Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

[Doc Democracy]

I was just reading the thread by Acid Crash on using EGO instead of STR to calculate REC and was taken by the title of the thread.

 

We are all aware that the basic construction of powers often throws people new to Hero as powers are based on effect rather than on the name of the power.

 

If the effect of the power is to damage something then you want to look at energy blast or killing attack regardless of the special effects. If the effect is to restrict someone's movement then you use entangle. This is one of the base 'rules' of the system.

 

Looking at the characteristic system I'm not sure that this is more of a hangover from old systems (starting with D&D) than a true representation of the Hero System at work.

 

Strength - what is it. Well often the first clause in any argument of what strength would contribute to is "someone who is strong is often..." Complete opposite to the way that anything else is designed in the system.

 

So I thought about it. In all the characteristics the system looks at the characteristic and what is does before assigning game effects.

 

I think that a true representation of the system would be to make all the effects of characteristics into powers and to get rid of the characteristics. Easier said than done though! The presence of characteristics is something that causes huge arguments and probably contributes more to skew in the system than anything else.

 

As you can probably tell by now - I haven't got some system all thought out in my head - I'm writing as I think - but getting rid of characteristics would be a fantastic opportunity to streamline the system. There could be a generic contest formula - regardless of whether you were using skills or combat that could be influenced by the proper powers. There would be no more concerns about whether strength should be 1 point per point or more than that or what characteristics influenced others.

 

Maybe I should go and think more about this?

 

Doc (brainstorming after his first coffee)

[tesuji]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Well, since characteristics have been doing free figs since i can remember... back into champions 2 iirc, by definition they are "the way hero does things".

 

But, seriously, the argument could certainly be supported for making characteristics just SFX and so making "i am strong" justification for buying hand to hand attack, lifting, etc.

 

i doubt such a change would be palatable to many this late in the system's life. neither the substantial hero 4 rewrite nor hero5 tackled any char changes at all, i have no reason to imagine there ever will be... beyond house rules of course.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

i doubt such a change would be palatable to many this late in the system's life. neither the substantial hero 4 rewrite nor hero5 tackled any char changes at all' date=' i have no reason to imagine there ever will be... beyond house rules of course.[/quote']

 

I do think that the best supplement that Hero could publish now would be the Ultimate House Rules Supplement. This would be a selection of ideas that people could adopt as house rules that have been brought up in the forums or elsewhere demonstrating what you might use the system to do with tweaks away from the 'core' system.

 

I think it'd be a good seller. I'd buy it...

 

 

Doc

[Agent X]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I wouldn't. I would hate to have to translate with other gamers based on a host of house rules they chose compared to the ones I chose.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I wouldn't. I would hate to have to translate with other gamers based on a host of house rules they chose compared to the ones I chose.

 

I guess I have never migrated characters from one GM to another. I've never been in the position to as I've always run the games and so such considerations are not important to me. Seems to me though that most groups have house rules that they use and it'd be no more difficult negotiating published house rules than it would home-grown ones.

 

Doc

[ChuckB]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I do think that the best supplement that Hero could publish now would be the Ultimate House Rules Supplement. This would be a selection of ideas that people could adopt as house rules that have been brought up in the forums or elsewhere demonstrating what you might use the system to do with tweaks away from the 'core' system.

 

I think it'd be a good seller. I'd buy it...

 

 

Doc

 

Down the road, it might be worth considering for a Hero Designer supplement.

[TheEmerged]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

i doubt such a change would be palatable to many this late in the system's life. neither the substantial hero 4 rewrite nor hero5 tackled any char changes at all' date=' i have no reason to imagine there ever will be... beyond house rules of course.[/quote']

 

The fact that something has always be done a certain way doesn't make it right or wrong -- any more than the fact that something is new makes it right or wrong. And you'll have people that will complain about any change; my late father used to joke that there will be people in Heaven complaining that gold doesn't make as good a paving surface as asphalt.

[Blackjack]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

FWIW, I think Characteristics ARE important in the HERO system.

 

Unlike any given Power, Talent, or Skill, everyone has Strength, DEX, Body, etc. If you're not a Brick, how do you determine your ability to break out of a Grab or Entangle without knowing - objectively - how strong the grabee is? If you're not a Speedster, now can I, as your GM, judge how well you avoid slipping across an icy floor?

 

As for the Characteristic system being contrary to the way HERO does things, I have to respectfully disagree. Sure, there have been disagreements about how much a point of STR or DEX should cost, but paying points for Characteristics, making you stronger, faster, tougher, smarter, is exactly how character construction is done...

 

Example time:

1) Nightwolf is a demi-brick (50 STR) with Wrestling (Martial Arts based on Grab). Sure, he could "buy STR" to determine his ability to hold and damage an opponent with a power or such, but how do I reflect his lifting strength?

 

2) Ladyhawke is a flying speedster (SPD 8, DEX 33). Even if her wings are pinned and she can't fly, she can still run, jump, and Dive for Cover. She can also walk across a balance beam. How can I tell if she succeeds in either action without a DEX roll?

 

All of this doesn't even take into account game mechanics such as who acts first (DEX order...) or getting Stunned.

 

Admittedly, I generally believe in 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Having said all that, I think this is an interesting discussion. If anyone were to come up with an alternative to Characteristics, I'd be interested in hearing it.

[AngryBug]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I think a game system without characteristics is an interesting idea, but it's a little late in the game (so to speak) for that system to be Hero. Characteristics are too deeply imbedded in too many basic game elements to remove them at this point.

 

Personally, I think Characteristics belong in the game, anyway. They serve an important function in determining what each character is capable of, physically and mentally. Without characteristics, how do you know how strong, agile, healthy, tough, quick thinking, strong willed, impressive, attractive, hard to hurt, fast, recuperative, resistant to fatigue and injury you are- at a glance?

 

Without Characteristics, each of these would have to be created by another game mechanic, in some form or another, which would just be characteristics in another, more complicated form.

 

The thing that makes characteristics different from any other game element, and deserving of a separate category all their own, is that everybody has them.

 

In most game worlds, only a few people have powers.

A few more than that have some talents.

Many people have perks.

Most people have some skills, some people have many.

 

Even an infant has characteristics.

 

Removing them from the game would mean removing a vital representation of the character's basic physical and mental abilities.

 

Like I said, that could work for a game system...

 

Just not this one!

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I know exactly what you mean, DocD, and found it odd when I started playing the game ~15 years ago. The characterisitics are not reasoned from effect, and could be done with powers, as long as a certain baseline were defined in a fashion similar to the basic combat manuevers that are available to all and dont cost any points.

 

 

If a "generic person" were defined as being able to walk X # of feet, lift 100 lbs, take X actions per Y seconds, ignore Z points of non-killing damage, do a basic strike for 2d6 damage for 1 END, act simultaneously as everyone else with a base 3 OCV/3 DCV, and have an END Reserve of 20 END/4 REC by default, then all of the features normally boostable by upping characteristics could be purchasable directly by Power constructs.

 

However, in the end, it would be a system as complicated as the existing characteristics or more so, and it wouldnt offer any real advantage other than a conceptual compliance with the "reason from effect" mantra.

 

As a trade off it would alienate a lot of gamers that have been trained to be comfortable with the idea of statistics in RPGs.

[zebediah]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Characteristics strike me as doing a few things for Hero characters and GMs:

 

They're something everyone has some of, so you don't accidentlly forget to buy your character the ability to hurt people by punching them, the capacity to think, or the ability to run.

 

They help define the human norm, and give a sense of proportion--because each characteristic is a bundle of Powers, it does for you some of the balancing to determin how much END you want to be able to not get winded in a fistfight, or how fast someone with superhuman coordiantion should be able to pull off attacks.

 

They help the GM (and the player, during character design) have something that sums up the character concisely, in a quantitative way. A character with an Int of 5 shouldn't have a gadget pool, and a total klutz probably shouldn't have a lot of advantages that resemble fine control (like armor piercing, or selective AoE, or whatnot). Like an Elemental Control (or the old package deals), they make a great handle for visualizing the character, and as such I'd beleive they deserve to have something of a point discount.

 

Finally, they're good for filling in the cracks, so to speak. When a situation comes up and you can't easily deduce from the rules how the character would be able to respond, you can pick an appropriate characteristic and ask for a roll. This is related to the point above, and possibly a rephrasing of it--when you need to know if a character has the willpower to go on, you can appeal to the character concept, and get a number to test against. It means less GM fiat, which is the major reason to have a gaming system in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

Personally, I've been experimenting with the idea of using alternate sets of characteristics, and with only allowing characteristics to be bought 5 levels at a time--so every characteristic ends in 0 or 5. It's not entirely unprecidented, as White Wolf uses stats of 1 to 5 to cover the range of human ability, and buying the 5th dot costs twice as much as buying the third. And it gets rid of a lot of (what is to my mind) annoying rounding a pointshaving.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

If you are going to go in increments of 5, then you might as well just divide by 5 and go in increments of 1. If there are no middle values allowed, then there is no real difference between (15/5) and 3.

[zebediah]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

If you are going to go in increments of 5' date=' then you might as well just divide by 5 and go in increments of 1. If there are no middle values allowed, then there is no real difference between (15/5) and 3.[/quote']

 

Well, yes, that is the next step. :']

 

At which point, you have Recovery equal to Strength + Con, you do Strength dice of damage, skill rolls are 9 + skill + stat, and ybase Mental Defense equal to Ego. Much less computation, much more streamlined.

 

You can even do nice things for the CV...just set it equal to Dex, and give everyone an overall combat level per Dex.

 

 

Personally, when I first looked at Hero's characteristics, they looked like a D&D holdover. They've just called Wisdom Ego, Charisma Presence, and made hitpoints a stat. OK, some of the connotations are different, but it's basically the same old 6-stat system in an ~ 1 to 20 range for normals.

[zornwil]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Great post, Doc Democracy.

 

I have thought something similar on occasion. I think as Killer Shrike points out there's a pragmatic problem but setting that aside...

 

I think there is still some room for characteristics. They represent powers "everybody" has. To your point, though, they remain ill-suited to the "reasoning by effect" path of powers and throughout the system. In some areas it would be interesting to see characteristics replaced by general skills actually, I think, in some large part, with ECs or some similar set of limitations to group related skills rather than base characteristics, and with skill levels to match the effects of course of a commonly-derived additive base.

 

But coming back to KS' point, it does get complicated quickly. I guess that's another question - can it be streamlined somehow so that at once it is both consistent and reasonable in play?

 

How would this look?

 

STR => effects are weight management, leap (self-weight management), hitting: TK manages the weight issues except for leap; leap could be bought on its own; hitting of course already has EB, physical; it also makes people tougher, you could buy Defense directly though

 

DEX => just buy skill levels to replace CV; Everyman Skill, fine manipulation; SPD of course becomes uninfluenced

 

CON => okay, how do you get stunned? commonly CON only for STUN I believe is +1, so is there a STUN value that is 1 point per?

 

And so on...of course one could say that as it stands the chars are essentially one-off "proprietary" frameworks for certain sets of powers, those being the various bases for skills, the derived characteristic breaks, and so on.

 

And if we try to break it down, we come across that ugly thing in HERO where as we build the most basic blocks we find that points must be "fudged" to more accurately represent game impact, just as some of the cheaper Talents do not exactly match how they would be built, instead their values were changed. This is HERO's dirty little secret - its fundamental blocks don't points-balance if we try to break it down too much into smaller components. It's a symptom of the whole "whole versus sum of the parts" thing.

 

Anyway, good food for thought.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

A system without Characteristics wouldn't work IMO. Characteristics are the "everyman powers" of any system. Every character has at least some level of capability with them, and any construct that doesn't really isn't a character.

 

Ultimately, it would be nice if the Characteristics were boiled down to their component parts, so that you are forced into a package deal with things like lifting, HTH damage and physical defense, or agility, accuracy and actions. These should each be their own Characteristic, with their own cost.

 

Suggested for this list would be:

Lifting

Balance

Coordination

Accuracy (could be rolled into Coordination)

Health

Stamina

Damage Capacity

Memory

Perception

Willpower

Cleverness

Charisma

Self-Esteem

Comliness

Physical Defense

Energy Defense

Mental Defense

Actions

Endurance

Consciousness

 

I didn't include HTH Damage because not every possible character has that capacity (a baby's body, even if controlled by an adult mind, can't do much more than pull hair).

[zornwil]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

A system without Characteristics wouldn't work IMO. Characteristics are the "everyman powers" of any system. Every character has at least some level of capability with them, and any construct that doesn't really isn't a character.

 

Ultimately, it would be nice if the Characteristics were boiled down to their component parts, so that you are forced into a package deal with things like lifting, HTH damage and physical defense, or agility, accuracy and actions. These should each be their own Characteristic, with their own cost.

 

Suggested for this list would be:

Lifting

Balance

Coordination

Accuracy (could be rolled into Coordination)

Health

Stamina

Damage Capacity

Memory

Perception

Willpower

Cleverness

Charisma

Self-Esteem

Comliness

Physical Defense

Energy Defense

Mental Defense

Actions

Endurance

Consciousness

 

I didn't include HTH Damage because not every possible character has that capacity (a baby's body, even if controlled by an adult mind, can't do much more than pull hair).

Heh, I can see it now, "not only is HERO too hard with all its math, you have to pick from a list of 50 'sub-characteristics' and build your own STR, DEX. WIS...".

[Agent X]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

How many things do you guys want to list on your character sheet?

[zornwil]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

How many things do you guys want to list on your character sheet?

Conceptually or realistically?

 

Again I add

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

A system without Characteristics wouldn't work IMO. Characteristics are the "everyman powers" of any system. Every character has at least some level of capability with them' date=' and any construct that doesn't really isn't a character).[/quote']

 

I only really started thinking this because I've been playing HeroQuest - the Glorantha version rather than the GW boardgame - and none of the characters have what you would traditionally call characteristics. No-one has Strength written on the character sheet for example unless it is spectacularly different from the norm in some way.

 

It works very well there and obviously that just set me to thinking and when I read the thread about using EGO instead of STR it all coalesced into a question. It would obviously have been nicer if it had coalesced into a coherent proposal!!

 

I didn't include HTH Damage because not every possible character has that capacity (a baby's body' date=' even if controlled by an adult mind, can't do much more than pull hair).[/quote']

 

I think a problem that I share with lots of other Hero gamers is that I want to write things down on the character sheet to prove that I have them! I think it stems from the 'If you want to use it then buy it!' maxim.

 

However - if you only put on the character sheet the things that were significantly different then it would be easier to talk about a character that was 'hard to kill' as you would define that like any other power.

 

Like I say, I haven't thought it through but I might try it as a presentational exercise next time I play a game of Champions or Justice Inc.

 

How many things do you guys want to list on your character sheet?

 

Personally?? Only the interesting things...

 

 

Doc

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Great post' date=' Doc Democracy.[/quote']

 

Well - you are at least partly to blame - I enjoyed reading the frameworks posts and have been looking at alternative ways to use the system ever since...

 

I have thought something similar on occasion. I think as Killer Shrike points out there's a pragmatic problem but setting that aside...

 

I think there is still some room for characteristics. They represent powers "everybody" has.

 

As I said before though, if everyone has them to the same, or similar enough fashion, do they have to be on the character sheet?

 

My aim in life is to have a character sheet that someone new to the game could pick up and use effectively without an integral knowledge of the game.

 

I suppose it doesn't require no characteristics but I was thinking that removing another set of things to think about it makes the system as a whole easier to digest.

 

If I ever come up with such a character sheet then I shall be sure to post it!

[Dust Raven]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

As I said before though' date=' if everyone has them to the same, or similar enough fashion, do they have to be on the character sheet?[/quote']

My gut response to this is two fold.

 

1) No they don't, and in Hero they aren't. Things that everybody has in common, and at the same value, that is. Senses for example.

2) Characteristics vary widely from character to character, or should. If everybody, PC or otherwise, almost always has the same STR value, then there needn't be a stat for it. I suppose that's why some games, like D&D, don't have a SPD/Actions stat. Everybody of a particular level/class always has the same actions unless some outside source or special training alters this.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Heh' date=' I can see it now, "not only is HERO too hard with all its math, you have to pick from a list of 50 'sub-characteristics' and build your own STR, DEX. WIS..."[/quote']

How many things do you guys want to list on your character sheet?

This, is of course, why we "only" have 14 Characteristics...

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

2) Characteristics vary widely from character to character' date=' or should. If everybody, PC or otherwise, almost always has the same STR value, then there needn't be a stat for it. I suppose that's why some games, like D&D, don't have a SPD/Actions stat. Everybody of a particular level/class [i']always[/i] has the same actions unless some outside source or special training alters this.

 

My concern is that people add things to characteristics because they are there rather than for any other reason - they don't want to miss out.

 

Would the system be more streamlined if people only bought stuff as the character demanded? Not sure if that's as clear written down as it is in my head! It is crystal in there....

 

 

Doc

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

My concern is that people add things to characteristics because they are there rather than for any other reason - they don't want to miss out.

 

Would the system be more streamlined if people only bought stuff as the character demanded?

 

Characteristics are more visible. I don't think they significantly more susceptible to being bought without character demand. Watch how many players come up with the most pff the wall reason their character would have mental, power and flash defense, because they don't want to have an easily targeted vulnerability.

 

This isn't to say every player abuses defenses, but I've seen it at least as much as characteristic abuse.

 

Now, what about resistant defenses? Many comic book characters have none, but what would a GM say to a player whose character design included no resistant defenses?

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

This isn't to say every player abuses defenses' date=' but I've seen it at least as much as characteristic abuse.[/quote']

 

I don't think I was talking about characteristic abuse.

 

I think that quite a few of my players see a characteristic list that is mostly 10's as boring and spend points on them to make them more interesting. I think the vary fact that they appear on the character sheet makes the players more likely to buy them as they see the characteristics as one of teh major ways they differentiate each other.

 

Personally I'm very focussed on the powers but I do see some stats raised to make the character more 'interesting'. I'd rather the points were spent on cool stuff that made the character more interesting than stats that made the sheet more interesting.

 

Obviosuly nothing that I've made a real study of - but something that is true among my players.

 

Doc