Porting the best of HERO to Tri-Stat

Funksaw · August 16, 2004

I'm thinking about crossposting this to the Guardians of Order Board.

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I really like the core system for damage in Hero, and indeed, am impressed. But it is a bit complex, and I was just wondering if i could take the things I like about HERO and port them over to Tri-Stat to shore up the holes in that system.

So here are my ideas:

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Problem: Tri-Stat's initiative system requires the players to roll initiative and divide initiative amongst the number of offensive actions the character has.

Proposed Solution: Port the 12-phase system from HERO into Tri-Stat.

This would be simple - a character with X number of offensive actions in Tri-Stat moves at the same segments that someone with the same SPD in Hero would. For characters with 13+ offensive actions (not that rare in Tri-Stat) the characters would simply take more than one action on certain phases.

Characters can take Defensive actions at any time, however, defensive actions taken beyond the number of defensive actions the character has incurs the normal -4, -8, -12, etc penalties.

This affects the following attributes:

Combat Technique Lightning Reflexes: Instead of granting a +5 bonus to initiative, Combat Technique Lightning Reflexes should allow a character to move all of her phases one slot to the left, I.e, a character with 4 attacks and 2 lightning relfexes would move on 1, 4, 7, and 10, rather than 3, 6, 9, and 12.

This also affects the Defect "Activation Time" Instead of 10 initiative, a level-1 Activation Time defect costs a phase.

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Problem: Tri-Stat's damage system is random and makes no distinction between deadly and not-so-deadly damage.

Proposed Solution: Port HERO's Normal Damage system into Tri-Stat.

This one requires a little bit of work, but only a little...

Characters would get two "health" pools: Normal and Lethal health. Normal health would be calculated using the (Body+Soul)x5 + bonuses from attributes formula. Lethal Health would (depending on how "lethal" you want "lethal" to be) consist of either Normal Health/5 (which is probably the simplest way to go) or simply the Body score (Having a strong heart might keep you getting back up after getting knocked down, but it doesn't put your liver back into it's proper place...)

A character who loses all his Normal Health is unconscious, a character who loses all his Lethal health is unconscious and will die without medical treatment - a character who loses more than twice his lethal health (i.e, gets into negative health) dies.

Attacks that do damage would then use 1d6 for every 5 points of damage in the Tri-Stat system an attack does. Normal damage is added, Lethal damage is calculated at 1 point for each 2-5 that comes up, 2 points for every 6.

(Luckily, everything in Tri-Stat's divisible by 5, so this works very well.)

After that is determined, the damage bonus from the character's Attack Combat Value is added as Normal damage and the ACV/5 (round down) is added to lethal damage. (To clarify, in Tri-Stat, only a portion of the damage is "random" - the ACV is generally tacked on as a bonus after the "random portion" of the damage is determined.)

I.E., The final normal damage equals (Power Damage/5)x1d6 + ACV

Lethal damage equals (Lethal Damage from damage roll) + ACV/5

This would cause the following changes in the following attributes:

Generally, if a power grants any amount of armor, that armor number applies to Normal damage, and that number/5 worth of Lethal damage. This includes powers such as: Adaptation, Armour, Grow, and Force Field.

Generally, if a power grants extra damage, it grants 1d6 for every 5 points of damage. This affects: Combat Technique (Leap Attack), Grow, Natural Weapons, Massive Damage, Superstrength, Special Attack, and the defects Bane and Achilles Heel.

Damage Absorption would add up to 2 Lethal Damage per level in addition to 10 Normal Damage.

Damage Conversion only counts the Normal Damage when determining the character points received - not the Lethal Damage.

Healing heals 20 normal health points per and 4 lethal health per day per level. A character need not heal both types of damage or both types of damage proportionately to each other. Healing only normal damage is considered a "specific wound type."

Regeneration heals 5 normal health points per turn (not phase!) and 1 lethal health point.

August 16, 2004