A few questions

[zosodojo777]

I just got Hero system sidekick, and was thinking of introducing my group to it, but I have a few questions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

1.Does Hero have some system of letting the GM's know what is an appropriate challenge for the characters? Possibly something akin to D&D's CR system?

 

2.How do you determine how many active points you can use? Does it just have to be set by the GM?

[Maur]

Re: A few questions

 

1) Appropriate challenge is based on a few things. How many points your player's characters are built off of, the CVs (OCV, DCV, etc...) of each, the DCs (Damage Classes) and the amount of defenses (resistant and non-resistant) that all parties have.

 

2) HERO System is just a system. So, you, as the GM, have to set your limits based on what you want from the players for a given campaign. I don't know about sidekick, but I believe FRED (5th Ed. Revised) has some examples of AP limits based on type of game (Superheros, Heroes, normals, etc...). The higher you set the AP limit, the more powerful, in general, your player's characters will be.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: A few questions

 

Welcome aboard!

 

1. Roughly: total Character Points. Attacks vs. Defenses.

 

2. Set by the GM. There are some rough guidelines in the books, and a lot of GMs follow them, but not all by any means.

[JohnTaber]

Re: A few questions

 

Just an FYI...balancing combat in Hero can be tough...especially for new Hero GMs and especially for heroic style play (i.e. Fantasy Hero). My recommendation is to make the first combat heavily in favor of the PC so you can get a feel for their combat ability. I call it..."attack of the dogs". Use wolves or dogs or something REALLY wimpy to get a feel. If your PC wipe them up then adjust accordingly for other encounters. Note that I have adjust down too.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: A few questions

 

There are a few traps for the unwary and many of them revolve around the use of 3D6 for the to hit.

 

When combat values are equal characters have a 62.5% chance of a successful hit - the game is more fun when you hit more often.

 

A +2 advantage in CV means you hit 83.8% of the time.

 

A -2 disadvantage in CV means you hit 37.5% of the time.

 

So a differential of 2 in CVs means a big difference in the chances to hit. If the differential goes to 4 then the contest can be over (unless the damage caused when hitting is very different - no point in hitting all the time if you are essentially tickling the opponent)

 

So - be aware of CV differentials and be wary of providing too many hefty (+2 or more bonuses) - they can have a bigger impact than you intended.

 

 

Doc

[zosodojo777]

Re: A few questions

 

Thanks for the help. I found ther recommended AP in sidekick. I'll have to try this with my friends. Is the besitary the best resource for villains/monsters?

[CTaylor]

Re: A few questions

 

Balancing encounters is a tough one because it takes experience to get a feel for what power level and what kind of abilities challenges your characters well. I advise working up rather than down; if an encounter is overwhelming, you're left with few choices to prevent a party wipe or just a humiliating defeat. If you start small, the players get a nice feel for what they can do and some confidence - it's best to give heroes a chance to feel powerful and heroic before you throw the mega villain at them.

 

Generally speaking I've found that each 50 points of power is worth an additional character of opposition. Thus, take the average point value of your PCs, and add 50 points to a single opponent for each extra PC present. This is a very rough rule of thumb but it's served me fairly well with well-built enemies and a clever battleground.

 

For me, combat encounters are more about the setting and tactics than the abilities of the monsters. You can have PCs fight goblins 5 times in a row and make each one different: these goblins are bland and ill-equipped, these have great traps they spring on people, these are smart and use clever tactics, these have powerful allies, these goblins are fought on a net over spikes that they are skilled fighting on, etc.

 

Look at movies and how fight scenes are set up. Everyone has seen a fight scene in movies a hundred times, how do you make it interesting? Well put the fights in odd places and make them exciting by the setting and what happens. It's one thing to have a bar fight, but it is another entirely to have a bar fight that's burning to the ground or during an earthquake, or on a moving train, a sinking ship, a zeppelin 1500 feet up.

[Vulcan]

Re: A few questions

 

Depends on the genre you're running. For fantasy, yes. For superheroes, you need one of the villian sourcebooks. Not certain what books there are for the other generes, though.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: A few questions

 

Welcome to the community, zosodojo! (Or should I call you "Mr. 777?")

 

Some time back we started compiling a thread of advice for novice GMs. From your remarks it's not clear whether or not you're a novice, but a lot of the advice on that thread is specific to HERO System GMing. You may be able to glean some useful tips: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3304

 

As for your question re the HERO System Bestiary, IMHO it's an excellent general-purpose resource for any genre of HERO gaming, with creatures both mundane and fantastic, at any power level. However, it primarily deals with animals and "monsters", so if you're interested in sapient races and/or individual NPCs you'd want to look up one of the other published compilations, such as Monsters, Minions, And Marauders for fantasy races, or Nobles, Knights, And Necromancers for individual fantasy foes.

 

OTOH several excellent HERO fan-created websites host a huge array of free character and creature write-ups from many sources -- books, comics, television, movies, even other RPGs -- which we can direct you to if you're interested.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: A few questions

 

1.Does Hero have some system of letting the GM's know what is an appropriate challenge for the characters? Possibly something akin to D&D's CR system?

 

There's nothing in the core rules that specifically addresses this issue, nor that is referenced in most published Hero Games books. As my board colleagues have already said, many GMs simply use their own experience and trial-and-error to balance encounters. However, there have been several efforts to devise such a system, both "official" and created by fans.

 

First, the Champions genre book (guidelines and examples for using HERO to play superheroes) describes a "Rule Of X", a relatively simple formula for comparing the capabilities of characters in various areas to see how they balance with each other. One fan created an online "Combat Rating System" based on formulas from an older Hero Games product, which rates characters according to several criteria. You can access that here. (It's also possible to download the CRS to your own computer.)

 

The most elaborate system I've seen for this purpose is the "Effectiveness Rating," which is detailed in issue #3 of Hero Games' electronic magazine, Digital Hero (an inexpensive and broadly useful publication for HERO gamers, BTW). There's also a free Excel spreadsheet for use with the ER, which you can download from here.

 

Note that none of these formulas give results as detailed and specific as that from D&D, because HERO characters are not as formulaic and defined by "class" and/or "level". You'll still need to apply your best judgement.

[pinecone]

Re: A few questions

 

Just an FYI...balancing combat in Hero can be tough...especially for new Hero GMs and especially for heroic style play (i.e. Fantasy Hero). My recommendation is to make the first combat heavily in favor of the PC so you can get a feel for their combat ability. I call it..."attack of the dogs". Use wolves or dogs or something REALLY wimpy to get a feel. If your PC wipe them up then adjust accordingly for other encounters. Note that I have adjust down too.

 

I agree...I used to call it "Attack of the mooks" You get to see the overall dynamic, and basic combat power/efficency in a safe "controlled" environment...

[zosodojo777]

Re: A few questions

 

Thanks all. Attack of the mooks/dogs sounds like a solid plan, since I wouldn't want a character death spoiling my players' first Hero experience.

Also, lord laiden, the combat rating system looks really nice, I'll have to tr that out. The advice article is intresting, I'll have to remember it.

[prestidigitator]

Re: A few questions

 

I also try to throw in an encounter at some point for a new campaign or players where they are NOT expected to win, but usually engineer it in such a way that the players and characters can "learn from the experience" (e.g. not be dead and recover pretty easily from it, both in story terms and in terms of bruised egos ). Not to "put the players in their place," but as a point of reference; I think it is useful from both player and GM perspectives to know what an overpowered challenge looks and feels like.

 

An example of such an encounter would be a professional rivalry of some kind, or a misunderstanding where one group thinks the other is up to no good, but the other side is basically good and/or honorable and will not simply dispatch of the party when they win. Or simply enemies that don't have the motivation (yet?) to do so. This can be a great story element as well, setting up rivalries, setting the tone, giving that initial adventure motivation, etc.

[Tonio]

Re: A few questions

 

I also try to throw in an encounter at some point for a new campaign or players where they are NOT expected to win, but usually engineer it in such a way that the players and characters can "learn from the experience" (e.g. not be dead and recover pretty easily from it, both in story terms and in terms of bruised egos ). Not to "put the players in their place," but as a point of reference; I think it is useful from both player and GM perspectives to know what an overpowered challenge looks and feels like.

 

An example of such an encounter would be a professional rivalry of some kind, or a misunderstanding where one group thinks the other is up to no good, but the other side is basically good and/or honorable and will not simply dispatch of the party when they win. Or simply enemies that don't have the motivation (yet?) to do so. This can be a great story element as well, setting up rivalries, setting the tone, giving that initial adventure motivation, etc.

 

Being in encounters you don't win also serves to accentuate the feeling of victory in those encounters you do win. Beating the bad guys can stop being fun if you always succeed, and especially so if it becomes effortless.

[CTaylor]

Re: A few questions

 

Right, both perspectives are useful: both the fight that the PCs clean up in to feel heroic (and get a baseline of what they can stomp on) and the fight that beats them into the ground like a tent peg, to show them their limitations and force them to get creative or learn.

 

Books and movies sometimes avoid both of these perspectives and suffer from it. Consider Worf from Star Trek: TNG. He was supposedly all tough and bad and dangerous, but in order to make the writer's bad guy of the week seem tough, he'd trash Worf. Since Worf never had a chance to actually look powerful, it just made him look pathetic and surly.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: A few questions

 

Indeed. Not until he became a regular on DS9 did Worf start kicking butt in frequent and impressive style.

 

He impressed me most in Star Trek: First Contact, when he took down at least two Borg hand-to-hand.

[SteveZilla]

Re: A few questions

 

Worf impressed me in DS9 when he was captured and forced to fight the Jem'Hadar one at a time in ritual HtH combat. IIRC, he killed about 15 of them.

[SteveZilla]

Re: A few questions

 

I also try to throw in an encounter at some point for a new campaign or players where they are NOT expected to win, but usually engineer it in such a way that the players and characters can "learn from the experience" (e.g. not be dead and recover pretty easily from it, both in story terms and in terms of bruised egos ). Not to "put the players in their place," but as a point of reference; I think it is useful from both player and GM perspectives to know what an overpowered challenge looks and feels like.

 

An example of such an encounter would be a professional rivalry of some kind, or a misunderstanding where one group thinks the other is up to no good, but the other side is basically good and/or honorable and will not simply dispatch of the party when they win. Or simply enemies that don't have the motivation (yet?) to do so. This can be a great story element as well, setting up rivalries, setting the tone, giving that initial adventure motivation, etc.

 

Have you ever given the party an encounter where the correct line of action was to retreat (run away) -- at least temporarily?

[Doc Democracy]

Re: A few questions

 

Have you ever given the party an encounter where the correct line of action was to retreat (run away) -- at least temporarily?

 

 

I never rely on PCs running away. Usually I tell them if I think that there is a good chance they will fight to the death that there is another way out - suggest they find something else etc.

 

But if I put them in a situation where I need them to run away then I know they will not - even if it looks obvious to them that they are all going to die...

 

 

Doc

[CTaylor]

Re: A few questions

 

Yeah you can't trust players to have their characters flee, they will stand and fight and die, no matter how stupid it is, simply out of a refusal to "lose." And really, what's the point of playing a game where your situation sucks as much as real life? The PCs should win almost always, it just should be a really tough fight sometimes. And the times they lose should set up an even bigger, more satisfying win later.

[pinecone]

Re: A few questions

 

Yeah, I try to avoid retreat senarios for just that reason...but I'm well known as a ruthless B*st**d, so if they insist, I gladly slaughter them all without mercy..

 

Because of that they generally develop a willingness to consider "plan B" (Run away!)

[SteveZilla]

Re: A few questions

 

Perhaps I could clarify what I meant by a "Run Away" encounter. I was not meaning having one solely to be a Dick-DM, but as part of a larger plot where they have to figure out how to affect the target they couldn't reliably affect earlier.

 

For example: There was a Stargate SG1 episode where Teal'c was testing a new virtual reality training "game" that learned and adapted to the "player". In it he faced several Kull Warriors that could only be defeated with a special weapon enhancement found elsewhere in the game. He thus had to retreat/avoid engaging them until he found that enhancement.