HERO/d20 house rules and mods?

[Dragonblade]

I'm new to the boards and a big HERO fan for years. I played 4th Edition HERO and Champions several times but the slowness and complexity of character creation and combat turned off most of my gaming group.

 

We went to d20 and D&D. I am a D&D veteran and love the game but I think HERO offers a certain flexibility and customizability that d20 simply doesn't. So in order to convince my group to go back HERO I have to tweak the rules to improve speed of play. Character creation is not such a big deal once I give everyone mins/maxes on point spending for different characteristics, powers, disadvantages, etc. In fact, the genre books like Ninja HERO, Champions, Star HERO, Fantasy HERO etc. are great at suggesting point spending guidelines.

 

The real trick though is combat. Rolling 3d6+OCV-DCV seems simple enough, but its three dice that need to be added up instead of just one. We were thinking of going to an opposed roll system: Attacker rolls d20+OCV vs. a Defense roll of d20+DCV. OR a single roll system that models d20 style Armor Class: d20+OCV vs. an AC or Def of 10+DCV.

 

Please help me look at the pros and cons of my two suggested methods vs. the standard HERO attack roll. Rolling one die speeds combat up by several seconds with every roll. And over a large combat can make quite a difference in terms of real world game time spent fighting. Speed of play is paramount to my group.

 

Another suggestion we developed was to ditch the speed chart. Simply use SPD as the number of actions you have in a round. Characters take turns in a round robin fashion, until those with a lower speed drop out because they ran out of actions. Those familiar with Palladium and Rifts should recognize this style of combat right away. Although this method sacrifices some of HERO's tactical realism, running attacks in this fashion plays immensely faster than using the SPD chart.

 

Please discuss. Is this a good idea? Bad? What issues do you foresee?

 

Another suggestion is to change the way damage is rolled. Rolling a 10d6 and counting both STUN and BODY means not only do you have to count the pips on ten dice, but you have to count them twice! One trick is to have one person count BODY while another counts STUN. This helps somewhat. But rolling and counting up a lot of dice is a big time waster and suspense killer in a long drawn out combat. Its bad enough when the wizard in the D&D game does this for his fireball spell, but in HERO every character has a bucketful of dice to roll!!

 

We came up with counting STUN normally and then divide by 3 to determine BODY. This cuts out double counting and generally works well, but you still have to count up all the STUN dice. We also thought about rolling one die with a multiplier instead of rolling a lot of dice. For example, instead of rolling 10d6 for STUN, roll 1d6x10 for STUN. The problem with this system is obvious. More extremes and less likely to roll an average between 30-40. We would still rolling killing damage the same way.

 

Any thoughts on any or all of these methods of speeding up combat? Good? Bad?

 

What house rules or quickplay tactics do you guys use?

[Farkling]

Hmmm....quickening combat...mine run fairly fast at the moment. Let's me think...

 

A) Pre-prepped Action Charts...ie. Villain and Heroes listed in DEX order with a phase chart blocked out to the right...

(like the ones MetaCreator and I assume Hero Designer can make now ). I used to use an Excel sheet...but I've lost the template.

 

Some players are allowed to preroll attacks. Also, I don't even have them make rolls if it is against extras or dramatically apporpriate...an OCV 11 versus a DCV 4 thug pretty much has an automatic hit. One player rolls his damage and his hit roll at the same time. (He has different colored/sized dice for his attack roll)

 

C) Extras taking damage dice 50% over their PD do not need a damage roll (18d6 versus 12 PD => splat!)...if the thug will hit a vertical surface...dice = to PD is sufficient for quick KO.

 

D) The extras hit rule can be used against villains when appropriate, damage rolls may/may not...I will frequently have the next attacker begin rolling after I have BODY/KB totals.

 

E) We count BODY/KB first. Short version...Sixes and ones...you rolled 10d6, you did 10 BODY + 6's - 1's...so if you have 2 sixes with no corresponding 1's...12 BODY....a 1 with no sixes...9 BODY. They can total STUN as I move on, unless it is necessary to have it to begin. I want the KB and the BODY for physical condition and location...I'll have STUN by the time someone asks "is he conscious?"

 

F) Summarized villain sheet so you can track all STUN/BOD in one place...and END as appropriate. (shh, I don't track END heavily for villains unless power construction demands it)

 

G) Characters have a list of combat manueveres on their character sheets...and range modifiers...and knowledge of how their OWN powers function with respect to combat.

[Farkling]

and I am not a fan of D20 conversion to hit...

 

the 3d6 gives that bell curve to hit....D20 has a different feel.

 

Bear with me...it's been a few years since Stats class...

 

OCV 7 DCV 20 on 3d6 = (3-) to hit. What? 3%? or 0% without crit rules.

OCV 7 DCV 15 on 3d6 = (3-) to hit. What? 3%?

OCV 7 DCV 10 on 3d6 = (8-) to hit. About 25%

OCV 7 DCV 7 on 3d6 = (11-) to hit. About 50%

OCV 7 DCV 4 on 3d6 = (14-) to hit About 75%

OCV 7 DCV 1 on 3d6 = (17-) to hit. What? 95%?

OCV 7 DCV -2 on 3d6 = (17-) to hit. Again..96%?, or 0% without crit rules.

 

OCV 7 DCV 20 on d20 = 7-27 vs 30. 5%, or 0% wihtout crit rules.

OCV 7 DCV 15 on d20 = 7-27 vs 25. 15% to hit.

OCV 7 DCV 10 on d20 = 7-27 vs 20. 30% to hit.

OCV 7 DCV 7 on d20 = 7-27 vs 17. 55% to hit.

OCV 7 DCV 4 on d20 = 7-27 vs 14. 65% to hit.

OCV 7 DCV 1 on d20 = 7-27 vs 11. 80% to hit.

OCV 7 DCV -2 on d20 = 7-27 vs. 9. 90% to hit.

 

I can't remeber how to compute the opposed die roll method. I'll try putting it in a spreadsheet, but my gut instinct is that the high DCV characters will be HARDER to hit. It would certainly have a more random feel. ugh. I like having some idea of how easy it is to hit my targets.

[TheEmerged]

RE: Competing Rolls of d20. Probably a bad idea. While it's closer to a curve than straight d20, it's still not "curved" enough to reflect the way the system is designed. Further, trust me on this one -- with a little practice, you can read three dice almost as fast as you can one. Finally, rolling twice will cause you to lose most of the time "saved".

 

HERO is designed with a curved success system -- and as such isn't as prone to the wide swings that d20 is prone to. It also means that bonuses to the roll matter (my personal biggest problem in d20 as a system; PC's often have to be 7th or 8th level before their skill ranks matter relative to the swing of the dice).

 

RE: Eliminating the SPD Chart. Again, rookie overemphasis; this becomes invisible with a little practice. If you eliminate this you will find yourself developing house rules for multiple attacks in a turn.

 

What would I recommend to speed combat up?

 

#1> Use minatures and a ruler/tape measure. When our gaming group first tried this, we were shocked at how much it speeded up combat. In hindsight, it seems that you spend more time counting hexes than counting the dice rolls. Now we use the battlemat to draw out buildings and such without regards to the hexes.

 

#2> Dice rolling program or pre-rolls. Again -- there is no substitute for preparation. If you can program or have access to a program like Excel, you can easily create a pre-roll sheet with over a hundred results per possible combination in a few minutes.

 

If you have a laptop or PDA, there are dice-rolling programs out there. In fact, a friend once found one that was pre-programmed to report BODY totals. I have lost the link and don't have time to find it right now, but I know they're out there.

 

#3> Reduce the number of options available until you're more familiar with the system. It's an easy tempation to use every optional rule you want at the outset. Don't. Get the core of the system under your belt, and then add until it works the way you want it to.

[Farkling]

That was idiotic...we don't use miniatures, but we do lay it out on the table with miniatures, markers, dice and a tape measure... doh !!

[DigitalGolem]

One major problem with the d20 mechanic is (as noted above) that it's far more "random" than the 3d6 bell-curve. I've found the most common in-game effect is wildly unpredictable results in combat. A given group of adventurers may encounter a weak foe, and proceed to rock all over it, only to meet a near-identical foe an hour later and get their proverbial butts kicked, for no better reason than poor dice rolls. This problem is also extended to skill rolls, of course, which may be more important than combat, in some campaigns.

 

While Hero doesn't completely eliminate this problem, it reduces the odds of "killjoy" dice rolls, making outcomes more predictable. The worst-case roll in d20 (natural 'one') always has a 5% probability, but in Hero, the worst case '18' is only ~0.5% probable. In other words, the d20 character is 10 times more likely to roll an automatic failure, (or success!) regardless of the characters' skill levels.

 

Is that a good thing? Not for me, but this is really a matter of personal taste, IMHO. Many gamers like d20 for the same reason I dislike it. (That's not a bug, it's a feature!) My new gaming group hasn't tried Hero yet, but I hope to acquaint them with it soon. Perhaps they'll convert....

 

thanx,

 

DGv3.0

[TheEmerged]

Originally posted by DigitalGolem

Is that a good thing? Not for me, but this is really a matter of personal taste, IMHO. Many gamers like d20 for the same reason I dislike it. (That's not a bug, it's a feature!) My new gaming group hasn't tried Hero yet, but I hope to acquaint them with it soon. Perhaps they'll convert....

 

thanx,

 

DGv3.0

 

Good point.

[prestidigitator]

d20 Skin

 

In an effort to quash the "d20 System is easier than the Hero System" argument (although I still don't seem to have raised much enthusiasm for this beautiful system among my players), I use the following method to make characteristic, skill, and attack rolls "look like" they do in d20:

 

1.) There is no longer a set target number for rolls. Instead you have a bonus based on your Char, Skill, OCV, etc. This bonus applies to your actual roll, not a target number (the GM can change the difficulty based on environment and other conditions not related to your character).

 

2.) Characteristics give you a +Char/5 to a Char roll or related Skill roll.

 

3.) You want to roll HIGH (18 is good, 3 is bad). A "standard" difficulty for a roll is 12+ (exactly equivalent to 9-, which is a Char roll if the Char is 0).

 

3.) If a character does not have a skill (including non-familiarity with a weapon), (s)he gets -3 to -5, depending on the complexity of the task, if a roll is possible at all.

 

4.) Familiarity with a skill gives you only a -1 to your roll (difference between 9- and 8-). The full skill gives you a +2 for Background Skills, or your Char bonus (+Char/5) for other skills. The normal Character Point progression for skills, skill levels, Per rolls, etc. apply to skill bonuses.

 

5.) For combat, your OCV (plus combat levels, maneuver bonus/penalty, etc.) is the bonus to your roll. The difficulty is 10+DCV of the target (this is a 10+, equivalent to an 11-, for a DCV of 0).

 

To summarize:

 

Char roll: +Char/5

Standard difficulty: 12+

 

Unfamiliar skill: -3 to -5 (if roll even possible)

Familiar skill: -1

Background Skill (proficient): +2, 1 CP for +1

Characteristic-based Skill (proficient): +Char/5, 2 CPs for +1

Standard difficulty: 12+

 

Attack: +OCV+maneuver (-3 if unfamiliar)

Standard difficulty: 10+DCV (or 10+OCV for blocks)

 

Opposed skill rolls: your roll+bonus must equal or exceed the other character's roll+bonus.

 

NOTE: This does NOT change the system in the slightest. All probablilities and costs are exactly the same. It is merely a different (more familiar, I suppose) presentation.

[bjbrown]

When my group converted from AD&D to Hero, it seemed to us that combat took longer in Hero. A few years later, combat takes about the same amount of time that it used to take in AD&D. Why? Because I, the GM, had been playing AD&D for fifteen years and knew most of the rules by heart. After playing a few years, I have almost the same familiarity with Hero rules. Not perfect, but now I'm not looking up so much all of the time. Having played both, Hero combat is no more complex than AD&D- they seem to both have about the same number of modifiers to keep in mind and to keep things confusing.

By the way, the easiest way to speed up play of both Hero and AD&D is to (a) reduce the amount of combat as much as possible ( make the necessary combats small in scale (i.e., few characters on each side).

Dice:First, rolling 1d20 and applying modifiers is no faster than rolling 3d6 and applying multipliers. The slow part is not recognizing the number on the dice; the slow part is the adding and subtracting. I wouldn't recommend changing dice as a way of speeding things up.

I don't know if it's faster or not, but generally after rolling attack dice, the player announces what DCV the roll would hit. The chart on 5E 244 is helpful for this.

Speed:In dealing with Speed and going in order, one of my players develops a chart at the beginning of combat that orders both when the heros act and when the villains act. Now he just tells us who is next and goes down the line. That has speeded up that aspect of play a lot. Abandoning the Speed chart could have two problems. It could confuse some of the finer points of when things happen on segments (may not always be a problem), and it could give an advantage to high speed people who go at the end and take multiple actions without the opportunity for intervening actions from lower speed people (maybe not a problem if your game has a very small range of Speed). For my games, though, developing an order of combat list helps speed things along.

Damage: Separate BODY and STUN is one of the great advantages of the Hero system over the AD&D system in my perspective (knocking out someone without killing them- what a concept). Keeping track of two different kinds of damage does take a little bit longer, though for me it's worthwhile. Since the Hit Location chart is an optional rule, maybe you want to ditch that and use a standard rule that for Killing Attacks, Stun is x3 of the BODY rolled, and for Normal Attacks, BODY is 1 per die. Again, I happen to like the Hit Location Chart, but tossing that aside will actually save you some time.

Other: Don't use an AD&D style of spell casting which is based on having a lot of spells and memorizing the ones to carry. So much of our AD&D was wasted by the players with Spell Casters scrutinizing the details of their spell lists to decide what spells to memorize day-to-day. Also, don't use Activation or Requires Skill Roll for spells in Hero- rolling skill rolls for spells will slow down the game. Each of your players should read every page of rules and every FAQ question associated for any power their character possesses. Looking up rules takes up time, and there's no reason that players can't be responsible for knowing the rules for their own powers (and the GM needs to do a lot of reading of rules to be prepared for each game session). Finally, organized character sheets, including player-made charts of common information, speed up the game.

[bjbrown]

I'll add one more quick post, rather than editing my previous one yet again. I can see no reason why adding up dice takes so long for your group, unless your group is using hard-to-read dice. Normal sized white dice with black pips are the easiest to read and add, it seems to me. Small dice, dice with numbers instead of pips, and dice with low contract from pips or number to background are hard to read and thus hard to add. (Regular, classic dice are much easier to read than those d20 with small faces and translucent colors.) I'm no math genius, but adding dice is a trivial, very quick task.

[Dragonblade]

Thanks for all the responses! I'm in the midst of planning a new HERO system based fantasy martial arts campaign using Ninja HERO and Fantasy HERO.

 

We are going to playtest some of our rules and also use base HERO rules and see which we like.

 

I don't have time to post a response to each one of you right now but I'll get back on the boards tomorrow and respond.

[Dragonblade]

Just an update, we working on world creation at the moment so haven't gotten to work on mechanics at all.

 

Basically, I think we will go with a d20+OCV vs. a 10+DCV rule. Very similar to D&D. Even though the d20 is more of a flat 5% variable and not a bell curve like rolling 3d6, I found that the essential difference between the two rolling methods is that 3d6 tends to give more and more of an advantage to whoever has the higher CV.

 

If you have two combatants, and the OCV of one is less than the DCV of his opponent, then under the 3d6 method, that person is less likely to be hit than if those combatants used my d20 method. Likewise, if the attacker's OCV is greater than the DCV, then the attacker is more likely to hit then if the d20 method is used.

 

Basically, 3d6 magnifies the advantage of whoever has the higher CV. Under my d20 method, the advantage is more muted, leading to a more balanced combat system IMHO. Characters with higher CV's then their opponents will dominate those opponents that much more using the 3d6 method. d20 favors the underdog in comparison.

 

As far as SPD goes, we will test a round-robin combat method. Everyone will act in order of DEX, although we are thinking of coming up with an initiative system to shake things up a bit. If we don't like the way it plays we may go back to the SPD chart.

 

As far as rolling damage goes, thats the hard one. You can't really change much here without significantly affecting the game. For now I think we will just have to play as is and see how it goes.

 

We are not playing a superheroic game so hopefully rolling a bucket of dice will not be an issue.

[Farkling]

If you need counting speed...

 

Normal Dice :: Total STUN and default to 1 BODY per die.

Killing Dice:: ROll the dice and muliply by three for STUN

 

If you toss the Speed Chart, Toss the SPD characteristic.

If you decide to reinstate it later, offer to trade skill levels out for SPD points when you do.

 

As to the 3d6 method...that is why the character who wants to be REALLY good, or surprise his oppenent buys skill levels in the heroic game, and "Single Hex Area Effect" in the superheroic....because the advantage WILL be his. If I'm using a D20, I need to buy so many more...you are encouraging armor and defenses over CV. At the flat 5% I won't bother dodging any more...I will always dive for cover...I have sooo much batter odds.

 

I am not a fan of the DnD D20 system since being an expert at something will not necessarily help you in combat. The amareur can still hit me easily if he's a lucky die roller. He has a 5% chance of hitting me REGARDLESS of how good I am. That effect always has and always will annoy me.

 

Let us know how it works out.

[prestidigitator]

Originally posted by Farkling

If you need counting speed...

 

Normal Dice :: Total STUN and default to 1 BODY per die.

Killing Dice:: ROll the dice and muliply by three for STUN

 

If you toss the Speed Chart, Toss the SPD characteristic.

If you decide to reinstate it later, offer to trade skill levels out for SPD points when you do.

 

As to the 3d6 method...that is why the character who wants to be REALLY good, or surprise his oppenent buys skill levels in the heroic game, and "Single Hex Area Effect" in the superheroic....because the advantage WILL be his. If I'm using a D20, I need to buy so many more...you are encouraging armor and defenses over CV. At the flat 5% I won't bother dodging any more...I will always dive for cover...I have sooo much batter odds.

 

I am not a fan of the DnD D20 system since being an expert at something will not necessarily help you in combat. The amareur can still hit me easily if he's a lucky die roller. He has a 5% chance of hitting me REGARDLESS of how good I am. That effect always has and always will annoy me.

 

Let us know how it works out.

 

I agree completely. By the way, if you really want the feel of the d20 system, you should throw out the Speed Characteristic, and instead use Penalty Skill Levels to decrease the penalty from the Sweep Maneuver.... I don't really like this myself, but I have been dealing with a little too much d20 lately, and know very well the frustration of not being able to move around any faster as an Epic level Fighter!

[VictorVonDoom]

If you want to use a d20 herogame why use MM? (that is loosely based on D&D)