Questions from a newbie

[lendrick]

Greets!

 

In a few weeks' time, I'll be attempting to get a skeptical D&D35/Pathfinder group to try the Hero System (which I've never played myself). I want to run a sci-fi campaign, and rather than waiting for Pathfinder Future book (if such a thing will ever exist), I thought we might try something different.

 

Anyway, I've got a couple of questions:

 

• D20 (D&D in particular) doesn't, in my experience, scale very well past about level 12 or so. Combat tends to take a long time (in actual minutes) to play out, while happening over a very short amount of in-character time. At a similar level of power, is Hero less cumbersome? How does it scale as you become more and more powerful?
  
• I'm reading that your typical sci-fi or fantasy game is "Heroic" and starts at around 175 points per character. How many more points might someone accumulate during a fairly long campaign?
  
• One of the more annoying aspects of D&D in the mid to high levels is how easy it can be to kill off characters, which is something I prefer to avoid unless they brought it on by doing something dumb. If you're dealing with very powerful characters in Hero, how easy is it to accidentally kill them off?
  
• In another post, someone mentioned pre-generated characters as a way to ease people in to the Hero System. Any other suggestions?
  

Thanks!

 

Bart

[redleaf]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

I've been thinking about this a lot, actually. I think Hero players might be a little different than D20 and other gamers.

 

D20 (D&D in particular) doesn't, in my experience, scale very well past about level 12 or so. Combat tends to take a long time (in actual minutes) to play out, while happening over a very short amount of in-character time. At a similar level of power, is Hero less cumbersome? How does it scale as you become more and more powerful?

 

I think the progession is more gradual, and I don't think combat gets more difficult as you build your character. That has been my experience.

 

I'm reading that your typical sci-fi or fantasy game is "Heroic" and starts at around 175 points per character. How many more points might someone accumulate during a fairly long campaign?

 

It could go on forever, but I'd say you'd get about 10-15xp per month depending on how often you played. At 3 times a month, probably 10xp. In my experience.

 

One of the more annoying aspects of D&D in the mid to high levels is how easy it can be to kill off characters, which is something I prefer to avoid unless they brought it on by doing something dumb. If you're dealing with very powerful characters in Hero, how easy is it to accidentally kill them off?

 

I'd say it's less easy to accidentally kill someone off in Hero, because the Stun usually takes them out before you can accidentally kill them. And then as a GM you can back off and give them some breathing room.

 

In another post, someone mentioned pre-generated characters as a way to ease people in to the Hero System. Any other suggestions?

 

Just an elaboration: get the player to pick a hero they like from TV or literature and then track down a copy of that character that's already been written up in Hero, then make cosmetic changes. And change the name.

 

This works well if you have someone jumping in at the last minute.

[Jhamin]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

Just an elaboration: get the player to pick a hero they like from TV or literature and then track down a copy of that character that's already been written up in Hero, then make cosmetic changes. And change the name.

 

This is a very good answer.

 

Your players may very well resist this and want to make their own characters. Avoid this for the first few games.

 

Most games give you a mix & match approach to character generation where you pick from a menu of races, classes, archetypes, feats, packages, or whatever and you simply gather the ones you want and end up with a character. As you likely know, Hero doesn't work this way. I have seen several experienced RPG players freeze up when they try to make a character in Hero without some experience in Hero first.

 

One other bit of advice:

In (say) pathfinder, how much damage a character can take or dish out is set by default by the mechanics. A longsword does a set amount of damage & you can only pump them up so much with the options you have at 1st level. In hero a Longsword does whatever damage you decide it does and there is *nothing* preventing a character from spending all their points on hitting more & doing more damage with it. This can get crazy.

The answer to this is for everyone, GM and Players alike, to agree on "how good is good" in this game & stick to it. When you do pick some pregens (or finally allow new characters) make sure you lay out some game limits and stick to them. It requires some maturity on the part of the players & GM but it heads off a lot of the "Hero Horror Stories" that crop up in RPG forums.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

Anyway, I've got a couple of questions:

D20 (D&D in particular) doesn't, in my experience, scale very well past about level 12 or so. Combat tends to take a long time (in actual minutes) to play out, while happening over a very short amount of in-character time.

HERO is an odd duck at times. Online, using text based chat and some scripted die rollers, I usually can finish a relatively simple combat in two hours or less. Even more complex combats only take a little longer. I think the longest one was an entire four hour session, but remember that as text based chat online. In person, I could probably have cut those times down 10-15%. The game scales to the current campaign guidelines. The only thing that really slows it down is high Speed scores. Keep those under lock and key and it should go smooth. I recommend 3-5 being the Speed range max.

I'm reading that your typical sci-fi or fantasy game is "Heroic" and starts at around 175 points per character. How many more points might someone accumulate during a fairly long campaign?

I ran a Star HERO campaign on and off for about 3 years. I gave out about an average of 25-40 xp per year. Maybe even a bit more. Depending on how generous you are, it can go as little as 1 XP per session or as high as 5. The rate at which you deal out experience should be governed by what you intend to do with the campaign and how often your players need "treats" (new character abilities, etc.) to stay interested. The typical focus of HERO is not to accumulate XP by slaying monsters. XP is awarded based on GM judgment.

One of the more annoying aspects of D&D in the mid to high levels is how easy it can be to kill off characters, which is something I prefer to avoid unless they brought it on by doing something dumb. If you're dealing with very powerful characters in Hero, how easy is it to accidentally kill them off?

Very easy to very difficult based on the scale of your game. If you follow a set of strict campaign guidelines for Combat Value, Damage Class, and Defenses, you shouldn't have too many problems with PC attrition.

In another post, someone mentioned pre-generated characters as a way to ease people in to the Hero System. Any other suggestions?

Pre-gens are useful to show how a character looks at the end of the character creation process. They do not highlight HERO's dynamic character building utility. I would say that it is much more useful to have a bunch of packages/templates available and then allow the player to mix and match those templates to get his character. Any leftover points can be used to flesh out individual abilities. That gives a pretty good balance between speed and customization. Having templates is useful for you as the GM too. You need that Special Ops Agent, add the appropriate Racial, Cultural and Professional Templates to shake 'n' bake one in just a few minutes.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

Increased Points in Hero doesn't usually mean increase capability to do or receiver damage. Often times it means increase range of capabilities.

 

You control how fast and how high damage and defenses go in Hero - unlike D20 where it's just level based advancement that always increases over time.

[pinecone]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

One trick I've used in the past is to provide "customisable pre-gens" In other words For say a 175 point character I might build a 125 pointer, and let the player add some "chrome" with the remaining points...that way you can build to a particular level of combat ability, yet the players feel some ownership of the finished char. I've even done it for one shots with positive reactions.

 

So if you want a speed range of 3 to 4 no worrys, include the speed as part of the pre made abilitys and all is well.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

1) Put maximum caps in your games. I suggest figuring out what you want the maxium Combat Values, Damage Classes, Defenses, and Speed to be. Then assume everyone will be at those values because if you say "you can do 12d6 damage" players are going to want to (less experienced players may be less able to reach the caps elegantly, but that doesn't mean they won't want to reach them)

 

2) I've played 50 point characters and 800 point characters, both work. If you are using caps (as mentioned above), more points relative to caps generally means more options. This might be VPPs who have the right power nearly all of the time, combos of multiple powers, or even simple things like extra senses/sensory powers. Higher point characters generally take longer to do combats with, because you have more options, but experience can bring this down significantly.

 

3) This depends on the story. A game where characters start out as "low level" adventurers, and proceed to become kingdom owning badasses will gain points very quickly. A game based around "you are the crew from Firefly" might gain points very slowly. If you expect characters to be "complete" at creation (i.e. having everything they need for their concept) I would give 1-3 points. If you want them to grow significantly, 4-6 points.

 

4) With properly chosen caps (PM me if you want my cap rules), you can choose how lethal you want your game to be. Generally HERO is very non-lethal (make sure players have resistant defenses though). This is based on the dual assumptions that 1) You will run out of STUN before BODY, and 2) People ignore you once you are down. As long as both of these hold true, it is very possible for characters to be unconcious but not dead, and then to get back up after the fight. With very powerful characters, players are more likely to have defenses against any random attack (more likely to have Life Supports, or Flash Defense or Power Defense) so they are generally tougher.

 

5) Other suggestions for easing into HERO: Start small. I started on 50 point vikings. That game lasted 1.5 years and we gained about 200 points over that time. In the begining, we would start every session out by learning a maneuver. The GM would explain, for example, block. Then the enemies in that session would use block an annoyingly large amount of the time. This style made us learn all the maneuvers, when to use them, and at a fairly gradual pace.

[bobooton]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

 

• D20 (D&D in particular) doesn't, in my experience, scale very well past about level 12 or so. Combat tends to take a long time (in actual minutes) to play out, while happening over a very short amount of in-character time. At a similar level of power, is Hero less cumbersome? How does it scale as you become more and more powerful?
  
• I'm reading that your typical sci-fi or fantasy game is "Heroic" and starts at around 175 points per character. How many more points might someone accumulate during a fairly long campaign?
  
• One of the more annoying aspects of D&D in the mid to high levels is how easy it can be to kill off characters, which is something I prefer to avoid unless they brought it on by doing something dumb. If you're dealing with very powerful characters in Hero, how easy is it to accidentally kill them off?
  
• In another post, someone mentioned pre-generated characters as a way to ease people in to the Hero System. Any other suggestions?
  

 

Thanks!

 

Bart

 

1) In my experience, HERO can be one of the slowest systems to play. There's a tactical component, speed, lots of rules and optional rules, and lots of die rolling for any given moment. High defenses or DCVs can make the game take a really long time, so limiting those will be helpful, but potentially deadly for the characters.

 

2) Think about how often you'd play and the average xp/game session. At 2xp/session and one session every two weeks, you'd get 52xp/year.

 

3) HERO is more random that D&D. Lots of stories around here about that one great roll or that one terrible roll, depending on your POV. However, splitting HP into STUN and BODY helps make HERO a bit more survivable than D&D, IMO. Just watch out if you decide to include hit locations.

 

4) Start simple? Unless your group is used to rules minutiae, you're better off skipping the optional stuff and keeping it simple for a while. Encourage purchasing of the books (e.g. 5xp for each core books) to get them buying into it. Once you've paid your money, you're more likely to delve into the game. Also, if possible, I would recommend hitting a convention or a game demo if you can find one in your area, just so you can see it in action.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

1) In my experience' date=' HERO can be one of the slowest systems to play. There's a tactical component, speed, lots of rules and optional rules, and lots of die rolling for any given moment. High defenses or DCVs can make the game take a really long time, so limiting those will be helpful, but potentially deadly for the characters.[/quote']

 

I actually find that in the hands of my gaming group (who are highly skilled in both 3.5 D&D and HERO system), that HERO combats tend to take longer because they are more epic. D&D wants 4 speed bumps a day, rather than 1+ epic fights. D&D also has the problem of you winning a fight about 1 hour before the fight ends. By this I mean that in round 1 the caster casts his spell that changes the odds enough that you win, and then you spend about 1-2 hours watching other characters stomp heads. OTOH if you just have people surrender when they get glitterdusted/stinking clouded/black tentacled/wall of stone/etc. then D&D is much much faster.

 

The other difference in play, is that D&D is an exception based rules system (i.e. it works like X EXCEPT when it doesn't). This forces a great deal of looking up rules during combat, whereas with HERO the mechanics don't have 1,000 exceptions that you need to check. Also debuffs are generally 1/2 DCV, 0 DCV, or some integer based on Change Environment. So D&D combat tends to stop and start much more than HERO.

 

All that is a tangent though, to what is really important: See if you have a greater Fun/Time ratio with HERO than with d20. If you find the Fun/Time ratio is better, than it won't mater if your combats are longer/shorter (since clearly that varies)

[lendrick]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

Just wanted to say thanks a lot for all of the excellent advice.

 

Given what I've heard, my plan at the moment is to pre-generate a group of space marines (around 150 points or so) with varying skill sets and let them choose a character, then run an adventure or two for them. In the meantime, I'll be putting together various items and powers and such that make sense in my campaign (psionics, etc), and when they're done with the one adventure I'll let them make new characters, and present them with a list of powers and items they can choose. If they want to make their own, I'll have them tell me what they want, and build something reasonable for it. I'll also be setting some reasonable caps so things don't get out of hand.

 

Now, I didn't see anything about this in the book for heroic campaigns, but it seems reasonable that for starting equipment, I give everyone roughly the same number of points' worth, so I'm going to take that into account when I balance the character out.

 

Anyway, thanks again.

 

Bart

[Susano]

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

Just an elaboration: get the player to pick a hero they like from TV or literature and then track down a copy of that character that's already been written up in Hero' date=' then make cosmetic changes. And change the name.[/quote']

 

Lots of samples to pick from here: http://surbrook.devermore.net/index/