HEROEs of Athas

[GeekySpaz]

I'll have to admit this hasn't come up as frequently as I would have thought given that WOTC just released the 4th edition of Dark Sun which is the best DnD setting (in my humble opinion) EVER. But I am working on a Dark Sun campaign using Fantasy Hero as a base rather than 4th or some other edition of DnD. I've had some fun in DnD over the years but I find that HERO just meshes with me better and is the best system I know of for building characters to concept.

 

That being said I need to establish some ground rules and maximums for characters in such a game to keep things balanced and working correctly. Most of the players in my game are fans of Rifts (hey nobody's perfect, the fact they are willing to play HERO is a step in the right direction I think). One player admitted to me that he prefers the structure of the class based system of Rifts to the free form point system of games like HERO.

 

What I would like to develop for my game is a Talent tree style system similar to what many computer games have and what games like 4th ed DnD are headed towards, in order to provide a structure similar to what this player is talking about. Now being that this will be a HERO game everything is drawn up in HERO terms so that if a player doesn't feel that any of the options I've left them with fit with the character they have in mind we can always adjust to what they want and keep things relatively balanced since everything is based on points anyway.

 

So I am trying to build talent trees based on at least 4 different branches, martial powers, arcane powers, psionic powers, and non-arcane magical powers. My basic concept is to have a small list of talents that unlock each of these branches that characters can buy. Each talent gives characters access to higher characteristics, and more talents/powers appropriate to the branch for which they have purchased the unlocking talent. As characters progress they must meet prerequisites for more advanced tiers within each branch, each of which will unlock more powerful abilities. I am thinking to limit the abilities within each tier based on active points. The problem I am having is developing the specifics of this concept.

 

Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated. If am approaching this the wrong way, and anyone can suggest a better approach that will meet the same end goal that would be appreciated as well.

[Lezentauw]

Re: HEROEs of Athas

 

If I remember correctly, the third edition of Fantasy Hero did something like that. They had a limitation that required x amount of points being spent in said school before you could purchase the spell. You could do something similiar, say -1/4 limitation, "Must have learned x power before you can learn this power."

[Shadowsoul]

Re: HEROEs of Athas

 

Sounds like a mammoth task to me. But do what you've got to do. First off how are you going to build this?

 

Is each talent going to progress in a linear fashion with specific pre-requisites? E.g. will Fireball 1 unlock Fireball 2 which unlocks Fireball 3 and nothing else. That will be relatively easy to build but inflexible to play.

 

Or will your build resemble the branches of an actual tree, with many abilities unlocking multiple other abilities? That could be fun to play but nightmarish to build.

 

Alternatively will you allow characters to unlock tiers rather than individual abilities? E.g. you have to buy 4 Tier 1 Martial abilities before you can start to purchase abilities from Tier 2 of the Martial Talents Tree. This is also relatively easy to build but would perhaps detract from any sense of specialisation.

 

The build which most appeals to me would be a combination of the first and third suggestions. You have to unlock each Tier by buying a certain number of abilities from the previous Tier. Once a Tier is unlocked certain abilities are also unlocked, but some abilities within that Tier have particular prerequisites. E.g. Psionic Blast would be automatically unlocked at Tier 2 but Lesser Mind Control would only be unlocked if the character had the Tier 1 ability Telepathy.

[GeekySpaz]

Re: HEROEs of Athas

 

Sounds like a mammoth task to me. But do what you've got to do. First off how are you going to build this?

 

Is each talent going to progress in a linear fashion with specific pre-requisites? E.g. will Fireball 1 unlock Fireball 2 which unlocks Fireball 3 and nothing else. That will be relatively easy to build but inflexible to play.

 

Or will your build resemble the branches of an actual tree, with many abilities unlocking multiple other abilities? That could be fun to play but nightmarish to build.

 

Alternatively will you allow characters to unlock tiers rather than individual abilities? E.g. you have to buy 4 Tier 1 Martial abilities before you can start to purchase abilities from Tier 2 of the Martial Talents Tree. This is also relatively easy to build but would perhaps detract from any sense of specialisation.

 

The build which most appeals to me would be a combination of the first and third suggestions. You have to unlock each Tier by buying a certain number of abilities from the previous Tier. Once a Tier is unlocked certain abilities are also unlocked, but some abilities within that Tier have particular prerequisites. E.g. Psionic Blast would be automatically unlocked at Tier 2 but Lesser Mind Control would only be unlocked if the character had the Tier 1 ability Telepathy.

 

I would ideally like to do something like the second one you mention. But I am forced to agree it is a nightmare to build. One of the beauties of the HERO system is that since players can build anything using the power system in HERO the GM is free to trust that the players will create the powers that they want and all he has to do is supervise and make sure the player doesn't make something too broken. Unfortunately such a system as the tree type structure removes much of that flexibility since the players are now constrained to choose from a list of pre-defined abilities. However I also feel that such a system could make character creation very fun.

 

As I work on this campaign I find I will probably have to reign in my ambition a bit and favor player flexibility over the fun of an ability tree (and flexibility certainly is not a bad thing).

 

What I have come up with thus far is this (all tentative of course):

 

I will be using the standard normal characteristic maximums as defined in 6E1, but with a further restriction. Each characteristic has a finite number of points that may be applied to it (30 pts for most characteristics but fewer points for some). Every 25 xp earned and a character can raise the maximum point ceiling for some of the characteristics. The player chooses a subset of the characteristics (I'm thinking 5 out of the 20 characteristics) and the ceilings for those increase by a finite amount (5 pts for most characteristics but fewer for a couple of them, such as PD and ED).

 

Powers are limited to 30 AP. Powers fall into one of a few categories, Martial Talents, Psionic abilities, and Magical abilities (divided into Arcane, and various types of Primal magic). At each 25 xp tier the character may raise the AP cap on one of these power categories by 5.

 

That's what I've come up with so far, such as it is.

[Markdoc]

Re: HEROEs of Athas

 

One way to approach this is simply set set your tiers to represent active points and the branch points on your tree certain "families" of advantages and "types" of power.

 

For example (taking an easy option) your tiers are - let's say - 30 active points. Your branches are (let's say) the schools of Hidden Fire, The Salamander and The Dragon.

 

Hidden Fire gets access to Reduced END, IPE, firebased illusions and HA

The Salamander gives you access to defensive fire powers (immunity to cold, magical ED, etc)

The Dragon has the offensive advantages - AF, AoE, AP, etc and the ranged attacks (EB, RKA)

 

Then simply make certain advantages "tier dependant" - for example you can''t get reduced END until tier 2 in Hidden Fire.

 

This way, you don't need to create each power, but just general categories of power. The players get a fair degree of flexibility, but they still have to build to "theme"

 

cheers, Mark

[GeekySpaz]

Re: HEROEs of Athas

 

One way to approach this is simply set set your tiers to represent active points and the branch points on your tree certain "families" of advantages and "types" of power.

 

For example (taking an easy option) your tiers are - let's say - 30 active points. Your branches are (let's say) the schools of Hidden Fire, The Salamander and The Dragon.

 

Hidden Fire gets access to Reduced END, IPE, firebased illusions and HA

The Salamander gives you access to defensive fire powers (immunity to cold, magical ED, etc)

The Dragon has the offensive advantages - AF, AoE, AP, etc and the ranged attacks (EB, RKA)

 

Then simply make certain advantages "tier dependant" - for example you can''t get reduced END until tier 2 in Hidden Fire.

 

This way, you don't need to create each power, but just general categories of power. The players get a fair degree of flexibility, but they still have to build to "theme"

 

cheers, Mark

 

I find you suggestion intriguing. I will have to give that thought.

 

To begin with I want to examine one of these as a bit of an experiment: For the martial tree there is an easy point to determine a couple of branches, between ranged and melee combat. One thing I've been giving some thought to lately is that there is very little need to specialize between ranged and melee combat. OCV applies equally to both and weapon familiarity is cheap enough (even with some of the optional weapons familiarity costs suggested in Fantasy Hero) that there is no real disincentive to buy familiarity in both melee and ranged weapons and really be equally effective with both barring talents that favor one over the other. If the martial tree has separate branches for melee and ranged combat that would force more specialization so that a character who takes power in both will not advance as quickly in either as a character who specializes in one. (These thought are rough at this point but I want to capture them and solicit feedback before progressing very far.)

[Justin]

Re: HEROEs of Athas

 

To begin with I want to examine one of these as a bit of an experiment: For the martial tree there is an easy point to determine a couple of branches' date=' between ranged and melee combat. One thing I've been giving some thought to lately is that there is very little need to specialize between ranged and melee combat. OCV applies equally to both and weapon familiarity is cheap enough (even with some of the optional weapons familiarity costs suggested in Fantasy Hero) that there is no real disincentive to buy familiarity in both melee and ranged weapons and really be equally effective with both barring talents that favor one over the other. If the martial tree has separate branches for melee and ranged combat that would force more specialization so that a character who takes power in both will not advance as quickly in either as a character who specializes in one. (These thought are rough at this point but I want to capture them and solicit feedback before progressing very far.)[/quote']

 

It looks like what you are constructing is a Martial Arts framework. That might be a good place to start looking for the actual structure of the talent trees. You might also wish to look at the various Schools of Magic that require a certain amount of points in one level of the School before you can spend any points in the next level of the school.

 

I think the biggest technical problem I would have with such a structure is that in Hero, skill advancement is cheap and open-ended; in D&D and other level-based games, skill advancement is a lot more regimented and expensive. Talent trees remove a lot of the open-ended-ness (if that's a word), and while the decision to do so is up to the GM, technically it would be a major pain in the neck to accomplish.