Hero-D&D system merge?

[Lucius]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

IMO' date=' you should either play a d20 supers game (M&M is popular, you may be able to get Silver Age Sentinels in d20 flavor in PDF), [/quote']

 

Given that nothing Baalbamoth said (at least in this thread) mentions supers or implies any desire to play them, and if anything, implies that his fellow players would absolutely refuse to play any such thing, why do you suggest getting a supers game?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary claims to be superpowereda to one end

[Pattern Ghost]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

Given that nothing Baalbamoth said (at least in this thread) mentions supers or implies any desire to play them, and if anything, implies that his fellow players would absolutely refuse to play any such thing, why do you suggest getting a supers game?

 

Slip of the brain. Brainfart. D'oh! moment. I actually fixed the second part of the suggestion, but not the first.

[Baalbamoth]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I'm listening to everybody... I started a thread on the PF forums about switching in hero combat and manuvers and basically everybody flipped except for the 3.5 D&D players who said "couldent hurt" basically.

 

BUT one guy game an example of a spell that grants multi attacks that is a core spell of many casters and then I started looking at how damn easy it would still be for people to create OMFG THATS TOTALLY OP! min-maxed opted characters even with the greatly time consuming merger I "was" planning. Now I figure i'll look around a bit and see what else is possible. I want to keep the PF setting to keep the players happy and do my damnded to get them to consider a basic hero game... or if not that... these...

 

http://stuffershack.com/warriors-and-warlocks/

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/92601-using-mutants-masterminds-fantasy-game.html

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

So you don't want to bring out the main Hero books because they're too big. And you don't want to bring out the Basic Rulebook because it's too small. And you want to make Hero as much like D&D as possible.

 

At this point, as much as I like Hero, I have to wonder if you might be better off trying Pathfinder instead. If you're worried about looking stuff up all the time, you can reduce that by sticking to the core book; Pathfinder powered up the core classes to make them competitive with all the aftermarket super-classes and feats available for D&D.

 

I hope I don't sound snarky here; it's just that it's starting to sound like Hero is not the appropriate solution to your current needs.

 

There was a lot of things I started to go point by point on, but this paragraph pretty much made me lose interest in further discourse.

 

I read this as "If you remove all the various things that distinguish the HERO System from other systems, the whole game will speed up, and that would be a good thing."

 

So...eh. I think it a fools errand, but your time is your own to use as you will. Good luck to you sir, and good day.

 

Simply stated, there aren't a lot of rules systems better at precisely simulating D&D than the D&D ruleset. If I want to play a D&D style game, D&D or Pathfinder are the right fit. If I want something that's not D&D, Hero is a much better fit. If your players want the D&D feel and D&D mechanics, then play D&D. If you want Hero and they don't, perhaps a new gaming group to satisfy that urge would be in order.

 

A hybrid monster? May as well write a third game system.

[Baalbamoth]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

as I mentioned in the beginning of this, the town I live in is pretty small. There is one gaming group... thats it. I really dont have a desire to go out and pamphlet neiborhoods looking for potential gamers who never played a tabletop RPG.

 

D&D 3.5 has huge problems in that clerics and wizards are walking divine/arcane engines of destruction, there is very little ballence involved. In Pathfinder, the 200+ feat system encourages power gaming soooooo much that its almost hard not to create a power gamed character... a 11th level magus/sorc melee attack is throwing 10d6+38 shock dammage+crits on a 15 or higher, and vorpals (instant death on a backup) an 11th level vanilla fighter is attacking 2-3x per rnd for 1d8+10 or so... again HUGE problem in ballence.

 

Thats sort of why I wanted to do this, so I could make an attempt to fix the system of PF... but I started a tread on the PF boards about it... and while discussing it, discovered that none of the changes I was proposing would completely eliminate all the imballence of PF, that there would still be huge rule raping holes in the system even with my changes... so I've given up.

 

I am checking out both Mutants and Masterminds and its fantasy version Warriors and Warlocks as a possible point system conversion to PF. but I dont really know that game well and am not sure it will work as a conversion.

 

above Shrike noted that the things I felt slowed champs down were central to the HGS, he's probably right, the thing I liked most about champs and HGS was the manuver point system for martial arts, the lack of AOOs, and pulling actions to perform defensive actions, and thats really all I wanted to transfer.

 

I wasnt trying to make a hero game using d20, I was trying to import what I liked about HGS and get rid of what I didnt like about pathfinder but ultamately I found its pointless because pathfinder is completely broken.

 

I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed for D&D Next (IE 5.0) and wait a year or so before I DM again.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

If you wanted, you could import some house rules from Unearthed Arcana (also here under Variant Rules). A few:

 

• Bell Curve Rolls - use 3d6 instead of 1d20. I may have around here somewhere some variant rules I was once working on for sanitizing the d20 game of non-six-sided dice entirely; if I find them I'll throw them up somewhere.
  
• Armor as Damage Reduction
  
• Defense Bonus
  
• Vitality and Wound Points
  
• Hex Grid - note that Hero 6e doesn't use hexes but Hero 5e does. It can at least get them thinking about not-squares as a playing surface. Also its close relative Combat Facing
  
• Spell Points
  
• Character Flaws and Character Traits
  
• Contacts
  
• Reputation
  
• Honor (read further down for codes of honor)
  

 

At this point you're about 70% d20 and 30% Hero. Look also at Killer Shrike's conversions for some ways to meet closer to the middle.

 

Edited to add:

 

 

I am checking out both Mutants and Masterminds and its fantasy version Warriors and Warlocks as a possible point system conversion to PF. but I dont really know that game well and am not sure it will work as a conversion.

 

Forgot about M&M. Yes, take a look there as well. Given that it's descended from d20, many of the house rules above will work with M&M (and I presume W&W). M&M has its own variants that will bring it closer to Hero as well, and here's a handy checklist of them. Also the M&M SRD.

 

Edit edit: A thread about adding hit points to M&M.

[Pattern Ghost]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

You could always fall back to old school DnD and break out the Rules Cyclopedia. =)

[Istaran]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I'm just curious, how often are AoOs actually coming up in your game? In my years of D&D (3.5 and 4e) I have seen them provoked only rarely (much less often in 4e, mostly I think due to removing "standing up" from the trigger list), and they are usually very straightforward to resolve.

 

You aren't the only one I have seen complain about how much time AoOs consume, so I'm sure it's a real phenomenon, but I just don't see it in play myself.

[Tasha]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I'm just curious, how often are AoOs actually coming up in your game? In my years of D&D (3.5 and 4e) I have seen them provoked only rarely (much less often in 4e, mostly I think due to removing "standing up" from the trigger list), and they are usually very straightforward to resolve.

 

You aren't the only one I have seen complain about how much time AoOs consume, so I'm sure it's a real phenomenon, but I just don't see it in play myself.

 

The time that AoO's consume is more in the realm of the ridiculous extremes that players to while moving their PC's to avoid taking one AoO. Which is kind of immersion breaking to me. It's one metagame thing that filters into the minds of even the most RP oriented players. It doesn't really take much more time, it's just annoying.

[Istaran]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

The time that AoO's consume is more in the realm of the ridiculous extremes that players to while moving their PC's to avoid taking one AoO. Which is kind of immersion breaking to me. It's one metagame thing that filters into the minds of even the most RP oriented players. It doesn't really take much more time' date=' it's just annoying.[/quote']

 

Okay. That's more fitting with my experiences. Going from D&D to HERO was kind of immersion killing for me because of the absence of AoOs.. what, you can just walk around/past someone and there's nothing they can do about it? no zone of control, no threat from the big brick. I also found it kind of distressing that the only way I had to play what D&D 4e labelled as a "defender" was driven primarily by the GMs ruling on how NPCs reacted to my character's physical appearance.

In terms of time taken, I did find 3.5 burned a lot more time on trying to avoid AoOs in complex situations than 4e, because the 1-2-1-2 diagonal distance counting made it much less obvious where you could get to within your movement limit without provoking. In 4e, OA usually comes down to simply modifying people's behavior. (Except when you get marks involved.. and frankly I like what provoking OAs from marked targets adds to the game dynamics, both from a gamist and narrative perspective. )

I like that melee characters get a zone of control as a balancing factor for lack of range, which lets them impede the movement of advancing melee enemies, or encourage a retreat for ranged enemies. It makes the story of what happens on the battlefield make more sense to me.

If -I- were going for a HERO/D&D hybrid, that'd probably be my top priority: adding OAs for everyone and standardizing a marking mechanic that characters can buy.

Which just goes to show how far off my preferences are from the OP.

[Gary Miles]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

Okay. That's more fitting with my experiences. Going from D&D to HERO was kind of immersion killing for me because of the absence of AoOs.. what' date=' [b']you can just walk around/past someone and there's nothing they can do about it[/b]? no zone of control, no threat from the big brick.

I believe (don't have FREd in front of me) that in 4th and 5th Edition Hero, if your character passed through a hex that was directly adjacent to another characters hex (as part of your guy's movement), then your guy is considered 1/2 DCV versus the other character.

 

To me, that sounds like the equivalent of "zone-of-control" and "Attack Of Opportunity".

 

I could be wrong, though. I rarely play D&D.

[Istaran]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I believe (don't have FREd in front of me) that in 4th and 5th Edition Hero, if your character passed through a hex that was directly adjacent to another characters hex (as part of your guy's movement), then your guy is considered 1/2 DCV versus the other character.

 

To me, that sounds like the equivalent of "zone-of-control" and "Attack Of Opportunity".

 

I could be wrong, though. I rarely play D&D.

 

I am not familiar with such a rule, and certainly we never played with it. (For that matter you couldn't even stop someone from passing through your own hex.)

That could certainly help re-establish some zone of control, though it's very conditional.. so if I make an attack against that character vs DCV (not an AOE, not a mental attack, etc) that hits only because of the half-DCV then it makes a difference, and if the enemy is doing something that would halve their DCV anyways then it's suddenly costless to walk past?

It's something, though I do personally prefer the simple effectiveness of a decent OA. You're welcome to different preferences of course.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I'm just curious, how often are AoOs actually coming up in your game? In my years of D&D (3.5 and 4e) I have seen them provoked only rarely (much less often in 4e, mostly I think due to removing "standing up" from the trigger list), and they are usually very straightforward to resolve.

 

You aren't the only one I have seen complain about how much time AoOs consume, so I'm sure it's a real phenomenon, but I just don't see it in play myself./QUOTE]

 

The time that AoO's consume is more in the realm of the ridiculous extremes that players to while moving their PC's to avoid taking one AoO. Which is kind of immersion breaking to me. It's one metagame thing that filters into the minds of even the most RP oriented players. It doesn't really take much more time' date=' it's just annoying.[/quote']

 

Agreed - much more time is spent with one player moving, someone else saying "that will provoke an AoO", new movement choice, etc. Now, our characters will often suck up the AoO to get where they need to be, or try Tumbling to get past, and we don't have a lot of standing up and measuring every possible distance and route to examine all the options, so it's never been a huge timewaster - and I ran a character with combat reflexes and a reach weapon in one game.

 

I don't find it any more distracting or immersion breaking than a Hero player measuring out every possible half move and counting the resulting range modifiers. In both cases, I consider there to be an easy solution. No grid, no pre-measurement. State what you will do and then we will measure it out. eg. "I will close with Orc Shaman - if I get there in one move action/a half move, I attack with my second action/half phase; if not I charge/move through". Now we measure distance. Maybe now there's a reason for that "Absolute Distance Sense"?

[Gary Miles]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I am not familiar with such a rule, and certainly we never played with it. (For that matter you couldn't even stop someone from passing through your own hex.)

That could certainly help re-establish some zone of control, though it's very conditional.. so if I make an attack against that character vs DCV (not an AOE, not a mental attack, etc) that hits only because of the half-DCV then it makes a difference, and if the enemy is doing something that would halve their DCV anyways then it's suddenly costless to walk past?

It's something, though I do personally prefer the simple effectiveness of a decent OA. You're welcome to different preferences of course.

Found it! (I knew I wasn't THAT crazy!)

 

Fifth Edition Ultimate Martial Artist, Page 160.

IGNORING OPPONENTS/!\:In the Hero System, it's possible to run right past and ignore an opponent standing in your way, even if he's delaying to hit you, and you won't suffer any sort of penalty. But that's inappropriate for many martial arts campaigns.

 

If one character moves right past (i.e., through the same or an adjacent hex) a foe using a Held Action to strike at him, the moving character has on 1/2 his DCV against the attack)

 

So, apparently, it was in "Special Cases and Optional Rules" in Ultimate Martial Artist.

 

But I know we've used it in non-martial arts games as well, because it makes sense.

[Istaran]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I haven't seen the inside of that particular suppliment, not sure if my old GM ever did either.

Also, at least the official version only gives 1/2 DCV versus a held action attack.. so anytime you didn't specifically hold an action, no zone of control. Got it.

Though this does highlight one strength of HERO - it's designed to be a 'toolkit', and is generally able to pick up optional/house rules pretty easily, generally more smoothly than D&D.

[Erkenfresh]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

Holding an action to attack an opponent trying to walk past you is Hero's version of the AoO. You can even use the attack to grab the opponent if you so desired. It also makes more sense than D&D where you could make your full move and still make AoO's.

[Istaran]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I disagree. Holding an action to attack an opponent walking past you is HERO's version of D&D's "Readied action". They're almost identical except for how they interact with initiative/turn sequence.

AoO means you have a zone of control in addition to your standard attacks. Held/readied action means you can hold off an attack for a better moment. Using a held action to serve the purpose of an AoO means you are dropping your normal damage out put to threaten to possibly go all the way back up to normal damage output if your opponent misbehaves.. meaning at most you do as much as you would normally. (The aforementioned optional rule at least gives you an accuracy boost.) Holding an action to threaten doing what you could have done normally is, generally speaking, a bad trade.

[KX_Mushashi]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

In hero the closest thing I can think of to a D20's AoO is am attack with the trigger advantage set to "Opponent moves in range of attack".

[Tasha]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

Okay. That's more fitting with my experiences. Going from D&D to HERO was kind of immersion killing for me because of the absence of AoOs.. what, you can just walk around/past someone and there's nothing they can do about it? no zone of control, no threat from the big brick. I also found it kind of distressing that the only way I had to play what D&D 4e labelled as a "defender" was driven primarily by the GMs ruling on how NPCs reacted to my character's physical appearance.

In terms of time taken, I did find 3.5 burned a lot more time on trying to avoid AoOs in complex situations than 4e, because the 1-2-1-2 diagonal distance counting made it much less obvious where you could get to within your movement limit without provoking. In 4e, OA usually comes down to simply modifying people's behavior. (Except when you get marks involved.. and frankly I like what provoking OAs from marked targets adds to the game dynamics, both from a gamist and narrative perspective. )

I like that melee characters get a zone of control as a balancing factor for lack of range, which lets them impede the movement of advancing melee enemies, or encourage a retreat for ranged enemies. It makes the story of what happens on the battlefield make more sense to me.

If -I- were going for a HERO/D&D hybrid, that'd probably be my top priority: adding OAs for everyone and standardizing a marking mechanic that characters can buy.

Which just goes to show how far off my preferences are from the OP.

 

In Hero a good GM or player will take delays which will mess with someone trying to pass through their melee range. I like the hero way of doing things. If I am totally engaged with an opponent and someone runs past me, I don't necessarily have the time or ability to strike out at them. Unless I was waiting for them to do it (ie I took a Delay). Zone of control is an outdated Wargamist way of looking at things. In a boardgame where turns take minutes or as much as hours ZoC makes a ton of sense. In a game like Hero where a normal is taking an action every 4-6 seconds it doesn't make as much sense. In hero there is much more going on in a short amount of time (ie a turn is 12 seconds) in D20 a round is 6 seconds. I like the way hero does stuff it make sense to me. D20 games always feel like I am playing a weak watered down Hero that has squishy rules and a GM that doesn't know how to say NO to overpowered ability constructs

 

To properly "Tank" someone in Hero just requires a bit of Roleplaying and a Presence attack. A Pre attack that is engineered to royally enrage the opposition. Been doing that since the early days of hero. "Marking" abilities are really not needed. Of course they are easy to write up (just have a debuff ability that is on a trigger of not attacking you).

[Zeropoint]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I don't have any real combat experience, but it always did seem a little odd that someone engaged in a desperate fight for their lives could have the spare time to take a casual swing at whoever happened to wander past the fight.

[Baalbamoth]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I'm in a pathfinder game now, and since there are more people playing that than D&D many call it D&D 3.75... Pathfinder has over 200 feats, and something like 50 archtypes, and 20 paragon classes... there are a heck of a lot of feats and abilities that grant AOOs, as an example... one character (flowing monk) can trip you, stomp on you, when you get up & try to attack him again trip and stomp on you again, and do this to anything that attacks him, all without taking a single action of his own. there are other feats that let you attack anybody who misses you when attacking, or feats that let you hit anyone who hit you. like I said... its pretty game breaking...

[Istaran]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

To properly "Tank" someone in Hero just requires a bit of Roleplaying and a Presence attack. A Pre attack that is engineered to royally enrage the opposition. Been doing that since the early days of hero. "Marking" abilities are really not needed. Of course they are easy to write up (just have a debuff ability that is on a trigger of not attacking you).

 

It is perhaps a "gamist" tendancy of mine, but I generally prefer having mechanics that change the incentive structure, rather than basically relying on my enemies to make suicidally bad decisions in the name of roleplaying. That's why, as someone who generally likes to play "tank" type characters, I really appreciate D&D 4e's defender concepts.

 

Basically, if two characters (A & are balanced against one another overall in combat, and A has better defenses (defenses here includes PD/ED, DCV, STUN & BODY totals, REC and regeneration, etc. everything that makes them passively harder to take out) than B, then logically B has some other major advantage. Either B deals more damage (per hit, or via accuracy) or can heal party members, or buff/debuff, etc. In a general sense we will call this thier "output". A has more defense, and B has more output, and overall they are balanced in combat.

If this is the case, and it is observably so, then an enemy that is fighting A and B, and can chose which of the two to attack (first) should definitely attack B first. B will be both easier to eliminate and also eliminating B will eliminate more "output" when he is eliminated.

(I realize it isn't always clear-cut, especially in HERO system. Maybe character C has low OCV/DCV, but is super tough and hits like a truck, while character D has high OCV/DCV and SPD, but is more fragile when hit and deals less per strike. I'm talking about a case where one character is heavily invested in defense while another is heavily invested in offense, or combat-defining utilities, so that the one is clearly harder to take out and the other is clearly doing more harm to the enemy, consistantly.)

 

If that's the case though, then investing in defense ultimately becomes selfish and wasteful.. by being so tough, you discourage enemies from attack you, thus making your toughness go to waste, while the superior "output" of your teammate(s) encourages the enemy to attack them instead. You could use PRE and roleplaying, as you said, but ultimately that means you're relying on your GM to have the enemies make decisions poorly. Personally, I'd rather make their options all suck and let them chose as they will, rather than try to convince the GM to have them chose stupidly.

 

That's where marking (and equivalent mechanics) comes in. Basically, the idea is that I apply some conditional defense to my allies and/or conditional output from myself that is triggered by my enemies ignoring me. If they attack me, they are bringing my high defenses into relevance, and leaving my high output colleague alone. If they bypass me, they are granting me an output boost and/or triggering the conditional defense boost for my allies. Either way, I'm contributing.

 

The problem with this from a hero system perspective is basically one of pricing. To allow for balance, this conditional boost in defenses/output should be less than an unconditional boost in the same. But Trigger is an advantage, quite possibly a pricey one, and it's going to be on top of paying for an additional attack power. Let's say I have a 12 DC attack power right now based off 30 STR. I want to add a 12 DC attack that triggers when an marked enemy walks away from me or attack an ally while adjacent to me. That's about a +1 advantage (no time to activate, zero phase to reset, two conditions apply simultaneously) if I'm reading it right. Doing that as a HTH (5e), that's 40 real points, before any further limitations. I think that's a fairly efficient way to buy it. Half the cost is "free" from STR, and a free -1/2 limitation on top. Of course further lims could cut it down, etc.

But let's look at some other comparable options, shall we?

For 40 points I could get +4 speed. That probably also at least doubles my damage output.

For 40 points I could add 12 DCs to my normal attack if it's a HTH attack, or 8 DCs otherwise. That probably far more than doubles my damage after defenses.

For 40 points I could get a vanilla +12d6 HTH attack and combine it with my existing attack for multiple power attacks. (Heck it's already 18d6 w/ strength, probably more than double my damage after defenses in and of itself.)

For 40 points I could get +20 DEX (selling back any speed), giving +6-7 OCV and DCV, which will greatly affect damage output and defenses.

 

In other words, because trigger is seen as such a potent advantage (and rightly in a general sense) I get much less effectiveness per point than just doing something straight forward (like punching harder).. but in order for a mark-type mechanic to be balanced it needs to cost much less than doing the straightforward thing. Doubling damage output (only if enemy violates mark) is strictly worse than doubling damage output (straight up, no matter what the enemy does), and should be priced accordingly.

Now one possibility is that the GM puts caps on damage output, but allows the trigger to functionally exceed those caps. For example, if the limit is SPD 6, OCV 8, DC 12 then you could have a SPD 4, OCV 8, DC 12 character with a OCV 8, DC 12 trigger (zero phase reset as above) that can potentially attack 8 times per Turn. But you then also run into the problem that you are spending so much more for your offense (especially the triggered part) that you either will be far -behind- on defenses (the opposite of the whole point) or will spend significantly more on combat.

Remember, the whole goal is to spend a similar amount on combat as a whole, more on defenses, and still have enough conditional bite that it makes sense for the enemy to attack you instead of your friends.

 

Does someone know a good trick for this in HERO? Say, some way to add a triggered attack as above for roughly half the cost of just adding that damage output to your character in a straightforward way?

 

EDIT to add:

It occurs to me that one approach that could get the desired results (in terms of change of incentive) while being cost efficient would be for the defender to have conditional bonuses rather than triggered attacks.

For example, maybe character B is SPD 6, OCV 8, 12 DC. I want character A to be tougher, but I want him to have less damage output unless I'm being ignored. So I build my main attack power as partially limited.. let's say it's 8 DC, +4 DC (only when attacking an enemy that I have verbally challenged who has attacked one of my allies since then. The bonus can't be used again until the enemy attacks an ally again). Maybe it's OCV 6 normally, but with 2 CSLs with the same limitation. And then I take those points I saved and use them to buy some extra PD/ED/etc.

[Erkenfresh]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

In all honesty, the marking mechanic from D&D really makes no sense. I understand it's there for game balance and for the many reasons you give above. It's there to create the need for a defender class. That's all good and dandy, but speaking in real life terms I don't get it. Unless you somehow involve magic in the equation, me challenging a foe and him attacking someone else should give no penalties to the attacker.

 

HERO let's you do so much tactically that such a marking system isn't really needed. Your defender could perform Move Throughs to push enemies away from softer allies. He could grab a foe to immobilize them without as much worry for the grabber retaliating since he can take a hit. In narrow passages, he could simply block the path as a human shield while his buddies pound on the foes from range. He could charge into a group of foes to draw their attention while his allies jump from ambush. And there are optional rules for performing a block or diving for cover into the attack to protect an adjacent ally. In my mind, these maneuvers make a lot more sense than marking.

[Christopher]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

I'm just curious, how often are AoOs actually coming up in your game? In my years of D&D (3.5 and 4e) I have seen them provoked only rarely (much less often in 4e, mostly I think due to removing "standing up" from the trigger list), and they are usually very straightforward to resolve.

 

You aren't the only one I have seen complain about how much time AoOs consume, so I'm sure it's a real phenomenon, but I just don't see it in play myself.

I think it mostly "comes up" in the sense that you try to avoid them.

 

I disagree. Holding an action to attack an opponent walking past you is HERO's version of D&D's "Readied action". They're almost identical except for how they interact with initiative/turn sequence.

In 6E that maneuver is under the optional Maneuvers.

 

You are wrong with the pomparsion. One Hero Turn (12 Seconds) is teh equivalent of one D&D phase (D&D just puts too many attacks into 3 seconds).

So that one held phase is closer to an AoO, than a hedl phase.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Hero-D&D system merge?

 

You are wrong with the pomparsion. One Hero Turn (12 Seconds) is teh equivalent of one D&D phase (D&D just puts too many attacks into 3 seconds).

 

This I can agree with. A D&D round is 6 seconds, but the comparison holds up well.

 

So that one held phase is closer to an AoO' date=' than a hedl phase.[/quote']

 

Here I cannot. An AoO is free. You do not sacrifice another action to be permitted to take an AoO, should the opportunity arise. Neither can you choose to forego the ability to take an AoO and do something else instead (say, get an extra attack against the opponent you're fighting). A Held Action requires you give up another action you could have taken, so it is not comparable to the AoO mechanic.

 

We can argue whether that's a flaw or a feature, but the comparison fails, IMO, simply because the AoO is a freebie and a held action is not.