Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

[jp42]

I've played Hero games since the mid-80s, back when it was called Champions, and still love the system. That said, I'm looking for ways to take it out of the cinematic hero realm and into a more grittily realistic style of game. What are the optional rules (and the books they're included in) that you'd recommend as being essential to making that sort of system out of the vanilla 6E rules?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

I've always had good luck with the Bleeding and Disabling Rules (core book) for added "realism" to a game.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Hit locations, Bleeding, Impairing/Disabling wounds, and slightly fewer points. Depending on the genre, limiting access to Resistant defenses while having Killing attacks relatively common will also increase relative lethality.

[griffinman01]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Definitely use hit locations, bleeding, disabling, etc but also make sure you keep track of things over the long-term. Nothing takes away realism faster than having your guys fully recovered from that shotgun blast to the chest they got two days ago. Keeping track of long-term effects make it a lot more real in terms of damage since you can take up to months to recover fully from bad injuries.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

As the others have noted, the big ones are Hit Locations (the damage multipliers and Stun multiplier based on location hit), Impairing and Disabling rules (which allow one-shot kills fairly easily if the Head or Vitals region is Disabled and in some cases even Impaired) Bleeding rules (a few minor wounds will add up to lots of bleeding. Characters can't just take wounds and keep going, they will eventually pass out unless they stop to treat the wounds) Critical Hit rules (a good to-hit roll means maximum damage possible on the dice, and when this optional rule is paired with the Impairing/Disabling rules, makes for incredibly deadly combats) and Long Term Endurance rules (characters can't keep going for long periods of time. They eventually have to rest/sleep in order to get their Endurance back over the long term)

 

These rules together make Hero very deadly/gritty. It completely changes the combats from four-color superheroic slugfests into quick and dirty mortal combats. The Impairing and Disabling are especially unforgiving and with these in place, characters will lose limbs, break arms and legs and can even lose their head in deadly combats. If you have ever had a discussion with anyone who claimed Hero is a deadly game system, its likely because they were playing with some or all of these optional rules in place.

[Tasha]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Hit Location alone will increase the Grit and Lethality of the system by a bunch.

 

I would also recommend either disallowing the Talent "Combat Luck" or rule that it doesn't stack with Armor for defense. That way you keep the Resistant defenses fairly low. (Yes Kirby this WOULD be a House rule, but one that is based on 1e Fantasy Hero's rules on Stacking Defenses, and I believe is also discussed as an option in the current FH).

 

I played with Impairing and Disabling rules for years and had them only come up a couple of times regarding PC's. Now when we play we use I&D as icing on the cake when a PC makes a spectacular Damage Roll.

 

Long Term Endurance was interesting, but the extra bookkeeping can make it annoying esp if one is teaching new players to play. Also with End costs being lower since 4e. It isn't as huge of a thing as it was in the old days. It can make people push attacks less, which I guess is a good thing or not.

 

Critical Hits can really make combats deadly esp when someone with a lot of OCV is fighting against someone with low DCV. We used to use the "Any roll that is less than half that needed to hit does max damage". That can get really nasty if someone is throwing dc 6 or more. If they also happen to roll a good hit location then really fun stuff happens (like Impairment and Disabling wounds)

 

Another Rule that you should think about using for grittyness and to discourage huge weapons and heavy armor is the Encumbrance rules. I would only make them add up their "regular combat Load". Don't be too annoying with this one. Just keep an eye out if they keep collecting DC4-6 weapons. Properly administered it will keep your PC's down to 2-6r PD and ED.

 

The most deadly Heroic level game I ever played in was a Western Hero game. Everyone was rdef1 -0 using weapons doing 1.5d6RKA +1 stun mod or more with a ton of OCV with said weapons. We had an old school western shootout in the middle of town against people prepared on roof tops etc. The party was pretty shot up with lots of impairing wounds, at least one dead PC, another on their way to being dead though bleeding. We ended up killing all of the opposition with a ton of Critical hits to various body parts.

 

Another think to keep in mind about ratcheting up the lethality, is that it can turn off new players. In our 2nd ever game of Fantasy Hero one of the PC's was critted to the Vitals from a DC 6 spear. 12BODY vs 3 def in a x1.5 Body location 13 body to the character's vitals which was disabling. Cut the player's PC in half in the first combat of the afternoon. The worst part of that was that the PC was the party's healer... OOPS! The player flat out refused to ever play Fantasy Hero after that.

 

Keep in mind that players can be very attached to their characters. The long and detailed character gen of Hero makes players even more attached to their characters than they would in a game with easy quick char gen.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Keep in mind that players can be very attached to their characters. The long and detailed character gen of Hero makes players even more attached to their characters than they would in a game with easy quick char gen.

This is an important consideration.

[Old Man]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Yeah, if you throw in all the optional rules, combat in Hero becomes really dangerous. I'm used to playing Fantasy Hero with those in effect, and I've seen my share of sudden PC death and TPKs because the dice didn't go our way. And that's with experienced players who knew what to expect. With new players I'd probably go with hit location and that's it.

 

Note also that in a fantasy campaign, PCs will have access to magical healing and quite a bit of resistant defense. A Western or modern-era game with firearms and limited armor and amputations and rehab is going to have pretty high PC turnover.

[griffinman01]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

One other thing to go with the hit location idea that I've been toying with in a sci-fi game (similar to firefly where most guns are still using bullets) is having locational armor. I ruled that when you bought armor it only covered 6 hit locations (you get to choose which locations when you buy it). You get shot in a place where there's no armor and you get no benefit from it. You could buy extra location protection at the cost of extra points (since we're doing normal humans I put the cost at 5 points for 5 extra locations). It's come into play a number of times in the few test fights I've run before the campaign begins. A number of times a weak shot would do serious damage to someone's hand simply because they didn't have armor there (or, even worse, someone took a shot to the face when he was just wearing a helmet). That also ups the realism because nothing short of something like Iron Man or Boba Fett would have full body armor and a lucky shot can always find the unprotected spots.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Armor/Defense is the big one that prevents combats from being deadly. It doesn't really matter if you activate all the optional rules to enhance lethality in your game if the defenses are so high, no one can do Body damage, or Body damage rolls are so low, that Impairing and Disabling wounds are never given. Low defense makes even a normal Hero game with few or no optional damage rules quick and painful affairs.

 

I also forgot to mention Encumbrance rules! What these do is prevent characters from piling on the defense and when they do, it drops their DCV considerably, so while they can take more punishment, they will get hit way more often, which tends to even things out a bit.

 

Keep in mind that when using the Impairing and Disabling rules, in a game where the Damage to Defense ratio is pretty even and balanced, you should get fairly regular Impairing results, but Disabling results should be rare. If you rarely get impairing results and almost never get disabling results, your Defenses are too high. If you get Impairing results almost ever attack and Disabling results are more common, either your defenses are too low or damage amounts are too high. Balance these factors and you'll have a fun game that CAN be lethal, but isn't so lethal that your players are afraid to play it. Takes a while to get the balance down, but you'll get there.

[jp42]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Another think to keep in mind about ratcheting up the lethality, is that it can turn off new players. In our 2nd ever game of Fantasy Hero one of the PC's was critted to the Vitals from a DC 6 spear. 12BODY vs 3 def in a x1.5 Body location 13 body to the character's vitals which was disabling. Cut the player's PC in half in the first combat of the afternoon. The worst part of that was that the PC was the party's healer... OOPS! The player flat out refused to ever play Fantasy Hero after that.

 

Keep in mind that players can be very attached to their characters. The long and detailed character gen of Hero makes players even more attached to their characters than they would in a game with easy quick char gen.

 

This is probably the best unsolicited advice ever. I would never turn on all of these optional rules without explicitly spelling out how they would impact play, that's for sure. And I think it will be okay if the players in question are new to the system, but come from a similarly realistic system.

 

Great stuff here, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to share your experience using the system in a more realistic manner. Anything I should be concerned about outside of combat? Encumbrance rules sound like they'll be broadly applicable.

[phoenix240]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Wounding can be useful. It reminds the players that their characters aren't immune to pain, shock and fear.

[phoenix240]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Personally I'd love to see a future Hero supplement with more "gritty" rules for things like injury, recovery, illness, fatigue, mental stress and other things that are often handwaved in the cinematic action mood Hero System often emulates.

[jp42]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

Personally I'd love to see a future Hero supplement with more "gritty" rules for things like injury' date=' recovery, illness, fatigue, mental stress and other things that are often handwaved in the cinematic action mood Hero System often emulates.[/quote']

 

I've been reading the rule options that have been suggested in this thread and many of them do a good job of dealing with such things. I think I might tweak the injury/disability rules a bit, as they require that an individual take half his BODY or his total BODY in damage regardless of the location that is hit, while I think that an arm is a bit more fragile than the chest. That said, I'd also implement some manner of blow-through rule so that a wound to the arm would be incapable of causing more than a fraction of the BODY of the target.

 

Wounding will take care of your pain issue, and can be seen to encompass fear and shock as well, as it is based on an EGO roll, which makes me happy as EGO is often one of the first dump stats in non-powered games.

[Old Man]

Re: Maximizing Realism - what optional rules are essential?

 

as EGO is often one of the first dump stats in non-powered games.

 

That would explain why I procrastinate so much and don't exercise enough or eat right.