Why run Hero 6th?

[ghost-angel]

 (I can roll 30d6 and have it totaled up in seconds; an acquired skill more than any mathematical genius on my part.)

I am always surprised by the number of people I meet who just start adding instead of grouping - like by 10s - and then get lost 8 dice in.

[Kraven Kor]

I am always surprised by the number of people I meet who just start adding instead of grouping - like by 10s - and then get lost 8 dice in.

 

Yeah, well, these youngin's didn't learn on an abacus or with clay tablets and a stylus like we did

 

(My worst offender is actually older than me LOL.)

[Tasha]

The biggest drag on Combat in Hero I've seen is Option Overload ... player's unable to decided between the many maneuvers and powers at their disposal.

 

Beyond that, combat itself is no slower than any other system I've played.

 

With the introduction of D&D 3.0 and later, I don't really see Hero being that much slower than the newest editions of D&D. As long as the player has decided what they are going to do BEFORE their Character's Phase. Then the Combats go quickly. When people spend too much time worrying about what is the "right thing to do" is when stuff takes too long.

[Tasha]

I am always surprised by the number of people I meet who just start adding instead of grouping - like by 10s - and then get lost 8 dice in.

 

Yeah, I tend to spend time teaching the Noobies how to quickly add a handful of d6's and the shortcut for counting normal attack body. (subtract number of ones from 6's If there are more 6's then add the number to the number of dice thrown, otherwise subtract from number of dice thrown)

[lou_tennant]

Yeah, I tend to spend time teaching the Noobies how to quickly add a handful of d6's and the shortcut for counting normal attack body. (subtract number of ones from 6's If there are more 6's then add the number to the number of dice thrown, otherwise subtract from number of dice thrown)

Yep, we use a simple '1 up' or '1 down' style for working out body on normal attacks.

[Balabanto]

Hero is faster than D+D 4th by a MILE.

 

The only thing that makes 6th a litttle slower are two powers with stop signs, and if you don't use them, combat runs pretty quick. Damage Negation is a logistical nightmare that gives me fits, especially if more than one person in the group has Damage Negation. I banned this power. All it takes is one area effect and combat slows to a crawl. The other is the removal of Transfer from the game, clearly a mistake. Now it's Drain, Aid, cobble together results. This is the worst idea ever. 3 rolls to resolve instead of 2, and the laws of superhero physics go completely haywire. You can gain more than you take away easily. If this is my suite of super-abilities, as a player, you just became a jerk. "I drain him! I aid me! And I also aid this guy because the aid is area effect!"

 

GM: Thanks, Captain Confusion! I knew I could count on you! How did you get more power than you took away from him?

 

I run Hero 6th because it is an improvement over 5th with the exception of 5 things. Aid/Drain (Transfer was better), Growth (4th edition Growth was better), Damage Negation, END + STUN vs. Defense Levels, Replacement of " symbol with Meters.

 

Of these, two are combat decomplication (Why would you add new powers or remove powers that slow combat down?), One is stylistic differences, One is "I only run mapless combat when forced, and the meters issue means you can't use a 1-1 ratio. 1 hex=2 meters. Now you have to pick the scale of the map before you start every time." 

 

The last one, Growth, is my pet peeve. Now, Growth is degranluarized.

 

Which means this: It is harder to build the most basic characters, i.e. a character whose main power is the ability to change his size.

 

Shrinking is another pet peeve. 6 points per level for the benefits it grants? More than three eats your average bell curve and spits it out.

 

I have fifty pages of house rules. This is painful, but it's better than the alternative.

 

So why run Hero 6th? Because I always run in the latest edition of the game. It gets you published, spreads your name around and builds your game design cred so that you can write novels and have people know who you are. That's my goal in life.
 

[ghost-angel]

Hero is faster than D+D 4th by a MILE.

 

The only thing that makes 6th a litttle slower are two powers with stop signs, and if you don't use them, combat runs pretty quick. Damage Negation is a logistical nightmare that gives me fits, especially if more than one person in the group has Damage Negation. I banned this power. All it takes is one area effect and combat slows to a crawl. 

 

Use different colored dice for the Damage Negation, just count the colors that matter. Even works for multiple Damage Negation issues.

 

12 Dice; Character X has 4 Levels of DN, Character Y has 6 Levels.

6 Red Dice (Character Ys Damage); 2 Blue Dice (Character X add these to the Red); 4 White Dice (everyone else adds these two the previous two colors).

 

One roll, group 'em out.

 

The rest of your post is something I've never experienced as problems. RE: the Drain/Aid - "Limitation: Can't Aid more than you Drain -0". There fixed.

[Kraven Kor]

Eh, plenty of other things can slow things down.

 

AoE explosions can be tricky; but I just remove the highest dice rolled (roll 10d6, add up for full damage; remove highest die for each increment as DC's are removed.)

 

Heavily advantaged attacks and adding or removing DC's can be tricky.  Calculating things with autofire attacks on multiple targets with AF skills can be tricky.

 

Drains and other stuff with a fade / return rate can be hard for some players to track - I try to track for them but then I'm juggling more than I'd like.

 

I have pretty good results so far as speed of play when running HERO, but YRMV.

[bluesguy]

Combat speeds up when everyone uses different color dice and rolls everything all at once.  So my paladin decides to attack with his long sword and can do 2d6.  So when I roll my attacks I have 3d6 that is one color for attack roll, a different color for the 2d6 for the sword KA, and a third color for 1d6 STUN multiplier.  And if I have a 1/2d6 attack I have some  small dice I use.

 

A number of the players in my group use this approach.  It is catching on.

[bluesguy]

And of course one way to speed up your combat (Shameless plug here ) is to purchase a copy of Hero Combat Manager <G>.

[Kraven Kor]

Thus far, HCM's functionality has eluded me.  I watched the videos; I can't get it to do anything other than have a bunch of information duplicated in yet another place and format

 

I'm sure the problem lies somewhere between the chair, and the keyboard, and not with the program itself

[Spence]

Personally I do not think that HERO combat is faster or slower than any other game.  It is faster for me, but not because of any inherent structure.

 

I have seen D&D 4th and current Pathfinder games where one small combat (4 PC's) took well over 2 hours to complete.  I have seen the same battle completed in less than 10 minutes.

 

D&D/Path have hundreds of rigidly defined 'abilities' that are all intertwined resulting is thousands of permutations.

HERO has abilities, advantages and limitations that result in thousands of permutations. 

 

The key factor that seems to run throughout the issue is time.  Not how long the combat ran, but how long have you been playing.

I often hear "HERO combat takes too long to finish the battle, I can do the same thing in Pathfinder in 10 minutes!"

 

So I ask:        How long have you been playing Pathfinder?

 

Disgruntled Gamer:   5 years!  It's great!     

 

Me:                 How long have you played HERO?

 

Disgruntled Gamer:   I bought the book last week. 

 

Me:                Sooooo, it's like those guys playing their first game of Pathfinder over there.  They have been trying to kill those goblins for an hour, but they keep having to look up something in the book.

 

In the end, even combat in a game like FATE can take a while with a new GM and new players.    The game that you have been playing for years is always easier than the new one you just picked up. 

 

I returned to HERO because for me it is simpler that anything out there once I realized that that it only has two mechanisms, one for everything creation and one for everything resolution.   

 

 

[Balabanto]

Use different colored dice for the Damage Negation, just count the colors that matter. Even works for multiple Damage Negation issues.

 

12 Dice; Character X has 4 Levels of DN, Character Y has 6 Levels.

6 Red Dice (Character Ys Damage); 2 Blue Dice (Character X add these to the Red); 4 White Dice (everyone else adds these two the previous two colors).

 

One roll, group 'em out.

 

The rest of your post is something I've never experienced as problems. RE: the Drain/Aid - "Limitation: Can't Aid more than you Drain -0". There fixed.

 

If your goal is to speed up combat, GA, this still takes more time. Which is the point. Anything that adds more die rolls, counting up dice in different groups, etc, adds more time. Up until this edition of the game, there were no disconnects like these. Generate damage,apply against appropriate defense if any, tabulate result. My players, while a lot of fun, are not math geniuses. Adding a step to this process is a problem. If you want the game to spread, resolution has to be simple and effective.

 

Your limitation is a great idea, if I didn't have to run my game by the letter of the rules in order to publish things. House rules don't fix things that have to be playtested according to what's in the book. Yes. I could do this. No, the results would not be optimal. Most of my house rules govern additional things I either won't let people buy, or concepts you can't have because of genre limitations. Things like "Your special effect may not be "I warp reality to my will" etc.

 

Also, the Drain Aid problem compounds with END and STUN. END Drains are overpowered in this edition of the game because of the way they work. You have a 6d6 END Drain. The average character has 50-60 end. You hit them once. Combat is effectively over. He's burning STUN before phase 12 is over. The character will knock himself out before he gets to take very many actions. Even with power defense, this is still crippling. That's a problem.

 

The last problem is one I still can't figure out a way to overcome, and that's this. The system was rebalanced for Standard Effect. But players roll dice. So every two dice of power adds one additional point of effect that isn't included in the bell curve. Now, this can be corrected by someone who knows that 3 does not equal 3.5, because 1+2+3+4+5+6/6=3.5 and not 3, but nowhere in the books for this game is it stated that this was done. In theory, according to Standard Effect, a 10d6 Attack does 30 against 25 points of defenses, which is 5 stun. But if you roll dice, the average is actually 35, which is 10 stun. Standard Effect isn't average. It's the average mean. So in home games, this can be corrected by resetting the average amount of stuff people have, but it's not in the book. The problem with this is very simple: When characters are run out of the box from published products, they don't perform to expectations because of the .5 deviation. It looks small from 1d6. But from above 14, and there are a lot of high end villains in the CU that throw way more than this even though it's not necessary, the .5 deviation is brutal. Holocaust, Sunburst, and Doctor Destroyer come to mind.

 

This also returns us to the problem with new players, which is why I'm going to such lengths to explain all this. Most new players won't look at the balance until the material is already in play. And if the out of the box material doesn't match the operating system, then you have a bug. And that's how modern kids think about games. Only there's no "patch" they can download to fix it, even though I just demonstrated what that patch was. Barrier to entry is a big deal. And that .5 deviation creates a huge barrier to entry.

 

This is why I don't use the CU.

[NuSoardGraphite]

 

 

 

The last problem is one I still can't figure out a way to overcome, and that's this. The system was rebalanced for Standard Effect. But players roll dice. So every two dice of power adds one additional point of effect that isn't included in the bell curve. Now, this can be corrected by someone who knows that 3 does not equal 3.5, because 1+2+3+4+5+6/6=3.5 and not 3, but nowhere in the books for this game is it stated that this was done. In theory, according to Standard Effect, a 10d6 Attack does 30 against 25 points of defenses, which is 5 stun. But if you roll dice, the average is actually 35, which is 10 stun. Standard Effect isn't average. It's the average mean. So in home games, this can be corrected by resetting the average amount of stuff people have, but it's not in the book. The problem with this is very simple: When characters are run out of the box from published products, they don't perform to expectations because of the .5 deviation. It looks small from 1d6. But from above 14, and there are a lot of high end villains in the CU that throw way more than this even though it's not necessary, the .5 deviation is brutal. Holocaust, Sunburst, and Doctor Destroyer come to mind.

 

 

This is true.  I always balance my games on average damage (3.5/die) not Standard Effect.  I support Standard Effect, but if you take a Standard Effect, you get slightly less than the average roll, which I'm totally okay with.  IMO, the point of taking a Standard Effect is to avoid rolling near the minimum damage or you want an ability with a very reliable effect.

 

 

This also returns us to the problem with new players, which is why I'm going to such lengths to explain all this. Most new players won't look at the balance until the material is already in play. And if the out of the box material doesn't match the operating system, then you have a bug. And that's how modern kids think about games. Only there's no "patch" they can download to fix it, even though I just demonstrated what that patch was. Barrier to entry is a big deal. And that .5 deviation creates a huge barrier to entry.

 

This is why I don't use the CU.

 

 

You and me both.

[Nolgroth]

I use MapTool to speed up combat. I find that even with my preference for text chat, it ran only a little slower than the D&D Essentials game that I ran face to face.

 

Of course, I have not ran a MapTool game in a very long time.

[IndianaJoe3]

Also, the Drain Aid problem compounds with END and STUN. END Drains are overpowered in this edition of the game because of the way they work. You have a 6d6 END Drain. The average character has 50-60 end. You hit them once. Combat is effectively over. He's burning STUN before phase 12 is over. The character will knock himself out before he gets to take very many actions. Even with power defense, this is still crippling. That's a problem.

 

I'm not sure you're interpreting Drain correctly. END is considered to be a defensive power (6e1 135), so all Drains that target it have half effect. Your 6d6 END Drain will Drain 21 END - significant, but not instantly crippling. A modest amount of Power Defense will knock that down even further.

[JasonPacker]

I'm not sure you're interpreting Drain correctly. END is considered to be a defensive power (6e1 135), so all Drains that target it have half effect. Your 6d6 END Drain will Drain 21 END - significant, but not instantly crippling. A modest amount of Power Defense will knock that down even further.

Except that END is now 5 for 1, so roll 21, multiply by 5, then divide by 2 and get 52.5

 

Then, unless the return rate is changed, you get 25 END back at the end of each turn. 

 

Not bad for a 60 active point attack, but hardly the end of the world.

[Hyper-Man]

Drain vs. END is one of those attacks that should only be used with experienced players.  Isn't it often suggested to ignore END when introducing the system to new players?  The effectiveness of the tactic just goes to show that characters built with END in mind should have options for minimal END use.

[ghost-angel]

No ... the Drain is Active Points, technically you should Divide by 2 First, then Multiply that number of Active Points to get the actual END lost.

[Hyper-Man]

No ... the Drain is Active Points, technically you should Divide by 2 First, then Multiply that number of Active Points to get the actual END lost.

 

I don't think the order of calculations makes a difference here.  I researched something similar with my version of Superman a while back.

 

34) Super Solar Battery v2: Aid END 10d6 (standard effect: 30 points) (60 Active Points); Only to Aid Self (-1), Conditional Power Only in Direct Sunlight (-0) Real Cost: 27

Notes: There are 3 factors that go into how much END he gets from this. 1) END costs 1 Real point per 5 gained. 2) END is considered a Defensive Power vs. Adjustments so their effects are halved (6e1 pg141). 3) The power COSTS 6 END to activate. The total of all of this results in an imediate boost of +69 END (30x5=150, 150/2=75, 75-6=69) that begins to fade at -25 END per Turn. This boosted END is used first and must be completely gone before it can be Aided again. When combined with "More powerfull than a locamotive v3" (120 STR Total @16 END/Phase) & "Up, Up and Away!" (Flight 30m @0 END) he can attain a combined 'Total Lifting STR' of 125 before PUSHING that is sustainable for ~ 2-3 Turns. Accoring to APG1, 140 STR is enough to lift 6.4 million tons or The Great Pyramid of Giza (est.).

[ghost-angel]

My players, while a lot of fun, are not math geniuses.

 

 

I hate this. I hate this sentiment. I hate this statement. I hate this attitude.

 

Math is not hard. The game requires Basic Arithmetic. This is stuff you shouldn't get past the 3rd Grade without knowing.

 

How about we stop pretending people are stupid and can't add. How about we stop pretending math is some mystical force. How about that? Let's do that.

 

Your players are perfectly capable of adding dice. Maybe it takes an extra second. But you don't have to be a "math genius" - this is not a Slowing Down Combat issue, every game would then suffer equally from the same problem. Especially Shadowrun and it's endless dice. Or games with Exploding Dice - plenty of those around without problems. I've seen Magic Players add lots of numbers up with no problem - that's a card game.

 

No - I refuse to believe this is an issue. At all. I'm done with this trend.

[ghost-angel]

 

I don't think the order of calculations makes a difference here.  I researched something similar with my version of Superman a while back.

 

34) Super Solar Battery v2: Aid END 10d6 (standard effect: 30 points) (60 Active Points); Only to Aid Self (-1), Conditional Power Only in Direct Sunlight (-0) Real Cost: 27

Notes: There are 3 factors that go into how much END he gets from this. 1) END costs 1 Real point per 5 gained. 2) END is considered a Defensive Power vs. Adjustments so their effects are halved (6e1 pg141). 3) The power COSTS 6 END to activate. The total of all of this results in an imediate boost of +69 END (30x5=150, 150/2=75, 75-6=69) that begins to fade at -25 END per Turn. This boosted END is used first and must be completely gone before it can be Aided again. When combined with "More powerfull than a locamotive v3" (120 STR Total @16 END/Phase) & "Up, Up and Away!" (Flight 30m @0 END) he can attain a combined 'Total Lifting STR' of 125 before PUSHING that is sustainable for ~ 2-3 Turns. Accoring to APG1, 140 STR is enough to lift 6.4 million tons or The Great Pyramid of Giza (est.).

 

 

it the strictest technical sense, you divide the roll, which gets you the Active Points drained, which you then multiply by the AP/Stat ratio (1 to 5); by pure math, nah - Multiply/Divide goes in the same order of operations.

[NuSoardGraphite]

I hate this. I hate this sentiment. I hate this statement. I hate this attitude.

 

Math is not hard. The game requires Basic Arithmetic. This is stuff you shouldn't get past the 3rd Grade without knowing.

 

How about we stop pretending people are stupid and can't add. How about we stop pretending math is some mystical force. How about that? Let's do that.

 

Your players are perfectly capable of adding dice. Maybe it takes an extra second. But you don't have to be a "math genius" - this is not a Slowing Down Combat issue, every game would then suffer equally from the same problem. Especially Shadowrun and it's endless dice. Or games with Exploding Dice - plenty of those around without problems. I've seen Magic Players add lots of numbers up with no problem - that's a card game.

 

No - I refuse to believe this is an issue. At all. I'm done with this trend.

It's very sad, but there are a LOT of people out there who don't even want to do basic arithmetic.  They don't want to do anything beyond adding and subtracting from one or two digit numbers.   I had a roomate who never wanted to learn how to create a character in HERO because there were too many options for him to choose from (he was very indecisive) and there was too much math involved in creating the powers.

[JasonPacker]

I hate this. I hate this sentiment. I hate this statement. I hate this attitude.

 

Math is not hard. The game requires Basic Arithmetic. This is stuff you shouldn't get past the 3rd Grade without knowing.

 

How about we stop pretending people are stupid and can't add. How about we stop pretending math is some mystical force. How about that? Let's do that.

 

Your players are perfectly capable of adding dice. Maybe it takes an extra second. But you don't have to be a "math genius" - this is not a Slowing Down Combat issue, every game would then suffer equally from the same problem. Especially Shadowrun and it's endless dice. Or games with Exploding Dice - plenty of those around without problems. I've seen Magic Players add lots of numbers up with no problem - that's a card game.

 

No - I refuse to believe this is an issue. At all. I'm done with this trend.

 

This is the number one charge levied against Hero as a problem, and it's such a ridiculous premise. Even games that require two dice require basic addition and subtraction. I just will never understand.

[Balabanto]

I'm not sure you're interpreting Drain correctly. END is considered to be a defensive power (6e1 135), so all Drains that target it have half effect. Your 6d6 END Drain will Drain 21 END - significant, but not instantly crippling. A modest amount of Power Defense will kno ck that down even further.

 

Uh, no. END is a x5 characteristic.

 

6d6 END Drain drains 21x5/2 52 END. Drain Drains Character Points, not Values.