7th Edition thoughts

[Nolgroth]

  Don't even get me started on politics.

 

Right there is a long-term social combat situation if there ever was one. A political campaign could be the source of a ...well whole campaign. Talk about negotiation writ large. There would be plenty of opportunity for role playing as different politicians engage in open debate, subterfuge, back room deals, and even criminal conspiracies. It would definitely be a slower paced game, but if well run and enthusiastically supported by the entire group, could be fun. Could also be run as a "background" campaign to the adventuring campaign. Imagine having to defend your actions to the voters when you and your superteam take out half a city block while defending the city from Mechanon.

[bigbywolfe]

While 6th edition is not perfect, I see no need to put things like figured characteristics, Comeliness, Elemental Controls, and game inches back.

I completely agree with rj (I think that's the first time I've ever said that  )

[Balabanto]

Game inches might be functional, but the others, no. Game inches are still useful for people who do combat on battle maps.

[zslane]

(Points to self)

[mhd]

Does anyone actually have problems converting meters/yards/shaku to hexes/squares/inches on the fly?

 

But speaking of grids and the like, I wouldn't mind some optional facing rules.

[Balabanto]

Actually, yes! My players can't do the 2m=1 hex conversion, especially when rolling knockback.  And god forbid you should change it to an odd number. Maps blow up. Hideously. At least when the inch mark was indicative of a number of specific two meter hexes, everyone knew what it was. Knockback being a 2/1 conversion is awful. People CAN'T do this. They just can't. I have to monitor everyone's die rolls now. I never had to do that before.

[Ndreare]

The extra step of division added to map based combat is annoying. In our games I convert everything to inches before printing characters.

Player's in general hate every extra step after the basic roll and compare.

[Christopher R Taylor]

We just treat the hex map as being 1 meter per hex.  Most miniatures pretty well fill a hex anyway unless you're using really tiny ones, so the scale looks better.  And as for knockback, I don't double it.  I use it straight up because kb was always too exaggerated anyway.  In other words: no extra step, just take it as is.  A lot of the time we just use a tape measure to check distance anyway; 1"=1m and away you go.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think some of the figured characteristics made a lot of sense, and I wouldn't cry to see some of them returned, at least.  And Comeliness harmed nothing by existing despite some commentary so its return would be fine as well.  Elemental Control was just a cost break for people who could convince the GM they had a tight concept and no more, I never really liked them.  The only good use I ever found for ECs was to use them to make a high-skill character cheaper.

[pinecone]

To be honest I very seldom saw anyone use ECs except "new" players, it was sort of like OAF...every new player sees that +1 and goes gaga. Only to swear off of foci once they find that it is a disadd afterall. But I really saw no reason to remove something so well established. Even if all you do is change the name of "Unified" to EC, or use both "depending", where was the harm?

 

I most strongly agree with Cassandra, 6th for me was a long trip into the desert. I have found no value in the trip whatsoever...

[zslane]

I find the process of building up many of the old powers with the new, more abstract meta-powers intellectually exhausting. Back when you had to decide whether Armor or Force Field made more sense as the underlying mechanic for your paladin's Divine Aura of Protection, the game's system of abstractions seemed pretty clever. Now that you have to essentially build Armor or Force Field from even smaller meta pieces, the character creation process has become tedious, and it no longer feels clever to me. Even when you remove the heavy lifting off the shoulders of players by pre-building powers, spells, and gear, the write-ups of these things become nigh-unreadable masses of keywords and parenthesized modifier values.

 

The first three editions of the game drifted in the direction of providing too many highly specific, monolithic powers that were less flexible than their foundational brethren. The 4th edition did an excellent job, IMO, of stepping back from that approach and finding an effective middle-ground between too concrete and too abstract. The 5th and 6th editions, I feel, have drifted in the direction of too much abstraction, as the game now, more than ever, feels as if the abstractions have abstractions.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I agree.  I didn't care for gliding and flight being separate, but suppress, transfer, and not just drain should be all still part of the rules.  If it takes too much work to build a power, its not well designed.

[Balabanto]

We just treat the hex map as being 1 meter per hex.  Most miniatures pretty well fill a hex anyway unless you're using really tiny ones, so the scale looks better.  And as for knockback, I don't double it.  I use it straight up because kb was always too exaggerated anyway.  In other words: no extra step, just take it as is.  A lot of the time we just use a tape measure to check distance anyway; 1"=1m and away you go.

 

Unless you play with insanely overpowered characters, this leads to Skyscrapers the size of hovels. I have a fully finished basement in which my games usually reside. It's 20 meters long. That's about ten hexes. I can't mentally process games in the Bottle City of Kandor. Maybe other people can, but that's not how I choose to run my games. There's a concept of scale in superhero games. It needs to be obeyed.

[mhd]

Actually, yes! My players can't do the 2m=1 hex conversion, especially when rolling knockback.  And god forbid you should change it to an odd number.

Like 5 feet squares in D&D?

 

I always thought that having to cope with the worst possible measurement system helps prepare one for these situations (12! 3! 1760! Whut?). And it's not like HERO is an enemy of division.

 

Apart from the units, I've always liked the GURPS scale of 1 hex/1yd. Especially due to the fact that this also made reach matter a bit more.

[Balabanto]

But it's not "Five foot squares" in D+D anymore. It's just "squares." The building is as big or as small as you want. This has advantages and disadvantages. Remember that when it's five foot squares here, it's two meter squares in the european 3.5 D+D rulebooks. So all those rulebooks, everything's bigger.

[IndianaJoe3]

I've often wondered if Hero needs a, "mapless" option. Approximating ranges in combat isn't bad under the current system, but movement costs get really fuzzy.

[rjcurrie]

I've often wondered if Hero needs a, "mapless" option. Approximating ranges in combat isn't bad under the current system, but movement costs get really fuzzy.

 

What do you mean?  Most Hero GMs I know run Hero without a combat map (as opposed to a roughly sketched out match that shows approximately where things are).  What are the issues that you are seeing that need to be dealt with. 

[Old Man]

We like to use a 1" : 1" scale, to simplify conversions as much as possible.  Of course we have to model characters as occupying thousands of hexes, and any hit location is DCV3, but there are always tradeoffs. 

[zslane]

When it comes to combat, I don't think I have ever played Champions theatre-of-the-mind style. I have always used vinyl battlemats covered in hexes. I see no reason why one couldn't go totally theatre of the mind (and fudging most of the tactical details), but I personally see no appeal in it either.

[Ndreare]

I would say 95% of our games are 100% theater of the mind. The only times we do use my extensive collection of miniatures is when I know ahead of time there will be a big battle and want it to be a big deal with strategy really mattering. We also have recently taken to playing on www.roll20.net and in that case we have to convert, however in those instances the 1/2 conversion to inches is still annoying. 

[zslane]

I wonder if there is a use divide along genre lines. All my experience is with Champions, where every session ended, by design, in a big fight with the villains. We broke out the vinyl battlemat and cardboard heroes (from SJG) and went to town. Theatre of the mind was used for all the "detective work" that led up to the big battle, but not the combat itself.

 

Maybe it would have been different if we were doing a heroic-level campaign, like fantasy or something, but when it came to supers, we wanted to keep track of position and distance down to the hex. One hex of distance could make the difference between hitting or missing! Objects in the environment were key elements of the tactical situation, and knowing exactly where everything was, how big everything was, etc. was vital to victory or defeat.

[ghost-angel]

I've played Hero on hex battlemaps, with the hexes set to the standard 1" = 2m to 1" = 1m, and up to 1" = 5m on peronal combat and up for vehicles.

I've played Hero on square battlemaps. Same basic adjustments, sometimes a square = 1m, sometimes 2m.

I've played Hero on roughly drawn, unscaled, maps where we either used a ruler, or just kind of fudged it a little

I've played Hero on no maps at all, totally theater of mind.

 

It has worked equally well in all conditions. Each condition brought with it ups and downs and reasons why it worked well at the time, and reasons why it could have gone smoother (sometimes battlemap fights take waay to long, sometimes theater of mind fights are much too abstract).

[NuSoardGraphite]

I find the process of building up many of the old powers with the new, more abstract meta-powers intellectually exhausting. Back when you had to decide whether Armor or Force Field made more sense as the underlying mechanic for your paladin's Divine Aura of Protection, the game's system of abstractions seemed pretty clever. Now that you have to essentially build Armor or Force Field from even smaller meta pieces, the character creation process has become tedious, and it no longer feels clever to me. Even when you remove the heavy lifting off the shoulders of players by pre-building powers, spells, and gear, the write-ups of these things become nigh-unreadable masses of keywords and parenthesized modifier values.

 

The first three editions of the game drifted in the direction of providing too many highly specific, monolithic powers that were less flexible than their foundational brethren. The 4th edition did an excellent job, IMO, of stepping back from that approach and finding an effective middle-ground between too concrete and too abstract. The 5th and 6th editions, I feel, have drifted in the direction of too much abstraction, as the game now, more than ever, feels as if the abstractions have abstractions.

This.  Times 1000.

 

The game system has become more and more complex with each new edition.  4th edition did an excellent job of providing all the tools necessary for designing whatever was in one's imagination.  5th edition was similar even if it was slightly more complex. Then the complexity got ramped up quite a bit with 5E revised.  The 6th edition has gone completely off the rails with character writeups that are so esoteric, they appear as pure gobbledygook.  Frankly, it's an extreme turn off to the system.

[NuSoardGraphite]

What do you mean?  Most Hero GMs I know run Hero without a combat map (as opposed to a roughly sketched out match that shows approximately where things are).  What are the issues that you are seeing that need to be dealt with. 

No maps used in my games.  In fact, I haven't used maps with Hero since the mid 90's.

[Hyper-Man]

re: Gliding and other Movement abilities.

 

Count me in the minority here.

 

I like this change.  I wish something similar had been done with Talents (remove them as a distinct type of ability - separate from Skills and Powers - and just treat them as minor 'everyman' powers that normals can purchase).

 

In the case of Gliding and the similarly costed Swinging there were tones of rules exceptions that had to be spelled out to prevent abuses (like Usable As another form of Movement). 

 

I think it could be simplified further.

Create a base Power called Movement that costs 1 point per 1m.

By default choose 1 flavor from following list:

1. Running which includes No Turn Mode

2. Flight which includes Altitude

3. Teleport... etc

 

Gliding and Swinging are just Limited versions of option #2.

 

I've seen similar suggestions for attack powers like Blast, HA and Killing Attacks. 

Reduce the list of core Powers and it might help newbies understand the Core Principle of Reason from Effects a little better.

 

HM