HS 6e is mechanically the best version of the rules; dissenting views welcome

[ghost-angel]

I do like the D&D 5E model of Adventures - they're really micro-campaigns designed to last a group several months or more worth of play. They have slowed up hard on Character Splat Books which is nice.

 

More stuff like Xanathar's & Ravnica's might get more players buying books, but mostly it seems to be the Campaign Books being put out.

 

I think it would be interesting if Hero, being a universal system, actually put out pairs of Books and GMs and Players Campaign Book, for different kinds of campaigns.

But... 5E's line mostly proved that if the word "champions" isn't on the front it doesn't sell really well... so I doubt that would help Hero sell more stuff.

 

That kind of product line could make getting the 2 big volumes back in print possibly worth it.

[Spence]

On 6/4/2019 at 8:40 AM, Toxxus said:

 

This is one area where I feel HERO system just destroyed itself in the market.

 

The failure to produce a reasonable volume of adventures sent GMs and their players to other systems.  A lot of us who played RPGs in high school & college grew up, started families, and no longer had time to generate entire worlds from scratch.

 

Many of us were quite happy to use canned adventures and modify them to fit our preferences.

 

Fast forward 30 years and I STILL do this.  I'm currently running HERO system twice a week using Pathfinder adventures.  That's $300 worth of adventure path books I've sent to Paizo instead of HERO because there aren't any Fantasy HERO adventures of similar quality.

 

The core of HERO system combat is preferred by my players, but the current rule books are so overwhelming none of them have tried to make their own characters.  Three of my players have purchased HERO Designer and only two of them have tried to make a character as they are quickly overwhelmed by the volume of options in the software.

 

HERO would benefit, imo, from two things.  A condensed, simplified version of the rules in a modern format along with some playable content.

 

I and almost all the gamers I know have hit the "free time crunch".  It is far easier to buy and run a pregen adventure or adapt one, than build my own.   I have gotten to the point where I can convert a GUMSHOE module to Call of Cthulhu and vice verse almost on the fly.  And I have run a CoC module using GUMSHOE with only a half hour prep, and that was building the player characters.  For other games like D&D or C&C, they are a bigger pain to convert so I simply play them straight up.  I don't like Pathfinder, but their adventure/campaign books are spectacular and luckily they are stupid easy to convert to D&D 5th.

 

As far as a condensed, simplified version of the rules, we have had that.  Several times, 5th had Sidekick which took the 592 page core book to 128 pages.  6th edition takes the two core books (vol 1 & 2) of 784 pages combined to the Basic Rulebook of 138 pages.  Champions Complete (or Hero 6.5 ) is only 242 pages.  But I totally agree that the presentation needs to enter the modern age.  Ten years ago I was firmly in the camp of substance over wasted money on art, but I have long since had my mind changed.  I see so many games that are really bad or mediocre flying off the shelf because they pop and the interiors are gorgeous.  Presentation means something.

 

The sad thing is that Hero is literally the funnest most versatile game I have ever played.

 

On 6/4/2019 at 1:36 PM, megaplayboy said:

I think there was a point in time where the conventional wisdom at Hero was that adventure books don't sell as well as XYZ type releases.  During the latter era of 4th edition that may actually have been true.  I think it was more a commonplace/substitute practice to introduce a villain or team or agency and suggest 3 scenarios one could use them in.  

 

There was a time in the way back where RPG sales were way down and adventures were not selling.  I believe it was during one of the big recessions.  I remember gaming and hobby shops closing their doors like it was a pandemic with the hobby almost going extinct.  My personal opinion is that it was because because the RPG gamer majority was reduced older hardcore players that are the type that do not buy much pre-built material. 

 

But that was years ago.  Things have changed.  It started with Pinnacle's Plot Points.  Paizo refined the concept and doubled down with their brilliant Adventure Paths and then WotC followed with their Adventure Modules.  They sell allot, and not just to people that play those systems.  I have several Savage Worlds modules and plot points and I do not play SW.

 

I believe that the plot point format would be perfect for Hero.  Essentially a plot point is a hardback book that is a self contained setting/adventure.  One chapter gives an overview of the setting.  Another chapter covers how to build characters for the setting and any special rules, gear and anything else that is not in the core rules.  A chapter gives advice on running the setting and then you have complete campaign (6 to 12 episodes) that can be run "out of the box". 

[Spence]

On 6/4/2019 at 2:49 PM, megaplayboy said:

In the old days, they were 24-64 page books that sold for 5-10 bucks apiece.  Probably not a big profit margin.  

 

Yep, and they did not necessarily fit into existing campaigns.  But today we have Plot Points/Adventure Paths/Adventure Books that are complete self-contained start to finish campaigns that included adjusted/tweaked rules if necessary.  These are $50 books, colorful and shiny and they sell, a lot.   One or two a year. 

 

D&D centers their Adventure League night around it.  Come in a learn to play, not books or dice required.  Don't have a character?  Here is a pregen.  They have pregen characters with versions from 1st level to 10th that are free for download.    Every league night sees 4 or 5 new to D&D players buying a Players Handbook. 

 

The key is PLAYING.    (yes I shouted that last word )

 

When you pick up a Hero rulebook (4th, 5th or 6th) you cannot play the game.  Instead you have to spend several weeks deciding on  how the world works, what a suitable PC is, teach people how to build those suitable PC's and then create a world and adventure from scratch.  Even if you use a setting, they are so hyper detailed that you spend weeks learning then teaching that hyper detail and you still have to build adventures. 

 

We had PC's built and were actually playing Conan (Modiphious), Fear Itself, Fall of Delta Green & Trail of Cthulhu (Pelgrane) and Star Wars (FFG) within two days of buying the rulebook.  I am familiar with Hero and I could not build PC's and a campaign in two days and I already know the rules.

 

 

[Anaximander]

I am primarily invested in 6e, and I like it.  I have considered co-investing in 5e to improve my chances of actually getting into a game.  The big issue for me is that I live in small population zone, and though there are more gamers than there used to be, they tend to prefer games where you roll your characters than they do point buy systems.   I have and have had multiple gaming systems that I would have loved to either run or play, but I tend to the odd man out in my area.  I am kind of hoping to have some success with Modiphius' new Star Trek game though I guess that doesn't help Hero Games.

[Hugh Neilson]

21 hours ago, massey said:

Let's say that Hero decided to start in that direction.  They could start by publishing a combined rulebook and genre book, like 4th edition Champions.  It gives people Viper agents, a villain team, about a dozen individual villains, and a master villain like Mechanon.  It also gives a starting hero team and some basic ideas on superhero adventures, as well as info on Delta City or something, wherever you've got your campaigns set.  You also publish a Classic Enemies/CKC villain book with like 50 different bad guys to use.  This is your standard Players Handbook/Monster Manual that most people will buy.  It's kind of expected at this point.

 

But then, then let's say you start 3 different adventure modules, based around 3 different teams.  So you've got maybe X-Men, Teen Titans, and Fantastic Four.  The first module gives character sheets for our heroes, and campaign guidelines if players want to use their own.  And each module has like a dozen adventures (one game a week for 3 months) for these characters.  And once every quarter, you release a new module.  You could go for a year, or a year and a half (or however long you want), taking these characters through the equivalent of one writer's time on a comic book.  So it would be sort of like John Byrne's run on Superman, or Walt Simonson's run on Thor.  You've got a certain set of plots and supporting characters that the author likes, and villains who will show up, but it's a defined period of the characters' history.  Each new module shows how the characters have spent their XP and gives updated character sheets.  It also obviously includes new villains and NPCs that will be appearing in the next three months worth of adventures.

 

So you've got like 3 different teams of characters for a new group of players to select from.  And you'll have 3 different storylines that you'll develop over the next year or two.  Then, once you complete one of those stories, you can publish a sourcebook that brings everybody up to date.  So let's say your X-Men analog have been operating in the Pacific Northwest city of Seacouver.  You could make an X-Men sourcebook that details what it's like, who the villains are, and just sort of a general update for people who didn't play through the modules.  It gives character sheets for the heroes that would more or less match up with their final versions from the modules (it doesn't have to be exactly the same -- there's a new writer on that comic now, after all).  And maybe some characters or organizations who were mentioned in the module get fleshed out a little better here.

 

Then, you start with a new series of modules.  New characters in a different part of the world.  Maybe now you have Hudson City Vigilantes (Batman Family plus Spidey plus Cloak and Dagger), Avengers West Coast (standard adult supers), and a comedy one (🎵Rorschach and Deadpool...🎶).  Sort of different genres within the broader superhero category.  If something became really popular, like say maybe your X-Men adventures sold really well, you could always revisit them a little later with a new adventure module.  Characters don't have to stay static.  Just because Wolverine ended the last module at 537 points, that doesn't mean that he's at least that level in your new module.  Maybe he's been hanging out in bars instead of training, or his powers are fluctuating, or whatever.  In one adventure maybe he traveled into outer space and hung out with aliens, and that character sheet included Language: Klingon and +2 OCV with disintegrators.  That doesn't mean it needs to be on his character sheet now that he's on a mission to rescue mutant POWs from some southeast asian country.

 

I think something like this would let you flesh out your superhero world in an organic and interesting way.  People might actually care when you publish the stats for some superhero team.  The Tiger Squad would be somebody who was introduced in a planned way, and not just like "oh yeah, here are some dudes from China that you might use if you can come up with anything".

 

Anyway, this post was kind of stream of consciousness, but nobody is really doing any kind of real continuity with superhero rpgs.

 

The sole aspect I would challenge is a focus on pregen characters.  I would instead take the route of a "campaign guide" (most likely an online one) for players which spells out the character guidelines in detail,  and possibly provides some pregen's who would be suitable, but also serve as good examples.  As an example, that X-Men themed campaign might require all PCs be mutants, set a mandatory complication or two, set out a few acceptable Hunteds (and/or mandate these be "mystery hunteds" which are detailed in the AP for assignment by the GM), maybe even some DNPCs.  It might ban some powers outright and require others (e.g. a Cosmic Campaign might require enough Life Support and transportation abilities to be able to operate in space on a galactic scale). 

 

An FF theme might push that the characters must, in some way, be interconnected by friendships or family relationships, and here is how they obtain(ed) their powers.

 

Those three APs could/should also be of differing power levels.  That could mean our X-Men/Teen Titans start out as very novice heroes, maybe with less than Standard Supers points, our FF is standard supers, and perhaps we replace the third with an Avengers/Justice League "world's greatest Supers" vibe.  Or maybe that third one is full-on cosmic as we already have two fairly traditional earth-based Supers setups.

 

But I'd be more than happy to see a single, solid campaign AP!

 

Fantasy tends to be a really good fit for "novice to demigod, then retire and start again".  A different approach could be better for other genres, as well as for Hero System where character growth is less "zero to hero", with defined beginning and ending power levels, than the d20 system.

 

The problem, as we have said before on these Boards, is not that Hero is not a great game system.  It is that it is a game system, not a game.  In today's time-pressed market, it really needs Games Powered by Hero System to sell it.  There is no d20 system rulebook, only games that are powered by the d20 system.

[ghost-angel]

2 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

The problem, as we have said before on these Boards, is not that Hero is not a great game system.  It is that it is a game system, not a game.  In today's time-pressed market, it really needs Games Powered by Hero System to sell it.  There is no d20 system rulebook, only games that are powered by the d20 system.

 

This is the most pertinent point; Even with the generic D&D Books that have no specific campaign world attached are Build & Go for the most part (the GM needs to do enough work to populate an appropriate level adventure.)

 

One of the better books for Players from the 5E era was the Character Creation Guide, it's as close as Hero has come to a pure Players Guide.

 

A set of books that is GM Campaign and Players Creation Guide that strips the rules down to "this is what you need to play this specific campaign" & then have a note "for more detail on creating your own game or adding to the system get the Full Ruleset..." might be a way to go for Hero. Reduce the Needed Rules down enough for each campaign and it might be one book...

[Grailknight]

Another point that isn't being addressed is this: Hero has no book that you can call a GM's guide. Yes the main books are long but Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete prove that much of that word count is examples and side notes. The actual rules on character creation and combat aren't much longer than the Player's Handbook. Advice and Guidelines for GM's are given their own section but are nowhere near the depth and detail needed to run the game without experience. Separate that out and expand upon it in a GM only book(maybe with all the almanac optional rules) and you'd take a big step toward getting Hero out again.

[Ninja-Bear]

Hugh Neilson I have some characters back in the day that have weird characteristic numbers. I do have a 17 DEX somewhere and I know I have a fantasy character that has a 17 STR. Why? Because I didn’t look at Figureds and look at pricing but said to myself if sample characters had 18 STR and if I see the guy a less STR shouldn’t it be less? If I post some of my designs, you guys will see the inefficiency and may have your heads explode.  Bye most of my original Champion character’s stats were based off my original character built for me. So I have a bunch of 26 DEX because that’s what my original had.

[Brian Stanfield]

On 6/6/2019 at 3:55 PM, Grailknight said:

Another point that isn't being addressed is this: Hero has no book that you can call a GM's guide. Yes the main books are long but Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete prove that much of that word count is examples and side notes. The actual rules on character creation and combat aren't much longer than the Player's Handbook. Advice and Guidelines for GM's are given their own section but are nowhere near the depth and detail needed to run the game without experience. Separate that out and expand upon it in a GM only book(maybe with all the almanac optional rules) and you'd take a big step toward getting Hero out again.

Aaron Allston’s Strikeforce is the closest thing to a GM’s guide you’ll get for HERO, and it’s still probably the best book out there even today. I wish there was a way to include those observations into a more thorough GM section of the rules, as you rightly suggest.

[Brian Stanfield]

On 6/2/2019 at 10:25 PM, Spence said:

...there are three very real things being done by literally all of the current successful games.

1) Playable settings.

2) actual adventures and campaigns that only require the GM to read them to run.  In other words playable "out of the box".   One or two 6-10 episode campaigns a year are more than enough, especially when you have #3.

3) Some form of open license that allows people to create adventures without needing a specific license.  That allows anywhere from dozens to hundreds, depending on the game, of low cost or free adventures to be available for people who do not have time to spend building games but want to play.  They may not be top shelf master works, but they are more than sufficient to play.

It seems like you don’t even need #3 as long as people are willing to share their adventures at no cost. I’m not sure how the licensing works, but maybe it would be possible to have an adventures section in the downloads page of herogames.com where people could share their adventures with the rest of the community. No one profits from it, and it wouldn’t be compromising any IP . . .

 

The adventures really wouldn’t even have to be all that complex or complete. They’d need just enough to give people the tools to run an adventure right away. Characters & villains, the main point of conflict, and a series of interactions, and you have something playable. 

 

I wonder if anybody would be willing to try something like this?

[Ninja-Bear]

I feel that the build character to concept is a little misleading. You CAN build  a character to concept, that concept could be Joe normal in a Super game but in play, that character may not be any fun. A

nd this can go the opposite way in power builds too. Just because you can build it doesn’t mean you should play it.

[Hugh Neilson]

3 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Hugh Neilson I have some characters back in the day that have weird characteristic numbers. I do have a 17 DEX somewhere and I know I have a fantasy character that has a 17 STR. Why? Because I didn’t look at Figureds and look at pricing but said to myself if sample characters had 18 STR and if I see the guy a less STR shouldn’t it be less? If I post some of my designs, you guys will see the inefficiency and may have your heads explode.  Bye most of my original Champion character’s stats were based off my original character built for me. So I have a bunch of 26 DEX because that’s what my original had.

 

I've seen 17 DEX more than one.  It rounds up to 6 CV, so if DEX rolls were not an issue, it was a decent choice, especially in a heroic game where that was often a decent to high base CV.

 

STR gets challenging in Fantasy thanks to STR minima for weapons.  However, when another player could choose to have that "not quite in concept, but close" 18 STR and reduce the cost of PD by 1 and REC by 2, is it fair that his "1 point higher STR" concept should net 3 more points to spend?

 

1 minute ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I feel that the build character to concept is a little misleading. You CAN build  a character to concept, that concept could be Joe normal in a Super game but in play, that character may not be any fun. And this can go the opposite way in power builds too. Just because you can build it doesn’t mean you should play it.

 

Exactly this!  But if my concept is "Joe Normal who has training that puts him on par with Supers", why should that concept pay more points for the same mechanical results?  Pre-6e, I either break concept so I can get the kind of CV this character needs from DEX, or I massively overspending on skill levels so that my character can't actually function on par with Supers.

 

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

4 hours ago, Brian Stanfield said:

It seems like you don’t even need #3 as long as people are willing to share their adventures at no cost. I’m not sure how the licensing works, but maybe it would be possible to have an adventures section in the downloads page of herogames.com where people could share their adventures with the rest of the community. No one profits from it, and it wouldn’t be compromising any IP . . .

 

The adventures really wouldn’t even have to be all that complex or complete. They’d need just enough to give people the tools to run an adventure right away. Characters & villains, the main point of conflict, and a series of interactions, and you have something playable. 

 

I wonder if anybody would be willing to try something like this?

 

I fully intend to put all of the characters, villains and scenarios of my Golden Age game in the thread I made.  Will not be professionally put together but I intend to have my GM notes there.

[Ninja-Bear]

4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Exactly this!  But if my concept is "Joe Normal who has training that puts him on par with Supers", why should that concept pay more points for the same mechanical results?  Pre-6e, I either break concept so I can get the kind of CV this character needs from DEX, or I massively overspending on skill levels so that my character can't actually function on par with Supers.

 

 

 

Hugh I agree that we should pay equal points-in theory. (Btw I don’t mind that figureds got removed.) I just have this feeling that the game has become like kids arguing to their mom that their sibling got one more sprinkle on their ice cream than theirs. (It’s hard on how I want to word this.) 

[assault]

6 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Exactly this!  But if my concept is "Joe Normal who has training that puts him on par with Supers", why should that concept pay more points for the same mechanical results?  Pre-6e, I either break concept so I can get the kind of CV this character needs from DEX, or I massively overspending on skill levels so that my character can't actually function on par with Supers.

 

"Joe Normal who has training that puts him on par with Supers" is a high DEX concept.

 

In most settings, most other supers don't have that level of training, and only a few are super-fast/agile/whatever.

[Ninja-Bear]

Didn’t Spider-Man have a bunch of dangerous villains that were normal? And they gave him a ok fight? One was a Judo black belt and another had trick rope skills?

[Brian Stanfield]

5 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

I fully intend to put all of the characters, villains and scenarios of my Golden Age game in the thread I made.  Will not be professionally put together but I intend to have my GM notes there.

I wish that the web site would facilitate this kind of exchange more easily. A separate tab on the downloads page would be awesome!

[Hugh Neilson]

14 hours ago, assault said:

 

"Joe Normal who has training that puts him on par with Supers" is a high DEX concept.

 

In most settings, most other supers don't have that level of training, and only a few are super-fast/agile/whatever.

 

Agreed.  But that suggests humans can exceed 20 DEX and 4 SPD with special training and not be "superhuman".  I don't mind Supers being "legendary", but that means those normal humans don't have "normal characteristic maxima".  I have lost count of GM's criticizing "not building to concept" just on these Boards when it is suggested Batman has DEX and SPD in the Legendary ranges, much less the over-30 "superhuman" level.  There are ways to fix this.  Price the components of DEX appropriately so other mechanics like skill levels can be used without making the character hopelessly ineffecient based on points.  Reflect the source material, where it is clear "trained normals" have DEX well above their peers in the Supers community either by reducing the DEX and SPD of non-super-fast/agile Supers or by setting "human maximum" DEX and SPD considerably higher than they are at present.

 

12 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Didn’t Spider-Man have a bunch of dangerous villains that were normal? And they gave him a ok fight? One was a Judo black belt and another had trick rope skills?

 

Compared to early opponents, Spidey was not all that powerful.  An octogenrian who could fly gave him trouble, as did a pudgy scientist with cybernetic tentacles.  He had quite a few "human normal" enemies early on.

 

If you built the world around a "massively agile" Spidey with, say, 26 DEX, that would work.  Put the Ox and Doc Ock at 8 DEX and the Thing at 11 (and give them some skill levels with their appropriate HTH attacks).  Put the rest of the FF, and Cowboy, at 13 - 15 DEX - above average but still well within human norms - with a bit of skill with their various attacks.  Fancy Dan with DEX 18 - 20, judo skills and a bit of martial arts levels now seems pretty fast by comparison.  While he is not as fast as 26 DEX, 5 SPD Spider-Man, he is a credible threat.

 

But when Supers start at 23 DEX/5 SPD and go up from there, Spidey needs a much higher DEX and SPD to cover his niche, and no one with normal human DEX and SPD is a credible threat.  That was how 1st Ed portrayed Supers.  Although a few early on could get by with 18-20 DEX and 4 SPD, even that soon faded.  Not really an issue until we define 20 as "top level of a normal human" and 30 as "the highest even legendary humans can achieve".

[assault]

10 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Agreed.  But that suggests humans can exceed 20 DEX and 4 SPD with special training and not be "superhuman".  I don't mind Supers being "legendary", but that means those normal humans don't have "normal characteristic maxima".  I have lost count of GM's criticizing "not building to concept" just on these Boards when it is suggested Batman has DEX and SPD in the Legendary ranges, much less the over-30 "superhuman" level.  There are ways to fix this.  Price the components of DEX appropriately so other mechanics like skill levels can be used without making the character hopelessly ineffecient based on points.  Reflect the source material, where it is clear "trained normals" have DEX well above their peers in the Supers community either by reducing the DEX and SPD of non-super-fast/agile Supers or by setting "human maximum" DEX and SPD considerably higher than they are at present.

 

What's clear is that "normal characteristic maxima" don't exist in the source material. "Normals" are not disadvantaged in any way. In fact, most "supers" are "normals" aside from their actual superpowers.

So the issue is one of benchmarks. More precisely, it is one of people creating problems for themselves by trying to import benchmarks for non-superheroic characters into superheroic games.

Assuming people are going to keep doing that, "setting "human maximum" DEX and SPD considerably higher than they are at present" is the only solution. In fact, we probably don't really need to change anything, except to make it clear that any character capable of functioning as a superhero or villain will have "legendary" levels of DEX, SPD, CON and whatever else they need to be viable.

Oh, and we probably shouldn't use exact copies of published characters in our games. No 8 DEX Doc Ock, for example. Guy with Doc Ock like powers and 23-26 DEX? Sure.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 6/22/2019 at 11:04 AM, Brian Stanfield said:

It seems like you don’t even need #3 as long as people are willing to share their adventures at no cost. I’m not sure how the licensing works, but maybe it would be possible to have an adventures section in the downloads page of herogames.com where people could share their adventures with the rest of the community. No one profits from it, and it wouldn’t be compromising any IP . . .

 

Here’s part of the problem. If you want sparkling artwork, very few people do that for free. Artists these days take a dim view of being paid in exposure, and those that do, either you are married to, best friends with, or , more commonly, aren’t of sufficient professional quality to attract sales. Canned art won’t make it any more,’either. This is just the art side. What about the writers? The various species of editors?  Sure I can see someone reworking their personal campaign into an adventure book, simply for the love of the game, but art, and editorial, even for an unprinted PDF will still need to be paid for. I would love to illustrate stuff again, but other than one or two pieces to personal friends,’not without pay, and a contract. I suggest the writers take that into consideration too. 

[Hugh Neilson]

13 hours ago, assault said:

 

What's clear is that "normal characteristic maxima" don't exist in the source material. "Normals" are not disadvantaged in any way. In fact, most "supers" are "normals" aside from their actual superpowers.

So the issue is one of benchmarks. More precisely, it is one of people creating problems for themselves by trying to import benchmarks for non-superheroic characters into superheroic games.

Assuming people are going to keep doing that, "setting "human maximum" DEX and SPD considerably higher than they are at present" is the only solution. In fact, we probably don't really need to change anything, except to make it clear that any character capable of functioning as a superhero or villain will have "legendary" levels of DEX, SPD, CON and whatever else they need to be viable.

Oh, and we probably shouldn't use exact copies of published characters in our games. No 8 DEX Doc Ock, for example. Guy with Doc Ock like powers and 23-26 DEX? Sure.

 

DEX is an easy solution.  As well, with 6e divorcing CV from DEX, paring back DEX would be easy.  That was an opportunity missed, IMO.  But Hero really values backwards compatibility.

 

CON is unavoidable - reducing average damage to 15 so an 18 or 20 CON avoids being stunned makes for long battles.  And the high DEF concepts tend to be high CON concepts as well.

 

It would actually be easy to pare back all published characters about 2 SPD and 9 DEX/3 CV.  This would put the Slow Super (presently 20 DEX, 4 SPD, 7 CV) at 11 DEX, 2 SPD, 4 CV - a bit better than a Normal (probably has some skill levels or powers that hit easily).  Average Super comes in at SPD 3, DEX 14 - 18, and CV 5-6.  Really agile characters?  21 - 26 DEX, 4-5 SPD and 7-9 CV.

 

But we are about 4.8 editions too late -  1st Ed came out of the gate with Supers starting at 20-23 DEX and 4-5 SPD, and ramping up from there  But unless we are willing to do so, the answer is that those characters are faster than their superpowered peers in the source material, so we have to allow that in any game intended to align with that source material.

[Toxxus]

On 6/22/2019 at 9:11 PM, Ninja-Bear said:

Didn’t Spider-Man have a bunch of dangerous villains that were normal? And they gave him a ok fight? One was a Judo black belt and another had trick rope skills?

 

Only because of wildly bad writing and power level inconsistency.

 

The same spider man who can lift 5-10 tons and is fast enough to dodge bullets.  In one write-up part of spiderman's bullet dodging prowess was attributed to the fact he was so quick that he could actually see the bullets coming.

 

Some normal judoka is going to give him any trouble at all?  Complete BS.  I have a brown belt in judo and a black belt in TKD and some other training and someone with spiderman's strength and speed would have me mutilated by the end of the first Segment 12.

 

Rope tricks?  Against someone who can dodge bullets?  Not sure if anyone has compared the muzzle velocity of a lasso recently, but I'm betting it's 50-100x slower than a bullet.

 

I HATED those comics.

[Brian Stanfield]

14 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 

Here’s part of the problem. If you want sparkling artwork, very few people do that for free. Artists these days take a dim view of being paid in exposure, and those that do, either you are married to, best friends with, or , more commonly, aren’t of sufficient professional quality to attract sales. Canned art won’t make it any more,’either. This is just the art side. What about the writers? The various species of editors?  Sure I can see someone reworking their personal campaign into an adventure book, simply for the love of the game, but art, and editorial, even for an unprinted PDF will still need to be paid for. I would love to illustrate stuff again, but other than one or two pieces to personal friends,’not without pay, and a contract. I suggest the writers take that into consideration too. 

If the goal was to provide professionally finished adventures and campaigns, then I absolutely agree with you. However, what I’m envisioning here is something to go on the downloads page, which is all unprofessional (for the most part), and offered up by players for use by other players. One of the most frequent complaints about 6e and HERO in general is that there aren’t any adventures available which are ready to run. Everyone on the forums has probably created adventures and larger campaigns, so if we all simply offered up our notes and character write-ups we’d have a huge pool of ready-to-go adventures. No art would be needed, nor any finished editing, just the plot points, conflicts, villains, etc. it would be an almost instant archive of adventures that people have run (and presumably enjoyed). 

 

This is is obviously a makeshift idea at first, and completely an amateur effort, but it could become a very real and valuable resource to keep the community going. It’s just a thought. . . .

[Scott Ruggels]

2 hours ago, Brian Stanfield said:

If the goal was to provide professionally finished adventures and campaigns, then I absolutely agree with you. However, what I’m envisioning here is something to go on the downloads page, which is all unprofessional (for the most part), and offered up by players for use by other players. One of the most frequent complaints about 6e and HERO in general is that there aren’t any adventures available which are ready to run. Everyone on the forums has probably created adventures and larger campaigns, so if we all simply offered up our notes and character write-ups we’d have a huge pool of ready-to-go adventures. No art would be needed, nor any finished editing, just the plot points, conflicts, villains, etc. it would be an almost instant archive of adventures that people have run (and presumably enjoyed). 

 

This is is obviously a makeshift idea at first, and completely an amateur effort, but it could become a very real and valuable resource to keep the community going. It’s just a thought. . . .

 

So.... basically like a digital version of Rogues Gallery? I could actually see that working. For the graphically challenged, there would probably have to be a Word Template of some sort and editable tables, but I could see that working. Solicit ideas so you can have a batch of material ready per quarter, and build up a back log. and just keep pumping it out, regularly. Quality is what attracts customers. Consistency is what retains them.

[Ninja-Bear]

The nice thing about 6th is you can have a Super DEX say 33 and still have only 6 OCV and 4 DCV.  Here I think the mindset should change on CV. CV should be viewed as a Meta-characteristic. So perhaps your most agile character may only have a 8 DCV cause with Martial Dodge that’s a 13 DCV. And the MAX OCV  7 for a “Normal” with CSLs.