Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?

[TranquiloUno]

16 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

 This is convinces me even more why HERO needs to put out superior art with its publications, because it really does affect the way we remember the books and how we engage them aesthetically.

 

It's my opinion that rulebook\sourcebook art is the secret sauce\silver bullet of RPGs.

To the point I think they might matter more than the rules.

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, Brian Stanfield said:

You know what’s funny? I have a really good friend that I’ve known for many years, and he teaches art at the college where I teach. I’ve always loved his work, and when I was toying with the idea of doing a Fantasy HERO Lite booklet a couple years ago I asked him if he could do a few illustrations to fill the white spaces. He said sure, no problem, he’s done a lot of odd jobs for a lot of game companies. 

 

Huh? I didn’t realize that! Which ones? It turns out he did a lot of work for TSR and Wizards of the Coast, including D&D, and more importantly he did some of the earliest Magic: the Gathering cards! He still gets flown all over the world to do card signings! How did I know this guy for almost twenty years and never know this?!

"You didn't ask?"  XD>

Oh I have had friends that ended up in Hollywood,, one of which won an Oscar for best special effects, but stuff like that doesn't come up all that often, it's Which cool Movie did you see last week? How are your kids? Did your wife ever decipher that particular in joke between us?" That sort of thing.

 

I am still open for illustration gigs, and now, currently am working hard to get up to that TSR level of art, so I can do Digital paintings at a pace I could make money at. (even though I get more 3D model commissions these days).

[greysword]

Ok, I made it through page 1 and a third through page 2, and now I'm going to speak. 🙂  I'll finish the rest of the thread later.

 

First, I think it is a fool's errand to reduce Hero to a shell of what it is just to please the casual gamer crowd.  RPG gamers are usually among the more intelligent and imaginative of the human race.  To dumb down the rules for them is almost an insult.  Anyone that can learn D&D (any version) can graduate to Hero.  Hero is more complex on purpose; because, it is for the intermediate to advanced crowd.  Those who spend enough time with the cookie cutter D&D character design and mechanics will eventually want to graduate to something more freeing.  That's where even the basic Hero game rules come into play.  However oif the crowd wants to stay with the standard d20, no amount of rules manipulation will bring them over.

 

In reality, Hero is very easy to play for a novice.  All they need to know is what the powers do, how many dice they need to role (to hit and damage), and the basic to hit formula (as mentioned):  11+ Offense - Defense = roll needed.  Or to describe the other way to do this: 11- to hit roll + Your Offense =or < Bad Guy's Defense.  Usually it takes 2-3 rolls for new people to get this and enjoy it themselves.  We just stop with the acronyms (OCV/DCV) and call it by the first letter.  That is all they need to get it and have fun.  The GM can work with the rest to make the game fun and if this is a longer running game, they will pick it up.

 

Now, if we want new groups to start on their own without any knowledge of Hero, then they only need 2 things: a "Complete" rule book and Hero Designer.  I don't own those massive tombs called 6E1 & 6E2; I have Champions Complete, and I'm able to GM a fun and engaging game from that book alone.  Honestly, when people say "on 6E1, page 24..." I roll my eyes.  😀  Champions Complete is succinct enough to get the main mechanics and rule set in a way that makes it easy to digest.  It isn't nearly as hard as Shadowrun, for instance.  But, I digress.  The second thing they need is Hero Designer.  I think if this was a free program, then it would make the system more accessible and make it so others would like to give it a shot.  The software makes character creation simple and fun, and it has enough of an explanation embedded with it to allow new players to understand what they are getting.   

 

Of course another way to do this would be to make the Hero rule set available and free (or low cost) on a software platform that is widely adopted already, such as Hero Lab.  If the people who already have Hero Lab can pick up Hero for very low cost, they'll do it just to have in the inventory.  It would also make tracking game elements easier for new players.

 

Ok, I've prattled on enough, I suppose.  In summary, I think Hero should be considered an Intermediate to Advanced RPG, that players from more mainstream systems (such as D&D, Pathfinder, Star Finder, and Mutants & Masterminds) can graduate to, as Hero provides more choice over the cookie cutter character design and game play of those systems and a better to hit and damage system.  It should not be dumb down just to appease the casual gamer crowd.  If we want Hero to gain more traction in the community, we need to get the "Complete" rule books on the shelves and either make Hero Designer free or link up with a popular RPG gaming software like Hero Labs.  Lastly, Hero is already pretty simple to play, especially for the type of person that is attracted to RPGs in the first place, so simplifying it beyond the Basic rule book is unnecessary.

 

Thanks for listening!

 

 - Chris

[Scott Ruggels]

3 hours ago, TranquiloUno said:

 

It's my opinion that rulebook\sourcebook art is the secret sauce\silver bullet of RPGs.

To the point I think they might matter more than the rules.

 

 

^  ^  ^  ^  ^  THIS!  ^  ^  ^  ^  ^  ^  ^ 

[Brian Stanfield]

9 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

"You didn't ask?"  XD>

Oh I have had friends that ended up in Hollywood,, one of which won an Oscar for best special effects, but stuff like that doesn't come up all that often, it's Which cool Movie did you see last week? How are your kids? Did your wife ever decipher that particular in joke between us?" That sort of thing.

 

I am still open for illustration gigs, and now, currently am working hard to get up to that TSR level of art, so I can do Digital paintings at a pace I could make money at. (even though I get more 3D model commissions these days).

I have a buddy who is a great Warhammer 40k modeler in the Seattle area. He was offered a dream job to go build models for a Hollywood studio, but turned it down for some inane reason like he doesn’t like the sun that much or some such. Joe’s cut from a different cloth, but I still can’t believe he turned it down. 

[Brian Stanfield]

Welcome to the forums, Greysword! Out of curiosity, how long have you been playing in the HERO System? This isn't a challenge to your authority or anything like that, I'm simply curious. Many of us have been playing the games since the rules were only 70 pages and really easy to learn. I think @Duke Bushido is on to something when he doesn't play past 3rd edition. Trust me, you'll learn this if you spend enough time on the forums. . . .  (Love you Duke!)

 

7 hours ago, greysword said:

First, I think it is a fool's errand to reduce Hero to a shell of what it is just to please the casual gamer crowd.  RPG gamers are usually among the more intelligent and imaginative of the human race.  To dumb down the rules for them is almost an insult. 

So, perhaps you're misunderstanding my question. I'm not interested in dumbing down the rules permanently for casual gamers. I agree that gamers are smart and can figure this stuff out on their own simply because they want to. But what I am interested in is how much can you boil the game down for teaching purposes so that casual gamers can get into gaming. I've got a new group of 6 and only one of them is an experienced RPGer, so my challenge is to not only teach them what role playing games are all about in the first place, but also how to explain rules mechanics to people who've never experienced the concept before. It's not insulting to try to come up with better ways to teach the rules. I'll let the full ruleset come into play after they get used to the basics.

 

7 hours ago, greysword said:

In reality, Hero is very easy to play for a novice.  All they need to know is what the powers do, how many dice they need to role (to hit and damage), and the basic to hit formula (as mentioned):  11+ Offense - Defense = roll needed.  Or to describe the other way to do this: 11- to hit roll + Your Offense =or < Bad Guy's Defense.  Usually it takes 2-3 rolls for new people to get this and enjoy it themselves.  We just stop with the acronyms (OCV/DCV) and call it by the first letter.  That is all they need to get it and have fun.  The GM can work with the rest to make the game fun and if this is a longer running game, they will pick it up.

Ok, so this is more what I was asking for. I think experienced gamers who are used to rolling dice for various reasons have forgotten what it's like to be a beginner who has never rolled dice for anything other than Monopoly. Subtracting a dice roll from 11 + your Offense (I like your simplification there) just doesn't make sense to someone who doesn't understand the concept of how the roll functions. The first formula is much more intuitive, and that's all I teach. Maybe later I'll switch it up on them when I don't want them to know the DCV of their opponents, but for now, it's so much simpler to jut give them a target roll.

 

As you say, dropping the acronyms helps too! There have been lots of various suggestions for this over the years, and I'm always curious about different ways to present the information so it doesn't confuse a new player.

 

Thanks for the input! Enjoy the forums!

[ghost-angel]

59 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

Subtracting a dice roll from 11 + your Offense (I like your simplification there) just doesn't make sense to someone who doesn't understand the concept of how the roll functions.

 

Let me ask you this; do these players understand the Skill System rolls in Hero?

If so, why is the Attack Roll so different?

[Chris Goodwin]

4 hours ago, ghost-angel said:

 

Let me ask you this; do these players understand the Skill System rolls in Hero?

If so, why is the Attack Roll so different?

 

I can't speak for Brian, but in my experience with new players it's that Skills have their target number written down, and bonuses or penalties are unlikely to change by more than one or two points, while the target number for combat is a lot more fluid.  OCV, DCV, range, combat maneuvers on the part of both the attacker and defender, et cetera, and all of those can change from phase to phase even against the same opponent.  

 

Having said that, I haven't the slightest desire to change how either combat or Skill values are (edit) calculated, though I do recognize that combat is more complicated.  To me, it's up there with Normal vs. Killing, PD vs. ED, Stun vs. Body, and so on.  Fundamental to the system.  But making it easier to do without fundamentally changing it is, to me, a worthy goal.

[Brian Stanfield]

3 hours ago, ghost-angel said:

 

Let me ask you this; do these players understand the Skill System rolls in Hero?

If so, why is the Attack Roll so different?

It’s different in this way:

• Skill roll = Roll under your skill.
• Attack roll - add your OCV to 11 (why 11, a newbie might ask) and roll the dice and subtract it from the previous number, and then maybe you can hit your opponent with this amount of DCV or less. 

I have ave no problem teaching the Skill Roll in 30 seconds. I’m still trying to get my newbies to understand the Attack Roll after two game sessions. 

[Brian Stanfield]

Does anyone know how to make my billeted lists post correctly the first time? I have to edit them every time to get them to post correctly. 

[Brian Stanfield]

42 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I can't speak for Brian, but in my experience with new players it's that Skills have their target number written down, and bonuses or penalties are unlikely to change by more than one or two points, while the target number for combat is a lot more fluid.  OCV, DCV, range, combat maneuvers on the part of both the attacker and defender, et cetera, and all of those can change from phase to phase even against the same opponent.  

This is pretty much what I’m talking about. 

 

43 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Having said that, I haven't the slightest desire to change how either combat or Skill values are changed, though I do recognize that combat is more complicated.  To me, it's up there with Normal vs. Killing, PD vs. ED, Stun vs. Body, and so on.  Fundamental to the system.  But making it easier to do without fundamentally changing it is, to me, a worthy goal.

Me too. I’m not trying to change the rules. I’m just looking for a streamlined way to present them for the first time. All the complex aspects of HERO System (normal/killing damage, etc.) are what make it distinctive in the first place. They need to be included, so no, I’m not trying to only please the casual gamers as was suggested above. I’ll keep the complexity because it’s more fun that way. BUT, I’ll also try to find the easiest, simplest way to teach those rules so that the complexity isn’t overwhelming for a newbie. 

[ghost-angel]

Since it seems the sticking point is explaining how Attack Rolls (which fundamentally work exactly like Skill Rolls) work; let's try.

 

Attack Skill = 11+OCV.

Literally forget everything else about OCV, DCV, and Combat. Just have them write down Attack Skill, 15-

Edit: forgot, you only ever need to do this once, at character creation. Like you only ever really calculate you skill rolls once, at character creation.

 

Skill Rolls: How much you roll under your Skill is how much you succeed by. If you have a Lockpick Skill of 14- and you roll a 10, you succeeded by 4. What does that mean? Well, the GM assigned a difficulty of 2 to the Lock. So, any roll that succeeds by 2 or more unlocks. (in Hero Combat Terms, the Lock has a DCV of 2, and your Lockpick Roll hit a DCV of 4 or lower, the explanations go both ways, because it's literally the same math.)

 

Moving back to Combat; You make an Attack Roll, you roll a 9, you have succeeded by 6 on your Attack Roll. What does that mean? Well, DCV is just a target difficulty, like with Skills. Your target has a Difficulty of 5, you hit if you succeed by 5 or more.

 

Modifiers:

Attack Modifiers adjust the success level of the Attack Roll, just like Skill Modifiers adjust the success level of the Skill Roll. You can either add this onto the Skill Roll directly, or you can add it to the Success Level after the roll - the math is the same. If you have +1 to OCV you can either say your Attack Skill goes up to 16- or just add 1 to your Success Roll.

 

Defense Modifiers adjust the target number, normally Skill Challenges have static target numbers (the Lock does not become more difficult or less difficult, typically, one attempt to the next), but Combat is fluid and sometimes positions change and the Target Number moves. Still - you're just adjsuting the target number, either yours or the GM adjusting the NPCs. And while this is typically yet another number to keep track of in combat, it's not especially unique to Hero - D&D has plenty of spells that adjust the AC modifier on the fly (heck, even as a reaction in the same Action sequence).

 

Once you strip out the, poorly presented IMO, formula in Hero and literally treat Attacking like any other Skill Challenge you only need to teach one mathematical idea. In or out of combat, Attack Rolls are just Combat Skill Challenges and Skills are just Non-Combat Attack Challenges.

[greysword]

10 hours ago, Brian Stanfield said:

Welcome to the forums, Greysword! Out of curiosity, how long have you been playing in the HERO System? This isn't a challenge to your authority or anything like that, I'm simply curious. Many of us have been playing the games since the rules were only 70 pages and really easy to learn. I think @Duke Bushido is on to something when he doesn't play past 3rd edition. Trust me, you'll learn this if you spend enough time on the forums. . . .  (Love you Duke!)

 

Thanks Brian!  That's a great question, so here's my history.

 

So, our group met for session 0 on June 19th, 2016.  Here, we learned about the setting and what sort of characters we'd need.  Before this, my encounter with Champions (and the Hero System) was 4th edition, where I made a character that was never played.  This was back in 1995-ish.  So, this game was technically my real first encounter with Hero.  We played every other week in our current game through mid November, and unfortunately, our GM had to resign.  I took up the mantle of GM for the group for our December 11th game, and stayed in this role for about 10 months.  Since then, we've been rotating the GM role, and I've been a player.

 

I don't have the two large blue rule books, mainly because 6E1 was going for about $200 at one point.  Now that they are Print on Demand and I've been in the system for about 3 years, it might be time. 😉  Instead, I've just been using Champions Complete as the rule book, Hero Designer for characters (PC & NPC), and the various Villain Books and modules available.

 

Oh, I should say that I've been an on again/off again gamer since the 1980s.  Played AD&D and Star Frontier a lot in Middle School and High School, but then mostly stopped.  I had a nice run for a few months on D&D 2E in the late 90's, but nothing since then until Hero.

 

 

10 hours ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

So, perhaps you're misunderstanding my question. I'm not interested in dumbing down the rules permanently for casual gamers. I agree that gamers are smart and can figure this stuff out on their own simply because they want to. But what I am interested in is how much can you boil the game down for teaching purposes so that casual gamers can get into gaming. I've got a new group of 6 and only one of them is an experienced RPGer, so my challenge is to not only teach them what role playing games are all about in the first place, but also how to explain rules mechanics to people who've never experienced the concept before. It's not insulting to try to come up with better ways to teach the rules. I'll let the full ruleset come into play after they get used to the basics.

 

Ok, so this is more what I was asking for. I think experienced gamers who are used to rolling dice for various reasons have forgotten what it's like to be a beginner who has never rolled dice for anything other than Monopoly. Subtracting a dice roll from 11 + your Offense (I like your simplification there) just doesn't make sense to someone who doesn't understand the concept of how the roll functions. The first formula is much more intuitive, and that's all I teach. Maybe later I'll switch it up on them when I don't want them to know the DCV of their opponents, but for now, it's so much simpler to jut give them a target roll.

 

As you say, dropping the acronyms helps too! There have been lots of various suggestions for this over the years, and I'm always curious about different ways to present the information so it doesn't confuse a new player.

 

I don't think the to hit rolls have been that much of a problem.  Myself and all of the other gamers new to Hero that we've collected (about 6, I think) all caught onto the system pretty fast.  However, none are casual gamers.  The good news is we have a "new to gaming" player that is about to start in a few weeks (not you, Chris).  If there is anything you'd like us to do or record, I'm happy to run the experiment. 😁  Just let me know.

 

 

10 hours ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

Thanks for the input! Enjoy the forums!

 

Thanks and I appreciate the welcome!  A long-time Hero system user, friend, and gamer in our group was surprised when Steve Long answered a rules question for me, himself   This is an awesome group of gamers on the Hero boards!

 

[greysword]

5 hours ago, ghost-angel said:

Since it seems the sticking point is explaining how Attack Rolls (which fundamentally work exactly like Skill Rolls) work; let's try.

 

Attack Skill = 11+OCV.

Literally forget everything else about OCV, DCV, and Combat. Just have them write down Attack Skill, 15-

Edit: forgot, you only ever need to do this once, at character creation. Like you only ever really calculate you skill rolls once, at character creation.

 

Skill Rolls: How much you roll under your Skill is how much you succeed by. If you have a Lockpick Skill of 14- and you roll a 10, you succeeded by 4. What does that mean? Well, the GM assigned a difficulty of 2 to the Lock. So, any roll that succeeds by 2 or more unlocks. (in Hero Combat Terms, the Lock has a DCV of 2, and your Lockpick Roll hit a DCV of 4 or lower, the explanations go both ways, because it's literally the same math.)

 

Moving back to Combat; You make an Attack Roll, you roll a 9, you have succeeded by 6 on your Attack Roll. What does that mean? Well, DCV is just a target difficulty, like with Skills. Your target has a Difficulty of 5, you hit if you succeed by 5 or more.

  

Modifiers: 

Attack Modifiers adjust the success level of the Attack Roll, just like Skill Modifiers adjust the success level of the Skill Roll. You can either add this onto the Skill Roll directly, or you can add it to the Success Level after the roll - the math is the same. If you have +1 to OCV you can either say your Attack Skill goes up to 16- or just add 1 to your Success Roll.

 

Defense Modifiers adjust the target number, normally Skill Challenges have static target numbers (the Lock does not become more difficult or less difficult, typically, one attempt to the next), but Combat is fluid and sometimes positions change and the Target Number moves. Still - you're just adjsuting the target number, either yours or the GM adjusting the NPCs. And while this is typically yet another number to keep track of in combat, it's not especially unique to Hero - D&D has plenty of spells that adjust the AC modifier on the fly (heck, even as a reaction in the same Action sequence).

 

Once you strip out the, poorly presented IMO, formula in Hero and literally treat Attacking like any other Skill Challenge you only need to teach one mathematical idea. In or out of combat, Attack Rolls are just Combat Skill Challenges and Skills are just Non-Combat Attack Challenges.

 

This is an excellent set of points!  We should write down the "Attack Skill" with the 11 already baked in.  My second character was a martial artist, so to keep it straight, I wrote down the "attack skill" for each of the most used scenarios (basic attack, full attack, full defense, etc) with the 11 already added.  It made it easy to to simply declare my intentions, roll the dice, subtract the die roll from the "attack skill" and tell the GM that I hit that number of less in Defense.  It worked smoothly.

 

However I will say, the hardest thing for me to remember (for some reason) is Knockback!  I always forget to do it and then how to find out how much should be applied.

[John Desmarais]

52 minutes ago, greysword said:

 

 

I don't have the two large blue rule books, mainly because 6E1 was going for about $200 at one point.  Now that they are Print on Demand and I've been in the system for about 3 years, it might be time. 😉  Instead, I've just been using Champions Complete as the rule book, Hero Designer for characters (PC & NPC), and the various Villain Books and modules available.

 

 

In all honesty, if your focus is Superheroes, Champions Complete is an excellent book to use.  It is a good example of what several folks have described in this thread as something they’d like to see done more often: system toolkitted for a specific genre and published as a stand-alone game.

[Duke Bushido]

34 minutes ago, John Desmarais said:

 

In all honesty, if your focus is Superheroes, Champions Complete is an excellent book to use.  It is a good example of what several folks have described in this thread as something they’d like to see done more often: system toolkitted for a specific genre and published as a stand-alone game.

 

 

Yep.

 

I've picked up every one so far, even if I wasn't interested in that particular game, just to support the "one thin book" model.

 

 

[Brian Stanfield]

4 hours ago, greysword said:

I don't think the to hit rolls have been that much of a problem.  Myself and all of the other gamers new to Hero that we've collected (about 6, I think) all caught onto the system pretty fast.  However, none are casual gamers.  The good news is we have a "new to gaming" player that is about to start in a few weeks (not you, Chris).  If there is anything you'd like us to do or record, I'm happy to run the experiment. 😁  Just let me know.

Just find out what method works best for teaching the combat rolls. Pay special attention to which method end out “clicking” with your player, and then post it here. I’m curious to find out what works for you. 

 

4 hours ago, greysword said:

Thanks and I appreciate the welcome!  A long-time Hero system user, friend, and gamer in our group was surprised when Steve Long answered a rules question for me, himself   This is an awesome group of gamers on the Hero boards!

Steve is always active on the forums, usually at least once a week (at least it seems so). I contacted him directly about his Hudson City book and he had all kinds of feedback for me. This is one of the things I love about the HERO forums! People are usually really helpful. 

[Brian Stanfield]

10 hours ago, ghost-angel said:

Once you strip out the, poorly presented IMO, formula in Hero and literally treat Attacking like any other Skill Challenge you only need to teach one mathematical idea. In or out of combat, Attack Rolls are just Combat Skill Challenges and Skills are just Non-Combat Attack Challenges.

Thank you so much for this. Until you presented it so clearly, I just wasn’t seeing it. Now that I see it, it’s so obvious that I can’t unsee it! This is exactly how I’m going to describe it again for our second game session. I’m sure they don't recall too much at this point, so I’ll basically be reteaching them the basics again. This should help tremendously!

[Toxxus]

On 6/22/2019 at 12:12 AM, greysword said:

11+ Offense - Defense = roll needed.

 

I've noticed, as well, that replacing OCV/DCV with Offense and Defense leads to instant understanding with the players.  Same with replacing MOCV/MDCV with Mental Offense and Mental Defense.

[greysword]

On 6/22/2019 at 11:39 AM, ghost-angel said:

Since it seems the sticking point is explaining how Attack Rolls (which fundamentally work exactly like Skill Rolls) work; let's try.

 

Attack Skill = 11+OCV.

Literally forget everything else about OCV, DCV, and Combat. Just have them write down Attack Skill, 15-

Edit: forgot, you only ever need to do this once, at character creation. Like you only ever really calculate you skill rolls once, at character creation.

 

Skill Rolls: How much you roll under your Skill is how much you succeed by. If you have a Lockpick Skill of 14- and you roll a 10, you succeeded by 4. What does that mean? Well, the GM assigned a difficulty of 2 to the Lock. So, any roll that succeeds by 2 or more unlocks. (in Hero Combat Terms, the Lock has a DCV of 2, and your Lockpick Roll hit a DCV of 4 or lower, the explanations go both ways, because it's literally the same math.)

 

Moving back to Combat; You make an Attack Roll, you roll a 9, you have succeeded by 6 on your Attack Roll. What does that mean? Well, DCV is just a target difficulty, like with Skills. Your target has a Difficulty of 5, you hit if you succeed by 5 or more.

 

One other thing about the question, "why do we add an 11 to OCV", It appears that in skill tests an 11- is considered Competent:

 

Champions Complete pg. 23

 

Thus, I think the 11 assumes the hero is already "competent" at using their powers, as they've likely spent time practicing (hopefully, at least 🙂).  OCV is then used to increase the attack skill above competent at a cost of 3CP per +1 Attack, much like any other skill (which usually cost 2CP per +1 skill increase).  This seems like an easy way to explain why the 11 is in the equation.

 

[Brian Stanfield]

9 minutes ago, greysword said:

One other thing about the question, "why do we add an 11 to OCV", It appears that in skill tests an 11- is considered Competent:

Nice catch on that! Again, it’s another one of those things that I didn’t see before, but will never unsee again. Thanks!

[ghost-angel]

11- is also near the middle of the 3D6 bell curve so two combatants who are otherwise equal in skill (OCV and DCV match) will have a roughly 50/50 shot of hitting (or being missed), with a slight favor advantage towards the attacker rolling 11- on it. So yeah, if you want people to hit more often than they miss, you would want a base roll to start at 11- and go up from there.

 

Edit:

(This is also found in D&D5E, where the philosophy is "hitting more often is more fun than missing a lot and then doing all the damage if you manage to hit"; unlike 3rd and 4th Ed. where very High ACs and very high Damage were more common; D&D5E damage trends on the low end, but you almost always do damage.  You feel like you're getting somewhere even if it's a long road. Similar with Hero, slanted towards hitting things more often.)

[Brian Stanfield]

On 6/21/2019 at 4:15 PM, rravenwood said:

That said, I have to ask: what sort of laminated playing aids have you put into use? (Inquiring minds want to know )

It looks like I missed an entire page of responses. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. 

 

I have ave the speed chart laminated, a couple of pages from the books like the skills list and combat maneuvers and modifiers, and a lot of stuff from the downloads page, such as combat summaries, the quick roll reference chart that shows all the rolls needed for a range of OCV vs. DCV, stuff like that. 

[Brian Stanfield]

5 minutes ago, ghost-angel said:

11- is also near the middle of the 3D6 bell curve so two combatants who are otherwise equal in skill (OCV and DCV match) will have a roughly 50/50 shot of hitting (or being missed), with a slight favor advantage towards the attacker rolling 11- on it. So yeah, if you want people to hit more often than they miss, you would want a base roll to start at 11- and go up from there.

 

Edit:

(This is also found in D&D5E, where the philosophy is "hitting more often is more fun than missing a lot and then doing all the damage if you manage to hit"; unlike 3rd and 4th Ed. where very High ACs and very high Damage were more common; D&D5E damage trends on the low end, but you almost always do damage.  You feel like you're getting somewhere even if it's a long road. Similar with Hero, slanted towards hitting things more often.)

Good points, butte 50/50 split is at 10-, so trying to explain this to people who have never RPGed before may not catch on as easily as saying “11- is a competent skill level, and is modified by your OCV,” or whatever. This is all great stuff though!

[RDU Neil]

On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 2:59 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

11 + OCV - your dice roll = the DCV you can hit, or less, is exactly the same formula but I’ve found it’s almost impossible to explain to someone new to the system. You roll the dice to. . . do what? Take away from my OCV? Why do I want to do that? What is my target number I’m trying to hit?

 

Funny... this is how I explain it and it seems eminently grokkable. Roll... subtract that from your offense... that is the defense you hit. Done. Very quickly they realize why rolling low is good. The important thing is to have your Offensive Number (OCV + 11) clearly written down. If I had my druthers, that would be part of the Stat... your OCV is 11+X and you pay five for 1 for x. That would simplify things a lot, IMO.