What happened to HERO?

[Spence]

1 hour ago, GM Joe said:

A 5e presented more like the BBB or the HERO System Rulesbook would have been most welcome. It just came at a time in my life when a giant tome simply was not practical and therefore not welcome. 5eR even moreso.

 

6e? I can get behind all the rules changes if presented differently....except the decoupling of secondary characteristics. I know the logic of it, and I tried....I really did. It just turns out that it's one of those things I can't get past. Call it nostalgia, call it old dogs/new tricks....for whatever reason, it just isn't something I can embrace.

 

This is me too.  The only reason I recently leaned toward 5thR was I can actually get dead tree books. 

 

For the secondaries, they are fantastic in eliminating what we called the "6 Million Dollar Man" syndrome.  The figured's gave you a general baseline to reflect the minimum structure to support the attribute.  It may not have been perfect, but it far better IMO than the big nadda of 6th. 

 

It is like the stun multiple for KA's, we had misread (or something) and we ran it as 1d6-1 giving you a 0-5 multiplier.  Which fell perfectly into a cinematic simulation of something that has been known in reality.  Body was the physical damage and Stun was the shock/stun damage.  We had been trained that immediately after a high stress/adrenaline pumped event that threatened injury you should check each other for injury.  Because it is not only possible, but will happen that a person has been stabbed, shot or has a piece of rebar sticking in them and they do not notice and never felt it.  Zero stun.  Bam!!  It has also happened where a person takes a relatively minor hit and gets knocked out or dazed.  x5 Stun.  Bam!!!

 

When I got introduced to Champions in 82, it was the only system that actually modeled that little speck of reality into its cinematic action. 

Not to mention how the integral inclusion of Knockback into the combat was pure awesome.  Whenever I read a new Supers/Anime/Pulp'ish Action RPG one of the first things I look for is how they handle Knockback.....

 

Ramble over.......

 

Edited December 24, 2019 by Spence
I hate autocorrect....

[Ternaugh]

21 minutes ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

It does work, it just wasn't explained perfectly.  Let me try again for him, but with more words. 

 

A power with no Modifiers has its base cost multiplied by 4/4 to get final cost.

Add Advantages directly to this: A +1/4 Advantage brings it to 5/4, a +1 Advantage on top of that brings it to 9/4, so on and so forth. 

"Add" Limitations to the denominator: A -1/4 Limitation brings it to 4/5, a -1/2 Limitation on top of that brings it to 4/7. 

If you have both, do both!  A +3/4 Advantage and -1/2 Limitation brings the multiplier to 7/6. 

More formally, what you're doing is taking Base ∙ ( 4 + 4 ∙ Σ(Advantages) ) / ( 4 - 4 ∙ Σ(Limitations) ).  The reason I phrased it as 1/1 was to rip out all those 4s.  I'd do it as Base ∙ ( 1 + Σ(Advantages) ) / ( 1 - Σ(Limitations) ). 

Once you've added everything up, multiply to get real cost.  If you're using the 1/1 method, you can also multiply base cost by numerator to get AP but the 4s screw that up. 

 

Of course, me saying it works doesn't mean it works, so I'll prove it works. 

Energy Blast 10d6, Penetrating (+1/2).  50 * (4+2) / (4) = 300/4 = 75. 

Energy Blast 10d6, Beam (-1/4).  60 * (4) / (4+1) = 200/5 = 40. 

Energy Blast 10d6, Penetrating (+1/2), Beam (-1/4).  50 * (4+2) / (4+1) = 300/5 = 60. 

Energy Blast 6d6, AOE 1" (+1/2), 1/2 END (+1/4), Reduced Penetration (-1/4), No KB (-1/4).  30 * (4+2+1) / (4+1+1) = 210/6 = 35. 

And HD agrees with all the numbers. 

 

This as described will work, as the second formula shown in the part I bolded is essentially the Real Cost calculation as one formula.

Multiplying both the top and bottom by 4 allows for the elimination of fractions in the numerator and denominator, as all fractions for Advantages and Limitations have a LCD of 4.  

 

It has the advantage of calculating Real Cost quickly.

 

Active Cost would be Base ∙ ( 4 + 4 ∙ Σ(Advantages) )/4 , which is just the numerator/4 in the final fraction in your calculations.

[Solitude]

34 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

 

This as described will work, as the second formula shown in the part I bolded is essentially the Real Cost calculation as one formula.

Multiplying both the top and bottom by 4 allows for the elimination of fractions in the numerator and denominator, as all fractions for Advantages and Limitations have a LCD of 4.  

 

It has the advantage of calculating Real Cost quickly.

 

Active Cost would be Base ∙ ( 4 + 4 ∙ Σ(Advantages) )/4 , which is just the numerator/4 in the final fraction in your calculations.

 

I am pretty sure that it was explained this way early on,  either in first edition or in an early Adventurer's Club.

[Greywind]

Earlier editions seemed to rely more on GM judgement. Later editions have just become numerating every screw and nail holding the place together.

[Ternaugh]

36 minutes ago, Solitude said:

 

I am pretty sure that it was explained this way early on,  either in first edition or in an early Adventurer's Club.

 

It wouldn't work with previous editions before 4th. They had an extra step for Reduced Endurance between Active and Real calculations.

[Spence]

I don't really see the point of playing math games when it is already straight forward.

 

Unless the point is to drive prospective new players away?

 

Active Cost = Base Cost x (1 + Advantages)

Real Cost = Active Cost / (1 + Total Bonus from all Limitations)

 

Are pretty basic and hard to mess up. 

And even if math is not your thing there is a chart......

[Ternaugh]

5 minutes ago, Spence said:

I don't really see the point of playing math games when it is already straight forward.

 

Unless the point is to drive prospective new players away?

 

Active Cost = Base Cost x (1 + Advantages)

Real Cost = Active Cost / (1 + Total Bonus from all Limitations)

 

Are pretty basic and hard to mess up. 

And even if math is not your thing there is a chart......

 

It's for the upcoming Common Core Hero. 😉

[Solitude]

27 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

 

It's for the upcoming Common Core Hero. 😉

 

Doesn't Common Core Hero make you divide the cost by 1/4 plus another fraction which will be calculated from your figured characteristics using an equation which will appear in a future supplement?

[Duke Bushido]

5 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

(Our long-unseen board colleague James "GamingPhil" / "Gaming Philosopher" Jandebeur had an amazing piece called Incomplete Rules, saved on the Wayback Machine here, which would have obviated the need for most of the new entity types!  I've long thought that should have been an official part of the game in some capacity.)

 

 

Chris:

 

Thank you _so much_ for posting this!  It's nice to see my groups aren't alone in this.    (I know: it's not your favorite thing).  On the plus side, I don't have to fret over typing up an electronic version of our house rules on vehicles / mechs / robots / etc, because that is almost spot-on to how we have done it since we first learned to play: it's a universal creator; create with it!  (though in all fairness, it's a bit buggy for ships-- water or space-- unless you want to buy DEF per location then build custom hit location charts).

[Sketchpad]

5 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

Slots that are empty but paid for.  Honestly, at this point it can mean anything you want it to; our original idea was to put controlling parameters on it to prevent everyone from simply dumping everything into a pool and declaring they were building  baby Superman. 

 

@Duke Bushido isn't that basically what a VPP is at its core?

 

4 hours ago, GM Joe said:

Just for the record, I would totally be on board with a 6e quickstart, or a 6e patterned on the 4e BBB, or a 6e boxed set a la 2e / early 3e.

 

I like 4e (and, to a slightly lesser extent, 2e and 3e) because those editions are all over my post-AD&D years.

 

A 5e presented more like the BBB or the HERO System Rulesbook would have been most welcome. It just came at a time in my life when a giant tome simply was not practical and therefore not welcome. 5eR even moreso.

 

6e? I can get behind all the rules changes if presented differently....except the decoupling of secondary characteristics. I know the logic of it, and I tried....I really did. It just turns out that it's one of those things I can't get past. Call it nostalgia, call it old dogs/new tricks....for whatever reason, it just isn't something I can embrace.

 

Despite that, I would fully support a new, beginner-friendly core book or even starter set...were it to be on offer. Because further splintering HERO just doesn't seem helpful at this point. The issues just aren't that big, in the end.

 

I agree @GM Joe. The Basic Hero's Handbook for Mutants & Masterminds is a great starter book, and a book like that for Champions would be pretty awesome. 

[Duke Bushido]

1 minute ago, Sketchpad said:

 

@Duke Bushido isn't that basically what a VPP is at its core?

 

Yes.

 

The topic was sort of "how we did it before it was official."  in 1982 (2e), there was no VPP.  We cobbled something together; it worked well enough to meet our needs.  We've tweaked it a bit here and there over the years, but for the most part, we still do it that way.  Gotta level with you: we all-- players and GM alike-- kind of balked at the pricing of the official Gadget Pool when it came along: seemed like a hell of a lot of utility for +1/4....

 

 

 

[Spence]

 

16 hours ago, Solitude said:

 

Doesn't Common Core Hero make you divide the cost by 1/4 plus another fraction which will be calculated from your figured characteristics using an equation which will appear in a future supplement?

 

Don't forget you have to circle an arbitrary number of "bubbles" on the worksheet and then randomly pick a final number that will be "close enough"

 

[Solitude]

27 minutes ago, Spence said:

 

 

Don't forget you have to circle an arbitrary number of "bubbles" on the worksheet and then randomly pick a final number that will be "close enough"

 

 

The most annoying thing about Common Core Hero is that it is just so unsatisfying...even if you roll like crap, ignore the important clue that was out in the open, accidentally kill the hostages, and then you all die when you forget about that delayed effect killing explasion that was set up in the second round...everybody still advances to the next scenario in the campaign and gets six experience points.

[Spence]

3 minutes ago, Solitude said:

 

The most annoying thing about Common Core Hero is that it is just so unsatisfying...even if you roll like crap, ignore the important clue that was out in the open, accidentally kill the hostages, and then you all die when you forget about that delayed effect killing explasion that was set up in the second round...everybody still advances to the next scenario in the campaign and gets six experience points.

 

but but but..... 

 

if you didn't someone might lose

 

They might feeeeel bad

[DreadDomain]

On 12/25/2019 at 6:01 AM, Chris Goodwin said:

This is a rare case of disagreement with my good friend @Duke Bushido (and I honestly consider him a friend, and I hope this disagreement is calm, measured, and respectful!).   

 

I don't mind having new Powers when the situation seems to call for it.  Looking back through the first-gen Champions corebooks, it's easy to go down the Powers and Skills lists and see which comic book supers Peterson, MacDonald, et al, were thinking of when they included them.  Clinging, Entangle, Swinging.  Missile Deflection, Armor, high Strength, Mind Control.  Enhanced Senses, HKA, Regeneration.  Growth and Shrinking.  Stretching.  Invisibility and Force Wall.  Desolidification and Gliding.  Acrobatics, high DEX, Passive Sonar, and Physical Limitation: Blindness.  

 

High Strength, Armor, Flight, X-Ray Vision, Instant Change.  

 

I mean, I wasn't there, so I can't say that's how they went through and decided which Powers to include, but... it sure seems that way to me.   

 

Champions II had some new Powers:  Energy Absorption, Gadget Points, Light Illusions, Presence Defense, Reflection.  It's less easy to point to particular characters and see where they came from, unless (like I was) you were obsessed with the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and the DC Who's Who.  But, I can look at that list and see a character that was -- maybe? -- overlooked in the core rules.  

 

Martial Arts, Stealth, Detective Work, and...?   

 

Hey GM, how do I do this thing where a certain caped crusader (it's in lower case so I don't have to include the TM's, R's, Pat. Pendings, and so on) always seems to have the right nighttime-animal-named-but-not-themed gadget for the situation?  

 

There were a couple of other new entity types and other things you could buy, included in the Champions II supplement: bases, vehicles, computers, AIs, and the Mastermind Option.  

 

So... I mean, you can do shapeshifting with a high Disguise -- but the corebooks had Climbing and Clinging both, and Stealth and Invisibility, and Security Systems and Tunneling...

(Incidentally, how would you have done visible-light holographic images using just the first-gen corebooks without the supplements?  And Duke, I honestly also am not sure what you meant by unassigned Multipower -- it sounds like a Multipower with unspent points so that you can define slots in play?)  

 

(It's also fairly evident that Champions III, and to an extent Champions II as well, were developed at the same time Fantasy Hero was.  Looking through the FH 1e corebook, it's easy to point to source material and see what they were thinking of when they included the spell effects they did, and how those then went on to be included in the supplements.  Dispel (Neutralization in C III), Healing, Images (Light Illusions in C II), Suppress (Neutralization), Shapeshift (Multiform/Shapeshift in C III), Transform (Transformation Attack in C III), planar travel (the +1/2 Interdimensional advantage on Teleportation in C II).  Those were pretty obvious folds back into Champions.  Aid became its own thing in FH because it seemed that the obvious way to do it in Champions -- Characteristics bought Usable On Others -- wouldn't work in FH, because they didn't seem to want Characteristics as a spell effect, and it wasn't folded back into Champions via III.)

I'd rather just add a new Power and call it good (I liked Change Environment in particular, but also Dispel/Suppress, Healing, Multiform, Shapeshift, Transform, the Resurrection and Regrow Limbs adders for Healing and Regeneration), than to try to fiddle a Power into something that doesn't quite do it (the 5e Regeneration as Healing build, or Instant Change as Transform build).  I'm less happy with the X-into-Y decisions that were made with the edition changes:   Healing into Aid, Regeneration into Healing, Instant Change into Transform, Transfer into Aid+Drain, Suppress into Drain.  (If I were going to mess with Suppress I'd have kept it its own Power and folded Dispel into it; Dispel is more or less an instant, all-or-nothing Suppress.)

 

I even like new entity types -- Bases, Computer/AI, Followers/Agents, Vehicles, Spirits.  I'd like have seen Robots (C II p. 30) make it into 4th as well -- not (necessarily) a mech or a vehicle, but a non-sentient construct (STR, DEX, BODY, INT, DEF, SPD, maybe PRE).  I was less happy with the second-gen "vehicles are almost characters" idea -- I liked that, for instance, in Champions II you could buy vehicle gadgets -- ejection seats, fire extinguishers, electronic countermeasures, radio control -- with the same "pay a few points and call it good" notion, without having to overbuild a Power to do it.  (Our long-unseen board colleague James "GamingPhil" / "Gaming Philosopher" Jandebeur had an amazing piece called Incomplete Rules, saved on the Wayback Machine here, which would have obviated the need for most of the new entity types!  I've long thought that should have been an official part of the game in some capacity.)

I know your favorite edition is Champions 3e while mine is 6e but I read your post and pretty much agree with all of it. Having 6e as my preferred does not mean I agree with everything that was done (I dont).

[Solitude]

1 hour ago, DreadDomain said:

I know your favorite edition is Champions 3e while mine is 6e but I read your post and pretty much agree with all of it. Having 6e as my preferred does not mean I agree with everything that was done (I dont).

 

Champions Three worked fairly seamlessly with most of the other genre books and the degree of simplicity in integrating other genres was lost to a large extent thereafter. 

 

I liked having crossovers with characters and settings from different campaigns showing up occasionally  in someone elses campaign.  Have three new roleplayers in your fantasy hero campaign who did something stupid and marooned themselves on an island of lizard folk?  A superhero testing his quantum wafflemaker and lands on the island.

 

And I miss the Rolemaster sourcebooks which integrated into the game with all the mythic whatever books.

[zslane]

The problem with HERO pre-4e was that point costs often differed between genre books. Consequently, characters weren’t really cross-genre compatible, at least not in terms of the CP economy. 4e was the edition that cleaned all that up and made the system truly universal and genre-independent. It was also the last edition to enjoy an easily digested rules presentation. And the BBB wins the award for Best Cover Art.

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

The problem with HERO pre-4e was that point costs often differed between genre books. Consequently, characters weren’t really cross-genre compatible, at least not in terms of the CP economy. 4e was the edition that cleaned all that up and made the system truly universal and genre-independent. It was also the last edition to enjoy an easily digested rules presentation. And the BBB wins the award for Best Cover Art.

 

I don't see that as a problem.  They were different games that shared a "house system", not genre books.  

 

In Fantasy Hero for 6th edition, the GM can essentially set point costs for magic however they want.  Pay full price for spells individually, pay 1/3 the real cost, buy them in a Multipower... a fighter type might pay full price for a Power that a caster would pay 1/3 for as a spell, for instance.  

[Chris Goodwin]

On 12/25/2019 at 2:17 PM, DreadDomain said:

I know your favorite edition is Champions 3e while mine is 6e but I read your post and pretty much agree with all of it. Having 6e as my preferred does not mean I agree with everything that was done (I dont).

 

I've been playing Champions in 6th and it's been growing on me.  If I had to pick a second favorite, it would probably be 6th.  

[assault]

2 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

I've been playing Champions in 6th and it's been growing on me. 

 

You can get a cream for that. 😀

[DreadDomain]

On 12/26/2019 at 9:54 AM, Solitude said:

 

Champions Three worked fairly seamlessly with most of the other genre books and the degree of simplicity in integrating other genres was lost to a large extent thereafter. 

It was lost to us because HERO Games mostly decided to not showcase it. The greatest HERO paradox is that from 5e onwards they were establishing the system as the ultimate toolkit but mostly refused to use it themselves. We had lots of (good) books filled with suggestions (genre book) but very few games (à la Danger International and Justice Inc). Lucha Libre and MHI were the closest to it.

The most notable failure in ths department of "let's use the toolkit to create a game" was Fantasy Hero Complete. In the end it was merely a rehash of the toolkit in a thin fantasy trappings.

[Lord Liaden]

[Personal bias mode On:]

 

I love everything Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions let me do. I love having options. I love the flexibility of matching game mechanics and play style to concept, whatever that concept is. I would love a less verbose version of those rules, but I don't want to go back to pared-down or abridged rules.

 

1E, 2E, 3E, DI, JI, FH 1st Ed, were "complete" because they contained all the rules to run the kind of genre game the writers wanted you to run, the way they wanted you to run it. You wanted to vary that, you had to figure it out for yourself. If I want that kind of game experience, there are dozens of RPGs that can give it to me. And IMHO the people who already play and like those RPGs aren't going to flock to Hero if it's made more like what they already play.

 

Toolkit forever!

 

[Personal bias mode Off.]

[Ternaugh]

42 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

[Personal bias mode On:]

 

I love everything Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions let me do. I love having options. I love the flexibility of matching game mechanics and play style to concept, whatever that concept is. I would love a less verbose version of those rules, but I don't want to go back to pared-down or abridged rules.

 

1E, 2E, 3E, DI, JI, FH 1st Ed, were "complete" because they contained all the rules to run the kind of genre game the writers wanted you to run, the way they wanted you to run it. You wanted to vary that, you had to figure it out for yourself. If I want that kind of game experience, there are dozens of RPGs that can give it to me. And IMHO the people who already play and like those RPGs aren't going to flock to Hero if it's made more like what they already play.

 

Toolkit forever!

 

[Personal bias mode Off.]

 

We use 5er as the base rules for my FH game, but much of the material is from 4e FH/FHC/FHCII and the 3rd Ed Pirates! book. I've grabbed a few things from 6e where I've seen fit. The campaign is old enough that some of the materials and characters were written using WordPerfect and Quattro Pro for DOS, some were set up in Creation Workshop (which works fine in Windows 10, by the way), and some were written in various incarnations of Hero Designer. 

[Chris Goodwin]

My own personal bias...

 

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

1E, 2E, 3E, DI, JI, FH 1st Ed, were "complete" because they contained all the rules to run the kind of genre game the writers wanted you to run, the way they wanted you to run it. You wanted to vary that, you had to figure it out for yourself. If I want that kind of game experience, there are dozens of RPGs that can give it to me. And IMHO the people who already play and like those RPGs aren't going to flock to Hero if it's made more like what they already play.

 

3E, DI, and FH 1st ed... a fair number of the games I played in while using them, we started without having characters in hand, and an hour later we were getting into the first adventure.  

 

By contrast... if I have 6e1, 6e2, Fantasy Hero for 6th edition... or even Fantasy Hero Complete... and let's say Turakian Age... I still have to figure it out for myself.  

 

The title of this thread is, "What happened to HERO?"  Point A, point B, draw your own conclusions.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 12/24/2019 at 4:49 PM, Spence said:

Active Cost = Base Cost x (1 + Advantages)

Real Cost = Active Cost / (1 + Total Bonus from all Limitations)

 

Are pretty basic and hard to mess up. 

And even if math is not your thing there is a chart......

As soon as Division and Parentheses appear. Poof brain shuts down.