The HERO System Book of Templates OR Champions Heroes: Volume 1

[DreadDomain]

I just wanted to give the nod to Christopher (@ Khymeria) regarding The HERO System Book of Templates. This is an excellent book to get people started quickly with character concepts that are very well-known. At 5$, it is great value and I want more of this. The fact that the HERO Designer files are included makes it even more valuable. If I may make two comments on the product:

 

1) It might not have been your choice but why name this supplement The HERO System Book of Templates? I believe it makes a disservice to your product and does not convey the flavor, nor the utility value it's due. I believe Champions Heroes: Volume 1 (assuming there could be more) would have been better at illustrating the goal of the suplement.

2) This book could be very useful for newbies and using the long form utilitarian character sheet format is a bit daunting for many. Having a short form character sheet excluding cost and advantage/limitation values and diving the stat block by functions (Characteristics, Movement, Offense, Defense, etc) would make the sheet more easily readable. Because you provide the HD file, we have all the detail anyway (well, for those who have HERO Designer). That being said, I understand it is a lot less work for you to use the formay that HD spits out.

 

Anyway, thanks again for doing this and I hope you will come up with more. Your supplement inspired me to do this right after I bought it (I am sure you will recognise the content of the characetr sheet ) 

 

 

Thanks again!

[Tjack]

24 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

I just wanted to give the nod to Christopher (@ Khymeria) regarding The HERO System Book of Templates. This is an excellent book to get people started quickly with character concepts that are very well-known. At 5$, it is great value and I want more of this. The fact that the HERO Designer files are included makes it even more valuable. If I may make two comments on the product:

 

1) It might not have been your choice but why name this supplement The HERO System Book of Templates? I believe it makes a disservice to your product and does not convey the flavor, nor the utility value it's due. I believe Champions Heroes: Volume 1 (assuming there could be more) would have been better at illustrating the goal of the suplement.

2) This book could be very useful for newbies and using the long form utilitarian character sheet format is a bit daunting for many. Having a short form character sheet excluding cost and advantage/limitation values and diving the stat block by functions (Characteristics, Movement, Offense, Defense, etc) would make the sheet more easily readable. Because you provide the HD file, we have all the detail anyway (well, for those who have HERO Designer). That being said, I understand it is a lot less work for you to use the formay that HD spits out.

 

Anyway, thanks again for doing this and I hope you will come up with more. Your supplement inspired me to do this right after I bought it (I am sure you will recognise the content of the characetr sheet ) 

 

 

Thanks again!

 

 

  A great job, but you forgot the special skill level for throwing teammates.   Or is that something you pick up with experience points?

[DreadDomain]

5 minutes ago, Tjack said:

 

 

  A great job, but you forgot the special skill level for throwing teammates.   Or is that something you pick up with experience points?

Hi Tjack,

 

Just to be clear Christopher is the ne who has done a great job. I just took the HD file he provided, filled what he had filed off and laid it out in Word (I really need to leard to create an Export from HD).

 

But I had the same thought. He needs a Fastball Special!!

[Greywind]

Falls under "Teamwork" with applicable throw modifiers. Keep in mind the only one he really does it with is Wolverine, due to the fact that maneuver is just as painful for the "ball" as it is for the person the ball is thrown at.

[DreadDomain]

25 minutes ago, Greywind said:

Falls under "Teamwork" with applicable throw modifiers. Keep in mind the only one he really does it with is Wolverine, due to the fact that maneuver is just as painful for the "ball" as it is for the person the ball is thrown at.

Agreed. I was simply thinking of a few extra levels in Throwing 

[dmjalund]

There aren't that many HTH combatants in the X-men. wolverine was one.Beast was another. But when Collosus was part of the team, it was only Wolvie

[Tjack]

  Granted, he did it mostly with Wolvie, but from time to time he’d chuck somebody else.  He threw Kitty one time so she could phase into a Sentinel’s head and disrupt the circuitry.   For the rules conscious among us call it, “Throw vs. willing participant.”

[Sketchpad]

15 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

I just wanted to give the nod to Christopher (@ Khymeria) regarding The HERO System Book of Templates. This is an excellent book to get people started quickly with character concepts that are very well-known. At 5$, it is great value and I want more of this. The fact that the HERO Designer files are included makes it even more valuable. If I may make two comments on the product:

 

1) It might not have been your choice but why name this supplement The HERO System Book of Templates? I believe it makes a disservice to your product and does not convey the flavor, nor the utility value it's due. I believe Champions Heroes: Volume 1 (assuming there could be more) would have been better at illustrating the goal of the suplement.

2) This book could be very useful for newbies and using the long form utilitarian character sheet format is a bit daunting for many. Having a short form character sheet excluding cost and advantage/limitation values and diving the stat block by functions (Characteristics, Movement, Offense, Defense, etc) would make the sheet more easily readable. Because you provide the HD file, we have all the detail anyway (well, for those who have HERO Designer). That being said, I understand it is a lot less work for you to use the formay that HD spits out.

 

Anyway, thanks again for doing this and I hope you will come up with more. Your supplement inspired me to do this right after I bought it (I am sure you will recognise the content of the characetr sheet ) 

 

 

Thanks again!

 

As a side note, I REALLY dig your character sheet format! That's really nice looking.

[DreadDomain]

2 hours ago, Sketchpad said:

 

As a side note, I REALLY dig your character sheet format! That's really nice looking.

Thanks Sketchpad. I created this sheet because I was tired to look at long form HERO character sheets with all the technical lingo. Character sheets in say Champions Villains, are ok but the ones in Larger than Life make my eyes bleed. I wanted to break up the wall of characteristics (from STR to STUN) thematically to make it easier to read and I also wanted to edited out all the clutter in the power write-ups. I don't find that writing "Reduced END (cost no END), -1/2" is helpful, "0 END" is sufficient. I also wanted most of the character sheet to fit on a single page, including a picture.

Section titles are Calibri Light, size 10, capitalised. Standard characteristic names are Calibri Light, size 9, bold. The rest is Calibri Light, size 9 with flavour names in bold-itallic. I have never printed it so it might look terrible on paper but it looks nice on the screen.

I export a character sheet from HD (can't remember the name but it's one where the real cost of abilities and values of advantages/limitations are not shown), copy the content of my MS Word sheet and edit out some more (like find-replace Active Points by AP). Like I said, I need to learn to create an HD export format 😊.

 

With a product like the one from Christopher, you can create a good number of Marvel inspired heroes in minutes. By dropping the HD file in my CS, I wanted to see how quick I could repurpose Chris' work into a full-fledged Marvel character. I'm pretty happy with the result.

[Spence]

DreadDomain your character sheet is fantastic. 

Do you think you might consider putting it up on HoC?

 

 

[DreadDomain]

On 4/6/2020 at 12:13 PM, Spence said:

DreadDomain your character sheet is fantastic. 

Do you think you might consider putting it up on HoC?

 

 

Thanks very much Spence but there isn't much into it, it is just a Word file that I use from one character to another. I can upload a character or two in the download section of the board for people to grab if you want.

[grandmastergm]

On 4/6/2020 at 3:55 AM, DreadDomain said:

Thanks very much Spence but there isn't much into it, it is just a Word file that I use from one character to another. I can upload a character or two in the download section of the board for people to take if you want.

 

Please do, that's an awesome character sheet.  Do you have to put in the information manually, or do you have HDC do it as an export?

[Spence]

On 4/6/2020 at 12:55 AM, DreadDomain said:

Thanks very much Spence but there isn't much into it, it is just a Word file that I use from one character to another. I can upload a character or two in the download section of the board for people to take if you want.

 

Please

[DreadDomain]

14 hours ago, grandmastergm said:

 

Please do, that's an awesome character sheet.  Do you have to put in the information manually, or do you have HDC do it as an export?

Manually unfortunately. I looked into the export formats this morning and it looks way to much work to create one (at least for me).

[DreadDomain]

7 hours ago, Spence said:

 

Please

Will try to upload a few characters over the week-end.

[Spence]

11 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Manually unfortunately. I looked into the export formats this morning and it looks way to much work to create one (at least for me).

Just a comment from the peanut gallery.  Manual is best for me.  I never really got into automatic and usually transfer info manually anyway

[DreadDomain]

Hey guys,

 

I have upload a few sheets in the download section under DC and Marvel Sample Heroes. Let me know if it doesn't work well (the download worked well for me).

 

A selection of DC and Marvel heroes created in Hero Designer and laid on a simple RTF character sheet with a lot of the technical text edited out to make it simpler to read but also to have a character sheet of a single page (except for Batman. Because he's Batman). The sheet uses Calibri Light font. Section titles are size 10, capitalized. Standard characteristic names are size 9, bold. The rest is size 9 with flavor names in bold-italic. I have never printed it so it might look terrible on paper but it looks nice on the screen. Most characters were built using a combination of the Super HERO gallery, my own ideas but also ideas mined from these forums. The exception is Colossus which comes 99% from The HERO System Book of Templates by Christopher Hackler (which you can buy from this site). The file contains:

Justice League 

• Aquaman (700pts)
• Batman (800pts)
• Flash (700pts)
• Green Lantern (700pts)
• Superman (800pts)
• Wonder Woman (700pts)

Titans

• Beast Boy (400pts)
• Nightwing (400pts)
• Raven (400pts)
• Starfire (400 pts)

Marvel

• Colossus (400pts)
• Daredevil (400pts)
• Spider-Man (400pts)

[Spence]

7 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Hey guys,

 

I have upload a few sheets in the download

 

Titans

• Beast Boy (400pts)
• Nightwing (400pts)
• Raven (400pts)
• Starfire (400 pts)

 

 

Nice. 

 

I am a 4th or 5th player, but these still look great 

 

I always found BB and other shape changers to be more difficult.   There are too many possibilities to build them all out and it can be session stalling if they try to build on the fly.

 

 

 

 

[DreadDomain]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

 

Nice. 

 

I am a 4th or 5th player, but these still look great 

 

I always found BB and other shape changers to be more difficult.   There are too many possibilities to build them all out and it can be session stalling if they try to build on the fly.

 

 

 

 

Beast Boy is the laziest build of the lot. For a real game, I would insist that variable powers like multiform or VPP come with an array of pre-built examples.

I have also used organization contact to simulate contact pool instead of using Universal Connections from APG.

Generally, I prefer to use powers with the appropriate special effect (so for running I prefer to use running instead of flight or teleport) so I've added cheap adders to simulate running on vertical surfaces or liquids.

Finally, I have created superspeed powers (based on multiple attacks and skill levels only to complete task quicker) instead of builds using AoE with selective.

For the utility belts I have used the build in Champions Complete (if I remember correctly) but it annoys me to buy normal equipment (flashlight, med kits) with points.

In the end, like every builds, they are debatable.

I hope you enjoy the sheet.

[DreadDomain]

For your info, I have uploaded the Dc and Marvel Sample Heroes file in the download section. I have added Cyborg to the Justice League and Donna Troy, Omen and Tempest to the Titans. I have also added the Hero Designer files (except for Colossus which comes from the HERO System Book of Templates).

[Nemblamenchisus]

Concept was excellent, writing and crunch was good. Design, layout and marketing was terrible. Hats off to Christopher Hackler for writing it, but Hero Games (what's left of it) is not even trying anymore in 2020. 

[chall]

Hope to see more books like this in the future.

[HeroGM]

Fluffing around with Hero Designer, HTML, and CSS (w/ grid)