Abort!

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

How often do characters in your game Abort?  What prompts an Abort?  How does the possibility of Aborting influence your combats? 

[dsatow]

We have a saying: "Aborting to dodge is useless."  Not because gaining a +3/+5 to your DCV is tactically bad, but with a lot of our luck, if you abort your next phase, the GM will end up always rolling less than an 8 making it effectively useless.  The last time I heard the phrase from my fellow gamers, they aborted to a martial dodge making it a 6- to hit and the GM rolled a 5.  To put icing on the cake, the GM rolled just over 4.5 points per die of damage.

[drunkonduty]

With my more savvy and experienced players Aborting and Holding are big parts of the combat. The interaction between these and the SPD chart are one of the main reasons I like HERO combat.

[Ninja-Bear]

On 4/22/2020 at 10:19 PM, dsatow said:

We have a saying: "Aborting to dodge is useless."  Not because gaining a +3/+5 to your DCV is tactically bad, but with a lot of our luck, if you abort your next phase, the GM will end up always rolling less than an 8 making it effectively useless.  The last time I heard the phrase from my fellow gamers, they aborted to a martial dodge making it a 6- to hit and the GM rolled a 5.  To put icing on the cake, the GM rolled just over 4.5 points per die of damage.

That’s funny cause we have some of the similar luck in our group too. 

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

7 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

That’s funny cause we have some of the similar luck in our group too. 

My group had that too!  Very first time anyone Aborted they got hit through the Dodge two Phases in a row and KO'd.  First and only PC KO of the campaign at that, our resident KO-magnet wouldn't show up until next campaign. 

[Ninja-Bear]

As the old joke goes”sometimes the dice are out to kill yah!”

[Tech]

Here's how our campaign uses it: a character may abort to dodge, even if their phase hasn't occurred yet.

 

Ex: A speed 6 hero aborts to dodge on phase 5 for his phase 6 move. The dodge bonus continues through phase 7.

 

How often do people abort to dodge? That's hard to gauge: that depends on so many circumstances. What prompts an abort to dodge is also hard and entirely player dependent. I guess if they don't want to be hit, they can dodge - what more do you need than that? How's it influence combat? How we do it works well, maintains the colorful comic action flow and villains can do this as well.

[Hugh Neilson]

"It depends".  One of the most effective tactics for a team up against a Big Bad (or even 2 against 1) is to wait for the opponent to commit to an attack, the target Dodges (or Blocks), the rest attack. 

[ScottishFox]

One of first Fantasy HERO combats I did for the table I converted from D&D 5e was a practice sword fight (using great swords) between the estate guard captain and the party's Witcher character.

 

Once they realized they could have a proper sword fight (attack, block, counterstrike, block, attack, etc.) instead of just trading shots to the face D&D style they were really excited.

 

The players quickly adapted to HERO (minus power creation) and holding phases and Aborting for defensive maneuvers became very common.

 

I remember even back in the 90s my players when faced with a truly damaging opponent (like a frost giant say) would all hold their turns and then the character attacked would dodge/block and the others would attack like a pack of wild dogs.

[LoneWolf]

If you really want to be effective in combat this is one of the first things you need to master.  The Hero system unlike D&D requires some tactical thinking and not just taking turns hitting each other.  Along with holding phase it can allow a character to create tactical openings and defeat seemingly more powerful opponents. 

 

Once common tactic is to allow the enemy to attack first and depending on what he does adjust your tactics.  I have a character with a high DEX that usually hold phase and waits to see what the enemy does.  If he sees an opponent that is vulnerable he can go all out on the attack and often does more damage that way.  And once the phase is over and he is attacked the next phase while he is vulnerable he simply aborts to a defensive action.

 

Holding phase can also be used to allow a character to act twice is rapid succession, or perform complicated multipart actions.  You simply hold actin until the segment before your next phase.  You perform the first part of the multipart action then, and then when your phase comes up you perform he next part.  If timed right the opponent is often unable to react to the situation, or if he chooses to abort it can allow the rest of the team to pound the crap out of him.

 

 

The best tactic vs the lucky GM syndrome is not to allow him to roll.  I have played against a GM who always seemed to hit when you dodged.  Once we started aborting to block instead that stopped happening.  If he does not get to roll the dice often his luck is nullified.  

[Duke Bushido]

Rarely. 

 

Held phases are pretty common.  Aborting is almost exclusively to save someone else: a leap in front of a civilian, things like that. 

 

As has been noted, something about an Abort to Dodge turns the GMs roll-to-hit dice into d4......