arosslaw

Re: The Book Of The Machine I have to say, this book is BEAUTIFUL. If this is how all the 6E books are going to look, consider me sold. Wow, just wow. Having read and loved Book of the Destroyer, I have to say I found the history section of this one a bit . . . off. Like Dr. Destroyer, Mechanon is supposed to be a world-class foe, yet where the good Doctor has actually seized control of the world a few times (albeit briefly) and has killed a good many supers, Mechanon seems a constant "almost". Almost killed this hero, almost killed that hero, all his plans come across as just "eh." I just did not get the sense of how terrible and scary he is supposed to me. Still, all the crunchy stuff was awesome. Not sure about the new look, but that's easy enough to tweak.

Re: Monster Island Unfortunately, I have to agree with the above sentiments. Instead of a book about giant monsters I got book about a bunch of different groups watching the giant monsters. Not that the content was bad, just not what I hoped from a book titled "Monster Island." I also have to say I cannot stand the MMO art. Yuck. I've been with Champs since First Edition and have every book published to date. However, if this book is an indication of how the MMO stuff is going to influence future books, I may start skipping the setting books entirely and just enjoy crunch books like the Book of the Destroyer. We'll see.

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"? Ah, some misunderstanding as to the question. I was wondering what, if any, rules or tweaks people have for WHEN the squishy person is unfortunate enough to get hit. The squishy character has all his dodge and luck and what not, and we as GM's try not to arbitrarily direct the 20d6 AP Penetrating attack at him TOO often, but every now and then stuff happens and someone who just can't take a hit catches Grond's haymaker. Then what? As mentioned in the OP, some systems have fate/luck/hero points people can spend to fend off death. Without those, do you fudge the roll? Tweak the damage? What?

I love a mixed group as much as the next GM, but obviously worry about the stealthy detective getting hit by the blast that is designed to at least bother the brick. A lot of games these days have a hero point/willpower/etc. mechanic that allows characters to dodge/suck up/negate damage. Hero does not, and other than simply not trying to hit the stealthy guy with the big blast (which seems not right), what solutions have people come up with for when the guy with no significant defenses sucks up 20d6? (btw, for purposes of this question, we are assuming there are groups that don't build every character so they can take a tank shot point blank without flinching)

I've been following the various threads about speed-capping with some interest and in thinking about the various situations where characters comment on "how fast" someone is, how do you tell if they're talking about Dex as opposed to speed? The standard speedy indicators are high CV and huge amounts of movement, both of which can be accomplished with DEX and lots of movement. Are there any examples of a high speed but low Dex character? Do all "speedsters" have to have high speed? Part of the argument in the other threat seems to be whether speed is a "combat" stat or not. Seems to me while arguments can be made on either side, people take it because of what it does in combat, plain and simple. Has anyone tried removing speed entirely and simply using multi-action penalties instead?

Yes, yes, I know. This old chestnut again. Apologies and all that, but here we go again . . . I love the Hero System. Love it. Have played since 1st ed, have bought everything Steve et al has pubilshed for 5e and will continue to do so. BUT, I don't run the game and have not in years. Why, because with any other system I want to use I can usually get 2-4 combats in per session. With Hero, I'm lucky to pull off 1-2. What makes it so darn slow and what can we do about it? Is it the speed chart? Other games have convulted initiative systems (look at Exalted). Hero actually maps it out so everyone always knows when everyone goes. That should speed things up, if anything. Counting all the damage dice? Maybe. Too much math with roll under and combating CVs? I don't know. For all you actually running the system, what do you find causes things to slow down the most and what have you done to fix it? Thanks!

Re: What Other Pulp Hero Books Would You Like To See? I'd love to see Hero get Aaron Allston to do a sourcebook for his Doc Sidhe series. That would be awesome.

One of the interesting aspects of Exalted that I'd like to port over to my game is the skill-related charms. I'm just not sure how to manage them in Hero System terms. For example, Charm can cause a given bureaucracy to slow down its process or even completely lose track of an item (such as a ship or person). Huge levels of Bureaucracy skill wouldn't do this. Could you use some variation of Change Environment for something like this? Thanks. Andrew Ross

Howdy. I was a Champions junkie from 1st ed through the BBB, but for some reason the BBB just didn't click with me or the group and we moved on to other systems (gasp). Anyhow, after resisting for months, I finally broke down and picked up the 5th edition and was VERY impressed, enough to pick up the rest of the new books. After all these years I'm seriously thinking about running with the Hero System again, but . . . The one thing that does not appear to have changed is the slow pace of combat. Granted we used to run with 6-8 people, but even with everyone very familiar with the rules and combat notesheets, the fights still took forever. My question (finally) is, for those using the 5th edition on a regular basis, any particular tricks you've found useful for speeding things along. I always liked the Hero System because I could make anything and instantly know how it balanced against anything else, but we also tend to run a combat-heavy game and I'm worried about the slow pace. Right now I'm down to considering using either Hero 5th or Mutants and Masterminds for our new game. Input appeciated. Thanks.