shuddemell

True enough, the initial question prompted me to give an answer based on what we USED to do, or did at one point in a campaign. Presently, I don't even use AP, and prefer penetrating. Also, yeah, a Tank wasn't the best example, but the point was made nonetheless....

Actually, that was the whole point of the modification. Which is to say, I wanted AP attenuated at higher levels. Actually, that was the whole point of the modification. Which is to say, I wanted AP attenuated at higher levels. In the case of your 2nd example, the DC of the attack is 6, and therefore it will halve anything up to 12 rPD, so it would still have the resistant PD down to 4.5 (5 rounded). What I really wanted in the heroic game was a limit to the amount of penetration that could be achieved with a single application of AP... If you applied it twice then you would halve up to 4*DC. It really doesn't make much a difference on very low end Heroic like low fantasy, but is more useful at a middle level like Dark Champions (keeping an AP rifle from piercing a tank for example). Now with the advent of penetrating, I almost never allow the simple AP, and tend to go with piercing as the mechanic to achieve the effect I want.

Yes, that is true in a superheroic campaign, we primarily only used it in heroic and almost exclusively with killing attacks...

I did use a variation similar to this... What I did was treat AP as normal halving defenses up until the point that they (in the case of normal attacks) were twice the number of DC (dice) of the attack, at that point, they would subtract no more from the defense. For example, in the case of an 8d6 attack, it would halve defenses up to 16, and subtract 8 from those greater. So a def of 4 would go to 2, but a def of 20 would go to 12. Worked pretty well for us...

It is true that the options I mentioned aren't necessarily appropriate to all campaigns, however they work for those wanting KA's to feel more realistic. I have considered the same options for supers and the like, and it seems quite workable using only regular attacks with a resistant limitation.

I would suggest, that if you want killing attacks to have the impact they should on 'real' people, you should use the optional hit locations, incapacitation rules, et. al.

I personally think Old Man is dead on, people no longer wish to make the time for a hobby. Most seem to want it served to them like hors d'oeuvres... I think this is both a legacy of video games and television.... Less and less people read or follow pursuits that require actual work. Now, I am not judging this, as people should do what makes them happy, but the dumbing down of America is certainly the big factor in my opinion. So it probably is a lost cause to hope for the hay days of the 80's, as far as TTRP goes... and Hero's rep for complexity (mostly undeserved in my opinion) makes it a prime target for this tar pit... Sad....

Sorry, to clarify, what I meant was when I used their formula that the calculation yielded .000033, not the .009 they reported. And yes, the calculation you mention gives the correct result, I was just saying that even with their formula, they didn't get the right answer and I was wondering what they did differently. Thanks again for your help.

Yeah, thanks for confirming what I suspected, and with the exception of decimal places that is what their formula suggests as well. I seem to remember that .34% from PSE I, where if my dim memory serves we calculated it then...

Well, remember gravity is driven by both masses involved, so if you have a counteracting force, in this case the centrifugal force, then APPARENT gravity would be lessened. Actual gravity is still the same (that is on earth 9.8 m/s^2). What you are really determining is the FORCE felt from gravity, which of course, isn't gravity itself. It might be useful to remember that gravity is a type of acceleration, and since in spinning objects the direction of the velocity is constantly changing, then that is a type of acceleration as well, and they are in opposite directions, so they are essentially counteracting each other.

Mr. Long, According to page 113 Star Hero, you calculate the lessening of earths gravity due to centrifugal effects to be less by .0009%, however I cannot get the numbers to come out correctly... could you assist? Here is what I calculated... The formula would be [(Mass^.333*500)/(3600*Radius)]^2.... Which according to my calculations works out like this: If Earth's Mass is 1, and the period of rotation is 24 hours, then this is [(1^.333*500)/(3600*24)]^2 = (.005787)^2= .000033, not the .000009 as listed.... what am I missing?

You know, I couldn't get his numbers to work out correctly, so I must be missing something... From Star Hero the formula would be [(Mass^.333*500)/(3600*Radius)]^2.... Which according to my calculations works out like this: If Earth's Mass is 1, and the period of rotation is 24 hours, then this is [(1^.333*500)/(3600*24)]^2 = (.005787)^2= .000033, not the .0009 as listed.... what am I missing? BTW, I cross posted this for Mr. Long to answer as well.

Done!

Re: Passing Strike It is mentioned on the following pages 7, 8, 12, 13, 83, 96, 97, 246, however no actual definitions are given, but given its appearance in the tables, it is simply a move-by maneuver, essentially.

Re: Looking For Input On Potential New Fantasy Product I am not really advocating folding up the tent, but rather perhaps, pitching it in another location... My main point is that some groups are lost causes and as the bottom line is the only thing that keeps this floating, it is essential to focus in the right place.

Re: Looking For Input On Potential New Fantasy Product Wow, lots of good ideas... but I wonder how many of them are realistic for the long haul. To begin with, a complete gaming toolkit is counter productive to continually selling supplements in and of itself (this by the way, is the thing that really sold me on Hero, lo those many years ago... I liked having to only buy a small set of books and then my imagination does the rest! Though this seems to be common among this group, it is a very rare attitude among the D&D and Pathfinder crowd). This being said, in my experience (limited it may be, though 33+ years of gaming is nearly as long as it can get) says that a large portion of the players of other systems aren't going to switch. They have great intellectual, economic and temporal investments in their chosen system. This alone provides them with almost indomitable inertia to avoid changing. I have encountered this resistance more times than not, actually almost everytime I suggested playing any system other than whatever that table had as its favorite system. I believe today, that the vast majority of new players come from contact with current players, and as such tend to the prejudices held by their peer group. So, I believe it unlikely to steal many current players from one system to another. The only chance left is to get them from the crib, so to speak. With that goal in mind, obviously a complete Fantasy Hero in a book seems to make more sense than a supplement to CC. Some of you may remember recently when I attempted to start a campaign of "championing" (pun intended) the hero system on other sites. This went virtually nowhere... many of the old hands here rightly pointed out the general resistance to Hero on other sites, and I reluctantly had to accept that I was tilting at windmills. If the resistance on other sites is any indication, breaking into a stratified and prejudiced group of gamers will be nigh impossible. In addition to that, most of those here offering advice on how to proceed are long-term gamers with the vast majority of them having at least 20 years of gaming under their belt, so their general perspective is somewhat nostalgic, and based more on memories of what it is like to be a new gamer, rather than coming into the hobby fresh, myself included in this category. So the old hats will find very little impetus to buy something that they already have in other books (except possibly from the point of view of supporting their system), and the gamers of other systems will see little reason to change their system that they have invested so heavily in. So who is left? New gamers? I have (in Oklahoma at least) found it almost impossible to get anyone new interested in playing Hero, even though I will run it, even to the point of hand-holding and building characters for them... As such, I see the available market as too small to support a system, especially in direct competition with Narosia (which I am looking forward to receiving). I have to agree with Old Man on this point, it is probably best to wait a while both to see how Narosia is received and determine if the market will bear any more. I fear that being the best game will not be enough to save it, it has to be PERCEIVED as being the best, and too much advertising water has gone under that bridge I think...

Re: Advocacy on other sites... Well Chris, I would say that were true concerning those already sold on Hero. If you concede you can't win anyone else over, then yes it does work fine. I am not advocating pushing things, I am saying a presence, albeit an organic one can be good. I really don't mind if people are intent on harshing my gig anyway, I know what I like. But you are right in that, considering the tendency of people to be antagonistic towards new ideas, then it would probably only breed animosity. I had hoped, since the gaming community is aging (I myself started gaming in 1978) that it would also be maturing... Guess not... I suppose what I am seeing is the decline of the hobby in general, and Hero in particular, and I wanted to spark some interest. I have watched this board for a while now, and there are a lot of good, reasonable, creative people here. So much so that I really think this community has a lot to offer, unfortunately it is being overlooked by the naysayers at such places and those that concede defeat. I don't believe I am the sort to overbearingly push my ideas as better than anyone else's... so I think it seems like everyone believes I was wanting to hit people over the head with Hero to knock sense into them, which I am not. I am talking about a subtle thing, but it seems that maybe it is a naive hope on my part if you all believe any kind of advocacy would come to naught. Sad really.

Re: Advocacy on other sites... Yes, I agree that all of us piling on there as you suggest would be counter productive at best, and it isn't really what I was suggesting. I was mainly interested in those that seem to post here and only here broaden their sphere of influence a bit. I know that most of you that have responded do indeed post elsewhere, and I ran into Derek on rpg.net myself. I was hoping with a little more effort we can win hearts and minds. I don't solely play Hero myself, though it is the only game I GM. In any case, thanks for you input, it tends to reinforce what I have seemed to notice... and that is few people are willing to change from the comfortable, even if the promise of something better is there. Well, I don't really want to spend what precious little time I have tilting at windmills....

Re: Advocacy on other sites... Well, I certainly didn't intend to engage in a my game is better than your game sort of thing. As a matter of fact, I don't really believe it is for everyone anyway, a lot of people don't want to put in the work required for Hero. My only point was that on generic sites, rather than those dedicated to a particular system, some sort of positive representation could be helpful. Just a thought...

Hi, I am a little new to the boards (posting anyway), but I have been wondering if some of the great discussions here might have an impact on non-hero players on other boards. I tried starting some on rpg.net and had some limited success and thought maybe that sort of advocacy would be the way to get more people into Hero. I see a lot of people with misconceptions and bad experiences that might not be valid if only enough people with Hero savvy were to dispel them. Just a thought on helping Hero overcome and become more recognized in the larger RPG market. What are everyone's thoughts about this, and is it unwise to pursue any further?

Re: Hero System Sixth Edition Concise As a long time printing professional, I would say it is quite likely within the next ten years printed material will be a lot harder to come by. With the skyrocketing cost of paper (we have seen a 225% increase in paper costs in the last 2 years) and the dwindling market of an actual reading public, not to mention the even faster downward spiral in the number of gamers such as ourselves... pdf's (or some other format) will begin to dominate the market more and more. On the positive side, it makes self publishing accessible to anyone with the time and effort to spend, but for retail ventures printing is quickly becoming a losing game. (Which is why I am back in college changing professions.) You only have to see the current state of Hero to realize that this is a large part of the problem, since it certainly isn't a question of quality or value...

Re: What Can We Do To Serve HERO? As someone who spent a long time away from RP'ing and came back to it... The only thing I wanted to play was Hero.. one game, one set of rule, infinite settings. I found 2 main resistances among those I approached as players... Cost and difficulty. These have both been addressed many times in this thread. For me the solution began by asking my potential players to describe their characters in prose and then letting me build them and provide character sheets once complete for them to examine. Didn't ask them to buy the game at first. This got them past the initial complexity issue... Now they want to buy the rulebooks to build their own characters... for as we all know, no one can write up your character as well as you can... In any case, my one practical suggestion is to reduce the cost of the PDF's, in particular the Basic Rulebook. Since they have no material or shipping costs, they can practically be distributed with minimal cost. That would get many to take the plunge, and I feel only after playing and catching the Hero System in its glory can those be swayed... My two cents, less taxes.

Re: Changes at Hero What more is left to be said? I prefer to believe this is a transition rather than an ending... though it does put me in mind of something Asimov once said.... Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. In any case, all the best to the folks leaving and those still at Hero. You have all done an amazing job keeping us all entertained. Sincerely, Mark Weems

Re: Steve's Chat Tonight (Thursday, October 13) Mr. Long, Timing for these is bad for me, I was wondering if you keep a log of the conversation that I could peruse later... would be kind of cool if you did. Love your work, keep it coming!

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? I personally think that both Mythic and Legendary Hero would have a place on my shelf. Just wondering as well, when dealing with the Chinese pantheon, would you approach it from both a Buddhist and a Taoist perspective? Though they have many similarities, their outlook/approach is somewhat different in my experience.