Sketchpad

I'm away from my books at the moment, but do Resource points work the same way as equipment meaning you'd be limited to the sorts of things anybody could reasonably buy in a setting? Because, if so, it might help to think about how you envision the setting, marcusxbaer. If it makes sense to you that a given thing from Gadgets and Gear would be available for anybody with the right access to buy then it would be valid for your Resource points. This way you can adapt the rules to different settings as needs be.
 
Hope I've understood the question correctly, and apologies if not!

I ran Delta Green in 1999-2002 but under Hero. The way I did it was to treat SAN loss like a Mental Transformation. When you reached Transformation pips equal to (IIRC) 2xEGO you gained a 10pt Psychological Disadvantage (that you of course received no points back for). This then scaled up to a 20pt psychological at 4xEGO, and “0 SAN” at 6xEGO. 
If you gained too many transform points at one time (at least 5pts I think?) you also got temporary effects - fight or flight type reactions/emotional shutdown.  
You needed therapy to remove the transformation points - they would not heal with time - and therapy gradually reduced less and less the more you used it. 

I have checked and checked the rules for the sanity clause, but I don't believe he exists.

Second Chance TV Series
 
"It follows the life of Jimmy Pritchard, a 75-year-old former King County, Washington sheriff who was morally corrupt and later disgraced and forced to retire. After he is killed in a robbery at his son's home, Pritchard is brought back to life in the improved body of a younger man by billionaire tech-genius twins Mary and Otto Goodwin. However, despite having a new life and a chance to relive his life and find a new purpose, the temptations that led to his career being tarnished continue to haunt him."
 
This could be a character in Champions or Dark Champions.  He even had his own "Batmobile"--a 1971 Buick Riviera "Boattail."  
 

 
An excellent machine for any Seventies-era PI or rogue cop.

Remember that the OP wants to simulate a popular Shonen anime. Low powered supers are the floor here. Most of the characters can be well rounded versions of themselves at 250-300 points but if they all want to be close to the main characters then they will need more. He could start them at 200 and then give experience at a higher rate than is normal in Hero also. 
 
 

Created two new (and related) talents for Fantasy Here which would work for both 5th Edition and 6th Edition, and I am checking to see what others think of it. The following are the talents:
 
Armor Mastery I
Armor (4 PD/4 ED) (12 Active Points); OIF (-1/2), Must be Aware of Attack (-1/2), Restrainable (-1/2), Only Half as Much as Worn Armor (-1/2), Not verse Critical Hit (-1/4), Not verse AE (-1/4))
3 Points
 
Armor Mastery II
Hardened (+1/4) for up to 36 Active Points of Worn Armor (9 Active Points); OIF (-1/2), Must be Aware of Attack (-1/2), Restrainable (-1/2), Not verse Critical Hit (-1/4), Not verse AE (-1/4)
3 Points
 
This talent is for characters who are masters at wearing armor, shifting in such ways where attacks hit the best defended portions of the armor. Each can only be purchased once of course, and Armor Mastery I must be purchased before Armor Mastery II. Attached is a Prefab file for it. Please let me know what you think.
 
Armor Mastery.hdp

Yes, it did have Sanity rules. They're the Shock and Stress rules that Sketchpad started the thread to ask about.

I believe the suplilment Horror Hero for 4ed had Sanity rules. It also was the first place to see Spirit rules.

Obviously without posting from a soon to be released book here I can't show you my work, but you nailed it. Two different powers to give to a monster or situation or scene. One is a Transform and the other is a Drain, which makes you more and more susceptible over time as you slowly lose your willpower and mind. It's why I love the Hero System, the answer is probably there. The only thing I changed was shifting "Turning Undead" from PRE (as it is represented in Fantasy Hero) to EGO, but that is a different topic altogether and for setting reasons.

I think the first thing I would want to understand would be the purpose of the sanity and shock stuff and, given that the system is chock full of tools, I would be looking to the existing kit before adding anything new.
 
For instance, in Cthulhu the big thing is that you slowly go mad, you accumulate strange tics and phobias until you cannot function.
 
Now that sounds to me like picking up complications in-game.  We have mechanics to do that.  We might call it Transform and Pow Def in the toolkit, but it would be trivial to label things Horror and Resilience.
 
In HERO the options are great, you can add physical complication, psychological ones, dependencies, social complications and reputations and everything us already costed out.
 
The big difference is that the purpose of the Transform is vague, or random, and you might be counting up potential before applying rather than counting down.
 
I think that the target for impact would be when Horror exceeded EGO (minus the number of existing complications).  You might have, or build up, a defence to these things but that could be eroded by knowledge of Mythos.
 
We do often leap to additional systems rather than adapting what we have.
 
Doc
 

Maybe CON would be a better defense against Stress, but you need something of that kind in a horror setting.  I cannot remember the system that was used in Champions 3D in the horror dimension, but that seemed effective.
 
If I was to build something from scratch it would be something along the lines of presence attacks that cause Long Term END style effects on combat, skill, and characteristic rolls.  So each time you face something supernatural, impossible, or horrendous, you suffer a presence attack, and depending on how badly it hits, you suffer an increasing cumulative penalty, and duration.  So an attack equal to presence = one turn of effect, PRE+10 = until end of combat, etc.
 
I had a "coolness under fire" rule for my Vietnam campaign where the characters would suffer a presence attack in combat because they are just not ready for it.  Once they faced combat once, they could spend XPs on a 1-point familiarity that removes the shock unless something really overwhelming happens like being in the middle of a bombing or artillery strike.

I used a sanity system Cthulhu influenced heavily in the soon to be released Hero Games supplement Gaslight: Heroic Investigations In Victorian London that was featured on the Patreon when it was launched (if you were a Patreon member go glance at it).  It allows for madness to occur, and then slow healing to occur naturally or faster with an alienist, or some other conditions. I used it the mechanics also in some supers testing in the madness dimension style stuff but you want to scale up the points a bit especially if a lot of defense is in play but it works for that as well. 

IIRC back in the early 2000s, Steve Long created a 44-page free PDF, The Hero System Genre By Genre, which discussed the conventions of a number of different game genres, and how to model them in Hero System (5E at the time), including a number of sample characters for several genres. One of them was horror, for which he proposed a new Sanity (SAN) stat. The following is quoted from p. 43:
 
---------------------------------------------------------------
 
To represent the long-term problems caused by stress and sustained fear, many Horror Hero GMs come up with a new Figured Characteristic to represent a character’s capacity to withstand the effects of horror. For example, you might create a Sanity (SAN) Figured Characteristic, derived from EGO + (PRE/2) + (CON/2). Characters lose Sanity like they lose STUN, but only from effects that are particularly terrifying, gruesome, or disturbing — the GM assigns a “Sanity Damage” rating (in d6) to each such phenomena. If a character drops to 0 SAN, he snaps and becomes completely insane (and an NPC under the GM’s control) until he recovers his wits. Characters may regain lost SAN with REC, just like STUN, but do not get Post-Segment 12 Recoveries and can only make SAN Recoveries when they are in calming, non-stressful, non-frightening situations (i.e., rarely in the middle of a scenario, but only between adventures). Many other versions of SAN (or the like) are possible; each GM sets it up to represent the feelings of horror he most wants to simulate.
 

I am not ignoring the questions; I swear.  I had to leqve work early becauae the wife reported a water geyser in the front yard.  At my age, digging up waterlines and pine roots doesnt go as effortlessly as it once did_  eight hours later, the repairs are made and the pard is more-or-less intact.
 
I am going to bed.
 
I will get badk to you, though; I promise it.
 
 
 
 

Hello Herodom! For those that have used it, what is your opinion of the Shock & Stress system in Horror Hero? Do you think there's a better way of approaching such concepts in 6th ed? 

Hmm... I would think creating a SAN stat that works a bit like Mental STUN would be more along the Call of Cthulhu lines. I believe I've seen a few other folks try that in HERO a few years (decades?) back. 
 
 
 
I would think that EGO would be better to defend against Fear-Based PRE Attacks. 
 
EGO Damage is an interesting idea. Would you basically use it akin to BODY? 
 
Not sure if I agree on INT damage. 
 
I think in the long run, I was interpreting the rules less like CoC's SAN, and more like lasting Fear, particularly the section on situational PRE-Attacks.

As we are all aware, it was an attempt to add C'thullu's Sanity type damage stat as a genre rule.
 
I am not saying anything nehative about it, because it worked well enough as presented.
 
I don't know that you could "better" it wccept perhaps brining stress more in line with the current long-term Endurance rules. 
 
I say that because- well, if you jave an official mechanic that can be re-named to do the same job, then use it: it keeps things "tight" within the rules, and also because at the wnd od the day, you are simply adding another "damage goes here" stat like STUN, Body, or- in a way- Endurance.  We already know that idea works; it is simply figuring out if you want to require players to buy it from zero, make it a Figured characteristic (very not-6e, though), or assign a base value and allow players to improve it from there.
 
_Realistically_, that last one is the least disruptive to the character building process as it doesn't require spending points you would normally use elsewhere.  Yes; the option to just toss players a few more points to compensate is there, but I think you will find that those compensatory points end up spent to buy about the same amount  of whatever you decide to to name,your new damage tracker.
 
 
So let's explore a couple of other things:
 
Presence defends against shock as it does a Presence Attack.  Intelligence defends against Stress.
 
Shock "damage" affects EGO-  either you can directly "damage" EGO, or you can assign a damage stat that defaults to "equal to EGO" and then determine what happens when that stat gets to Zero or whatever levels you want effects to occur. 
 
Stress, at least basing it on job and child-rearing experience, damages Intelligence (determine how it recovers is up to you.)
 
I would let both of these factors (or just the one that you want to most play-up in the game) contribute to a "sanity" or "personality schism" or what-have-you akin to Long Term Enduranve or Fatigue or whatever it is that 6e is calling it.
 
 

Give the Players what they paid for.
 
Example 1: I played Captain America, with a positive Reputation: WW II hero, strives for the American dream.
 
Another Player chose Super Patriot, aka John Walker, an additional character from Marvel Comics. Super Patriot has superhuman strength and stamina. He mocks Captain America, saying Cap is an tired old warhorse who should be put out to pasture. Super Patriot makes such snide remarks every game session.
 
Our Game Master privately expressed concern about these slurs. "Hey, that's on you, GM," I replied. "You knew what personality Super Patriot has before you allowed him in our game. There's some slack on your part, in not having Non Player Characters express their admiration of Cap - ever. You should do so at least once every game session- large amounts of daily fan mail, a cop directing traffic sees Cap and says thank you for helping his grandfather who served in Europe with the Big Red One, etc.

Game Masters should only call for a Player dice roll if the outcome of it provides an interesting result to the game.
 
Example 1: our heroes are leisurely Climbing a building, with tools, out of combat. All else being equal: automatic success.
 
In the above example, there is no time specified. Remember, certain tasks take more than a Phase to complete unless a penalty is included.
 
Example 2: Gone in 60 Seconds, car theft; no penalty to Security Systems roll if a minute or more is allotted to this task. If there is no car alarm, surveillance, time constraint, etc, automatic success for taking a minute plus to steal the car.
 

See, that is where I think Complete books should diverge from the toolkit books.
 
Instant change should be a talent presented as a "thing" in Champions.  Pay the cost, here us what it does, in text, not gamespeak.  Each genre should gave a chunk of things like that which are just given a cost and an explanation in the rulebook.  There can be an annex showing how it was put together (for the toolkit-interested).
 
Doc
 

Not at all; that is the whole reason that we made the attacks have a static value (any why I suspect Doc Democracy recommended the same basic idea): we are only making one roll.
 
For ordinary combat, we make obe roll- the damage roll.  We just flipped that and made damage a known quantity instead of Defense, and make one roll for Defense, which is now rhe variable quantity.
 
In the narrative, it is lucky shots or poorly-placed shots, hitting seams or reinforced major structural components, etc.   As I said, it was done to add a bit of balance that the rules as written don't allow for without having to add artificial limits that make the sturdiest warship vulnerable to lighter-weight ship's weapons.  Using this system, they generally _aren't particularly vulnerable: we roll a die for every three points of Def, but given the average roll is three-and-a-half, and roughly half of all rolls will be higher than average, and even the higher low rolls may still provide proof against the weapon in use, but abysmal rolls- however unlikely, _do_ happen, so we have eliminated that feeling of being totally invulnerable.
 
Same amount of rolling; samr amount of math, and the desired end results.  What's not to love?
 
 

I want to be clear about presenting this Fate Points idea--I think it could really work and improve the game. I re-offered it as a mental exercise because I still wanted to utilize the brain power of those turned off by the idea itself.
 
I am honestly, as a player, closest to Doc Democracy and Scott Ruggels and Duke Bushido. I have blown my rolls many times. I have even had superhero PC's die from a bad roll--when I first started gaming in the 80s--but as my group got a handle on the spirit of Champions, that kind of thing never happened.
 
I am very much a "let the chips fall where they may" type person in Champions, as a player. My current quest for this new "xp as Fate Points" comes from playing a lot of Champions games online. I find this group of new players really wants more narrative control as compared to players who have grown into the system. I don't think that's a bad thing or a game breaker. So this is a compromise that might allow for more new players to join in.
 
This has been my experience and I'm offering up this anecdotal data for analysis and attack.
 
GMing is an art. If you have someone new to Champions, a new GM, they don't often GM it the way I would. You will usually get a very literal "the roll is the roll" style of GMing. So a situation like the example I keep referring to with Christopher happens. And what is the solution? We all see that the GM should step in and make it more narratively effective, or else go with "the roll is the roll": i.e., the hero fails and we move along and work towards a win later in the story instead of the cool moment that would have tied it up nicely. But the other kind of player, they want the scene settled with the nice, immediate resolution. You're still building trust at this point. So, since I don't have any Hero gamers in my area and I play online, I have to find a way to work with the players that I pull together. 
 
So I'm GMing and often everyone wants the rolls on the table for everyone to see. Some of us here do it that way. When I GMed a lot of tabletop I kept the rolls hidden 95% of the time and rolled sometimes in front of the group and went with "the roll is the roll" when it was a visible roll. But, when I play with the online players, if I do a "roll is the roll" and their character fails...sometimes they just kind of quietly quit the game. Not because they are sulking, but because we've put all this work into the game (building a Champions character for the first time!) and we reach this critical moment and they are constantly evaluating whether the game is worth their time investment. So a failure early on is a downer and it's read as a "so this is how the game is going to be" moment.
 
So I thought about a way that could prevent that icky moment from discouraging new players. 
 
If I was playing with my old group, we would have giggled the heck out of this idea. But I really like the fresh players who turn up for my games. I want them to stay. They often make decisions and comments I would never have considered. They are hilarious. They are brave. They get the genre. But we are not a group of people who sit at a table in the real world and have a social contract with one another. I used to go to the same school as all of the players in my original group. Champions was maybe 15% of what we did together. That's a different situation, is what I'm saying.
 
People wonder why it's challenging to attract new players to Hero, why everyone doesn't embrace Champions as the One True System. (It really is. I love it to death.) But many of us adherents started with these groups where we were socially attached, socially obligated. I'm currently playing in games where this is the first exposure to the Hero system for half or more of the players, and I am finding it wanting in this exact way.
 
I'm not at all annoyed or bitter when I write all of this. (In fact, I may not even be right.) As always, bouncing an idea off you folks has led me to a moment of better understanding, I think. If I asked this question anywhere else, I wouldn't have figured out anything.
 
PS: The xp as Fate, that's just because I really don't worry that much about xp as a player anymore. A good GM can have a freshly-made character and one with 100 points of xp operate together seamlessly. However, most people do care about xp and character advancement. I realize I am in the tiny minority on that. I think that the players I am trying to keep wouldn't like xp as Fate, because they do want character advancement. So I'm seeing Doc's idea as probably what I will go with:
 

Allowing a reroll still doesn’t guarantee success either. So you still can have that adversity. 
 
Lord knows I’ve had run of bad rolls that it wouldn’t matter how many HAPs I had.

Not exactly. Heroic Action Points were introduced with Pulp Hero for Fifth Edition, because they could be argued to suit the genre, because other pulp RPGs were using something similar, and because there had long been requests/complaints from Hero players for a comparable mechanic. 6E only incorporated them into the core rules as one option.
 
But I don't agree with categorizing a particular game mechanic which some people like as a "sin" because someone else doesn't like it, or doesn't think it works for them when it works for someone else.
 
  
 
Breeding character is all well and good, but RPGs are supposed to be fun for all participants. When the former treads on the latter, I draw the line.

To that end, I offer a quick breakdown of how we do the ship-to-ship stuff where I use a similar idea:
 
Wepaons are bought the same way you buy dice: 5/d6 or 15/kd6.  However, they are calculated as static values:  each Die is 1 Body or 3 BODY for KA.  As we are usinf this exclusively for ship-to-ship---  that is "large scale" weapons, and ships dont really take STUN, but getting a character hit with a ship's gun should be memorable at the very least, when STUN is required, it is assumbed to be BODY x10 for non KA weapons, and BODY x 50 for KA weapons.  This idea of 'scaled' weapons comes, of,course, from the original Star HERO.  Any PC-sized object directly hit with a ship's weapon assumes a x10 damage multiplier.  (For those who balk, go back to Traveller, hit a PC with a missile launcher, and tell me if a funeral is even possible).
 
Defenses are bought as normal (with whatever modifiers are desired), but the final value of the Defense is considered the "rating" for the defense. (It's only a yacht!  We're lucky if it has a 12 armor rating!).    Divide the rating (the defense listed on the sheet) by 3.  When a hit is scored, roll Rating/3 in d6.  Subtract this amount from the attack rating to determine damage through defenses.
 
Combat becomes dicey, and even an SDB might score a "lucky shot" against a dreadnaught.  Not likely, but it can happen, where it just cannot using the rules as written without piling in artificial limits based on ship class, etc.
 
The single ultimate problem with the HERO vehicle rules since Day 1 (Champions II) is that no part of the vehicle has size, weight, or mass.
 
Accordingly, we have always stuck to our house rules for vehicles.
 
Sorry- that's a different topic.