mhd

MA 262, the "Follow" restrictive element. Used e.g. with the Fencing Riposte on MA 29.

If I have a Block + Strike combination, can I do two strikes as a Rapid Attack, both qualifying as the Follow-Up maneuver? (e.g. with a two weapon cross block followed by left and right thrusts, or a neck grab plus two quick jabs to the nose) As per the rules, I could do a Block + Strike + Strike with both strikes being the follow up if they're on different phases, of course. But I'm not sure if it's true (and balanced) for a combo attack. If not, would a Rapid Attack be possible, but only the first strike counting as the follow up?

How else would you build BraveStarr? No Eyes of the Hawk?

Which might be a good way to simulate the exact mechanics, but neither the idea nor the concept of "tanking"...

The D&D opportunity attacks introduced in 2E Skills&Powers and widely popularized by 3E always reminded me of the old "one attack per 1 HD creature" that fighters got in older editions, i.e. a quick way to obliterate hordes of mooks. In practice, they often resulted in lots of messy powergaming with reach weapons, trips etc. Certainly not something that's actually meant to simulate anything specific from the real world, which -- never mind all the superheroics -- seems to be more in line with the HERO view. Well, at least compared to the rather abstract D&D heritage. And at least to me, "tanking" is rooted in abstract games of rather specialized "units". Especially when it comes blocking lots of enemy actions, as opposed to what Holding actions already covers. Not that you couldn't build it, but then it's certainly some kind of special effect and power and doesn't really need to be covered by the generic combat rules. Conditional SPD, triggers, CSLs for Holding Multiple Attacks, Entangle etc. One thing that I did note a bit is that this isn't as much a concern in GURPS, although it shares quite a few elements with HERO and doesn't have opportunity attacks, either. I think this is mainly due to the more elaborate facing and reach rules there, plus a more limited combat movement. If positional tactics are a goal, that might be a source for some inspiration.

Yes, that's part of what I'm looking for. If I get a good picture of what it's about, this doesn't just make it easier to describe what's going on, but also how to figure out perception roll penalties/bonuses or how to tie in additional abilities. This isn't just the "infrared/ultraviolet perception" part of the rules, but various degrees of nightvision, how discriminatory/analytical/tracking might be included, skill bonuses etc. And as we're a rather visual species, at least some metaphors regarding our normal spectrum are always helpful. It's much easier to handwave smell for a wolfman than modify sight. The good thing is that we already had the opportunity to map the extended spectrum to our abilities with thermal imaging... UV as some kind of (often non-utilitarian) enhanced perception is a rather nice idea and might explain a few things about some haughty elven aesthetics...

This topic is probably going to get a bit weird, as we're basically talking about explaining the missing color(s) to the color-blind, probably even worse. But it's a pretty common ability for fantasy races to have some kind of improved vision. Sometimes this just is simple "nightvision", and even D&D moved towards that rather handwaving solution to things (monochromatic "darkvision"). But before that, we reveled in the glory of infra- (and sometimes ultra-)vision, so let's stick to that for a while. Now, in popular culture, we're basically seeing two versions of "infravison": Thermographic imaging ("Predator"-vision) or night vision (the military kind, which, AFAIK, isn't just about the infrared spectrum). In other words, either a wide range of heat-themed false colors or shades-of-green (IIRC the color we can distinguish the most nuances of). I don't really know a lot about UV imaging, other than having seen black light on crime shows and in night clubs... Now the first thing I would have to think about when picturing how your average elf/orc/dwarf would see the world is whether that's always on or an alternate mode of vision. Quite a few fantasy settings use the latter, probably to make it easier to relate to human perception during normal circumstances. One of the few pieces of fiction that actually delved into the topic a bit were the infamous Drow stories by Mr. Salvatore, where it pretty much was thermal imaging, and they had to switch it of for a few purposes, deciphering non-thermal writing being one of them. If that's some kind of auxiliary mode, this false color mapping might even been the brain's way to unify the different modes to a common denominator. Probably one of the better way to approach things, as it's easy enough to explain in the game. So in this case, someone gifted with infravision would switch between different ranges, with both modes overlapping little. Now, with a visual range that includes everything, I'm naturally a bit confused about how to picture it. If I "just" can't see red because my visual spectrum ends a bit above it, there's a color missing. Maybe even with the world getting just a bit darker? But adding infrared goes beyond that. It's not just that I get a new color (nuances) added to my portfolio, I also get a completely new light source (heat)! This is rather trippy. So let's say I got a hot blue gas flame. It's quite blue, but it's also rather hot. Dude, I'm freaking out now! Would this most likely be a matter of precedence, so with wide-spectrum vision I'd always see that part of the flame as blue, as it's emitting light, but e.g. a rotting blue plant would be some shade of infrared once the light gets turned off and I can't see the vivid color anymore? And still not sure entirely what passive UV vision would bring to the table. Better vision under starlight? Nature prematurely optimizing for raves?

That still leaves us with a proper martial art in the end. And would either require a good, full-fledged teacher or for me as GM to allow developing it all on your own, which I'm a bit reluctant to do for beginning characters (if you're already the master of the Eagle Claw and the Seven Fists of the Iron Mountain, I've got no problem if you come up with the Harmonious Way of the Clouds). My desire would be for something less flexible and even less powerful than even a subset of the proper MA associated with the fighting style or weapon. For some MA's it might be possible to pick both basic and less exotic moves for the basic training version (so no botta segrete NNDs or +4DC attacks maybe), but styles with a more limited selection this would be hard to do. So I think if I'm going with maneuvers, I probably would have to go with the maneuver construction rules and come up with some 3 pointers. And right now this seems the best way to approach this, as I can't think of a good way to do this with talents or limits on CSLs...

My current HERO Fantasy campaign is patterned a bit after two old D&D adventures: X1 - Isle of Dread and N4 - Treasure Hunt. The first implies an island full of dinosaurs and savage tribes, the latter a start-from-scratch, pick your career attitude. So the point budgets are rather low, but increase steadily, giving everyone the chance to learn their trades from the ground up. Given the territory, though, there might not be a specialized teacher... This made me yearn a bit for an intermediate step between mere Weapon Familiarity (I don't use the weapon group option) and a full-fledged martial art. Combat Skill Levels are a possibility (3 pointers, probably), especially if you then trade the points in for MA maneuvers. So WF -> +1 CSL -> +2 CSL -> 10 points in MA maneuvers, then either add new ones or get a proper MA CSL. Another idea I had was some kind of basic maneuvers for certain weapons. This in turn would be used to emphasize the strengths and weaknesses of the weapon. Let's call that Combat Training and say that you get two fixed maneuvers. CT(sword) would have Block and a Martial Strike, CT(axe) might have Martial Strike + Sacrifice Strike etc. Weapon combinations/styles might be a possiblity, too, so you could have a CT(shield & sword). As this would be the basic training, the first step one does after you stop hitting yourselves, cost should be kept down. This probably means two 3 point maneuvers, sometimes specially created lesser versions of the more expensive basic MA moves. Not sure how "risky" it is to actually break the limitation that no MA maneuver can cost less than 3 points. Transgressing that rule would make for a neat 5 point base package (WF+CT). Otherwise it's 7-8 points, same cost as WF + 2 levels of CSL. know that you aren't strictly limited to buy MA's with a 10 point minimum after creation, and so I could just list which maneuvers you're likely to learn first. Still, some of those might be of the 4 or 5 point variant, and I would like to make a distinction between the basic version and a proper martial art. For one, almost anyone can teach you the basic version, making this the difference between e.g. militia training and a proper weapons instructor. As the moves are fixed, you know what to expect from the grunts. (One intention I didn't mention was making it easier for HERO newbs and players who'd like a bit more guidance than "you know nothing, now find something to spend your points on". Just like pre-made spells and powers.)

I think that's the point, people who could afford lots of stuff could afford servants carrying them around. In classical and medieval times, you had quite an entourage going on. Which is why the "department store" meme is quite linked to the henchman/carrier/pack gorilla/torch bearer meme. Strangely enough, the latter has become more rare in recent years of the game, so we're left a bit out of balance. Extradimensional storage solves that, of course.

My first thought was "well, that's what the mirror/piece of polished metal is for", as I would've said that periscopes would be a bit too modern for most quasi-medieval settings (mostly a Renaissance thing, with relatively cheap mirrors being a 19th century invention). That made me look up periscope on Wikipedia. And apparently, dear old Gutenberg was one of the first to make one, selling it to back row pilgrims so that they can see what's going on. Which is why my next campaign will feature either dwarves or halfling nobles who use periscopes like opera glasses, and with exactly the same hauteur.

Really depends on the setting. For some, mythological limited deities (who manifest, walk around, beget monstrosities and demigods and can be fooled) is quite fun. My preferred "High Fantasy" way, I'd say (not the biggest fan of "racial pantheons", deities known only by one name/nature or "portfolios", though). Gods would be somewhat between their equivalents in the Marvel Universe (Thor, Herc, Snowbird, the Aquarian...) and those pesky higher powers from Star Trek (Q, Trelane, Apollo) But for less high-falutin settings (i.e. most of the time, if my players let me), I'm not a fan of divine magic at all, which pretty much removes a "hard facts" proof of gods and thus I prefer to leave things more uncertain. You never know in the end.

Loincloths, for propriety's sake. Every other "necessary starting item" reeks of mollycoddling or even communism, citizen. Don't make me invoke the wrath of Ken St. Andre.

In my personal fantasy RPG experience, the only thing that I disliked more than bothering with encumbrance was checking for infected wounds (my first RPG didn't have lots of rules, but for some kind of reason it thought that was important). Having said that, especially in a campaign where armor and/or looting plays a role, things shouldn't run unchecked. So generally I do this "audit" style, where I don't demand constant vigilance, but might take a timeout where the player has to tally his load. This usually takes care of most bit-by-bit encumbrance issues, and most larger items are plot issues anyway ("How do we get this 100,000 copper piece hoard into Basecampington village?") Currently, I'm postponing most of this. HERO is still pretty new in our group and we all started out basically naked and shipwrecked, so there wasn't that much to encumber the players. When I start doing it properly, I want to do it right, and that means fiddling a bit with said 6E encumbrace rules, some suggestions from FH regarding armor penalties, never mind LTE due to the climate and circumstances (lots of treks through jungles currently, with an arid desert environment scheduled next).

I'm this close to adopting the table, the only thing stopping me currently is the Vitals hit location. As the basic table is all about positional deviation, this pretty much equates Vitals with Groin. And I would say that we do have "vital" organs outside of that region, unless we're playing an adolescent Toon variant. I've never been quite happy with them even in the default version, so that was on my todo-list anyway, now I just need a good way to integrate that with this table. My current favorite solution would be simply removing the Vitals location, replacing it with "Groin". BODYx 1, nSTUN 1.5/1 (m/f). A vital shot could be aimed at several locations, mostly Breast, Ribs, Stomach. It doesn't ever come up randomly, but is either just a narrative result of a very high damage roll or simply the character dying from the attack, or is simulated by an maneuver with an intrinsically high damage (+4DC, usually). Of course this is more likely to apply to a +4DC fencing thrust than a +4DC jump kick. To make this viable for people without martial arts or high CSLs, the "Offensive Haymaker" rule can be used. Note that the usual application of that (haymaker to the chest) has the same penalty as a shot to the vitals would have (-3 location, -5 OCV). I would have liked some increased chance of hitting the base location with a missed shot -- so a normal chest hit instead of a +4DC vital hit -- but that would just make the offensive haymaker better than the normal one. Doing it the haymaker/maneuver way would also serve as a good incentive to use the +/- DC method of modifying damage instead of multipliers, as suggested in this thread.

Sadly the laptop I occasionally get out at the table is running Linux, as I usually don't carry around my relatively huge Macbook. Runs Hero Designer just fine, though.

So he's a Bananagrabber?

I'd regard most reports that use the unit "of X men" as apocryphal, but it's not like this hasn't been measured more extensively (and recently). I think the current conclusion is that pound by pound, chimps are about twice as strong as humans on average, with some wide variance depending on how you define "strength". They also seem to be pretty bat at controlling that strength and don't have as much muscular endurance as humans (HackMaster pack gorillas probably excepted). Orang-Utans seem to have comparable strength, but weigh a bit more, so I'd go with the straight weight ratio there (for males: chimps/70kg, orangutans/110kg, gorillas/160kg). So 20/21 seems like a pretty good approximation if you want to be in line with the HSB statistics (which generally err towards the cinematic/high end/alphas).

But they can be small piercing, piercing, large piercing or huge piercing, depending on caliber (as well as the usual impaling for bigger projectiles). All with different wound modifiers for unliving targets, if I remember correctly.

Any sufficiently fast blunt attack is indistinguishable form a piercing one... I think it really depends on the specific situation, unless you want to introduce even more damage type to generically cover things (I think GURPS 4E has about half a dozen now). For the mentioned skeletal immunity, another approach would be to classify bullets as bypassing the added PD if they have a positive STUNx. So bring the big guns...

Well, for an Apache superhero, a multipower might be worth it, but other than that I'd go with straight club statistics, which are probably generous anyway. Bone isn't that sharp anyway, at least not for long, so I'd call the superficial cuts special effects anyway. Just like you don't distinguish much between a flanged and a blunt mace. A few versions a quick Google Image Search turned up looked a bit pointier, maybe like a small pick with Reduced Penetration. It all depends a bit on how big the "Ethnic Cool" factor should be.

When I discovered HERO not too long ago (after letting the BBB sit in my shelf for ages), I really liked the concept of a SPD value. There's lots of freezing and waiting for an opportune moment in combat (as far as I can see it), and this handles it quite nicely. But one thing that always bothered my a bit was its effect on normal movement speed. In a superhero campaign this isn't as much an issue, as real speedsters operate on a different scale there, with plenty of NCM to have them going places. But within the usual limits of heroic campaigns (Running 10-20m, SPD 2-4), this quickly gets a bit annoying to me. I want to treat the difference between SPD 2 and 3 like "norms" vs. "trained fighters" - you basically learned not too waste as much time and handle yourself well during combat. SPD 4 is your swashbuckler with very fancy footwork, your ninja, or some almost preternaturally fast creatures. Everything beyond that is pretty rare... But that means broken down to a normal level, every "soldier" has in effect Running 15. And gets a big mileage out of increasing his base movement value. A fast non-combat character would probably be best served by buying limited SPD (e.g. a Discworld-esque Wiz(z)ard or street thief). So how do you handle this? I've read that a few on these forums don't use the speed table for heroic campaigns or have SPD 2 universally. For some this level of detail probably doesn't matter... Right now, I'm hand-waving this mostly, but basically have 2 x FMove as the maximum for a turn. That means even a SPD 4 fighter would be able to do his four half moves before every combat, and as a lot of times people are just attacking without changing their location, this doesn't come up often and doesn't hinder the game much. A bit easier than just letting people buy SPD > 2 as "non-movement only" and having them pick which phase they can't move.

If I remember correctly, GURPS Vitals isn't available via random roll. You could easily do the same for HERO. With this alternative system, you might even introduce it twice, representing Heart & Kidneys, and thus get different deviating locations on a near-miss.

To be honest, I very rarely find myself using critical successes, and don't use critical hits at all. Partially because I rarely see a point, as I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a reason what a "critical" success would be, as opposed to just grading it by your margin of success/failure. Maybe I missed something, but I can think of few skills where this is explicitly mentioned. Breakfall comes to mind, and I think you get a PRE bonus for a marvelous Oratory. And the other contributing factor is that I prefer players if they just tell me their margins on a straight roll and I go from that. Which makes calculating critical successes a bit hard, as the players don't have the necessary information, and I would need a "rolled 11, succeeded by 2" for every throw. Sure, it's not the biggest of problems, so if this would be a more intrinsic element of the game, I might worry. The way it handles right now, I wouldn't be missing a lot. Probably wouldn't hurt a lot if I'd replace "succeeds by half" with "succeeds by 5" in some places. And you're definitely right about "feel" of rolling, for some it might be a relief if "cursed" dice won't ruin their game, but it's hard to please the superstitious. For me, it's mostly about the unified system between combat and skill rolls. Whether that unified system is roll-high or -low doesn't matter as much.

I'm going to experiment a bit with a unified resolution mechanism, and would be interested in hearing from others who have experiences in that sector. Right now I'm planning to use the combat resolution mechanism for everything (as per APG2 9), but with rolling high being rewarded. If I'm not getting anything wrong, that would come down to the following formula: Skill Roll: SV + 3d6 > 10 + DV = success Combat Roll: OCV + 3d6 > 10 + DCV = success So far, so good. I'm wondering a bit about how to handle skill challenges. Stealth vs. PER is pretty common in my game, and I'm currently thinking about whether just to let the more active participant roll (i.e. the one using Stealth), or instead go by the mantra that in doubt, it's always the players rolling (i.e. they roll for Stealth if sneaking up on someone, they roll for PER if some thugs do the same to them). Right now I don't see any particular downsides to doing this, maybe apart from some handwritten adjustments to the HD character sheets. We're not playing HERO that long, so the transitional pains should be minimal.