Tasha

So for 6e I would probably go with 150+50. I HATE Zero to Hero. I have done it so many times as GM and Player. Probably an artifact of short lived campaigns. I like the PC's to start out as competent heroines/heroes. I like that in 6e you have fewer Complications so you can concentrate on the important ones.

I MAY someday run a Campaign at Superheroic levels. Basically the PCs would be the Iconic Characters that appear in the Forgotten Realms novels. Fighting Avatars of the Gods, Full sized Dragons etc.

Not very difficult; just prohibited by the copyright clause. So it doesn't make very good advice on the official forum for the product you are suggesting photocopying.

Also you could just copy the table into your favorite spreadsheet and print. Voila, no copywrite problems.  The Benefit of doing it that way is that you can control sizing and formatting.

Barrier, Damage Negation, Deflection off the top of my head.  Although Deflection is arguably Reflection from Champions 3 (I think it was?) repackaged.

In 6e anyone can Deflect Ranged attacks (as long as the GM oks it). Reflection is a power to add to the Free Deflection. In 5e and earlier Missle Deflection was a power that had an adder for Reflection

Barrier is basically a redesigned Force Wall, that makes permanent Barriers. Also it adds the ability to add body to the defense of a Barrier. To make a Force wall you just limit the Barrier to be a constant instead of an instant (ie you pay end every Phase)

Yeah I would keep all of those things for 6e and I would use the 6e structure for buying characteristics. Which fixes a TON of balance issues. Which would mean losing EC's and subbing Unified Power. for it. Which pretty much makes the game 6e and why should I spend all of that time converting to the early edition. Also the rules chimera won't have any character gen software support.

I used to call it "Duct" tape too, but it's IS actually Duck Tape after the Manufacture that first made it. It's kind of like thinking that wire cutters are nicknamed "Dykes" and not "Diags". Easy to mistake one word for the other.

If you buy shitty Duck tape you end up with Adhesive problems. Always buy good quality tools and materials. It will always save you time and money in the long run.

Lets see.
Healing (taping stuff together including wounds) could also be an Aid to body. The Aid might be best because things "fixed" with duct tape tend to deteriorate back to their broken state eventually.
Flash vs Sight (taping their eyes shut)
Darkness vs Sound Single target (Taping their mouth shut)
Entangle, hands or feet only (taping either wrists or ankles together)

Supply your own numbers, but use of Duck Tape should take at least a full Phase if not longer. With Concentration 1/2 DCV. None of this should be usable in combat. IMHO

So I wonder how much is +x run only for velocity damage is worth

My opinion is that I would allow it, but it would only be worth half damage. Otherwise it is VERY VERY unbalanced. I have a PC that had a HA that I used with movebys without the halving and it was very very over powered. 

Wow this is an interesting quote

"(Even though HA is in effect built from STR, generally speaking you shouldn’t treat it like STR — treat it like the distinct Power that it is. It’s not affected by Adjustment Powers that raise/lower STR, doesn’t add to a character’s STR for Grabbing or Squeezing targets, doesn’t apply to Move By/Through damage without the GM’s permission, can’t affect how much damage characters in Heroic campaigns do with weapons, and so on.)" 6e1 pg 231

So technically this is not a problem.

Is that Nightverine?

 

I'm having trouble figuring who the character is.

LOL No, I mean she's one of my favorite PCs. She's a martial artist with Wormhole based Teleportation.

My Second favorite character is a Metal Shaper that uses a Nanate swarm for her abilities.

Teleportation
Regeneration
rDef as instant healing
Full Life Support

That's what I would want

Which is the in a nutshell powerset of one of my favorite characters.

Doesn't Hero Designer 6 have that option?  I lost my hard drive and copy of the program so I can't check.  Hopefully I'll be able to afford to replace it soon.  Could have sworn I saved it off somewhere but I cannot find the copy.

Hm I can't find it there.  I wonder where I bought it now :/

Did you buy it on DriveThru RPG? (or RPGnow... same thing).

Tasha you say logical. First there is no guarantee that Armor should be decent against Blasters. Look how many generations of kevlar it took to as effecttive against.bullets as it is now.

 

Second Darth.Vader had no qualms allowing Aan Imperial Star Destroyer be blown apart in an asteroid field just.for the Millenium Falcon..Not sure of the official numbers but each ship had over a thousand crew members and he had 3 in danger.

 

Again He is Sith. They don't care. They will throw more at you. Again if they cared, why didn't the TIEs have shields in the beginning?

 

Well.thats.my.take on it.

 

Btw elite units do have nice stuff in my game. ; )

Well Vader doesn't buy stuff for the Imperial forces. That is up to the Regional Governors (AKA The Moffs). I can't imagine that they would waste money on armor that didn't actually work. Esp since it was pretty clear that it made a difference during the Clone Wars.

On top of that everyone ASSUMES that the hit kills the Stormtrooper. They could just be Wounded and KOed. 

Yeah, stormtrooper armor should have 0 rED to match the films, but some rPD as it did seem to offer some protection vs the Ewoks primitive weapons.

 

Or just give Stormtroopers very low BOD scores (maybe because they are clones) so the armor does protect them, but it only takes 4-5 BOD damage to kill them.

 

Or maybe they just have very low STUN so they pretty much fall unconscious after one hit. We don't know for sure that every Stormtrooper shot dies, just that they fall down out of the fight. Maybe most of them get back up a few minutes later?

By the time of ep IV the Clonetroopers were all dead or really really old. So Stormtroopers are actually recruited humans.

Stormtrooper Armor is probably around 7PD and ED. It doesn't really make logical sense to have armor that doesn't protect the wearer. It's pretty clear from the games and Books that Trooper armor is protective. 

Blaster Pistols being 3d6 RKA (given the damage that Han did to poor Greedo), or 9d6 in "Stun mode" 

Blaster Rifles are probably 3 1/2 D6 RKA up to 4d6 RKA. They are all pretty darned deadly.

PCs should probably have extra DCV as "combat Luck" and/or a level or two of Regular Combat luck 3rPD/rED. YMMV

I tend to err on the side of making a fun game that makes logical sense, instead of slavishly trying to emulate what you see on the screen. 

Info on Stormtroopers

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Stormtrooper

PS I would also recommend checking other versions of the Star Wars RPG to see how they build Stormtrooper armor. Those were build under licence by Lucas  and were placed under quite a bit of scrutiny before release

Given that HERO has a learning curve, characters develop organically, and everything is point-buy versus being random? Do you allow players to "respec"? A chance to revise their build, possible retcon bits of history? Especially in supers games?

 

If so, under what conditions? Does it require a goal of sorts? Do you require they buy it with XP (arguably because they'll be spending more efficiently the second time 'round)?

For the first 4 sessions or so, I will let a player totally rebuild their character as long as they keep the basic powerset the same.

I find that even with more than 30 Years of experience with the system. That sometimes powersets and individual constructs don't work as well as we imagine when the Character is made. Sometimes you have to come at an ability in a different way.

Also, during that time (and later if I have to) I as GM reserve the right to retroactively disallow a power construct that proves unbalanced.

We have periodic discussions on here about what should be done to get more people playing Hero, but I don't recall anyone talking about why anyone would want to play Hero instead of any of the other RPGs.

 

What do you see as the compelling reason(s) people should play Hero instead of something else?

 

Keep in mind it can't be, "You can make any kind of character you want!" because you can do that in a lot of other RPGs.

You can build the campaign of your dream, switch genres as often as you like. All without needing to learn a new game system.

The Game also defaults to a more cinematic feel that allows for PC's mistakes to not be immediately deadly. With that you can add included variations to both increase or decrease lethality.

That I can build the character of my dreams without having to take stuff that was part of someone else's vision of that kind of character.

Hero System is Freedom.

I do find it a little disappointing how little support there has been for ​Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete​. They were supposed to be Hero Games' new flagship products... Yet since their release very few products have been published which are compatible with them specifically. Nor is there a forum for CC/FHC specific rules questions. I don't consider Steve Long a credible source for answers to CC/FHC questions, since he only references 5th and 6th edition source books; although to be fair, I doubt either Michael Surbrook or Derek Hiemforth have the kind of free time Steve Long has to devote to such a forum anyway.

 

Regarding our struggling fan base:  This is simply my personal observation, but there appear to be more new faces coming to the boards lately... there are also lots of dissatisfied Pathfinder and D&D 5th Edition consumers scouring the market for "Something Better". I think now is the time for Hero Games to invest in a massive advertising campaign to draw consumers attention to CC/FHC and grow our fan base. Likewise, we Herophiles need to start writing (or start writing better) supplements for those source books so that the new consumers we get don't fall off the learning curve before the company can regain traction.

Steve Only answers Questions about the full 6e Rulebooks. I don't think he wants to deal with the edited down Complete books. (Please DON'T start a whole discussion about this, it's a really dead horse that has gotten people banned  )

Like most of the smaller companies Hero doesn't have the money to run huge advertising campaigns. Even if they did where would they run those ads? Adventures really don't make that much money, not as much as Core Rules, Genre books and Game Worlds. Because all players will buy those three. Adventures are only purchased by GMs.

We do have champions Adventures and Supplements coming out of BlackWyrm Games. Perhaps someone will write some adventures for FHC's little campaign world.

I whole heartedly agree with the consensus.  I began playing Hero the Summer of 1981 and have never really been able to look at another game.

 

But this does beg the question, if the Hero System is the best Generic Point Buy system out there, why do we continue to struggle with a fan base?  Why can't DOJ sell enough products to remain profitable?  As it stands, very little is being released for the game and most of what is I consider absolutely sub par (I am not speaking of the big Kick Starters and such but more about the stuff being created with the OLA).  I truly miss the days of the Prospective Books for the upcoming year and chomping at the bit until the books came out.

 

It saddens me that even the partnership with Champions-Online couldn't get us out of this funk.  I am not sure if it is indicative of the nature of PNP RPGs in general or of something more related to HERO.  There is a steep learning curve and some people just seem not to want to even try.  One of the reasons I would love to see Chris Taylor's idea of the Starter Pack succeed.

 

My $.02,

Some of that is the lack of willingness to use Champs Online to create an Entry Level RPG. I know that character Gen there is very structured, but that would be pretty easy to bring into the PnP Game. Also the fact that CO bombed in the marketplace killed any other incentive by both companies (DOJ/Hero, and Cryptic) to do much more work in that direction.

Hello everyone,

 

    As i spend more time playing with the HERO system i find it increasingly difficult to adapt or try to play with another system. I own like 100 system core rulebooks trying all these years to find the holy grail that will bring the right mix of freedom of creation and flexibility on the crunchiness level required for each party but nothing surpasses HERO.

   In my current state if i open a new core rulebook its a matter of time until i get to a dead end regarding character option or GM'S options(and being mostly a GM for the last 18 years that's really a problem) also what makes HERO system really exceptional is its support, very few system have an official board for answers, if at all, and keep posting errata even after almost 9 years from their production. The other generic RPGs i have purchased fall apart each with major flaws(expensive, limited depth and power scale, NO support/errata/official board at all(Cypher System). I think once someone embraces HERO it's too difficult to accept the boundaries of other systems even if they come packed with fluff.

 

Anyone other affected with this syndrome? 

Story of my Gaming life...

I just figure that the Heroes are using skill levels and Talents to do extra damage with their blasters.

I built the attack the way I did because I don't assume anything about a GM's monster writeup. I don't KNOW that they DO have a suceptability to Holy Water, they may only have a vulnerability. Also suspeptabilities tend to be kind of low powered (1-3 d6 of damage that normal damage so no more than 3 damage). As a PC I would want a better attack. So again you buy the attack you want and don't just rely on GM's largess. YMMV.

I did Ask Steve what the baseline assumption is in RAW, tho I suspect the answer will have a higher-than-normal dose of "it depends, ask your GM." Like I said, I can argue both sides of the question myself.

 

Giving players an attack "for free" because some monsters are allergic to it does potentially open the door to munchkinism. But as a GM, I'm pretty sure I can reign that in if needed.

 

OTOH forcing players to pay points for something that is only an "attack" because someone else has a Susceptibility to it can lead to some really absurd extreme cases, like having to pay points for a water bottle. Do I need to pay points for my costume because some monster somewhere out there might be allergic to spandex? My wife is allergic to gluten - do I need to pay for this slice of toast? Never mind environmental factors like "allergic to sunlight." It just seems like the more I think about it the sillier it seems.

We are talking about a VPP. If you want something that is beyond a fragile or unreliable attack. Then you should pay points for it. If you want to hope you have access to the Susceptibility(ie leave it up to the GM for access), then don't pay points for it. You may find that the priest isn't available to bless your water,

I disagree, In supers games you pay for your attacks. In Heroic games it's of course very different.

It's in a VPP so it's not wasted points. It's something that should be charged for. Change Environment doesn't do it IMHO. Again if it's a one off, I am not going to stress about it. If the Player wants this as something they can grab and use quickly at a drop of a hat, it's paid for with points. It's the way the system works. It's an NND blast or RKA that does body. Defense is not being Undead (or a Demon). 

You know what effect holy water has on me? It gets me wet. It isn't a special material against anyone who didn't take a susceptibility to it.

 

People don't have to pay points for it because vampires got extra points by being susceptible to a harmless material you can get in real life.

It's still an attack that someone wants to make without penalties that is always there. Do you give NND's to heroes for no points if the NND only effects a small group? It's an attack, you pay points for it. You pay less points because it's only useful against vampires. BTW would you be taking this stand if the game were urban fantasy where Vampires were very common? Perhaps If I were in a DC Game where we were fighting Kryptonians and I wanted a gun that fired kryptonite rocks you would give me that for free. Because it's just a rock to everyone else.

No.  The vampires got points back for their susceptibility.  Effectively they paid to transform other people's non-attacks into an attack vs them.  If they took susceptibility vs human skin, every person on the planet is not instantly required to spend points to be able to touch them.

Still Holy water is a special material. Again if someone is fighting Vampires and goes into a nearby church and has the Priest(ess) bless some water for an attack. Sure it's free. If the player wants to keep that attack around for use esp if Vampires are something that will come up time and time again. They need to pay for the attack.

How about some bigger type and a readable font. That typeface just makes my eyes blur and gives me a headache.

In one Urban Fantasy Adventure the main character charms her water filled paint balls with spells. Usually a sleep spell.