Joe Walsh

"If I join band, what are my options?"
 

Well, a Move Through is ½ phase and FMove, -V/10 OCV and -3 DCV, does STR + V/6 and the attacker takes damage.


 
What if we drop the damage to –v/10 like the Martial maneuver, give it the Move By’s “attacker takes 1/3 damage” and add in the Fall elements to get a normal Tackle?

Thank you!
 
 
That makes total sense. I never did move on from the punch-specific haymaker, but given that the game did, it makes sense to get rid of Kick.
 
The thing is, to me 4e was pretty clear Haymaker was a punch-specific thing. I understand different people interpret it differently, but the 4e entry itself seems pretty plain to me:
 
But, like I say, different strokes for different folks. It's just curious to me that Kick was dropped with the publication of 4e yet they went with the "all-out punch" explanation for Haymaker.
 
 
One of the 6e changes I liked best was the updated Combat Maneuvers. It was nice to see more hand-to-hand attacks added outside of Martial Arts. Heck, I didn't own a copy of Ninja Hero until well into the 4e era, when a local game store had it marked down. It was a little too in the weeds for me. My earlier Classic Traveller experience taught me to be careful about buying expanded subsystems that are used at the table before it's been proven our group needs them.

Sweep was introduced in the original Fantasy Hero, as one of the 3-point Weapon Maneuvers characters could purchase.  In 4E Champions / HSR it became one of the optional combat maneuvers.

I mean, you should avoid Ohio just on the general principle if you're a minority...
 
Stupidity elsewhere...
 
Connecticut Republican Asks for "Evidence" Those 17th-Century Ladies Were No Witches

Espionage! is the gift that kept on giving.
 

Maneuvers such as Double Fire are part of why most of us were very surprised when it was announced that multiple attack and combined attack had ALWAYS been in the rules, don't you know?  In the penumbra, or something

Okay.... 
 
Because tracking all of this on the phone screen isn't working out, just to clear up a couple of things, I present the (incomplete, but with all entries) maneuver charts from the first four editions:
 
1e
(and for the guys on the other thread, Steve "Force* Goodman is listed exactly like that on the dedications page) 
 
Punch
Haymaker
Kick
Block
Dodge
Grab
Mover By
Move Through
Martial Punch
Martial Kick
Martial Block
Martial Dodge
Martial Throw. 
 
That's right; by the book, you had to have martial arts to throw someone.  You might have a STR:30 and a successful grab, but you can't just chuck that Viper goon without yelling "heeya!". And you can't yell heeya if you aren't qualified. 
 
Fortunately, we ignore that completely.   There were rules for throwing things, after all, maneuver or not.  One of the examples included "uncooperative character.". What more do you need? 
 
2e:
This one is odd, as there is the maneuver chart:
 
Punch
Haymaker
Kick
Block
Dodge
Grab 
Move By
Move Through
Martial Punch 
Martial Kick
Martial Block
Martial Dodge
Martial Throw
 
I say it is odd, because while this is not exactly combat maneuvers, there is an additional chart of actions that lists their combat time:
 
Move By
Move Through
Haymaker
Kick
Other Combat Maneuvers
Full Move
Leaping
Change Clothes. (full phase, by the way.  A SPD:4 character can change his clothes in three seconds.  Amazing. 
 
Recover from being stunned
Half Move
Find Weakness
Missile Deflection 
Making an atrack
Acrobatics
Turn on a Power
Turn off a Power
Shift Multipower 
Danger Sense (no time, but the fact that it is listed on a chart of player-selectable actions implies that it isn't as automatic as it should be) 
 
Soliloquy (also no time; never fails to be hilarious) 
Presence Attack (no time, even if your violent action is attacking someone or something.  Yes; Davien tried to exploit this - constantly!  House rule: violent action _can_ be an attack, but all the rules of an attack apply.) 
 
And my favoritw: GM asks you to make a roll.  (also no time, if you were wondering.) 
 
Champions II gave us mental combat maneuvers:
 
Mind Block
Ego Evade
MIndbar 
 
Note that there are no allowances to make these Martial, so no Ego Ninjas, please. 
 
MIndbar was just amazing.  It really was. Kind of like pinning an opponent's arms so he could not punch, but grabbing him by the mental power so he can't do that. 
 
C2 also gave us some nifty new Combat Maneuvers:
 
Dive for Cover 
Pulling a Punch 
Rolling with a Punch (this one was so overlooked, in spite of having "Heroic-level characters" written all over it in lipstick. Red.  Mine, because I loved it so much....) 
 
And the famous Coordinating an attack. 
 
Those last two-- especially that last one-- weren't really maneuvers as much as they were options, but as Hugh noted above, this game has been riddled with semantics issues since its inception) 
 
Then one final maneuver, just for you Speedster, the Multiple Move By.  (Multiple Move _Thriugh_ was not listed, but hey; knock yourself out.
 
Out cold. 
 
Champions III gave us Shockwave, which is _kind of_ a maneuver, in as much as the character takes a specific action and suffers a CV adjustment 
 
It also gave us the awesome Centipedemobile.
 
We also see the first example of losing experience points forever, way back in 2e, even before Fantasy HERO made it part of enchanting an item, yet the "but the points will be gone forever; that isn't true to the game" argument still comes up when I mention things like stealing foci. 
 
But back on tooic:
 
The last entry for 2e is Espionage! (emphasis not mine, but as it is part of the title, it is apparently mandatory).  You may remember this as the game that gave us the exhaustive Skill list that found its way into 4e.  Also, you may not remember it at all.  If you don't remember it, it is the game that introduced the Hit Location Chart, the Time Chart, Package Deals and "knowledge skills" and roll-your-own skills, also re-introduced in 4e, and with us ever since.
 
And of course, it introduced Flying Tackle. 
 
Here we go:
 
Flying Tackle
Other Combat Maneuvers
Maneuvers
Half Move
Full Move
Acrobatics
Leaping
Bracing
To "set" 
Set and Brace
Drawing a pistol
Firing a gun
Reloading. (half phase.  Not even "varies.". Automatic? Revolver?  Cap and ball?  Half a phase, done) 
 
Preparing a grenade 
Throwing a grenade
Making an attack
Recover from stunned 
Take a Recovery 
Open a door
Starting a car
Soliloquy (still no time!) 
Presence Attack (still sporting the "no time" loophole!) 
Making a Skill roll
GM asks you to make a roll
 
Whew.
 
At some point, I am going to put all of those into one chart. 
 
Again. 
 
Of course, I will have to include "combat modifiers" on p29, since it includes a number of actions as well:
 
Autofire v 1 target
Autofire v many targets
Burst fire 
Bracing
Set for 1 phase
Bracing and setring
Made a half-move
Surprise Maneuver
Double Firing
Snap Shot
Attacking with off hand
Using unfamiliar weapon
Using unfamiliar weapon
 
(omitted those things without CV mods) 
 
As I think about it, 3e is huge. 
 
Maybe later.  I am going to bed. 
 
Really rough day. 
 
 

The converse also holds. 
 
A haymaker can be a double fist hammer strike, OR a braced spinning snap kick.
 
A kick can be the above, or a quick jab...a simple Strike, not a haymaker.
 
So defining a Kick maneuver is IMO far more obfuscating than useful.  

Thank you!
 
 
That makes total sense. I never did move on from the punch-specific haymaker, but given that the game did, it makes sense to get rid of Kick.
 
The thing is, to me 4e was pretty clear Haymaker was a punch-specific thing. I understand different people interpret it differently, but the 4e entry itself seems pretty plain to me:
 
But, like I say, different strokes for different folks. It's just curious to me that Kick was dropped with the publication of 4e yet they went with the "all-out punch" explanation for Haymaker.
 
 
One of the 6e changes I liked best was the updated Combat Maneuvers. It was nice to see more hand-to-hand attacks added outside of Martial Arts. Heck, I didn't own a copy of Ninja Hero until well into the 4e era, when a local game store had it marked down. It was a little too in the weeds for me. My earlier Classic Traveller experience taught me to be careful about buying expanded subsystems that are used at the table before it's been proven our group needs them.

It took a bit of digging but here is the post of zero cost martial arts maneuvers

It's okay, they hated you first.
 
Also I'm pretty sure you already can't drive across the country.
 
I may have mentioned this before but my team recently hired a new analyst, a girl who literally had to flee Texas for California because she's trans.  Texas' loss and our gain, though I'm a little resentful that she's better at our job than I am.

Hey all, it has been ages since I posted here, kind of dropped out of the roleplaying scene due to life and other hobbies, but I'm hoping you all can help me out. My son wants to introduce his friends to Hero System to show them that there is more than just class-based systems like D&D available and how Hero can do anything. He is going to use pre-generated heroes for them to play from the Book of Templates, but doesn't know what to run as a one shot to introduce them to the system. He is new to GMing Hero as well, but has played with me GMing so knows the general gist of how it works. He doesn't want to go overboard with this one shot because he wants it to go relatively fast and be somewhat easy to work through the mechanics. I tossed around some ideas, but I haven't come up with anything I would consider solid. My best thought was grab an Enemies group out of one of the books and do the stereotypical bank robbery scenario.
 
I'll add that they will be playing remotely over the Internet, so they have to work around those aspects too.

I think the ones added to 6e were Shove, Trip and Choke.
 
 
Yup - so removing Kick when we removed the SFX aspect of Haymaker was the logical approach.  It was, IIRC, in 1e and 2e (not much changed between 1e and 2e).  I'm not sure I ever really read 3e.  I recall Growth and Shrinking changing range modifiers instead of DCV.
 
 
If we accept that +5 STR = 2x as strong = +1d6, then the power of both blows is quadrupled.
 
More to the point, the 1e/2e MA cost your STR, with every additional x1/2 to damage costing half your STR again.
 
 
There's very little difference.  With 6e returning to 1e - no "can't more than double the HKA with STR", converting STR to a KA is pretty cheap anyway.  A 2d6 NND for 4 points isn't all that cheap, especially...
 
 
considering how common the defenses against a Choke or a Nerve Strike are.  I think Doom "has rigid armor protecting his vulnerable spots or PD Resistant
Protection" and "rigid armor on the neck, Resistant Protection PD on the neck, or Life Support: Self-Contained Breathing", making him immune to Nerve Strikes and Chokes (martial or not).

I advocated for Trip in the SETAC days because a non-MA should be able to Trip someone.  I didn't recall it being in FH.  On a broader basis, most MA maneuvers were things anyone should be able to do, so make non-Martial versions and MA versions are just better at it.
 
To me, Kick went away because it was SFX-specific. You can do a Haymaker with your fists or with your feet, so why is a special maneuver needed? Based on where MA ended up, this would just be -2OCV, -2 DCV, +2 DCs now, extra time now.
 
 
With the removal of damage adder limits in 6e, it seems a natural fit, doesn't it?  But it also would mean everyone knows how to strike a blow that bypasses all normal (i.e. non-resistant)  defenses.
 
 
We have Grab-By that combines Grab and Move By.  Why not Grab Through?
 
 

Oh boy!  A thread made for me!   
 
 
 
And, if memory serves, _only_ in Fantasy HERO (I will have to go crawling the bookshelf to confirm that), which has led to I-can't-keep-up-with-how-many conversations revolving around it being impossible to knock someone down without martial arts, because only then does something say "target falls. '. Knocked' em down to-30 Stun?  Well, too bad; you don't have martial arts, he wobbles around on his get, unconscious, but still standing.  You'll just have to shoot around him. 
 
 
 
 
I don't get that, either.  I can see it changing, the same way Haymaker did, but I don't get why it wasn't forwarded. 
 
Except I kind of do. 
 
I am going to blame it on a combination of Aaron Alston and the absolute mania that tabletop gamers seem to have for martial arts.  Once his truly-inspirational idea for a one-off campaign-- modify skill levels and pretend they are individual maneuvers, rip elements out of the standard maneuvers and tie them to these martial skill levels-was legitimized as _the_ HERO way to do things (not saying it isn't a lovely idea; I am just not pretending it is something that it isn't), suddenly common, everyday brawling maneuvers-things third graders instinctively know how to do-were reserved as "martial.  You have to buy that martial." 
 
It's the same problem HERO has had since it was just Champions:  there are going to be those people who think along the lines that "if it is _possible_ to pay points for it, then you _must_ pay points for it.  It's the flamethrower thing all over again: yes; that is your Ed energy blast, but if you want it to set things on fire, then you have to also buy a transform, otherwise that giant pool of crude oil is perfectly safe. ". (the backdoor, of course, is a side-effect: may set flammable things on fire, which rebates points, so we get right back to the" points don't mean squat, balance-wise" discussion). 
 
Honestly, after Ninja HERO, I am pleasantly surprised we can still punch without having buy it martial. 
 
Seriously!  Think about all the things kids do instinctively when fighting: the tackle, they slap, they grab, they hold, they choke, they bite, they kick-- you know what they don't do? They don't punch!  Most of them don't even learn how to make a fist with their thumbs on the outside until they see it often enough, someone shows them, or they dislocate their thumb. 
 
Wierdly, all of those maneuvers are martial, and punching is not. 
 
 
Hold suffered a "roll into" problem.  These days (since 4e, I think, but again, I would have to crawl the bookshelf) it is just assumed to be a part of grab.  The problem is that in reality, grab is...  Awkward.  It is a quick maneuver to take someone off guard or pull them off balance or even just get their attention. 
 
You have to grab and then hold., realistically, and just because you grabbed them didn't mean you weren't going to take a poke or three to face or one to the groin before you managed to actually get a hold on them. 
 
In a fight, and once upon a time in Hero, you could grab, then hold, or grab, then punch, or grab, then choke, or grab, then throw, but somewhere along the way someone who maybe didn't fight a lot growing up thought 'well, of course you are going to hold them; what else would you do?' 
 
And that was the end of that. 
 
Man, you could even do a Grab By, and if you were running full-tilt across the room, there was no way you were going to put a hold on them.  A grab is really nothing more than a maneuver to get your opponent off-balance (either literally, for a good shove, or figuratively, throwing his game off) and dropping his DCV a bit to give you better odds with your next maneuver (which is now hold, period).
 
 
 
Not from this perspective, looking backwards from Grab and Hold rolled into one; not, it does not make sense.  But once upon a time, you could do more than just squeeze them after you put the grab on them.  Grab an arm with one hand and slam them with the other, grab them and shove them into a wall, grab them by the head and jam your things into their eyes (which you can know only do with Martial arts, as it adds a 'flash' element or something; I don't know....) 
 
_or_ grab them and attempt to put a hold on them.  Or-a perrinial favorite: grab them and go into that haymaker. 
 
 
 
 
Got out of hand; became awesome.... Tomato, tomahto..... 
 

 
As it was only found in Champions, I always took it to be available as either someone's Schick, or for knocking down doors justicely.  You know: before "Tunneling" became the way to knock down a door (or pick the lock, if you choose 'fills in behind me').  Maybe that facial-tick-inducing build came about because kick had gone away. 
 
 
 
You can _now_.  In fact, that is pretty much all you can, if you don't have high STR or superpowers to either zap them or squeeze them. 
 
 
 
 
Respectful disagreement.  Every high-school boy knows that a punch to the throat is brutal, as is a punch to the side of the neck, or a kick to the side of the knee, and lots of other things just as bad.  Whether or not they choose to do these things in a fight is more a matter of how brutal they can really bring themselves to be.  Seriously: a lifetime of "don't hit people" and "use your words" really does have an effect.  With that in your background, you can probably still get threatened enough or enraged enough to trade a few punches, but there is a psychological line you have to cross before you can willingly cripple someone.  Most people won't do it if they can stay alive without doing it (and that gives me hope, overall). 
 
But it is a bit like being a serial killer: pretty much everyone on earth knows how to kill another human being.  Actually doing it has more to do with who you are and what lines you won't cross than it does any sort of ancient school of training or wizened old men on mountain tops. 
 
 
I was going to give an anecdotal  example of this, but I cannot find a single bit of news coverage on it-not surprising; it involved minors, and there was no internet. 
 
Back in the mid to late 80s, I lived in Liberty County, Georgia.  There was a call-out fight between two high school students.  I remember one of them was a local DJ named Mike (called himself 'Stanto Jay' or some such on the radio and a tiny kid who went by the nickname Tojo, and he was 'known' to be a problem Al over town. 
 
They got in a fight and Tojo scammed Mike out to some teen hangout spot, so he went, and he was a 'use your words' kid, and kept trying to talk the situation down.  According to witnesses, the entire time Mike was talking, trying to reason with him, the little guy pulled an aluminum bat from his car, walked over to Mike, and beat his head in, then left. 
 
I don't know how it came out ultimately, but I know Mike was still a drooling vegetable a couple of years later.  (and these are the things that extinguish that hope).
 
Even kids know what lethal is.  Whether or not they go that far is a matter of who they are. 
 
 
 
Good thoughts.  I just made it require a full phase and called it good. 
 
 
 
Agreed on structure: it's a sacrifice move-through or move-by.  Respectfully disagree on makinf it martial, however, unless one of the kids I grew up was a well-disguised Master Sifu teaching us how to play Smear the - -  look, I am going to leave that there; I rather hope it has a new name these days, but I know kids still play it: one kid has the Thing (usually a nerf football, for some reason) and all the other kids tackle him and keep jumping on until there is a dog pile wrestling to get the Thing, and whoever gets it takes off running until everyone figures it out.   At any rate, at least for those of us for whom childhood play didn't involve a screen (I know I ain't the only old fart here, by cracky!), tackling is an everyman ability. 
 
 
 
Quite a lot, actually.  Those modifiers are the reason my players would typically line up kicks instead of haymakers.
 
 
  
 
I laugh because when the Haymaker change came out, we _sort of_ incorporated it.... 
 
 
By that I mean that we changed kick to be +50 percent _up to 4d6_, and left Haymaker alone.  Still play it that way, actually.  It just seemed more "right," especially if you have actually tried kicking something apart.  Sure, your legs are much stronger than your arms, but outside of actual martial (and possibly gymnastic) training, you just aren't that good at bringing them to bear and keeping your feet, so you don't do a _lot_ of extra damage, just enough to notice. 
 
 
 
 
 
Just a total swag on my part, but possibly because you were only going to gain a die or a die and a half?  It didn't really help you break down doors (Killing Strike did, though!), so it is possible the authors saw no need for Killing Strike, Kick, and Haymaker.  Remember that for all of its universality, at the lower levels, HERO isn't really granular enough to justify a lot of identical-damage maneuvers.   Probably why most guns in our games were listed on the character sheet as 'gun.' without any particular regard for what sort of gun it was.  Even the seller Guns! Guns! Guns! Supplement did little but demonstrate how depressingly pointless it was to stress variations. 
 
 
We were disappointed.  We did take some inspiration from the Haymaker, and kept kick anyway. 
 
 
 
 
 
Went over somehow above, but I am having editing issues with the new keyboard, so.... 
 
Which makes it a normal or standard maneuver: anyone willing to jump face-first at another human can do it. 
 
 
And they were AWESOME! 
 
Thank you again for that! 
 
 
 
They do now; yes.  When Killing Strike was still around, there was no Ninja HERO, and most certainly no HERO System Martial Arts.  There was just martial arts: here is some extra damage, and you have unlocked the maneuvers that say "martial" on them. 
 
That was it.  Since anyone could kick a knee or punch a throat (the one maneuver that I never saw and always wanted to was dropkick.    ), it wasn't considered Martial. 
 
 
 
Ooh!  This sounds interesting!  If you haven't by the time I have finished this, go on a bit more about this idea.  I am very curious to know your thoughts on this. 
 
 
 
This is pretty spot-on.  Though we might consider two options: a move-by that ends with both prone as well as a move-through.  Sometimes the object is to catch them without roughing them up more than necessary. 
 
Ultimately, though, a tackle ends in a hold.  Both are knocked down; yes, but the entire point of a tackle is to stop them by restraining them. 
 
 
 
Eh.  You only get hurt the first time you try it, barring getting kicked in the face.  After that, you realize you should land on top of the guy, and not throw yourself at the ground next to him.  And, as mentioned above, it really isn't a stand-alone maneuver: the thing that makes it a tackle _instead of a move-by or - through is that it ends in a hold.  Both prone, yes, but with one of them holding the other. 
 
Those folks who find validity to the HERO Martial Arts seem to be focusing on the falls and the damage but not the "hold" part.  A tackle is itself a flying grab-by more than it is anything else. 
 
Agreed.  A move-through in a tackle is called "clipping," and will cost your team some yards.  ;). Seriously, though: I agree that move-by is a better model, as in particular, the goal is to restrain someone and not actually kill them. There is more "damage" from the fall than from the impact (unless you are clipping, which is why it is illegal). 
 
 
Now _this_ I can really get behind!  With the Tackle ending in a hold and the Trample ending in a....  Well, I can't say Grab anymore for you later-edition guys, as they are now one and the same, but still, I do like the distinction that one is intended to capture and restrain and one is intended to deliver injury. 
 
 
 
Sorry about that; somehow, I have an extra quote box. 
 
 
Dude, that was...  Brutal.  Ugh. 
 
 

What I take away from those statistics is that about 48% of the respondants had no idea of the origin of the phrase they were reacting to.

Ever consider bringing forward some of the old rules that were dropped along the way?
 
Sometimes old discarded rules are brought back in the official rules, of course. In 6e we regained the Trip maneuver that was last seen in Fantasy Hero 3e, for example.
 
The "Kick" maneuver, however, hasn't made it out of Champions 1e-3e. And although "Hold" was used in every non-Champions game from Espionage to Star Hero in the 2e and 3e eras, it hasn't been seen since. "Killing Blow" and "Flying Tackle" were in Espionage, Justice Inc, Danger International, and Star Hero but disappeared with 4e.
 
Kick: -2/-2, damage x1-1/2, lands at the end of the following segment. So effectively it was another OCV/DCV modifier choice for a Haymaker like effect.
Hold: -2/-2, both stopped. OK, hard to understand why this one stuck around so long, with Grab being better from a modifier perspective AND granting the opportunity to harm the opponent (which Hold does not).
Killing Blow: -2/-2, (STR/15)D6 Killing. Nice to have a killing attack available for hand-to-hand combat in some genres. Meant to simulate bone-breaking attacks and the like.
Flying Tackle: -2/both are prone, x1 STR damage and knock down. This one seems particularly reasonable, given that it's something any untrained combatant could attempt. I believe it's somewhere in Martial Arts now, but I'm not sure it needs to be locked away?
 
Wow, they sure did like their -2/-2 back in those days!
 
Have you tried bringing any of these maneuvers back for non-MA characters in more recent editions?
 
More broadly, have you brought forward any of the other rules that were dropped along the way?
 
How did it go?
 

It would be kind of difficult for black people to say they "agree" with a white supremacist slogan even if the sentiment is unobjectionable when taken strictly at face value.  

From the AP article on the Scott Adams issue, regarding the phrase “It’s OK to be white":
 
 
Parker Molloy goes into this in much more detail (including links to the 4chan hate channels where this whole thing was born) in her report, "An Overlooked Detail in the Scott Adams Dilbert Story":
https://open.substack.com/pub/presentage/p/scott-adams-white-grievance-dilbert