Joe Walsh

Oooh, I'd love to have a translation sheet so I could easily use HERO with all the TFT and T&T solos. And, sure, the GURPS and D&D solos too while I'm dreaming.
 
I started down that path a few years ago, but got bogged down in the issue you've identified: making combat interesting without it being complex for someone new to the system.
 
The premise I landed on was that having tactically meaningful choices to trade off between chance of hitting, chance of being hit, and the amount of damage at risk was what powered many RPGs that had combat systems that were fun and engaging all by themselves over the long term.  There's obviously much more that can be on offer, but those seemed core to me at the time (going from my notes, which include capsule write-ups of a bunch of systems analyzed along those lines (why do I do that to myself?)).
 
Fortunately HERO has plenty of those three tactical options in the form of Combat Modifiers, Combat Maneuvers, and Hit Location rules. Not quite as clean as an intentionally designed combat simulator like Melee/Wizard and the related GURPS system, but still very good when compared to a lot of other systems out there.
 
It seemed to me at the time that it should be possible to go with select maneuvers (probably pulling in one or more maneuvers from Martial Arts while collapsing a lot of the standard maneuvers down to the generic attack at +0/+0), add some Combat Modifiers, and call it a day. But I never got further than that.
 
Whether that's helpful I don't know. Maybe I was way off base or maybe I'm misinterpreting my notes. But, for what it's worth.
 
 
Undoubtedly!
 
 
 
The Kickstarter campaign page has a decent explanation, but the tl;dr is that the three-book version is the more recent and theoretically less errata-prone edition. I have the three-book version, but since I don't play T5 I haven't really looked into the errata issues.

Very much so; that is why I suggested it up-thread a bit.  It plays with the very basic rules from the  inception of the game, so there is no new mechanic or thing to wonder about.  The biggest number of skills, at least originally, we're "pay X to gain a characteristic roll that simulates success or failure at this skill.  Pay an additional point to increase that roll by 1."
 
What do you do if someone doesn't have a skill, generally?  "Blastro has disintegrated the observation deck out from beneath your feet!  Do you have Acrobatics?  No?  Do you have Breakfall?  No?   Okay, gimme a DEX roll...." 
 
"can I remember anything more about the mysterious man who handed off this old bottle to me?" 
 
Do you have Eidetic Memory?  No?  Okay, give me an Intelligence roll.... "
 
We studied this a lot when 4e hit. Well, shortly after 4e hit, because at first we were just enamored of this ground-breaking new skills system,  but it didn't take too many campaigns to see lots of the problems with it, chief among them being skills as points sucks.  The three of us that GM'ed in our group were slowly creeping toward mandating that your character didn't know it if you didn't buy it, and we were doing that simply because _it was possible_ to do it.  Every possible knowledge, every possible hobby or trade, could be turned into a skill, for Pete's sake!  And because we could, we too often _did_. 
 
I am sure you have heard me taking the position that just because your Inferno Blast _can_ set things on fire or your Freeze gun _can_ be used to chill a soft drink or your force field _could_ be played so as to serve as a ramp does _not_ automatically mean that a mechanic for this aspect must be paid for in addition to the base power. 
 
This Skills thing, way back when--  that was our own version of that.  The point at which I finally got it to click was when it occurred to me that "I am going to ask for a DEX roll whether he has the Skill or not." Since then, I have been pretty vigilant about watching for instances of pointlessly charging for something. 
 
Getting back on topic, 
 
Anyway, you want a very tight, very specific skill?  An in depth knowledge of the history, spread, and culture of variegated nasturtiums?  Go for it.  It costs one point, and gives you the lower of Characteristic roll or 8 or less.
 
Not only that, but since any book left unattended for more than two weeks through the 1990s turned into a copy of Aaron Alton's Ninja Hero, we were all _very_ familiar with the idea that Skill Levels could be used to _simulate_ something specific, beyond just raw ability. 
 
(don't believe me about that Ninja Hero crack?  Over the years, I have given away well over a dozen copies.  I currently own 2 copies.  I have never bought a copy, nor have I ever received one as a gift, so you tell me....) 
 
So why couldn't we use them as the skills themselves? 
 
Let me take a moment to point out to anyone not familiar with the old editions (pre-4 e) that the three magic numbers were 8, 11, and 14.  They still show up on various things-berserk recoveries, etc, but that is why the skills system we use works this way.
 
Skill points: the bare minimum cost of a skill level was 3pts for just one thing.
 
This worked out great for us, because we decided for that three points, you would get the lower of 14- or Characteristic roll.
 
That left two more of those magic numbers, so for a mere 2 pts, you could get the lower of Characteristic roll (no plus one, because you hadn't actually bought a full skill level).  Similarly, for a mere 1 pt, you could have a field of knowledge on any one thing at  the lower of Characteristics roll or 8 or less. 
 
 
Over the years, I have considered bringing those numbers more in line with the 6 9 11 thing, but at 8 or less, you have roughly a 25-ish percent chance on 3 dice, with 11 or less, call it 63 percent, and with 14 or less, you bump up to something like 90 percent, and I find this feels really 'right' for supers and for pulp. 
 
Given these results, I find it works particularly well for supers and pulp, where those who are good at something are very good at it. 
 
For most Heroic stuff, I drop the numbers down to a more modern 6, 9, or 11.  Most player Characters will at worst match that 11 or less with their characteristics rolls, and a good number of them will beat it. 
 
Skills that don't tie well to a characteristics roll Start at 11 or less for a 3-pt skill level.  If the skill is excessively narrow or non-utilitarian, then maybe two points, and often just one.  Let's face it: while it may come in handy once during a long running campaign, certain overly-obscure and excessively narrow knowledge skills are more quirks of the character than anything actually worth paying a point for. 
 
Right off the bat, improving from a one pt skill to a two pt skill costs 1 point, and adds _up to_ e3 to your roll.  Going from a 2 to a 3 costs one point, and adds _up to_ 3 to your roll.  After that, improve with skill levels as one would improve them via skill levels in the actual written rules.
 
 
A five-point Skill  group is a small group of tightly-related Skills.  Typically, I break the builds down as I would for the 1,2,3, pt skills described above:
 
You have 5 points; buy any combination of tightly-related skills that spends those 5 points.  All done?  Good.  Pick one more tightly-related Skill and take it at the 2 point level. 
 
Why?  Because otherwise you are just buying more of the previous kinds of skills, with the unnecessary requirement that they be related.  This is your reward for working within that limition.
 
These skills may be improved as per the previous category, one at a time, or all at once with another 5 pt skill level.  All skills are improved with a 10 pt skill level. 
 
At the 8 PT level, you may either take the eight points and spend them on tightly-related skills, then take two additional tightly-related skills at the two pt level.  Alternatively, the eight point skill group can take eight points of loosely-related skills and one more loosely-related skill at the one pt level.
 
Because of the way skills are built for one-at-a-time skills, there are no ten-point skill groups; ten point skill levels, as always, can advance all skill rolls by 1.
 
 
 
8 pt skill levels can advance all skills in any one 8-pt group or less by 1, or all loosely-related skills (such as if someone took an 8 pt group and a five pt group for a slew of science skills).   Note that the related skills need not be in the same group. 
 
If one character has a five-point groups of skills with archaic weapons that includes javelins, discus, and darts in the group and another five point (or even an eight point) group that includes bolos and hammers (the stone-on-a-rope kind), they are all nicely related under a skill level for "thrown weapons.". Tightly or loosely will vary from table to table, of course. 
 
Five point skill levels advance any five point group by 1, or all skills in a tightly-related group (which, again, does not have to be contained entirely within one Skill Group, though they generally will be). 
 
Three point skill levels work as described above, save when the current roll exceeds the lower of Characteristic roll or 14-, at which point they will advance one skill by 1.
 
 
Additional notes on Skills: all characters are assumed to have professional skills.  For this reason, I allow up to three no-charge professional skills, one at each level of 8, 11, and 14.
 
All characters are assumed to have background skills, and again: up to three, as above, for no charge. 
 
Everyman skills are still free, and I have a slightly higher tier scammed 'every adventurer skills' that varies from game to game.  Generally, when I notice that either everyone in the game has bought the same skill (hunting, for example) that is not on the everyman list, that skill becomes an every-adventurer skill, and they all get it at the 1 PT level for no charge. 
 
Literacy is determined through disadvantolications, and not skill point spending.  No matter how ignorant the typical person in the campaign is, lacking the ability to read is a disadvantage.  Maybe not much of one, but it is indeed one. 
 
Additional languages are three-point skills as above, with 1, 2, and 3 PT levels.  Mastery is assumed at 14 or less (at the very worst, you come across as low-brow or insulting or uneducated or something, but your point is completely made and understood. Accents are optional after 11-, and literacy is determined more by your background than any points spent. Conan could be literate (and eventually was) if he can explain it. 
Any 'Professional Skill' type skill is assumed to come with a sufficient knowledge base to perform that profession, allowing the roll for PS or KS to be on the same skill. 
 
Any purely academic KS- the character has the education, but no actual experience or perhaps even no idea how to physically do the thing- is 11 or less for three points. If it is a particularly broad field, then it is 8 or less for three points. If it is a narrow or obscure field, then it is 14 or less for one skill level. 
 
Any character who does not have a particular chracterisitcs-based skill may still attempt the skill using a characteristic roll.  In most cases, a GM has already assigned a difficulty penalty to a task.  Increase that penalty up to double (add no more than 4 additional penalties).  A successful INT roll can be a complimentary roll to a physical task, because sometimes you have to stop and think about it) 
 
Why?  Because these are superheroes, where even the impossible has a pretty good chance. 
 
This has allowed characters from all genres to have as many skills as they wanted, not have to pay for mundane things like foraging berries while marching, and with the various skill level options for increasing the characteristics, allows differences in skill levels to grow in ans the character moves through his story. 
 
It also really helps prevent skills becoming points-sucks. 
 
I think.  That may just be a side effect of having done it for a couple of years making me extra-sensitive to it now. 
 
 
Now it is slightly more refined that it sounds-no more complex than martial arts or any other skill level usage, really, but as I am working on a phone, I can't really go back and see what I have or have not said thus far, so I am assuming I screwed it all up. 
 
 
Optional:
 
For pulp, we use 5 point skill levels for very broad skills, and eight point skill levels for stupidly-broad skills, such as "Science!". (exclamation point not optional) 
 
Those are advance with additional skill levels, though the character may break out individual skills to advan e by one point per. 
 
Almost forgot! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Yep.  Always check for eighteens. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Yeah, the way we do it, supers can still buy most of the powers they want and still have a nice assortment of skills.   Heroic characters don't have to be built on what we used to use for supers, either. 
 
 
Well, we didn't do it so much for the pricing (that was just a happy accident) as much as we just had too many arguments about the "new" system and how it worked, _but_ we liked the idea of being able to make anything into a skill. 
 
 
 
Agreed.  I just kind of got tired of the 'you know this is wrong, right?' responses the few things I posted in the past generated.  You can only say "ni; this is _difgerenr_" so many times before you figure out that for some people, it is much more important to point out what isn't rules-legal, in spite of the fact that they are pointing it out to the guy who said 'these rules aren't working for us" then sat down with his group to figure out something different that did work.  Wierd, I know, but there it is. 
 
 
I used to as well, but I have lost them over the years.  Besides, the ones I tried and liked I continued to use, so I think I'm good. 
 
 
 
Well, it is when I met my wife, so you might be on to something there... 
 
 
 
Well, considering how many people loved 5e and still love 6e, I am going to guess it would have bombed horribly, so it is probably just as well DOJ beat me to it. 
 
Also, I would have had little budget after the initial rules run, because I would have withered up and blown away before I sold the rights to the flagship title. 
 
Though honestly, I have been posting here long enough that I think you can reasonably infer what it would have been like, perhaps not perfectly (because we will never know),  UT I am sure you could get a reasonable picture. 
 

 
 
 
Yeah, I forgot to remove that box early on, and now I cant
... 

Now I am sad....

Because you guys are a terrible influence, I sprang for three GURPS Conan solo adventures.  They're in a pretty straightforward choose-your-own-adventure format with around 300 separate entries apiece, most of which are one or two paragraphs.  Forks occur when the player makes a choice or a skill roll.  There is also a clever "plot word" mechanism that lets the game save state, which also affects how the player navigates the adventure.
 
What these solo adventures aren't  is introductory, because combat works like "fight the thing with the stat block on page X and if you survive turn to entry Y".  So the player would have to know how to conduct GURPS combat (and mass combat, for Moon of Blood).  (In fairness these adventures do assume you own a copy of GURPS Basic.)  So now I'm wondering how much Hero combat could be stripped down for introductory solo adventures.  It seems to me that the bare minimum (assuming a fantasy setting) are OCV/DCV, damage, armor, and then CON/BODY/STUN.  SPD isn't really necessary since there's only one PC, and the mental stats are likewise not needed in combat.  We'd put all the stats on the character sheet for educational purposes but the above should be all that are really necessary.
 
At this point I feel like a flowchart would be helpful for total newbs--attack, roll to hit, if you hit then roll damage, here's how you read the dice, here's how you figure BODY and STUN.  I'd want to include some maneuvers, though, like Block, Dodge, and maybe Trip--enough to make combat more than an exercise in dice rolling.  Thoughts?

I almost always did that just to not have to track END.
 
Also, Drain vs. END is devastating, try it sometime.

The "you have to pay for everything" approach is what kept me away from online HERO discussions for years. It was just so far removed from my way of doing things, and would make the game into such a chore to me, that I just stayed out of online HERO discussions entirely. Showing up with my minimalist designs just didn't seem worthwhile in the face of giant, detailed character postings that seemed to be the standard everyone adhered to. (Whereas with Traveller I just needed to stay away from the gearheads and their starship design discussions. 😦 )
 
Some of that did come in with 4th Edition, and then more with the later 4e products when character statblocks started getting bigger and more detailed, but to me it really showed itself with the removal of Package Bonuses with the release of 5e, and then it accelerated into 6e with the removal of Elemental Controls. The system moved steadily away from trusting the GM and players and toward trusting the official rules as The Final Word which could only be altered with great care by your local professional Authorized HERO System Service Technician. (I kid, but sometimes the fans' discussions and many of the questions to Steve Long sure seemed to spring from that viewpoint even moreso than the rules changes.)
 
 
Great example! Until I encountered the online HERO fanbase, I'd thought it was normal to use the bits of the HERO System that you felt were right for your game and leave the rest behind. So, if it made sense for your campaign not to use the Skills System in a detailed way, and instead rely mostly on PS:whatever that was fine and certainly in the spirit of Champions 1e-3e. 🤷‍♂️
 
Obviously, it's always been perfectly fine to me when a user of the rules takes a maximalist view of things and designs incredibly detailed character statblocks. I admire the thought and cleverness that goes into those designs. It's just nice to see a more relaxed approach make a return as a legitimate and accepted choice. It'd be great if someday the published materials made it clear that either way of doing things is equally good and equally supported.

I don't really know.  The people I know that have seen it aren't giving glowing reviews though.  I haven't seen it myself, but they say two things. 
 
1) It only resembles Trek when compared to STD and STP deep dark grimness. 
2) It is basically old TOS scripts given a slight rewrite and shot as "something new". 
 
I don't know personally because as I mentioned, I haven’t seen it.

🤣
 
Sorry about that! I'd used "Ransom" for decades because Out of the Silent Planet was the first sci-fi novel I read. As a kid, though, I hadn't realized what the protagonist's name really meant. I kept using that because I was known by it even long after I belatedly realized the meaning, only changing it more recently. On RPG boards I went with GM Joe, since I'm usually the GM and also because I was a big fan of GI Joe as a kid (back when they were 12" 'action figures' who could plausibly make out with Barbie).
 
 
I doubt many are interested in this, and it's definitely off-topic, so I'll spoiler-hide it:
 
 
 
CT stuff is so expensive now! I gave my copy of the Atlas of the Imperium to someone who needed it to produce T4 stuff and never did get it back. Now it would cost an arm and a leg to get a copy in good condition. Not that it's worth anything in play, of course. We have it all on a website now, errata-free. What I wouldn't have given for that back in the early 80s!
 
 
That first edition was pretty great. We did what we'd always done and fixed the problems we found. It was worth it. 2e worked for us, too. Then I waited in line at GenCon to get a signed hardcover copy of 3e the day it was released (it was so great when GenCon was in Milwaukee which is about an hour's drive from my home) and never used it. Eventually I sold it off, but I still have 1e and 2e!
 
 
Well, it's been a long time.
 
 
 
Great stuff! Just one question: when are you going to get the time to write up Duke's HERO System for publication by our hosts? It really should be shared. 🙏
 

If you've seen Rogue One, you already know how Andor ends.

Andor: I wish the Star Wars franchise wasn't so uneven.  I'd heard that this series was good, but I put it off after Boba Fett, Obi-Wan, and, well, the entire sequel trilogy.  But Andor is phenomenal.  The writing, the performances, the sets, the architecture--all top notch.  It's better than Rogue One.  It gets a little slow in places, and it suffers from the lack of an ending, but I wish I hadn't waited so long to watch it.

Ant-Persons
 
I have yet to see this one, but I am looking forward to it. Just not enough to pay theater prices right now. 

Ant-Man: Quantumania.  Two post credits scenes, one immediately after the initial credits, and one at the very end.
 
I don't see many films in the theater anymore, but I made a point of seeing this one even though I had no idea what to expect.  I even avoided the trailers for it, so I really had no clue where they were going to take the story of the Pyms.  It was pretty good, if highly weird, but that was to be expected for a movie shot almost entirely on location in the Quantum Realm.  My biggest problems with it were that it was a little predictable, and that MODOK was entirely too silly.  I can think of improvements.  But the characterization and performances were good, and the film did a good job of setting up the next Big Bad. 

I am not entirely certain I could _read_ in another life else I would have learned about the possibility of reincarnation, and taken steps to prevent it. 
 
Unless, of course, my goal was to do better the second time around, and if I did manage to pull that off, then I am positively _jubilant_ that I can't remember the first go. 
 
Realistically, I think finding the lighter side habitually is just part and parcel of extreme extroversion, which I suffer from quite happily. 
 
 
 
Hail, and well-met, good fellow.   I neither wear a trilby nor confuse them with fedoras, so that's about as cringe as I am able to get; I hope you're not disappointed. 
 
 
 
 
I shouldn't take the trouble, Sir, knowing what I know.  In fact, you can know what I know in just a few short moments:
 
It is neither terribly interesting nor exciting, and most of our discussions here are about a game we both play.   The only pertinent piece of information from that entire list that I would bother to remember is that of all the people on this board, I am the least likely to know anything about comic books or any particular superhero, save the Iron Man and Spiderman movies (all eight of the modern ones, and the ultra-cool made for TV ones from the seventies). 
 
Oh- I also know that the Thor that starred alongside Ferigno's Hulk in the 80s looked considerably less-cool than the one that starred in the Marvel movies. 
 
Oh, and thanks to the Traveller's Tales video games, I can recognize Lego Stan Lee from up to two feet away.  I feel that this counts for something. 
 
 
 
You want embarrassing?  You should see the look my wife gives me when I am scrolling down threads and come across your name.  Much like the inability not to moo at passing cows, I have to revive the 80s jingle from the tou commercials and sing out " Gee Emm Joooeee!" 
 
I have tried fighting it; my wife has tried avoidance therapy on my behalf (whereby she avoids noticing any attempt to get her attention for the next few hours), but thus far, I am completely unable to not do it. 
 
There.  Now we are even. 
 
 
Now I am even with _all_ of you, dammit. 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
Dead on.  I really preferred Miller's meager stuff to DGP's stuff, and from Mega forward, it was pretty much all DGP. For what it's worth, even though I prefer the LBBs and vectored movement, The Traveller Book- also published in a traditional-at-that-tme three-booklets-and-a-map, all inside a box version as the "Beginner's Set-- seems to be a real sweet spot compromise of what I like and what my players like.  That is to say, it has struck perfect compromise, observable by how equal our "generally cool with it but still slightly disappointed" is spread amongst us. 
 
 
 
 
 
OH MY GOD, _SPILL_!  SPILL! 
 
Okay:  my Classic Traveller collection is far from complete, but I have only recently begun to re-collect what I chunked out years ago (that being 2300, Mega, and TNE, all of which I hated, but Fire, Fusion, and Steel was the single greatest accessory ever published for any RPG, ever, period, even though it was a DGP manuscript, and that irritates like an unsanded seam on a butt plug. (I assume.  At least, it sounds like it would irritate.)
 
I completely missed T4, and didn't even hear of T5 until it, too, was out of print.  I have yet to get my hands on either (it kills me that I don't have either of those, but I _do_ have T-20: the version I am least-likely to ever play.  Gurps Traveller was pretty good, and I am delighted that Wiseman undid the assassination, though I have only the core rules (which is all I am interested in from any of the newer versions- it's a matter. Both money and time left on earth; under the circumstances, that makes me happy enough). 
 
I have heard that T4 had problems, but I do not know what they were (yet) and I am dying to hear from anyone involved in any sort of Traveller project!  I don't care if it is a sentence, a PM, or an e-mail, asir; just _spill_! 
 
Oh, I also missed Mongoose Traveller, and from what I hear about it, all I had to do was add "and he died! " (/Nicholas Cage) back in and I would have loved it.  As it stands, I do own a hardback of the Crowded Hours adventures anthology, and three of the four are _amazing_; totally worth the four bucks plus shipping I spent on it.  :). 
 
I guess I could go the GURPS Traveller route: after creating your character, roll a single die.  If it comes up 6, throw the character away and make another one, " but it doesn't have that same 'press your luck' element of danger to it. 
 
 
 
 
 
I have hated the three I have read, but I suspect that was because of the hard push to make us choke on the DGP- developed house system GDW was moving toward.  (weirdly, it worked in both Twilight 2000 (though I didn't really like it) and Cadilacs and Dinosaurs (which presented a more polished, more fun-to-use version of it) but it just didn't capture that feeling of simplicity that somehow amplified the 'tiny speck in an endless universe' feeling that Miller's original barebones system brought forward. 
 
And of course, the "Kafers are just the bad guys; that's just how it works" that, because there will never be a better word, is overt permission to be racist.  That did't fly well with me _at all_.  Tell me _whi_ they are, like you do with all the other races, and not _what_ they are. 
 
 
But I think I can still see the topic from here; better head back towards it before I get completely turned around... 
 
 
So many stories...  So many horrible, tragic, _hillarious_ stories.... 
 
 
 
More embarrassment:  fans of Shadow run talk about how awful the first edition was. 
 
It was the only edition I really liked.   even then, though, the fantasy trappings were not exactly to my taste.  If I want your chocolate in my peanut butter, I will arrange an innocent accident at an aerobics class involving two people making weird snack decisions during their workout; that you very much. 
 

 
He absolutely nailed the 80s anesthetic for cyberpunk, I think., and that tends to be the way I like my cyberpunk. 
 
 
Yeah, ditto.  Once you start thinking of it slang of the era, it gets better. 
 
Probably. 
 
One day. 
 
 
 
Really?   You'd think you would have picked up on that "priceless collection of ancient Etruscan snoods" thing a ways back up. 
 
 
 
 
It's be just my luck that my superpower would be "immortality, except for the side effect'
 
 
 
Oh yeah; those helped me develop a comic book feel more than anything else did, I think.  I cribbed so many plot twists and locations from them early on.... 
 
 
 
 
 
It' a just elephants all the way down with you, isn't it? 
 
 

 

 
 
 
Technically, I didn't modify it.  I threw it out completely. 
 
Well no; technically, I didn't do that, either.  I opted not to back port it into my games except for very rare occasions, and decided that Skill Levels-a thing that already existed and already did what skills do- were the way to go. 
 
As an ezample: PS Archery becomes +2 with bows. 
 
KS: Engineering becomes +2 to INT rolls for engineering problems. 
 
Two weapon fighting becomes +4 with off-hand weapon, not to exceed the off-hand penalty. 
 
Area Knowledge becomes +3 to INT rolls about area X. 
 
Skill levels already have costing and mechanics in place for 'everything' to 'large, related groups,' to 'small, closely-related groups' to 'this one thing and no other thing.' 
 
A quick house rule that Skill Leves as Skills can't be allocated to something else-such as CV or extra damage-and it has worked pretty well since 4e came out a few days ago.  Maybe some extensive okay testing will show me why it' s a bad idea. 
 
For Supers and pulp, build straight off the Characteristic roll.  For more 'normal' heroic games, start with 9+ instead of 11+, and for grim, ultra-realistic stuff, start with 7+ Char. 
 
For something screwy, consider averaging 2 or more characteristics and deriving you 'bonus' (the thing after the plus) from that instead of one single characteristic. 
 
It really solves the 'points auck' problem, and retains the option for broad or narrow skills (buy then as 'one single thing, small closely - related group, or large related group, so pricing is' in line' with utility for those to whom that bit matters. 
 
If you are concerned about what else they might spend their 150 points on, the don't give them 150 points.  If you are concerned about what they might spend their XP on, have a talk before hand and say 'look, I am going to try something with this campaign, but it involves reducing awarded XP along the way.  That may or may not change after we have tried it a bit, but for now, we are going to kind of ease into this. 
 
 
Most importantly, if you are concerned about either of those, you should admit that you have been using skills as a points suck all this time, and let go of that. 
 
 
 
 
Thank you, Hugh. 
 
Thank you deeply. 
 
I was beginning to think I had wasted a lot of words not getting my point across:
 
The skills section works as-is if you are a Hero player from way back.  If you are new, and looking for some guidance, you aren't going to find it in the books. 
 
 

Well that's half the picture.  Few GMs do this, I think, but you don't have to make a roll at all for trivial or common uses of a skill.  You don't have to make an Acrobatics roll to do a summersault.   You don't have to make a Shadowing Roll to follow someone not paying any attention.  The reason you cannot ever buy off your roll is that you might face something so challenging that it requires a roll at a significant penalty.  Any roll above 14- is pretty well automatic, but still leaves room for "wow this lock is really complicated."

(This isn't a response to anyone, just me continuing to ramble.)
 
I've been going on about skill levels as/vs skills because levels do fit with the rest of the game.  You can define a level as a +1 in almost anything you can roll, its open-ended.  And you can define it broadly or narrowlyAs you buy a broader level, the cost per +1 goes up, but the cost per thing you're able to add to goes down. (And there's an upper bound, the 10pt overall level that has ultimate breadth). From +1 OCV with your EB for 2pts, to +1 with your whole multipower for 3, to 5pt all OCV levels. Why? Free points? No, because you're getting less, you're not going to use every attack every phase, you're really only ever getting two points of benefit.  Call it diminishing returns or redundancy, but, at best, you're not overpaying. 
 
Skills are sorta similar in structure, you can define almost any skill into being, and some are broader or narrower. But, instead of paying more for a very broad skill or a lot for a theoretical upper-bound omniskill, narrow skills are just vaguely expected to give better results, oh, and provide complementary skill checks (which, hey, a bonus, don't skill levels do that) And you just buy more of them. The more skills you have on your sheet the less likely it is you'll use a given one in a given session - and the more likely there'll be some you /never/ use, at all. 
 
And, while a level makes you better at something (1 Skill level say takes you from 13- to 14-), a skill doesn't (defining into being another KS skill means you make your same INT check with it), but it does make everyone else bad at it. 
(Lockout, "creating incompetence")
 
...sorry, I don't have a point or conclusion... just trail'n off...
 

A mention of Jack Of All Trades from Traveller Hero probably deserves a mention at this point, since it was just a construct of skill levels. A more limited form of it could be easily constructed to just apply to Science skills or any other grouping of similar skills.
 
I could also see an argument for buying a Skill Enhancer like Linguist and then just buying single points in different languages and calling them full fluency thanks to the enhancer’s effect. For ten points that would mean the character is fully fluent in seven languages, which seems reasonable.

....Yeah?  But instead of skills? Or even just as a thought experiment around how much should skills cost/how many skills there should be?
 
Like Overall Levels at 10 pts for +1 to anything have been a feature, from Champions 1st through Hero 6th, right? A solid benchmark.
If you think of lacking a skill as a penalty to a roll, like an 11- or a normal 10 stat or general skill, taking a -5 or -8 or -11 whatever conveys that, then an upper bound for "character buys every skill," should reasonably be around 50 to 100 points. (And that fits the very old power design maxim that 50 points should be good, a power you can hang your superhero cape on, and 100pts sgould be just wonderful)
 
Now, I know at some point there was an explicit rule that you can't add levels if you don't have the skill - but, like some other rules about skills, and many skills, themselves - it seems like it's there to justify skills, when they don't really fit the game that well. (And it also sounds like an early iteration of the "buy it the most expensive way" maxim.)  Maybe? 
IDK, I'm just noodling around the wrong side of a long-settled issue.
 

@GM Joe I don't really track what skills have been used in the past. We are an old group, I've been playing for 35 years and two of the members have been with me for 30 of those years. A lot of trust. Which of course means I can under design a bit and me and the players can work things out in game. Would definitely need a bit more tooling to realize to people outside my group.
 
I think I drew more inspiration from the old Skills in Shadowrun where you might buy Firearms, and then specialize in rifles or something. I think it hues close to 5e backgrounds though. I hadn't really thought of that, some design space to think about. Thanks.

I am not familiar with Supers, save having heard it mentioned in these forums a few times.   I am not shooting it down, of course-- I can't! I know nothing about it. 
 
I know that it is difficult to keep track of the details of what are essentially faceless strangers with a common hobby, so as a soft reminder, allow me to politely state that by and large, Superheroes isn't my bag.  I have played, and do still play, _a lot_ of Champions, because after my Travellers /Tunnles and Trolls group broke up (the GM's wife was military, and had been reassigned to another duty station) way back in '79, the next non DnD group I found was a Champions group, and even if supers was not my favorite, I confess to having a romantic appreciation for clear-cut good guys and dastardly villains, so as long as the story is good, I can play supers. 
 
I was never a comic book kid (gearhead for life.  Even as a kid, I loved tearing into engines and seeing if I could get them running again), so I had no serious self-insertion attraction to the settings or the characters, nor even a serious understanding of the tropes (he was bombarded with radiation and then _what?!! _. No-no-no-!  I think you misread that.  I think you meant gelatinous death via rapid cellular destruction and tissue degeneration.  Or at least cancer, and lots of it). 
 
My preference is science fiction, my heart belongs to Classic Traveller, Cyberpunk is great from the 80's interpretation of the genre, and it is tied with post-apocalyptic adventures (and what is Cyberpunk but a unique take on an apocalypse of social structure and not just the entire human race?).  You heard that right: I _loved_ Gama World despite it's absolute goofiness (up until the garbage that was 3e),  had a love/hate relationship with Aftermath, and all of our Car Wars games were straight up Mad Max.  There were two dozen other failed post-apoc games on the shelves, and I tried most of them. Pulp action is fun, but the people who really "get it" started dying off twenty-five years ago, and I can get into a well-realized non DND fantasy game. 
 
Then, after all that, comes superheroes and war gaming, in a constant switching of which I would prefer in that moment. To be fair, war gaming would win more consistently if I wasn't terrible at it. 
 
After all that, there is going to work, complete social isolation, self-mutilation, and repeatedly striking my thumb with a hammer.  Just beyond that there is DnD, and finally, when self-torture starts to seem sort of pleasant, there is LARP. 
 
After that is taking a third job, then bobbing for French fries, eating okra, and then military RPGs (sadly, this includes FASA'a Star Trek, which made no allowances for non-Starfleet characters): those games where you are not your own agent and are tasked with goals in which you have no actual interest, and then get shot and die.   It's like the retail industry simulator; why on earth would I want to do that to relax?
 
Finally, at the bottom of the bottom, like the earth beneath the feet of the elephants that support the world (unless you are one of those who believes it is just more elephants all the way down forever, you heathen, you) , there are collectible card games. 
 
The shorter version of all this is that alternate ways to play superheroes really aren't on my radar at all, but if I find an inexpensive PDF for Supers, I might check it out for the skills system. 
 
Now to be fair, I will read adventures and modules from _any_ game, because ultimately, stories and plots are universal, and you never know what inspiration you might find or where you might find it. 
 
 
 
Oh, yes.  It was quite an eye-opener, really, and it was the first time that I really started to notice that-- especially for 4e (latest and greatest at that time)-- too often, characters were being required to buy skills that one-hundred percent should have been everyman skills in their campaigns, and I started to realize that there were distinct levels of 'everyman skills' within a single campaign. 
 
Perhaps in your fantasy world "horse maintenance" is not an everyman skill.  Is it possible that it should be an every-adventurer skill?  If you find that you are requiring every adventurer to buy the same skill,  then that skill, Sir, should be an every-adventurer skill.  Any skill required to simply be in the game--
 
Let's paint me as the bad guy, because I did this one prior to having Miller open my eyes:
 
I _required_ characters in a fantasy game to buy some sort of skill to represent their ability to get food while trekking across the continent.  FOOD!  I didn't care if it was foraging, hunting, trapping, fishing, or woodcraft, I insisted that all of the characters have a skill related to feeding themselves. (my favorite response to that request was Seduction, if you were wondering).  You need to eat to stay alive and you need to stay alive to play in the game, and I was requiring them to pay for that simply because it _was possible_ to pay points for it, because the skills existed at all. 
 
That was when I began to look at how many skills that characters held that ultimately were not really necessary.  If the skill does nothing but keep you in the game (never once have we ever role played hunting or fishing or fungi collecting for subsistence reasons.  When we did, it was always about discovering (or failing to) something while in the process of doing the thing.  I can't tell you how many times a player has picked up dice to roll his hunting skill when the party makes camp, and I responded with "no need. Game is plentiful here, and within the hour you have returned with meat enough for the entire party"), then that skill is a points suck. 
 
If the level of your skill is the same as your most relevant Characteristic, then purchasing that skill is a points suck.   If it is lower than your most-relevant characteristic, then it is most _definitely_ a points suck because of Brick Fingers. 
 
No; that is not a typo.  You guys remember Brick, right?  I didn't use him, so other than poring over his 2e sheet for examples, I never kept up with him other than to note the squaring of his head for 4e, but if you remember Brick, then you likely remember "Brick Fingers: Cannot do fine work.". It's right up there with'"no fine manipulation" on Telekinesis. 
 
It is a _limitation_.  A _disadvantage_.  You can use your INT and DEX together for great feats of nimble-fingered adroit deftness, but _I cannot, as my brick finger do not allow me to do fine work. _
 
Here is a thing that I cannot do as well as my normal rolls indicate that I should.  It is a personal flaw worth character points. 
 
If you have an INT-based Skill worth less than the Characteristics roll.... 
 
No; I am not saying that the characters should suddenly lay claim to thirty skills at 8 or less and then claim disadvantages because their INT roll is 12 or less.  That way lies madness.  Or Davien. 
 
If you have an INT of 16 then you have an INT roll of 12 (13 under super-permissive GMs).  If you are being made to pay for an INT- based or even an INT-related skill with a roll of less than that, then that skill is a points suck. 
 
 
 
 
It won't work. 
 
At least. It won't work as a drop-in to HERO _as it stands now_. 
 
I say that because we are discussing the problems of infinitely splitting off such things as Professional Skills. And PS: X  from HERO _is_ Expertise: X from M and M.  That is what it is for:  it is a catch-all for unspecified skills related to this field. 
 
The problem doesn't go away: a lack of guidelines on when to split or just what is covered under what, and when does this umbrella not cover that problem.  
 
 
 
 
I do not believe that you are in the minority for liking it; I believe we all have a considerable appreciation for it, as there is nothing inherently wrong with the concept.   The problem is a complete lack of guidance (again, not really an issue once you realize that this skill means what the players and I have decided they mean, but still: that is considerably different from any sort of explanation or even an example of "this is too broad" and "this is too narrow.".  If I may borrow your own examples:
 
 
 
I don't know who Reed Richards is, but I have seen enough Marvel Movies to know the others.  Hank Pym was Kirk Douglas, Tony Stark was RDJ, and David Banner was some other guy.  I must have missed Reed Richards, but these three will do. 
 
Let's look at Stark.  From the movies and your suggested differentiations, Stark has engineering, Robotics, and physics. 
 
We look at Pym, and the ant man suit and the wasp suit, which the movies specify that he designed and built himself-and he, too, has engineering, Robotics, and physics. 
 
I didn't watch any of the Hulk movies, but given Banner's use in the movies I did see, he clearly knows physics and engineering, and I am willing to be that if we asked enough comic guys, they could cite examples of every one of the three (four, because of Richards) casually knocking out feats of all four of your categories, bringing this right back to 'how many of these skills was it necessary to separate and charge individually for? 
 
Please be aware that I am not saying you are wrong; I am simply asking if, between these characters, there was enough difference in their documented knowledge bases that they could not just as easily bought "super-science" and declared a specialty within the field of super-science (because I know Banner is supposed to be the most knowledgeable about gamma rays or radiation or some-such to warrant a specialty there)?  Stark buys Super-science and declares a specialty in Robotics or engineering, or maybe he has a double- major, but except for shrinking, there seems to be a ton of overlap between him and Pym (and Banner and Peter Parker, whose single limitation seems to be access to funds as opposed to a lack of super-science know-how). 
 
So does it seem more correct that each Character pay five points a whack (or whatever 6e is charging for them) for the identical four skills then buy either one up or three down to create an essentially negligible (and in the source material, generally ignored) distinction between the four, or to buy the one similar skill, and either declare a specialty, or buy a second skill for the specific specialty or- my favorite _at the moment_: buy two skill levels for use with rolls pertaining to their particular 'specialty'? 
 
The problem is that all of these are valid.  All of these are accurate.  Alll of these are rules-legal (so long as you are ignoring the 'most expensive is most correct way" rule the same way that the published material does). 
 
The only guidance is'"look how our amazing free-form skill system let's you do exactly what you want!" without even a fingerpoint in even one direction you might wish to go. 
 
Put another way: at one table, the same four skills at differing levels for these guys is perfect.  At another, it is not enough, and at a third, it is a waste of fifteen points, 
 
And all of these are correct. 
 
 
Precisely.  I get what you are going for, but the source material-- and in-games, the GM-- kind of invalidates it. 
 
In the source material, we know that these characters will be gifted with the knowledge of any field pertaining to the desires of the author.  I am not familiar with the source material, but I have seen that just in the movies. 
 
I saw a couple of flinches when I said the GM will invalidate it as well. Well, here is why I believe that:
 
The GM designs your adventures and he approves your characters.  He helps you build them and makes suggestions to ensure that your character lines up with what the adventure has in store. 
 
If your GM approves your hydrophobic desert-dwelling non-swimming character and then declares that this campaign will deal with ancient and mysterious forces massing in the Marianas trench, and only characters with Submarine Ops and Scuba skills need apply, everyone on this board would call this 'a dick move," except possibly Hermit, who would have a much nicer way to say that it was, in fact, a dick move. 
 
The GM is going to make certain that either your characters work in the story, or the story works for your characters.
 
Why?
 
Well, what are Skills for in-game?  Finding short-cuts, solving puzzles, and finding clues. 
 
Short-cuts:  hey, if I use my PS: electrical lineman right now, I can route the power directly to those massive servos and make this hidden gate open up, and we won't have to spend the next two hours combing the hills looking for a concealed airshaft to sneak through! 
 
That is a pleasant little windfall for the players, and shortcuts them further along.  But if no one has PS: electrical lineman?  Absolutely not a problem, because there is a hidden ventilation shaft that can be used to gain entry. 
 
If no one has Concealment?  Well, there is a narrative delay as the troupe spends _hours_ looking for a back door, (and any timed events advance that much closer), but the heroes  _will_ find a way in, with or without the appropriate skills, because the story is _jnside_. 
 
I have yet to see a GM (outside of old school DnD) who would say "well, no one here has PS:electrical lineman, and no one has concealment.  You comb the hills for several days, and the thermonuclear device goes off, resulting in a TPK and the death of over twenty-million people.  You guys suck; buy the right skills next time. "
 
If you have the right skills, a spectacular shortcut will reward you.  If you don't have the right skills, then the GM will have a less-glorious and possibly more time consuming alternative route for you, and it was probably the one he built the adventure around to begin with, because what kind of killer GM builds the adventure around the necessity of you finding the way forward with a die roll? 
 
 
Finding clues (because I no longer remember the order in which I laid out the topics of discussion, or exactly what those topics were, and the new larger keyboard I downloaded means I can see even less of the screen now.):
 
As Chris Goodwin once perfectly stated, clues _want_ to be found.  If a clue is hidden behind a die roll, then the odds are that either that clue is helpful (providing a certainty for something the character already suspects and is investigating anyway) in a shortcut-for-the-plot kind of way, or was a fun an interesting but otherwise unessential tidbit (that may or may not come around elsewhere, later), or that you haven't found that essential clue _here and now_, because if it is essential to the plot that it be found, the GM will move the clue to the next opportunity for discovery, or reveal it blatantly just before it is too late, or, depending on the kind of game you play, just as or after it is too lye, but again: if it is essential, it shouldn't be hidden behind a die roll at all,  but if it is, then it will be hidden behind a die roll for a skill or skills already found within that character group, and there will be multiple opportunities to find it. All you are really rolling for is to determine where and when you find it. 
 
Solving puzzles.  This is your typical deathtrap situation: Hailey and Henry Hostage are tied to a rocket pointed at some culturally-important building in an antagonistic nation, and there are only seconds before the rocket launches!  You must have Science Skill: Rockets to deactivate the rocket! 
 
Or Professional Skill: rocketry. 
Or Computer Programming. 
Or Security Systems. 
Or make a perception roll to notice the data cord going to the rocket and the terminal it is hooked to seems to still be uploading data. 
Or make a Luck roll to see the large red Abort button. 
Or shoot it in the computer. 
Or have your brick mangle the fuel nozzles. 
Or knock it over, and let the failsafe kick in. 
Or any of a dozen other the things the GM already knows will be acceptable, with perhaps varying degrees of success (you know: for fun!).   Maybe Henry doesn't make it or something. 
 
Still, if it is absolutely essential to advance the story, there is more than one way to succeed. 
 
In your pivotal moments-the climax of the session, that is really the only point at which a pass/fail is really likely to occur, the only point where it is all going to hinge on a roll of the Skill dice, maybe, and unless you are playing for humour or your GM is really in to the TPK concept, that one critical skill has already been determined to be one that at least one party member has a 'close enough' version of. 
 
Yes, that is all incredibly meta, but that is the tool by which we measure objectively, as well as the mindset of the writers of the source material: if Banner needs to know something about Pym particles, he just will, because it falls under the superscience skill,  but only if there are no Pym particle specialists on stage at that moment. 
 
 
 
 
Agreed.  I badly-stated a similar comment up-thread regarding cost complaints: skills _are the powers_ of heroic-level games.  Drop 60 points on an RKA and no one cares; that is what you do when you are building a superhuman.  Drop ten points on two world-class level skills, and it is too much.  Well, if you are playing supers, it does cut pretty deeply into your powers budget,  but if you are playing heroic, well, as long as those skills aren't just mandated points sucks, go for it.  It is your area of excellence. 
 
 
 
 
 
Agreed again.  Now let me go a little bit into my comments about being inspired by Marc Miller. 
 
Miller ran the game such that the characteristic roll was the important roll.  Everyone's complaints that Classic Traveller had too few skills and too few opportunities to earn buckets full of them were generally because they didn't understand that this was intentional.  (to my dismay, in each subsequent edition of Traveller, to include the career books that eventually got published, Miller capitulated and made more skills and made them more attainable by the bucketful.) 
 
It was Miller's position that the character's backstory- both his service history and his history before that-determined if there was a chance that a character knew how to do something. 
 
You are going to hate that, Scott; and to be fair, it is one of only a tiny handful of pure-narativism bits with which I agree. 
 
If the character did not have the skill, then he made a characteristic roll.  It was Miller's stance that a list of skills could not possibly be assembled that would cover even a portion of what a character actually knew, and that listed skills-those skills actually on the character sheet-represented those things at which the character was exceptionally-well trained or learned. 
 
I find that adopting that idea to Hero means that 'exceptional skills' can be represented by specific skill levels, and even combinations:  two levels of 'life sciences' and then two levels of the more specific 'botany' and one more for 'plants with unusual effects on humans.' 
 
 
Now the standard defense of all the zero-guidelines rules and optional-optional-optional rules, at least since 6e published, is "well, it's it is no longer a game; it is a set of mechanics from which one picks and chooses and creates a game.'". But let's remember a couple of things:
 
One, there are no useful guidelines for what is possible and 
 
Two, it has been like this since 4e, when it actually was still mostly a game. 
 
 
Now a look at going the other way-going toward increasing and possibly hyper-specificity. 
 
There are myriad little problems, but I think the most important one is lock out. 
 
Look at the example given above: for every single skill created, you are making the rule that 'no other skill does this.'. We can have superscience, or we can have superphysics, superchemistry, super radiation expert.... 
 
Going more humbly:
 
We have paramedic.  My character wants paramedic.  Your character does not, but he thinks first aid might come in handy.  He buys that for the same campaign.  You have three choices:  let their matching costs slide, alter the cost of one, or remove first aid from the wheelhouse of paramedic.  Another character decides that he learned triage as a corpsman, and now the paramedic must buy three skills when before he needed only one. 
 
Forensics can be broken down into... Well, _lots_ of skills, taking each one out of the skill forensics and creating a CSI skills group worth over a hundred points. 
 
At the end of the day, there is absolutely no single solution that solves this problem for everyone short of either preparing an exhaustive list of every available skill per campaign, with definitions (hello, APGs three through forty-one) or removing skills entirely from the game, and let's be honest, the only reason that this solution is equally-just for all is because we will all hate it equally. 
 
 

I like to say adding to a skill list "creates incompetence." Your 1st ed character with Detective Work was a competent Detective.  Then the game adds Deduction, well, you're no Sherlock anymore but you can still be Sam Spade.  Then Criminology, Conversation, and Shadowing are added - and what can your Detective even do?
 
And that reminds me that Hero already has Skill Levels, and why couldn't we just use those?
 
 

Exactly! Something more proportional than skill enhancers may be more appropriate for some campaigns.
 
 
 
When I really think about it, broad skills like that seem like they would work great for my past supers campaigns and, frankly, many (most?) of my heroic campaigns as well. It'd even work when characters share archetypes, thanks to the option to specialize in a slice of the broad skill.
 
 
 
Seems like maybe we're approaching consensus on broad skills.
 
 
 
Have you felt a need to keep a record of such decisions for later reference?
 
 
That's a neat idea. It sounds like you've put a HERO spin on how some modern (and OSR) games use a character's backstory to determine some capabilities on the fly during play.
 
Have you tried giving folks a pool of "background skills points" that can only be spent when situations arise in  play that their character's background indicates they should have a related skill? Seems like it would take the onus of new players particularly, but even old hands may appreciate not having the pressure to predict every background-related skill that will be worth buying for the campaign.
 
But, there I go again, trying to apply a fix to the current system when it seems obvious that broader skills would solve the same problem more elegantly. 🙄
 
 

I don't know. Sometimes I deal with it by simply having broader skills. I'm not the biggest fan of Science Skills, when every other profession just has KS and PS. In pulpy or superhero games I often just give the scientist "PS: and KS: SCIENCE!!!", or "SS: SCIENCE!!!" I only concern myself with more granular Sciences if multiple characters are scientists and need their own expertise. 
 
I literally uses skill enhancers too.
 
In an earlier post I described the "Skill Sets" (Spacer, Smuggler, Doctor, Bounty Hunter, Jedi, ect) I use in Star Wars, 10, 15, 20 point professions that give a PC access to a broad scope of skills based on the situation they're in. Any time during the game when they think their PC should have a skill under a Set they have they can ask to use that skill and I decide if it's appropriate and at what level (8-, 11-, full skill).
 
They can also specialize in skills that are clearly in the skill set (Spacer: Combat Piloting) by paying 2 (+1). In that case they actually write the skill down (full skill roll+1) and we never need to have the dramatic justification of them using the skill.
 
Also for years I've been giving characters like 10pts in background skills for free (not including their native language). In a lot of games this gives a PC a profession, and a little bit of Knowledge to fill out their back story with out costing the a skill level or cooler skill (I like that Shadowing is separate from Stealth now they can have both for example). 
 
So I think if someone of someone has an EC idea for Skills then probably I'm into it. 
 
I like hero as a gaming code, that we can create systems and interfaces over. The game is running underneath giving any of these these systems a bit of sense and consistency.
 
Sorry if I'm beginning to repeat myself. I love talking through this stuff. It reenforces my understanding of the game and the way I build. This really is my favorite system.
 
 

That's what I did in previous editions.  Its not much of a savings, but its a few points off each and that can add up on a skill monster.  Going back more to more broad skills then skill levels for specific types would be a good approach as well.
 
Instead of science skills, engineering, and dozens, even scores of variants, having Science as a skill would be more useful: you're skilled at all sciences.  Then you can buy "+3 with bioengineering" as a skill level, for example.  In certain very specific types of campaigns you could have more granular skills of specific types, but the general rules could be more general.
 
Stealth could cover shadowing as well, for example.  Social Skills could cover conversation, oratory, etc.

I like using Expert for this, grouping a bunch of skills together and giving a -1 point cost modifier to each of them for following a theme.
 
It reminds me a bit of the old package deal modifier from early editions and works pretty well in saving points on skill lists from the various package deals in the current books.

Jimmy Carter has done his best to live what the Bible teaches, not just mouth the slogans. I've met a few sincere Christians like that in my life. I often fear that religion does more harm than good, and I hate how it's always been used as an excuse to justify intolerance and hatred. But I can't fault anyone for whom religion is a motivator to treat their fellow humans with respect and compassion.