Chris Goodwin

I propose (and have previously posted about) a new Power that I'm calling Extras. It's basically the Power equivalent to a generic Perk, and I've shamelessly ripped it off from M&M's Feature power. The generic Extra would have a cost of 1-10 points, and would give the character some minor helpful ability that isn't otherwise covered by a regular Power, or that the GM feels that no one needs to bother working out with a Power build. If it's through a realistic gadget of some kind, it's half the cost, on the theory that it's replaceable but otherwise would be considered an OAF; if you need any more definition than that, you'd use the full cost and apply whatever Advantages and Limitations you want. The ability to create light could be considered an Extra. If you can, for instance, cast a Light spell, it might cost 3-10 points depending on amount of light &c, and half of that -- 1-5 points -- for a flashlight. If you want it to be a Maglite or something similar that you could bash someone over the head with, go back to the 3-10 points, apply OAF, and buy a couple of dice of HA through the same OAF.

Admittedly it needs more work. Some details are left to work out. Like the intensity value relating to duration, for instance; maybe it should have a separate duration value different from the intensity. It also suffers slightly from the "powers into other powers" issue that I complained about in the "What Happened to Hero?" thread.

Oh, hey. We have Entangle with the option to block senses as well. Instead of that, you'd link Obscure to it if that's what you wanted. If you made your Entangle Costs END to Maintain, then the Obscure would automatically act as above. If you didn't, then the Obscure would completely drop when the Entangle is broken. And you could apply the Instant Limitation to Obscure to essentially make it into almost-Flash. (Side note: why is Flash still a diced effect, count the BODY?)

The house rule I was looking at was noting that some Powers (primarily the Mental Powers) are Instant, but the user can spend END to keep them active at the same level, so they're more like a Constant Power. Some other Instant Powers have the option to cost END to maintain, and at least a couple (Aid and Drain in particular) have an either/or kind of thing between that and their normal fade rate. My thought, and the house rule, was what if we broke that out as a separate duration type. The general notion is that it applies to the Mental Powers, Aid, and Drain, and then I thought, what about Flash? And the instant realization that if you do that, you almost have Darkness, and you can make Darkness into a sort-of Flash by making it Usable As Attack. Then I checked the costs of Darkness and Flash... and here we are.

I've been working on some house rules, and one in particular has led me down a path, to wonder why we need both a Darkness and a Flash Power. For starters, both of those Powers have the same base cost for the initial Sense Group (5 for targeting, 3 for nontargeting), and the same additional cost to add one Sense or Sense Group (targeting: +10 per group / +5 per sense; nontargeting +5 per group / +3 per sense). If you were to take No Area (-1/4) and Usable As Attack on Darkness, you would effectively have something like a Flash that lasts as long as it is maintained for. In fact, Usable As Attack specifically calls out Darkness as its use case. So... why not combine them into a single Power? My tentative name for it is Obscure. Ranged, Single Target, Constant. Senses and sense groups are as per the current common cost for Darkness and Flash. The character can buy up the power level -- duration? Intensity? I'm not sure what. Maybe both? 5 points per +1 to either. Costs END to maintain; when the user stops spending END (which could be immediately), Obscure stops affecting the target at the end of that Segment, +1 Segment per +1 to power level. An Obscure bought to 0 END Cost would require some way for the target to stop being affected, as per normal for these kinds of Powers. Flash Defense would be renamed to Sensory Protection, and would protect against Obscure. If a character has enough Sensory Protection to reduce the Intensity to 0, then instead of being completely blinded (or whatever), they instead take a PER penalty equal to half the Intensity (the penalty reduced by 1 per additional point of SP), and those penalties go away completely when the Obscure drops. If the target has some Sensory Protection, but not enough to reduce it to 0, then each point reduces the number of Segments they're affected. Example: a target with 10 points of Sight Group Sensory Protection is hit with an intensity 12 Sight Group Obscure; when the attacker stops maintaining it, they're still blinded for an additional 2 Segments. Another target with 15 points of Sight Group SP would instead take a (Intensity 12 / 2 = 6; SP 15 - Intensity 12 = 3; 6 - 3 = 3) -3 penalty to Sight PER while the Obscure is maintained, and none at all when it drops. Comments? Thoughts?

The two big ones are Champions Now and the Hall of Champions (community content program at Drivethrurpg.com).

This is a rare case of disagreement with my good friend @Duke Bushido (and I honestly consider him a friend, and I hope this disagreement is calm, measured, and respectful!). I don't mind having new Powers when the situation seems to call for it. Looking back through the first-gen Champions corebooks, it's easy to go down the Powers and Skills lists and see which comic book supers Peterson, MacDonald, et al, were thinking of when they included them. Clinging, Entangle, Swinging. Missile Deflection, Armor, high Strength, Mind Control. Enhanced Senses, HKA, Regeneration. Growth and Shrinking. Stretching. Invisibility and Force Wall. Desolidification and Gliding. Acrobatics, high DEX, Passive Sonar, and Physical Limitation: Blindness. High Strength, Armor, Flight, X-Ray Vision, Instant Change. I mean, I wasn't there, so I can't say that's how they went through and decided which Powers to include, but... it sure seems that way to me. Champions II had some new Powers: Energy Absorption, Gadget Points, Light Illusions, Presence Defense, Reflection. It's less easy to point to particular characters and see where they came from, unless (like I was) you were obsessed with the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and the DC Who's Who. But, I can look at that list and see a character that was -- maybe? -- overlooked in the core rules. Martial Arts, Stealth, Detective Work, and...? Hey GM, how do I do this thing where a certain caped crusader (it's in lower case so I don't have to include the TM's, R's, Pat. Pendings, and so on) always seems to have the right nighttime-animal-named-but-not-themed gadget for the situation? There were a couple of other new entity types and other things you could buy, included in the Champions II supplement: bases, vehicles, computers, AIs, and the Mastermind Option. So... I mean, you can do shapeshifting with a high Disguise -- but the corebooks had Climbing and Clinging both, and Stealth and Invisibility, and Security Systems and Tunneling... (Incidentally, how would you have done visible-light holographic images using just the first-gen corebooks without the supplements? And Duke, I honestly also am not sure what you meant by unassigned Multipower -- it sounds like a Multipower with unspent points so that you can define slots in play?) (It's also fairly evident that Champions III, and to an extent Champions II as well, were developed at the same time Fantasy Hero was. Looking through the FH 1e corebook, it's easy to point to source material and see what they were thinking of when they included the spell effects they did, and how those then went on to be included in the supplements. Dispel (Neutralization in C III), Healing, Images (Light Illusions in C II), Suppress (Neutralization), Shapeshift (Multiform/Shapeshift in C III), Transform (Transformation Attack in C III), planar travel (the +1/2 Interdimensional advantage on Teleportation in C II). Those were pretty obvious folds back into Champions. Aid became its own thing in FH because it seemed that the obvious way to do it in Champions -- Characteristics bought Usable On Others -- wouldn't work in FH, because they didn't seem to want Characteristics as a spell effect, and it wasn't folded back into Champions via III.) I'd rather just add a new Power and call it good (I liked Change Environment in particular, but also Dispel/Suppress, Healing, Multiform, Shapeshift, Transform, the Resurrection and Regrow Limbs adders for Healing and Regeneration), than to try to fiddle a Power into something that doesn't quite do it (the 5e Regeneration as Healing build, or Instant Change as Transform build). I'm less happy with the X-into-Y decisions that were made with the edition changes: Healing into Aid, Regeneration into Healing, Instant Change into Transform, Transfer into Aid+Drain, Suppress into Drain. (If I were going to mess with Suppress I'd have kept it its own Power and folded Dispel into it; Dispel is more or less an instant, all-or-nothing Suppress.) I even like new entity types -- Bases, Computer/AI, Followers/Agents, Vehicles, Spirits. I'd like have seen Robots (C II p. 30) make it into 4th as well -- not (necessarily) a mech or a vehicle, but a non-sentient construct (STR, DEX, BODY, INT, DEF, SPD, maybe PRE). I was less happy with the second-gen "vehicles are almost characters" idea -- I liked that, for instance, in Champions II you could buy vehicle gadgets -- ejection seats, fire extinguishers, electronic countermeasures, radio control -- with the same "pay a few points and call it good" notion, without having to overbuild a Power to do it. (Our long-unseen board colleague James "GamingPhil" / "Gaming Philosopher" Jandebeur had an amazing piece called Incomplete Rules, saved on the Wayback Machine here, which would have obviated the need for most of the new entity types! I've long thought that should have been an official part of the game in some capacity.)

Says who?

Gadget Pool in II, VPP in III. Gadget Pool had a slightly different cost structure from VPP. Gadgeteering Skill was given more to do than the default VPP skill; it was more like Power Skill is now. (Did you do that on purpose? )

A bit more on topic While I'm not any of the board admins, I can't imagine there being any harm at all in asking someone to write such a supplement. A couple of the 4th edition Dark Champions books have some info about supers and the law (Dark Champions, Justice Not Law), and they're available in PDF from the Hero Games store. I don't have the 5th edition Dark Champions in PDF, but I'm sure that information is in there as well. I have both the 4th and 5th edition Dark Champions in hardcopy; I can bring them to the next session if you want to borrow them. I've bought a lot of GURPS supplements over the years, partly because they're usually well researched and quite usable with Hero. There's a GURPS Cops supplement which would probably prove helpful. I don't believe I have that one or I'd bring it as well.

I totally get the abstraction, and even argued in favor of it in the alternative CV thread in Fantasy Hero. But that doesn't mean I don't miss it or that it hasn't bugged me.

But... but... why would the police ever do such a terrible thing? Arrest a hero? For what? Whatever she -- I mean, they -- did, there must have been a good reason...

Thank you. A thousand times, thank you. This has bugged me too, ever since. I pulled hard for "decoupling" but wasn't thinking it would extend there. So, count me in.

It totally is. I linked it above. I'm poking around the boards looking for other threads where we might have discussed mecha. Here's what I'm finding: https://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/17725-robot-warriors-sample-mecha/ - started by me, some years ago. Duke, there's some technobabble there, so I think you'll get a kick out of it. The stats are for Robot Warriors, which means they'll largely be recognizable if all you have is 5th or 6th edition. https://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/23569-roman-mecha-your-comments-please/ - alternate universe Roman mecha (5th edition) https://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/2724-gundam-wing-mecha-stats/ - some Gundam Wing stats (5th edition) http://web.archive.org/web/20080128152013/http://www.starherofandom.com/h_robotech/index.php - some Robotech writeups found on the Wayback Machine https://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/39012-battletech-hex-hero-hex-mphkph-spd-mvnt/ - a thread here at the forums discussing converting Battletech movement rates to Hero http://mattcave.fcpages.com/champions.html - Mathew Ignash has a lot of writeups here, mostly from 4th edition, not too different from 5th. You can find writeups for Transformers, Robotech mecha, and maybe more. There've been quite a lot of others over the years, but many have succumbed to link rot, both within the boards and without. The ones above I've at least looked at to confirm there's something there.

One of my pipe-dream projects was to take the Champions 3rd edition corebook, plus Champions II and III supplements, and organize them into one book. Just the rules that were in those books, nothing added from the standalone games, no rules changes, and print it up for myself as "Champions Pi", for the 3.14 edition.

If you recall, though, it wasn't all. The Champions 1st-3rd edition corebooks were incomplete, even for Champions. The Champions II and Champions III supplements added stuff: vehicles, bases, computers/AI, danger rooms, agents; additional Combat Maneuvers, Skills, Powers, Disadvantages. For instance: Images (Light Illusions), Absorption, Reflection, Transform, Suppress (Neutralization), Damage Reduction, Multiform, Shapeshift, Variable Power Pools; Accidental Change, Dependency; Dive For Cover, Pulling your Punch, Roll With Punch, Coordinating Attacks; all of those appeared in the supplements, and not in any of the 1st-3rd ed core rules. The corebooks had 12 Skills; Champions II added a bunch in from Espionage!, but not all of them, and the other standalone games had their own lists. The standalone games used Hit Locations, Impairing/Disabling, advanced Bleeding, advanced firearms rules and lists (the Champions corebooks had things like "Light Pistol: 1d6 RKA, 6 shots, OAF; Heavy Pistol: 2d6 RKA, 8 shots, OAF). 4th edition was the first one that contained all of the rules.

If you have other questions, feel free to ask! We try to be a friendly and helpful bunch.

I have this one rulebook. I can play a superhero game. Using the same ruleset, I can play a fantasy game, or a science fiction game, or an old west game, and while I may want to choose different toggle options when putting the game together, I can look at the characters and know exactly what they can do. I don't have to try to guess whether a special ability is going to balance with others, or whether it's going to break my game, and 99% of the time my assessment will be correct. I can do all of that without having to learn a new ruleset, or even open a new sourcebook.

Sure, our theoretical "get 'em rolling dice first", doesn't have to be -- and already isn't -- the only way into the system. We have multiple points of entry that are an awful lot like walls, or at least briars and brambles, than open doors. It's not dumbing down the system. It's not "basic Hero" to the big books' "advanced". It would be 100% the HERO System, presented in a way that makes it easier to start chucking dice at the table. That's all. You don't start with the advanced concepts first. If someone doesn't know how to cook, you start them out browning ground beef, not making a Yorkshire Pudding.

For the low price of just two hundred 20 ounce lattes, or approximately 200 milliliters of printer ink, you too can help a neglected sword find a home...

@zorak asked this in Rules Questions, and seemed a little shy about starting a topic over here. I thought it deserved some discussion, so... Zorak, the way most folks would probably do it is using a Vehicle to represent the mech, with Extra Limbs for the arms if it has them. A Transformer or Veritech Fighter type could have a Multiform. I also happen to favor the third edition standalone game Robot Warriors though it's a bit behind the times as far as modern HERO System rules are concerned. RW has its own separate build system for mechs, similar to but not quite the same as the current edition's vehicle rules. You might check it out. Also, definitely take a look at Star Hero and The Ultimate Vehicle (for 5th edition, but it's compatible with 6th with a little bit of reworking). Anyone else want to chime in?

I remember, my first few characters were pretty lightweight as far as modifiers went. Get people rolling dice, rolling against 11+OCV whichever way you compare it, counting BODY and STUN and so on. Once they've got a few games under their belt, and have the context for all of this stuff, then let them start modifying their characters or making their own at their own pace.

To me, the split between how we do combat and how we do skills is one of the fundamental things that makes it Hero and not some other system. I mean, we have a bunch of dichotomies in the system: physical vs. psionic combat (CV vs. ECV/MCV), physical vs. energy defense, normal vs. resistant defense, normal vs. killing damage (and mechanics)... You could take away one or more of those -- maybe even most of them, and to me it would still "be the HERO System" ... but if you change that one thing, that's the heart and soul, to me. Fuzion, GURPS, M&M, d20/D&D... all of those systems settled on their own singular, unified systems for combat and skill rolls. And while I've played and enjoyed most of those systems, it always feels like something's missing. It took me a long time to figure it out. Within the past year, in fact. Wayne Shaw (he of "Thanks, Wayne"), who invented a number of things we use in the HERO System, wrote on RPG.net that if he could have done one thing differently it would have been that. That was when it hit me, and I responded to him that I was happy that he did it this way. Why that, and not something else? I have no idea. I don't even know if that particular bit grabs anyone else the way it does me.

I don't see why not. Spending experience between forms... I'm not even sure exactly how that works, much less having no ability to explain it. I think it might be explained more fully in one of the 6th edition books, but handling for Multiform and the "points/5" abilities has changed somewhat between them.

I don't think lowering the barrier to entry is the same as making it palatable to every possible roleplayer. It's intimidating. The college textbook-sized tomes especially, but even the Complete books are somewhat difficult to parse, and for all they're "complete" they might just not quite be. We can have easier to tackle "starter sets" without losing the heart of the HERO System.