Chris Goodwin

This is less a Hero Designer question and more of a rules question; you'd get a better response if it were moved to the HERO System Discussion board. When you buy Skill Levels (including Combat Skill Levels), they don't automatically add to the Skills (or combat). Instead, you have to allocate them during play, and -- here's the crucial difference -- each Skill Level (including Combat Skill Levels) can only be allocated to one use at a time. So if you had, let's say, +2 Combat Skill Levels with Hand-to-Hand Combat, then you could use them to add +2 OCV to one hand-to-hand attack, +1 to OCV and +1 to DCV when in hand-to-hand combat, or +2 to DCV when in hand-to-hand. None of those would work with any type of combat other than hand-to-hand. If you had +3 Skill Levels with all "thief" Skills (Concealment, Lockpicking, Sleight of Hand, Stealth), then you could take +3 on one use, but if you needed to use more than one of them on the same task, you'd have to allocate the +3 between the Skills you wanted to use.

Swords never run out of ammunition. Guns need a long modern supply train. You can maintain a sword with a rock, a cloth, and some oil. Guns need more. If you're field-stripping your gun, in the field, don't lose one of those tiny springs... If your gun stops working, it turns into a club, which is worse than a sword. IRL, until very recently the US military still practiced with small swords attached to the ends of their guns, just in case. Many people think they shouldn't have stopped. And those were still slightly inferior to a real sword. The US military also still trains its officers to use swords.

I doubt that the sheer awesomeness of this alone will ever be matched. Well done!

With good reason. Your stuff is fantastic!

I was seeing it starting at the title, and the writing style only reinforced it. Just as I was thinking about the Hooloovoo I got to the Gnaulhad...

Agreed. We need to not exclude half the population. We're trying to get more Hero gamers, not fewer.

Here it is in the store, along with description:

Never heard of it. Do you have a link? Edit: Ah, the Hero Games news. Still waking up...

Remember, the GM has to okay the character first. Just because the rules say you can do something doesn't mean that a GM will allow it in their game. The point of Multiform isn't to be able to get "free points" (he says, glaring at his 1986 self). It's to have a way to be able to switch into multiple forms and to have a way to appropriately charge points to do that. There are a number of warnings to and safeguards from the GM that go into using Multiform.

Ah! I'm reminded of another one. An NPC in an urban fantasy game. Larry the Bum. His special ability is to animate the dead. They're not like necromantic undead, just... corpses that happen to be mobile and can walk around. He can control them to have them perform simple tasks, such as lifting and moving things within the limits of the body. As a homeless guy on the city streets, he very seldom has access to dead humans to animate, so he's most often surrounded by his "pets", which are animated dead animals. They last until they fall apart; his power can also be dispelled, turning them back into non-animate corpses. On the rare occasions he animates a human, the human can sometimes "talk" to him (make unintelligible sounds) and he appears to understand them, and will sometimes hold conversations with them in this way.

Strangest conceived and never played: Lego-Man. A battle between super sorcerers spilled over into a toy store. Magical blasts all over the place. Residual energies animated the Lego section, and Lego-Man was born! Never quite wrote him up. Strangest I ever played: this guy was what one group of mine used to call a PAG (Powered Armor Goon), which was usually someone who wore powered armor that he didn't create himself. Fairly typical PAG-style origin. He was a security guard at a warehouse. Realized that what he was guarding was criminal activity. He opened a crate and found powered armor, which he donned and used to stop the criminals. What made it strange was that the powered armor, purple in color, was the shape of, and had the powers of, and thus gave him the name of... Kangaroo!

I actually took that from the GUMSHOE system, which I think someone else mentioned on this thread. Yes, having the game halt because no one made the right roll to find the clue or open the locked door or whatever, sucks.

The recommended usage is to save a copy of the spreadsheet to your own Google Drive and use it from there. Before using it, you'll likely want to make a separate copy of that, and give it the name of your character. For each Power, you'll want to right-click and Duplicate the Complete Power Builder sheet, then right-click and Rename the duplicate to the name of the Power. This will let you save and later modify the Powers at will. At some point there was supposed to be a sheet that was a full character sheet, that would automatically populate from all of the other filled out data sheets, but I never got around to that. That's one of the things I want to eventually add, along with the Multipower, Elemental Control, and Disadvantage builders.

I'm at a computer now, so I can write up a bit more. My 3rd edition spreadsheet has a number of separate sheets. The ones you'll be interested in are: Character Data: Enter your name, character's name, secret identity. You can alter the Base Points value, but don't alter any of the others; they're all populated from the other sheets. Characteristics: This should look familiar and somewhat self explanatory. You can change the Characteristic values (cells A3 through A16) and it will automatically calculate costs and Figured Characteristic bases. The Figured Characteristic values themselves automatically populate from the figured bases, but you can change these as well, and it will correctly calculate costs. Don't alter any of the other numbers on the sheet. Points spent on Characteristics here will automatically update on the Character Data sheet. Powers & Skills: These are all freeform entry. You can type in values here, and the points will add up and update the appropriate values on the Character Data sheet. However, this is also set up so that you can copy and paste values in from the... Complete Power Builder: This is the meat and potatoes of the spreadsheet here. There are a couple of different sections: Book Writeup and Character Sheet Writeup: Don't alter these. They automatically populate from the sections below. If I've done everything right, they should generate a nice looking writeup that is suitable for a character sheet, or that looks like the 5th and 6th edition power writeups from the books! Power Selector: The interesting parts are: Power or Adder: Click that dropdown and select the desired Power. It should automatically populate some of the other fields; leave those alone. You can also delete the value here, and it will automatically depopulate any of the other fields that are dependent on it. Cost: This is automatically populated, and is the cost per unit (if the Power takes units) or for the base Power (if not). Units?: This is automatically populated, and should be True or False. If True, the Power is built with units of some kind (d6, DEF, inches, etc.). If False, it's a single buy (such as with the all-or-nothing Enhanced Senses). Bonus or Penalty?: This is automatically populated; don't alter it. Values should be Bonus, Penalty, Neither, or blank (which is treated as Neither). If it's a Bonus, then it prints that way on the character sheet (such as +5" Running). If it's a Penalty, then it prints that way as well (such as -4 to opponents' PER Rolls). If Neither or blank, it's just a number. Adder is Called: Automatically populated. Is it called d6, DEF, ", levels, something else? That will populate here. How Many Units: If it's a Power that takes units of some kind (such as d6, DEF, inches of movement, etc.) enter a number in here for how many you want to buy. If Units? is False, the number here will be ignored. Selected: For the Power and Secondary Unit (if applicable) lines, these are automatically True, and left blank. For the Adders, these are checkboxes that you can select or not. Secondary Unit: If the Power has some kind of secondary unit that is the same number of units as the primary (such as, with Entangle, d6 and DEF) that will be populated here. Total Cost: This is the total base cost for the basic Power and any units or adders that you've bought. Adders 1-6: Don't alter anything that comes up in the "Power or Adder" column. If these are blank, they'll be ignored. If not, they'll be options you can choose with the Power. For defensive Powers that include PD and ED (Armor, Force Field), those will show up here, and you can, for instance, choose amounts separately (and Units? are TRUE for these). For others (such as Invisibility) that you can buy separate non-unit options for, those will show up with Units? as FALSE. If you want to buy one of these Adders, you'll need to put a check in its checkbox in the Selected column. Adders 7-15: You can alter these as you see fit. If there are options you want to add, or custom Powers you want to use, you can fill in the adders here. For these, Units? has a checkbox for TRUE or FALSE. Bonus or Penalty? has a dropdown for Bonus, Penalty, or Neither. For Adder is called, enter its name here. How many units? is only relevant if you've checked the Units? checkbox; if so, enter some number here. If you want to buy the Adder, you'll need to check its checkbox in the Selected column. Modifier Selector: This prepopulates some of its fields from above, and you choose some from dropdowns. More explanation follows: Name: This is the name of your Power. If you've played 5th/6th editions, you're used to naming your Powers. This is alterable by you, and is optional but recommended. Power: Populated from the Power Selector; don't change it. If you need to call it something else mechanically, or if you've chosen one of the Custom Powers and need to call it something else, the empty space directly below the prepopulated Power is for that; if you enter something else in here, it will call it that in the writeup. Notes: Prepopulated from the Power Selector. It tells you what you've bought, any adders, levels, units, and so on. Don't change this. Base Cost: Prepopulated from the Power Selector. Don't change this. Advantages: These are dropdowns. Choose the desired Advantages from the list. You can choose Custom Advantages, in which case you'll need... Advantage Alt Text: Enter something in here, and it will overwrite the Advantage name in the writeup. If you choose a Custom Advantage, but need it to be called something else, you'll call it that here. If you leave it blank, it will use whatever the name of the Advantage you chose. Advantage Parenthetical Text: Enter something in here, and it will add it as a note in parentheses. This is more commonly used with Limitations, but exists here if you need it. Advantage Value: Populates automatically. Don't change this. Displays in second-gen format (+X for Advantages). Active Points: Populates automatically. Calculates based on the standard rules. Don't change this. Modifiers: Currently the only Modifier you can choose is Reduced END Cost. Modifiers Value, Modified Points, and END Cost are automatically populated as well; don't change these. (Special note: there is no "modifier intelligence", so you can do something weird like choose Reduced END Cost and Increased END Cost. I recommend against doing that, as the numbers will likely not be what you expect.) Limitations: Choose the Limitation from the dropdown box. The fields following that (Limitation Alt Text, Limitation Parenthetical Text, Limitation Value) work similarly to the above. Limitation Alt Text is primarily for Limited Power. Limitation Parenthetical Text lets you, for instance, enter the name of your Focus, so that it shows up as "OIF (gun, -1/2)". Limitation Value is prepopulated, and likewise uses second-gen notation (such as -1/2 for OIF). Real Cost: Calculated from the Active Points and Limitations as you'd expect. Cost Multiplier: If this is blank, it's treated as 1. If there's a number here, the multiplier is listed in the writeup (above). Ordinarily you'd leave this blank, but it's used in a few very specific cases: Enhanced Senses, for instance. Once you've built your Power, scroll back up to Book Writeup and Character Sheet Writeup. You can copy the Book Writeup text and pasted it into a document elsewhere. Or, for the Character Sheet Writeup, you can select the values under Cost, Power, and END, copy those, then switch back to the Powers & Skills tab, highlight a cell in the Cost column there, then do "Paste Values Only" with ctrl-shift-V, or right-click and select Paste Special, then Paste Values Only. Once you've done all of that, then you can switch back to the Character Data tab, and it will have updated your total cost. Disadvantages: If you've changed your base points value on the Character Data sheet, then it will populate the column with the value you've chosen! Otherwise it defaults to 100. I meant to put in a Disadvantages builder, but never got around to it, so you'll need to manually build these. The "100+" column, or whatever your base points are, is the point value of the Disadvantage, and the Disadvantage is the full text of the Disad. It's all freeform. After the above, there are two additional tabs that don't (yet) do anything: Multipower Builder and Elemental Control Builder. If you want either of those, you'll have to work them out by hand. Many of the tabs beyond those are locked (and contain data to populate the above sheets from) or were never completed or abandoned, and can be safely ignored. Any other questions, post! I read this thread, so you can post them here, or you can post elsewhere on the boards, or you can private message me here as well.

If you're asking about my Google spreadsheet, I on my phone right now and will explain later. The short version is, a lot of copying and pasting.

Your +5" of Running should have an END cost of 1 (3e p. 32), unless you're marking the total END cost for her total 11" Running, which would be 2. I really ought to try to work some more on my 3rd edition rules template for Hero Designer. That would probably prove helpful!

Combat Driving and Driving are the same Skill, as are Combat Piloting and Piloting. They were scattered through different 3rd edition books, but there wasn't any book that had both combat and "noncombat" versions. At least a couple of them had "Combat Vehicle Operation". 4th edition had Combat Driving and Combat Piloting, along with Transport Familiarity Transport Familiarity specifies that if you don't have the appropriate Combat Driving or Combat Piloting skill, you can't perform "combat" operations. So, I guess, maybe that's... kind of what you're thinking of? (I just realized in my Master Skills spreadsheet I messed this up in a few places. Mah bad, as the yout's are saying these days. 4th through 6th editions have only Combat Driving and Combat Piloting along with Transport Familiarity.)

I think you weren't the only one. I think everyone forgot him, including the people who were writing the adventures.

Hero already has some of its own "conditions": Stunned, Unconscious (various levels: 0 to -9, -10 to -19, -20 to -29, -30 and below), Dying (below 0 BODY), Transformed, Bleeding, Impaired/Disabled (hit location), Suffocating, Flashed (targeting sense), Prone, Covered, Braced, Set, Restrained (Entangled/Grabbed), probably some others I'm not bringing to mind at the moment. Hero has a number of game elements that are effectively its equivalent to Affliction: Change Environment, Flash, Transform, powers with the Usable On Others Advantage. Change Environment in particular has gone from being largely based around environmental effects to an all around "force roll and/or apply penalties" power, and can also be used to directly apply some conditions (Stunned, Suffocating, Prone). Flash is the "apply the Flashed condition" Power. A lot of Transforms are built as "target to target that is (X)". It might not be a bad idea for us to have a "cheat sheet" with conditions broken out: the effect, how it is applied, how to recover from it. They're strewn throughout the rules -- in the sections where they're most likely to be needed, true, but a reference sheet might be good to have.

The third edition era standalone game Robot Warriors (which I highly recommend if you have any interest at all in giant robots) had something called Combine, which was essentially Duplication in reverse. You could use Duplication without any issues.

Because people seem to keep missing or forgetting it... Steve said: One of the major provisions of the deal for us was that Cryptic licensed back to us, for free, the perpetual right to produce roleplaying game supplements for Champions, including the use of Cryptic's art. That was an important point for us, since we couldn't afford to lose the ongoing revenue from the Champions RPG. And access to free high-quality art would give us the opportunity to do something Hero Games had never been able to do in its nearly thirty-year history: publish full-colour books. (edited to dial it back a bit)

I will re-copy my post from here: ------------------------------------ The original thread wherein Steve Long announced that Cryptic was buying the rights to the Champions Universe is here. Some highlights from posts by Steve to the thread: From Cryptic's press release: From Steve directly: And in a later post on the thread from Steve: In short: Hero Games can produce all of the Champions they want, as long as they get approval from Cryptic. --------------------------- Following up my own posting. Steve says here: Boldface mine.

Except that part of the terms of the license deal was that they would license back to Hero Games, in perpetuity, the right to publish materials based on the Champions Universe IP. That part keeps getting left out.

Advanced Players Guide, page 135. But it's done with 6e core mechanics, and can as easily be done with prior editions' mechanics. AoE: Line or Hexes, with enough Extended Area to make the number of hexes equal to the character's movement. Viola!

What No, this is not an invitation for an explanation. Just... What