Chris Goodwin

Well obviously it's grizzly,bear that you cant sneak up on like you usually would....
 
 

an owl with the head of a bear? ridiculous!

Or maybe some sort of, I dunno, bear-owl hybrid...
 
Nah, no one would ever go for it.

This works well if you can isolate two things:
 
 - the hooks - what is the core of the character, to the player.   Maybe that's "great at archery and shapeshifts into animals" - spells can go by the wayside.
 
 - the wishes - what does the player wish the character could do, but D&D does not facilitate it (or reserves it for a much higher level).  Maybe "I'd rather she was a Dwarf, but their stats are all wrong" or "I wish she could take on hybrid animal forms".  HELLO HERO!

I understand taking inspiration or ideas from another game (say, the sanity stuff from Call of Cthulhu or spells like Magic Missile in D&D), but just whole cloth remaking the game is pointless.

I always wonder why someone would use one system to try to emulate another. Nothing will emulate a D&D game like playing D&D, so if that is the desired play experience, play D&D.
 
I recently read a Pathfinder scenario with some Lovecraftian influence.  It tried to bolt on a sanity mechanic (noted as optional). Given what the characters (L9 at the start of this section of an AP) should already have witnessed, their mental health should already have taken a hit.

And remember, Fantasy Heto is not D&D. 
 
I get a little depressed, every time some young player tries to cobble together a 3.5 or 5e TSR build. It never works or is never an efficient use of points. 

Nothing says you can't, and in fact there are "worked example" magic systems in Fantasy Hero for 6e that do these things.  Including "Magic Familiarity" skills that treat spells the same as weapons that warrior-types can acquire.
 
Barring a GM using a magic system like those, though, the default Hero System assumptions say that if you want anything extraordinary, like specialized (for which read "magical") weapons, armor, spells, special abilities, etc., you would pay the points. 
 
Effectively, paying a point for Weapon Familiarity: Blades lets you carry around a blade without having to pay points for it.  Treat it as a Perk, if you like, the same way a GM might charge a 1-point Perk in a Champions game to allow a character to carry around a cell phone;  they can both be taken away or destroyed in play and have to be re-acquired with money to replace. 

There is no reason a wizard cannot wear armor, this is not D&D where a wizard cannot cast spells in armor.   A GM could setup a house rule saying a wizard cannot cast in armor, but then the problem is GM created, instead of being due to getting equipment without paying points for it.  Also there is nothing in the rules that DEF from armor cannot stack with those of a spell.   That means the wizard is likely to have better defenses than the warrior.  Even if the GM does not allow stacking a wizard could purchase his armor spell as damage negation.   
 
If you make spells cost money instead of points, do you make talents also cost money instead of points?  In reality purchasing spells and purchasing talents are pretty much the same thing.  You pay points for the ability to do something extraordinary that others cannot.  
 
As long as you have enough talents and skills available for non-casters to purchase there is no imbalance.   
 

In FH1e, characters did start with any weapons they had at least one Skill Level with.  That doesn't seem to be the case in any of the later books, though I would allow it myself in Fantasy Hero (and have done in my Star Wars Hero game). 
 
N.B. I also assume that spells, magic items, and other things that characters pay points for are exempt from AP/DC limits, though as GM I reserve the right to decide otherwise in play if it breaks things at the table.  The rationale being, the equipment available for no point cost is already limited by STR minima, DCs, and DEF values; paying points, especially in a heroic level game where fewer points are available, should grant you greater abilities. 

A mage can also use that sword...

A fighter does not get a 2d6 HKA by buying a skill level.   They get one for purchasing a sword with cash.  Why cannot a wizard buy a wand that gives him a 2d6 RKA for cash?   There is nothing that states magic items have to be rare and expensive.  The monetary cost of a magic item is not something that is set by the rules.  Your problem is being created by your own house rules.  From a game mechanic standpoint, a bow and a wand of magic missiles will cost similar points.   
 
Most FH characters I have seen eventually get magic items.  The most common magic items seem to be weapons and armor.  Logically caster focused items should be more common.  In most campaigns it is spell casters that create items.  Why are they creating so many items for other types of characters instead of for themselves?
 
Also, if casters are creating the magic items why cannot a PC caster create their own magic items?  Doing so might require a skill.  So, if the PC caster buys the equivalent of inventor, they might be able to create their own magic items.  If this is the case the caster is actually has the advantage. 
 

Well, there's nothing I can add after that.
 
Thank you, Sir.
 

You're right in that there's nothing but word of mouth out there, but that word of "mouth" is now spread electronically. 
 
I feel comfortable saying that there is no person getting into the HERO System who doesn't have access to either an experienced player -- otherwise whose mouth is the "word of" coming from? -- or the Internet in some way.  I'm happy to be proven wrong. 
 
And any person creating a character intended for actual play in a game is going to have a GM who is going to look their characters over, check their stats for viability and whether they meet the campaign guidelines, and advise them where they don't. 
 
And if they do?  If they happen to create a character that somehow slips through? 
 
The world dies in nuclear fire --
 
No, it does not.  Nor does the patient die on the table.  Nor do the Gaming Police show up and haul everyone away to Gaming Prison. 
 
We admit that we made a mistake, and we fix it. 
 
My first two Champions characters were made using just the rulebook, without reference to a GM or an existing game.  I'm fairly certain they weren't viable in play, mainly because I didn't have a clue where the stats, including the Figured Characteristics, came in relative to any particular set of campaign guidelines.  In my defense, they weren't intended to be; they were me playing with the character creation mechanics in order to learn them.  (I'm pretty sure Feline came to about 180 total points -- this was third edition).  I showed them to my friend, who by then had been playing Champions for a couple of years, and he told me -- nicely, in case anyone was wondering -- why they wouldn't be viable.  My third character was as viable as a character could be that was created using only the third edition corebook and none of the supplements, which everyone else in the group had...
 
Figured Characteristics aren't an automatic protection from non viable characters, nor do they allow you to disclaim decision making for each one.  (Unless you've gone full Goodman School of Character Efficiency, and have built your characters with way-out-of-any-coherent-concept levels of STR, DEX, and CON, but if you're that person then nothing in any part of this discussion applies to you.)  You're still looking at them to decide whether the 8 base ED from your 38 CON is enough or whether you need more. 
 
I'll tell you what eliminating Figured Characteristics did do: it made it so that we don't need 28 DEX or 38 CON to hit the minmax breakpoints on CV's or Figured Characteristics, which means we build to concept rather than arms race, with housewives or grad students gaining energy powers and 25 STR and 23 DEX.  SPD 4 and DEX 15 are viable in play in a 375 point Champions game. 

You made me go back and look at ancient character sheets that I have kept for decades! 🙂
 
What I found was that, in my group at least - I have no other reference - that secondary characteristics were indeed bought up, but only after we had bought up primary characteristics to the point that one secondary had already been bought down drastically and a second had reached an acceptable point and the gains from buying primaries could no longer be realised because the system forbade you buying down more than one secondary.  It shows that the designers had already seen that primaries were too good a deal and that the astute player would ramp up CON and STR until every possible secondary had been bought down, exploiting the value in that relationship.
 
The reason, in my group, that secondaries were bought up was because, after a certain point, the rules prevented us exploiting buying them down...
 
I tend to avoid these conversations because I am a characteristic extremist, well out of alignment with most others on the boards.  However, what Chris said resonated with me
 
 
We had no access to anyone else, we had to learn it among ourselves and, like Chris, our first characters both players and GM were not viable in combat - they failed in multiple ways as we found out what worked, what didn't and settled on values for baselines in the game that the figured characteristics did not help very much at all beyond giving us vague suggestions that characters with a high con might be expected to have higher ED (but not PD) higher REC and much higher END than baseline characters. 
 
Unlike Chris, those unviabe characters were indeed supposed to be played, and they were.  We learned by making those mistakes and changing how we did things. 
 
Doc

 

You're right in that there's nothing but word of mouth out there, but that word of "mouth" is now spread electronically. 
 
I feel comfortable saying that there is no person getting into the HERO System who doesn't have access to either an experienced player -- otherwise whose mouth is the "word of" coming from? -- or the Internet in some way.  I'm happy to be proven wrong. 
 
And any person creating a character intended for actual play in a game is going to have a GM who is going to look their characters over, check their stats for viability and whether they meet the campaign guidelines, and advise them where they don't. 
 
And if they do?  If they happen to create a character that somehow slips through? 
 
The world dies in nuclear fire --
 
No, it does not.  Nor does the patient die on the table.  Nor do the Gaming Police show up and haul everyone away to Gaming Prison. 
 
We admit that we made a mistake, and we fix it. 
 
My first two Champions characters were made using just the rulebook, without reference to a GM or an existing game.  I'm fairly certain they weren't viable in play, mainly because I didn't have a clue where the stats, including the Figured Characteristics, came in relative to any particular set of campaign guidelines.  In my defense, they weren't intended to be; they were me playing with the character creation mechanics in order to learn them.  (I'm pretty sure Feline came to about 180 total points -- this was third edition).  I showed them to my friend, who by then had been playing Champions for a couple of years, and he told me -- nicely, in case anyone was wondering -- why they wouldn't be viable.  My third character was as viable as a character could be that was created using only the third edition corebook and none of the supplements, which everyone else in the group had...
 
Figured Characteristics aren't an automatic protection from non viable characters, nor do they allow you to disclaim decision making for each one.  (Unless you've gone full Goodman School of Character Efficiency, and have built your characters with way-out-of-any-coherent-concept levels of STR, DEX, and CON, but if you're that person then nothing in any part of this discussion applies to you.)  You're still looking at them to decide whether the 8 base ED from your 38 CON is enough or whether you need more. 
 
I'll tell you what eliminating Figured Characteristics did do: it made it so that we don't need 28 DEX or 38 CON to hit the minmax breakpoints on CV's or Figured Characteristics, which means we build to concept rather than arms race, with housewives or grad students gaining energy powers and 25 STR and 23 DEX.  SPD 4 and DEX 15 are viable in play in a 375 point Champions game. 

In most cases secondary stats were bought up from the figured values.   I have never had a character with a 20 STR that only had 4 PD.  Even REC had to be bought up.   A character with a 20 STR and 20 Con had 8 REC.  Even at 2 SP a heroic character will use 10 END per turn (4 for STR and at least 1 for movement).  If they have 3 or higher SPD they will burn even more.   If they have a 4 SPD they will burn through their 40 END about 30 seconds.   Going up to 10 REC means you last an extra turn or so.  That is assuming they have nothing else using END. 
 
Figured stats are kind of like minimum wage, they give you something, but not enough to survive.  You still need to buy them up from the starting values, so how is that any quicker or less mental effort?  Too me adding +6 REC takes the same amount of mental effort as adding +2.   
 

True.  But...
 
6e2 has a number of pregen characters in the HERO System Genre By Genre section.  6e1 has multiple sets of Characteristics guidelines by power levels on pages 35 and 48.  And then there's us, here at the boards and on the Discord server. 
 
And there's a ton more information available in the other supporting books. Champions, Fantasy Hero, Star Hero for 6th edition alone.  Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete.
 
A person new to 5th edition is going to be in exactly the same place as a person new to 6th edition with respect to expectations of where stats should be.  In this regard, reducing the amount of math by eliminating Figured Characteristics is reducing the mental load.  I can't comprehend how the opposite could be true.

True.  But...
 
6e2 has a number of pregen characters in the HERO System Genre By Genre section.  6e1 has multiple sets of Characteristics guidelines by power levels on pages 35 and 48.  And then there's us, here at the boards and on the Discord server. 
 
And there's a ton more information available in the other supporting books. Champions, Fantasy Hero, Star Hero for 6th edition alone.  Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete.
 
A person new to 5th edition is going to be in exactly the same place as a person new to 6th edition with respect to expectations of where stats should be.  In this regard, reducing the amount of math by eliminating Figured Characteristics is reducing the mental load.  I can't comprehend how the opposite could be true.

Hero System has an intellectual buy-in to open the locks, but once you pick the lock you’re done. Many other systems (looking hard at you d20) have different rules for everything and everything has a description that is open to interpretation. You can’t just read the formula and you need to constantly memorize what you saw and where. 

Most people bought SPD up rather than let the "wasted" decimal value languish.  You were leaving money on the table if you didn't. 
 
That aside, I would posit that, for instance, the mental load involved in minmaxing your CON alone to the point that the effort needed to figure out the return on saved points in ED, REC, END, and STUN, having been completely eliminated, results in a net reduction in mental load. 
 
In what possible way does the elimination of Figured Characteristics result in an increased mental load, especially in light of the above?  I'm listening.

I think that if anything it's gotten less complicated since, say, third edition.  Mainly from capping Disadplications, changing the way END costs were figured and modified, having more powers (so you wouldn't have to go down rabbit holes to create certain effects) and in 6e, eliminating Figured Characteristics. 
 
YMMV on whether anyone in particular agrees with or likes the changes, but they're less complicated than they used to be.  (And I'll note that back in the 80's we didn't have software for building characters with; we had to scrawl them out on cave walls by lamplight from a lamp made out of a rock and animal fat.)

We've talked about this pretty extensively, and you'll get quite a few people who don't agree...at least, making a good character.  Yeah, OK, you probably buy DEX to the OCV and DCV you want, but SPD is still separate, and things like defenses, REC, END, and STUN...well, you might just take what figured gave ya, but that didn't mean it was any good.
 
I'll buy that keeping SPDs down, the figured characteristics could well be at least close to solid values.

In what way?  It reduces at least a dozen arithmetical operations. 

Weirdly, the things we consistently have to look up are Grabs and Multiple Attack/Combined Attack.  Those are pretty much the only reasons we crack the books open at the table.