Phil

Re: 6E1 & 6E2 help Or just stop reading and get on with the character generation already

Re: Staggering SPD- 5th Ed. That's a wonderful, gorgeous construction! Build me another one that replaces the other purposes of the REC stat, and we're one step nearer my ultimate goal, the supremacy of Effect-Based Facism - no more catch-all characteristics, everything boils down to a single effect. Your honorary membership card is in the post! And remember, the campaign for 7th edition starts now...

Re: Staggering SPD- 5th Ed. Ah, does anything spoil a joke like being taken seriously? Still, following on with the serious note, I think there's some real mileage (especially in heroic games) to scrap the post-seg 12 recovery altogether. That's certainly what I did, last time I ran a Fantasy Hero variant.

Re: Staggering SPD- 5th Ed. Sooooo... can you hold your post-seg 12 recovery until, say, you actually get smacked in the face?

Re: AI with remote "puppet" body It's a NPC right? Well, hell, I wouldn't even bother building it! It is what it is. GM: Aha! Turns out that body was just the vehicle for an AI, which has now taken over your shipboard computer! Jeff: Oh my grief! Now we're in trouble! Although I'm interested, how did you actually build that using the Hero rules? GM: With a whoosh!, the ship's internal defences turn on your character Jeff. Oh dear, 45 Stun, 19 Body. Anyone else got any rules questions?

Re: 6E1 & 6E2 help I'll throw my two penneth in, and give you my thoughts on how to start getting to grips with things. 1. Firstly, my preference in learning a system is to make a character first and then play it later. Yours may be different. Do what you prefer, and ignore everyone's advice - except this, of course, that would be self defeating 3. Attributes & Skills - both M&M and Hero use attributes, and there's a lot of similarity here. While M&M uses d20+Char Bonus, Hero uses 3d6-Char/5. But the idea is the same, and there's a lot of the same characteristics too. In both games, skill levels simply adjust this dice roll, although M&M will tend to have higher skill levels while most Hero characters will only invest in the basic skills and maybe one or two levels. Attributes are important because... Strength sets your hand to hand damage and says how much you can lift Dexterity affects lots of skills, and in earlier editions was also vital to combat accuracy (I confess, I'm not sure if this is true in 6th edition) Constitution affects how easily you are Stunned and also some attacks like Poisons may attack vs. Con Intelligence affects both Perception rolls and Skills Ego is vital both to make and to resist Mental Attacks Pre is your force of personality, used for social skills and Presence attacks (e.g. intimidation) PD/ED represent your ability to ignore Physical and Energy damage respectively. In an average Superhero game where attacks are 8-12d6, these values would probably fall in the range of 12-28 (maybe lower if your character's theme is non-combatant or based on dodging) Rec helps you heal when you're hurt or tired Endurance represents your personal energy for powering attacks. If you've ever played any online RPGs, many of these have an Endurance or Mana type ability. This is the same sort of thing. Body represents your Hit Points for killing attacks. When BOD = 0 you die Stun represents your Hit POints for normal attacks. When Stun = 0 you're unconcious. 4. Attacking & Defending - in M&M, you know that you buy your Attack and Defence values. These are fairly generic, unless you buy Feats that modify them for specific abilities. Hero is similar. It uses Combat Values which apply for all of your attacks, unless you buy Combat Skill Levels (CSLs) which adjust this as you want. CSLs are a bit more flexible than most Feats though, in that you can often use them to increase Attack OR Defence OR Damage. 5. Damage - M&M has it's fairly unique Damage Saving Throw system, where you make a Toughness Save based on the damage value. Hero uses a much more traditional Hit Points system, which is only complicated by having two types of damage. Normal Damage mostly reduces your "Stun" attribute, while Killing Damage mostly reduces your "Body" attribute. M&M also has a distinction between Normal and Killing damage, but in Hero the two types of damage really do work differently. 6. Powers - At a "game philosophy" level, M&M and Hero are the same. They both focus on defining your superhero by chosing what Effects you want to create and then building the power. This is particularly true if you use the M&M Ultimate Power book. M&M is a little more abstracted, but the fact you know M&M should help you. 7. Power frameworks - this is where Hero gets complicated. In M&M you can create Power Arrays very cheaply and very simply. Hero has a similar framework called the Multipower, which is a little more complicated. 8. Speed - this is different from M&M, where every character gets to go once. In Hero, a round is made up of 12 segments, and each character can go a number of times equal to their speed attribute. 9. Advantages and Disadvantages - Like M&M, you can make powers more or less expensive by slightly changing how they operate. M&M's system for doing so is built around speed and clarity, but is based on Hero's original concept. This is where you can really have fun, making a power do exactly what you want. However, you may need to bear in mind some game terminology here relating to Cost - check out the rules relating to Active Cost and Real Cost to make sure you understand how these things link together. 9. Staggered Learning - here I bestow my advice upon you once more. I suggest you learn the game by creating some characters and running a few fights. a) Create yourself 2 characters. Use around 350 points for each (the exact amount doesn't matter really), and just spend points on Attributes, Combat Skill Levels and some basic powers. Don't use Killing Attacks, or Power Frameworks, and ignore Endurance for now. Maybe try making one with a speed of 6 and one a Speed of 4, to see how Speed affects combat. Create a third character and give him a killing attack. Bring him into the action and see how this can turn combat in different ways. c) Look at the Endurance rules, and try and run your combat again using Endurance. See how this changes things and how you might create characters differently in the future. d) Go back and look at Power Frameworks. Multipowers are the most common, so try and get your head around these. A gun with multiple settings or a utility belt with several gadgets on it are two possible explanations of multipower, but in essence it's the same as a M&M Power Array. Most multipowers are like Variable Arrays (i.e. +10 Array containing +10 Forcefield and +10 Blast, which allows you to have both powers running at the same time, up to a combined +10). However, multipowers may also be fixed, so that you can only have 1 power at a time. See if your two characters would benefit from being rebuilt using Multipowers or even Variable Power Pools. e) Now for Power Advantages. Who wants a plain Ranged Attack, when you can add Armour Piercing or Area of Effect or all sorts of other constructions! Try a few of these out. f) Keep going. Gradually add one or two rules on each time, and before you know it, it will all be clear as crystal! In short, good luck and enjoy! I learned the Hero system in this way, just by getting my hex map out and running battles, and it's great fun in a sad lonely geek kinda way

Re: Your favorite champions character Mine was probably Rage, a native american environmental warrior with a flaming spear. Bit of a glass cannon really, he'd usually be the first one down in any major brawl, but a modicum of regen and some decent Recovery usually got him back up in time to see the rest of the group mop up!

Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #8: APG Goodies Ditto. This is the product I think most of us have been waiting for, ever since FRED. 6ER will no doubt be a step up from FRED, but APG is where the excitement is at. I'm in danger of drooling on my keyboard...

Re: Request for comments: Replacement for Find Weakness

Re: Negatory

Re: Hero System Basic Rulebook 6th Ed is up for preorders! EBF has no uniforms. It has no policies or views of any kind. It merely has the tools whereby any uniform, policy or view you imagine can be built in an entirely consistent way

Re: Nano-Gadgeteer "Angela Spica, a Brooklyn-born scientist, [...] distilled an incalculable number of intelligent devices into nine pints of liquid machinery, which she used to replace her blood. This nanotechnology gave her extensive mechanical abilities: she can cover her body with liquid metal at will, fly, communicate with machinery, and create devices - including radio-telepathy bugs, weaponry, rocket engines, replacement lungs to cope with unfamiliar atmospheres and even additional copies of herself." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer_(comics)

Re: So Now Your the Sorcerer Supreme Noooo, you've got it all wrong! The Sorceror Supreme should be a lucked-in junkie hedonist coward!! The Authority SO got this one right. When he's functional, he can shift entire continents with his power. When he's non-functional, catatonic with fear or stoned out of his head, his powers are more incontintental

Re: Nano-Gadgeteer Sounds exactly like The Engineer from The Authority. That's really just a cosmic power pool, with a slightly different SFX.

Re: Hero System Basic Rulebook 6th Ed is up for preorders! Hmmm.... I don't really play Hero these days. And it doesn't sound like Hero 6 has taken the wholesale effects-based fascist approach that I was hoping for. But I'm not sure I can resist!!!

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong As others have pointed out, comic book super-strength doesn't function was strength perhaps would function in the real world. However, I do think there is place in future revision of Dark Champions or Champions Iron Age to consider some of the possible implications of such tremendous power. I can certainly see house rules that strength above a certain level must purchase a linked HKA. Of course, neatly tying this back to the thread (which I tried to leave, but which keeps drawing me back in!) is that you'd model this effect using a linked power, within the costed rules. You wouldn't just add free benefits to an existing attribute or ability.

Re: Gun Summoning I'm not sure about "Must have purchased ammo" as a -0, although this sort of disadvantage is notoriously difficult to cost out because it is very limiting if he tries to pick up and use rocket launchers and the like, less so in terms of pistols. That DOES seem terribly expensive, given that for the same cost he can just pick up a 13d6 EB! (well, maybe not in a dark champs campaign, but you get the picture)

Re: Abilities Discussion

Re: Abilities Discussion But you can't please all the people all the time. My L32 mentalist doesn't want any new powers, but she could sure use some more END/REC! :-)

Re: Abilities Discussion I've found that I can have similar impact with the Ego Storm AoE DoT power. I just fire it off and sit back and block, and it will toast entire mobs of henchmen of at least Level +3 without troubling me, frequently take down villains too, and make significant inroads into Master/Supervillains. I've got it enhanced to Rank 2, with a modifier that means it runs indepedently, which is why I'm able to block or activate another attack while it spits out ego-death!Occasionally I need to fire a few END-generating shots to keep it fuelled up, but otherwise it's truly monstrous. I keep expecting it to be the next power to be rebalanced (god, how I hate the non-word "nerf"!) but it's not happened in the past 2 patches!

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong The more you couple an unplaytested house rule to existing Hero rules, the more likely it is to be game imbalanced. Also, many of the worst House rules I've seen are negated by the simple expedient of using the existing, play-tested and debated-unto-infinity rules that Lord Long Almight hath provided. I apologise that persuasion and logic have failed, and concede defeat by falling on the pointy sword of exasperation.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Now I don't mean to sound patronising here, but surely, if you want an attack that mostly does Stun but occasionally does Body if the Damage roll is high enough.... well, strike me sideways with a wet kipper, isn't that what we call a Normal attack?! It mostly does Stun, and if there's not too much rPD then it also does Body. You can then enhance this a number of way: 1. Armour Piercing - you want to simulate an attack that penetrates defences, this will do it. 2. Limited Str "Only to damage, Only to overcome PD" 3. Linked Limited HKA "Only when Stun damage is >X" etc. etc. etc. The thing with the Hero System is that there are so many ways within the game to adjust and tweak attacks without needing to change the rules as to how those attacks function.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Hahaha I should've finished reading the thread, shouldn't I?

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong For what it's worth, I wouldn't allow this in my campaign. You're losing a bit of colour from Strength but still retaining all of it's full benefits in every other respect, even further fuelling the argument that you get too much benefit (in 5E) for each CP put into Strength. Although lifting is a fundamental aspect of Strength, in game mechanical terms I'd be inclined to call it a 1/8th limitation on Strength - or, as most campaigns don't go into this level of limitation granularity, call it -0. I'd either get the character to buy the full 25 Strength, especially if it's a superheroic campaign, and then if they chose to appear to look like a little old man, that's SFX. Or they can buy Hand Attack and Figured Chars separately.