CTaylor

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far One of the major themes of the 6th edition discussions was to make the game less complicated and smaller in rules, more sleek and easier to use. I suspect that decoupling figured characteristics made it more complicated and harder to build characters. Instead of having 8 characteristics you have to figure out baselines for, now you have 14 (18 if you add the Combat Values). Instead of natural progressions and connections between stats, each one is completely separated. That may or may not be a good thing - I can see advantages and disadvantages - but it does make things more complicated and building characters a bit more challenging. And thus daunting to new players. If the goal was to make the game easier for newcomers to play, this seems counterproductive.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Regarding Hit Locations, I suspect that the chart will be changed to reflect the smaller range of stun modifiers that KAs will now have. My guess would be that head and vitals will be x3, stomach x2, chest shoulders thighs x1 and extremities x1/2 like now. It just reduces the powerful impact of certain locations. And given this reduction (and the increase of resilience automatically given to stun from KAs) I would suggest the OCV penalties be reduced on hit locations. It is not as hard to hit a head as the chart presently insists. Even based on size it makes no sense: hitting an isolated, floating head-sized dodging object is a lot harder than a head attached to a dodging body.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Fair enough, as others have pointed out I was thinking more of the concept of them being figured but it is inaccurate to say that they are gone when they are merely changed. Still, I think its a pretty major set of changes, taken as a whole if not individually. Maybe its a good change; we'll have to wait and see.

Re: Top 5 Champs books of all time I loved the way Viper was organized, I liked the art, I liked the suggested scenarios, the base construction notes, the campaign ideas, and the equipment lists.

Re: Top 5 Champs books of all time I really liked GAC as well (both editions) but I only had 5 choices heheh

Re: Top 5 Champs books of all time For me hm. Excluding the original books (hero rules, Champions, etc): 1) Strike Force 2) Justice, Inc 3) Fantasy Hero (5th) 4) Viper (4th) 5) Ninja Hero Mind you I haven't been able to buy many 5th edition sourcebooks etc, so I don't know some of those might be better.

Re: Help with cost of travel. I'm not sure how much this will help you but there's a really handy online resource that converts money from different time periods, adjusting it for inflation. So you could estimate costs based on that: a train ticket costing x today costs y in z time period, for example. The Inflation Calculator is pretty easy to use and is a handy tool for historical games. It goes back to 1800.

Re: What's Hero System good for? Yeah you can do it, it just doesn't work as well to use Hero in my experience: the sense of terror and helplessness, the atmosphere isn't quite the same to me.

Re: What's Hero System good for? I think the list of things Hero isn't good for is far shorter and easier to give. In my opinion Hero doesn't do horror settings as well as, say, Call of Cthulhu. There's no reason to use the Hero system for story/romance/solid role playing or political settings - nor any other system, for that matter. That's all I can think of.

Re: terminator where thepeople scrapes with damage I think a Disad works fine: you default originally to looking and smelling human, but if you are hit with any attack that would do body to an ordinary human, you lose some of that flesh incrementally until you have nothing but metallic endoskeleton. After all, looking and smelling like a human being is a default power in Hero: you have to pay or get disads to be otherwise.

Re: The ability to enchant You could build it the old Ninja Hero style: a set of different abilities that you can learn like spells that enhance your attacks. You have martial arts, then specific "powers" learned for each dart: this one can fire through barriers without being slowed, this one is invisible and cannot be deflected, etc.

Re: terminator where thepeople scrapes with damage I'd build it with a disadvantage: as he takes body he's revealed to be a robot. That's how I did it in a Champions module getting dust on my computer shelf right now.

Re: Adding Power Defence to Entangle Yeah but in my opinion energy defense is a lot more reasonable and defensible than power defense is. Think of all the constructs you can build based on power defense and consider if every one of those concepts, special effects, and builds should be stopped by exactly the same 1 point/defense power.

Re: Adding Power Defence to Entangle Sure you can drain defense (acid) or body (some sort of weakening power) on an entangle. Gonna be rare, but it is conceivable. I'd suggest Sean's solution, and am really hoping that Power Defense is rebuilt in 6th edition so it's not the catch-all defense of doom like it is now. 1 point/defense protects from EVERYTHING no matter what the special effect!

Re: Western Hero I think hero games works better than any other system for Western games, at least the more cinematic ones. You can make them gritty as you want (people very likely to die from a gunshot) if you want as well. I recommend reading L'Amour, Brand, and other pulpish western novels for plots. L'Amour tended to have just a few stock plots he embellished and built up: 1) The wagon train that has problems on the way 2) The bad guy rancher pushing out homesteaders 3) The crooked guy using homesteaders to push out ranchers, then take over their land 4) The escort gone bad 5) The cattle drive 6) The explorer pushing westward Any of these can be adapted for a group with a bit of thought. In terms of movies, Silverado especially and the Magnificent Seven show how to give a group enough to do in a game setting.

Re: Hero's New Art Director(s) Congrats to all three!

Re: Acid What you could do is say that the acid has xD6 of effect per bottle, the more they use, the more D6 of effect they get instead of using charges.

Re: 350 point jedi? 350 seems really high, if you watch all Ben Kenobi could do in the first movie he was lucky to be pushing 100 points.

Re: Cowboy Bebop/ Firefly inspired game If I ever run another Star Hero game, I'd use the Cowboy Beebop world. Sci Fi but still pretty limited tech, and a great setting.

Re: My Bodyguard That's it in a nutshell. The love interest idea is interesting but I have a hard time GMing a love interest to another dude.

Re: My Bodyguard In all honesty I think this probably is the best option at present. It would make him do his job in a glorious and honorable way, then end up with a chance at a new character. Incidentally, Mark, I have thought about and like your ideas, and when I build the Bodyguard profession for my campaign book, I'll use things like that (he already has danger sense - only for ward and a few other bits but those are good ideas).

Re: My Bodyguard Although problematic given his background (they are selected at a young age and magically bonded to their ward), it is possible, and probably the most useful alternative. These guys aren't the only two characters in the game, so I can't change the entire campaign just to fit them in.

Re: My Bodyguard OK let me expand: the characters are roughly equivalent in power, that's not the point. The point is the knight doesn't need protecting because he's a knight. He wears plate armor. He's safe enough on his own. He doesn't require a bodyguard on adventures. Unless you can come up with some scenarios and ideas in which the bodyguard would be more useful and important. As a bodyguard. Since that's the entire concept of the character. Ways in which the very tough and capable knight would need someone to protect him. Ways he can be a bodyguard.! Is that more clear now?

I could use some advice or ideas for my fantasy campaign. One of the players built a bodyguard character with a slight mental bond with his ward, another PC. The bodyguard is pretty standard for nobles (the other PC is a younger son of a Lord) as is a duelist mage if they know no magic, so they can delegate duels that come up. The problem is that the PC being guarded started out pretty effective in combat and now is a heavy plate wearing knight at this point in the campaign. He doesn't really need much guarding. The bodyguard feels sort of ineffective and pointless now, his danger sense (for the knight) is handy, but other than that, he's just a quick, light fighter. I can throw him into situations where the knight character won't be armed (bodyguards usually are exempt to the requirement) but that seems a bit contrived more than once in a while. I like the bodyguard character, and I want him to be more useful and feel happy with his character. Any ideas?

Re: Hero Philosophy - SPEED I've found that if you give people extra speed for x (martial arts, spells, what have you) it works much, much better if they are some easily figured factor such as 3 speed +3 for shooting guns, or what have you. Not 5 speed +2 for martial arts. Much easier to figure out the phases you move on etc. I like the "star of the scene" bonus speed, if it was easier to work out phases. Its worth thinking about for certain events or special occasions.