Yamo

Ah, yes, but mechanics don't tell the whole story! As this thread illustrates, there are a lot of miscellaneous complex issues involved in running a gritty, low-powered campaign. You have to address everything from high character turnover rates to how to modify the traditional RPG campaign model (centered around highly-resiliant PCs) to something that works better for you. So you might not need a boatload of stats and Power write-ups, but there is still a lot of valuable GMing, campaiging, and character creation advice specific to that type of game. I would hate to think that HERO sourcebooks are only considered dumping grounds for various loose crunchy bits. Some genres depend a lot more on appropriate moods and storytelling strategies and are much less mechanically-dependent than that (horror, realistic espionage, NYPD Blue-style cops, modern military, etc). Yes, it does sell. This doesn't mean that HERO can't do more, do it well, and probably sell it like hotcakes, however. I would like to see some risks taken on new material. "We don't do X because we haven't done X" doesn't cut it for me. It;s fallacious reasoning. "We don't do X because the old HERO Games released a version of X with far inferior production values and writing than is standard today fifteen years ago to a completely different roleplaying market and it performed poorly" doesn't either. Irrelevent. That was then, this is now. Neither does "We asked a bunch of our old die-hard Champions grodnards, and none of them were interested." Irrelevent when the idea is to bring new blood to the game. As a universal system (and the best one going), there's a lot of new ground to break still and money to be made doing it. But hey, what do I know? I don't even like superheroes.

Hey! Not all Star Wars fans hate poor Jar Jar! As a clumsy, unloved doofus, he's the only character I can relate to! Hehe. Don't mind me. It's easy to develop a persecution complex in Star Wars fandom when Phantom Menace is your favorite of the films. At least I have my good buddy Don Trull's brilliant writings on the subject to encourage me.

At what point is a dead character that Resurrection Healing is applied to considered "officially" alive again? It is the point when BODY becomes positive again (i.e. at least 1), or the point when BODY is restored to greater than negative its starting value? If the latter, if the character is considered alive again, but with negative BODY, does he immediately begin "bleeding to death" all over again? To clarify: Fighter Tom has 10 BODY. An ogre whacks him with a huge sword and reduces him to -15, killing him. Cleric Bob throws a Resurrection Healing spell at Fighter Tom that restores 7 BODY. Is Fighter Tom considered to be still dead at -8 BODY, alive at -8 BODY and bleeding to death again, or alive and "stable" at -8 BODY? Thanks.

I love low-powered and realistic HERO! It is virtually unheard of for anyone in one of my campaigns to be allowed to build a character on more than 25+25. I also really wish that more published HERO products would take a step back from the "kewl powerz r00l, d00d!" philosophy and provide a decent treatment of gritty, realistic campaigning. I feel that the system in general is being shortchanged somewhat by the 5th edition product line neglecting this aspect entirely thus far. So Steve & company: More grit, less glitz, please!

The best solutions to this that I've found have been: 1. A magic MP with a single pool of charges. Or... 2. A magic END Reserve that fuels all spells and only recovers under specific circumstances (long lengths of time, a full night's sleep, lengthy spellbook study etc).

That would work, too. Your method is a little more Heroic and mine a little more Superheroic, but that's HERO for you. Love that flexability.

I would write this up in the book as a naked Advantage. For example: Legolas-style Superarchery: Autofire for up to RKA 2d6 (3 shots; +1/4) (7 Active Points), Bows Only (-1/2), Total Cost: 5 Points

Like this? Invisibility to Sight Group, No Fringe (30 Active Points) *plus* Invisible to Sight Group For Up to RKA 3d6 or HA +9d6 (22 Active Points), Linked (-1/4), Total Cost: 48 Points That should cover the full range of normal and magic weapons.

I would need two Linked naked IPE Advantages, wouldn't I? To cover both HA and HKA melee weapons? How high would I need to buy them?

I prefer to never house rule unless I'm absolutely forced to. If there's a legal mechanical way to build this, I want to find it and use it. Ranged attacks of all kinds would become visible immediately upon exiting the attacker's hex (or hexes for large attackers). Effectively, this Power would only conceal melee attacks.

The Invisibility description states that attacks the invisible character makes are not also rendered invisible unless they have IPE. The example is an invisible fantasy warrior who attacks a goblin with his sword, only to have the sword immediately become visible. I'm trying to build an Invisibility effect for my own campaign, and I don't want that to be the case. If an invisible warrior punches you or swings a weapon at you, you don't see a fist or a weapon blink into view, you just get whacked by an attack you can't see. Of course, making every character take IPE on their STR to accomplish this would be silly, as would giving all weapons IPE. How would I go about doing this?

No easy answers for any of this, but here are some of my solutions and ideas. Most of them are setting-derived and GM-imposed as opposed to hard rules from a book. 1. Limit the growth of Magic skill to +1 at a time and make the mage have an in-game rationale for every increase. Maybe he needs to seek out rare tomes or reclusive masters (shades of Ninja Hero here). And maybe each rare tome or reclusive master can only teach him so much. I have never run a campaign where PCs can simply increase or acquire skills willy-nilly without any logical in-game justification. 2. The GM just needs to always reserve veto power. Get used to saying things like "Sorry, but I don't want any RKAs bigger than 3d6; 2d6 with Advantages." 3. Having the Multipower fuelled by an END Reserve of some kind that either recovers very slowly or based on specific actions (meditation, sleep, lengthy spellbook study, the full moon, etc) helps a great deal to keep mage PCs balanced. Maybe the powerful wizard can throw an Area Effect RKA, but he'll also eventually "run out of gas." The powerful fighter, on the other hand, is never cut off from his four or five All Combat CSLs.

Not to digress, too much, but this caught my eye. Personally, I've found that a magic Multipower is the best way to counteract this. The mage pays big up front for a "mana pool" of sorts, but each indidudual spell (slot in the MP) is very cheap. Under this system, it's very rare for a new spell to run a mage more than 3-5 RP.

OIF Expendable (corpses of opportunity; -1/2)

Or you could simply put the AP HKA in a bokken Multipower with the less-lethal normal HA.

1. Include an unarmed martial artist-type character among the archetypes/templates/whatever. Even though this might seems like something that belongs more in Ninja Hero, you don't want D&D monk enthusiasts to feel left out. For that matter, don't miss any of the D&D core classes. 2. Justa minor thing that might help with the races section: I would make sure include the popular D&D "dark elves", complete with innate abilities as close to the original as you can get away with without provoking a lawsuit. Some players just can't get enough of those. 3. I would try making example PCs and villians for each of the major subgenres instead of a group of them at the same power level ala Star Hero or Champions. Have a low fantasy hero/villian, a high fantasy hero/villian, an urban fantasy hero/villian, and so on. A lot of people are still complaining that Champions didn't include example characters from the "Golden Age", "Silver Age", "Iron Age", etc and that Star Heros defaults were all for generic Star Trek-style space opera. More variation in sample characters helps showcase the system better.

This has been covered. Two reasons, though. 1. Adjustment Powers. So many Powers alter Characteristics in play (Absorption, Aid, Drain, Suppress, Transfer, etc) that being closer to a positive "breakpoint" or farther from a negative one is a bonus in and of itself. 2. Incremental improvement. I prefer to improve stats over time when possible rather than all at once in a big, unwieldly "clump" of effectiveness. If STR 3 in the "new HERO" was equal to STR 10-15 in the old, for example, any increase in the stat whatsoever would instantly provide colossal benefits. I don't like that. The result is too vague and unrealistic for my tastes. Too "Fuziony", if you will.

Make the ley lines an Always On area effect Aid that increases all powers with the magic special effect simultaneously.

I don't know how many of you have see this one yet, but boy is it a doozy. Enjoy! http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33827

The best balancing effect, as far as I'm concerned, isn't a mechanical one, but a story-based one. Specifically, the various components of magical potions should be strange and rare. They would either cost significant amounts of money (important in Heroic campaigns) or require dangerous quests to acquire. Possibly both! And when the PC does get his hands on the eye of newt or what-have-you, he'll have a finite quantity of it; enough for only a handful of draughts (and perhaps only one).

It now comes equipped with real shambling and brain-eating action!

I know I already mentioned this on the other boards, but now that they're defunct, I thought I'd resurrect the topic here. Twilight of the Dead is my own recently-created guide for roleplaying the gritty survival horror of George Romero's Living Dead films in HERO System. There are also notes for adapting the concept to other settings and power levels as well as converting things to other game systems. You can read (and download) it all for free here. Enjoy!

With Trigger outlawed, how do you handle the standard magic potions? Or does your campaign not use them?