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Agreed wholeheartedly.

Armor Class is such a fundamental change to Hero, that it changes the entire flow of the combat. Changing defense from resisting damage to reducing chance to hit requires adjustment to almost the entire to-hit and damage dynamic. We pick certain games because their mechanics can represent how we think the physics of our game world should be. Minor tweaks, changes and house rules are expected, but I question the necessity of such a huge change. Is it because one prefers the skill resolution in Hero? The point buy system? There may be other ways of getting what one wants without distorting the system so much. However, on the other hand, some gms do enjoy the challenge of hybridizing systems and making them work. And thats totally cool. I just think the concept of AC is so fundmentally different from the basic philosophy of Hero combat that it would be a tough fix.

Game balance is the bane of all new Hero GMs and is tough to pin down till you get experience with the system. But you will get there eventually. My suggestion when it comes to Fantasy Hero and other Heroic level games, is treat it like D&D. This means your players shouldnt be designing their weapons from their own pool of points. Use the default weapons, armor etc out of the Fantasy Hero books. Players spend points on their characters characteristics, skills and Talents/powers (spells or magical gifts etc)but with a strict active point AND limitation cap at least at the start of the game. And all special Talents and magical powers must follow the characters theme or background (no special abilities just cause) and be approved by the GM. If you must, limit the starting points to 50+50. (I use 75+75) extra points arent needed specifically because characters arent paying points for weapons and armor. It has worked for me for quite a long time. If you havent tried running in that fashion, I suggest giving it atest run to see if you like it.

Dont feel like i'm picking on you. I have this same conversation every year with Hero veterans. Its just a different perspective on the system. I picked up on it years ago before the authors even started calling the system a "toolkit" and I used to get a lot of hate for my approach to the system. After the 5th edition came out and the game began being presented as a highly malleable "toolkit" many others began seeing what I saw in the system long ago. It requires a shift in perspectives on how one views the role of the system in an RPG that is similar to the shift one is needed to understand Player Agency in the Fate RPG. But dont mind me. When someone says "Hero cant do this well" I will inevitably come around and argue with them about it. But it seems you picked up on this dynamic.

I may have misunderstood your meaning when you mentioned scale, mistaking you for meaning power level and not scale of size. Every other game system on the market that I am familiar with would have similar or worse problems when scaling down like that. You would treat humans the same way you would treat larger and tougher opponents such as dragons and giants when humans are the normal scale. They have more Body, more defense, more strength, but are much easier to hit. None of this is house ruling, just shifting the scale. None of this is outside the system at all. You can simply assign human scale and larger things Damage Reduction or Damage Negation to represent the difficulty of a fairy sized creature has in trying to damage them. A house rule? Yes, but one that fits entirely within the confines of the toolkit given to us. Stop thinking of Hero in the same way that you think of other RPGs. It is not that. If you cant stop thinking of it in that way, your ability tonuse Hero will always be limited. Once you understand the toolkit approach (there is no such thing as a wrong way to do things in Hero....do what you need to get to the game you want) then an entire universe of possibilities are opened to you. In fact, if a mechanic is present in the books, I dont ever think of it as a house rule if I find a new way of using that mechanic. The nature of Hero not only allows for it, but encourages it.

If everyone is playing "Borribles" then you just scale everything accordingly. The Borribles become the new standard and are now Body 10 and everything else scales from there. Scale in Hero is not difficult. The default is human scale (as in human normal is Body 10). If the entire campaign is run on a different scale, then everything shifts accordingly. But this is a TOTALLY different subject than a shift in power level. From Supers (most peoples default assumptions with Hero) to Heroic, which some people think Hero cant do because of their default assumptions. Preconcieved notions have to be overcome and a shift in perspective made and everything falls into place. I would also expect that every other game system ever devised with maybe one or two exceptions would have the same or worse difficulty with a change in scale like you suggest. Mainly because so few people run games with diminunative protagonists and it is not figured into the basic equation when the system is designed.

I say that because while I have two boys (both of whom my wife doesnt want them chatting online while gaming, but they are quite young still) i have several friends with young teenage daughters who either game or interact online through social media. Their parents keep a very tight rein on who they chat with online. Some of whom wont let their daughters voice chat at all. So my thought immediately went to parental control when this subject was brought up.

Not really. It may be necessary to activate some optional rules like hit locations, impairing and disabling, stunning and replace knockback with knockdown, but none of these are house rules. And there are lots of good guidelines in the Hero and Fantasy Hero books that will help you fine tune to the genre and power level you want. It then merely requires experience in play and some minor tweakingnakd fine tuning of characteristics and skills to get where you want. Once you get there, its fantastic. It requires no house ruling or going outside the system at all. Of course many GMs, once they get the experience with the system like to house rule a bit to fine tune even further, but that is usually for anvery specific feel or genre convention they are attempting to simulate and not strictly necessary for general fantasy simulation. But the thing to remember here us that Hero is a toolkit, and as such it is flexible enough to be bent, twisted and hammered into the exact shape that you want or a close enough approximation that will work for you. This times 100. The more experience you get with Hero, the more you will be able to fit it to whatever type of game you want. The actual secret to this is getting away from standard superhero gameplay, which is a lot of players "comfort zone" with Hero....so when they try to emulqte other genres, they do so from the perspective of building supers but try to shoehorn those conventions into a heroic fantasy mold and it doesnt work well....then they assume hero isnt good for fantasy. The failing isnt the system, but their approach to it. It merely requires adjusting how one thinks about the system and basic character design and interaction for all the pieces to begin to fall into place.

Its incredibly effective when applied to other settings. Its all in how you approach it.

I do not make them pay double cp for the purposee of Aid and Drains. Only for permanent straight adds to the characteristic itself. I do not apply a skill roll maximum in my games because I support rules for critical success (roll half or less) so the higher the skill can rise above 18, the greater chance of a critical success.

Part of it might be their parents not wanting them to talk too much online for fear of attracting stalkers and creepers? I also wonder how this translates to adult age female gamers. If it is a much larger percentage that talks online it may indeed be a parental factor thats keeping them silent.

A lot of actors avoid genre films because of the potential for type casting that comes with it. I think in todays climate, there is less fear associated with it than there used to be, but long standing stigma can be very hard to break.

Its a choice between taking potential Oscar winning performances and the respect that garners you within the industry, vs choosing a role that will win you potentially millions of fans cementing your popularity within pop culture for decades and beyond. Tough choice. Fame vs respect.

Hmmm...Brie Larson...not sure. Lets see who else geta rumored.

The question here is: Is 10 DC too much for the campaign at hand? Lets say the average combatant has a resistant defense of 6 and a PD of 6, for a total defense of 12. 10 DC means on average they take 0 Body and 23 Stun. This means for a combatant with 30 or so Stun will be taken out in 2 strikes. Lets put them up against a more powerful opponent with 8 res def, 8 PD and 40 stun. On average this opponent will take 0 Body and 19 Stun. It will take 2 to 3 strikes to take them out. Lets go tougher. Next opponent is a dragon with a res def of 12 and a PD of 16! Total defense of 28. That means on average it takes 0 Body and 7 Stun. On a critical hit it takes 8 Body and 32 Stun. That would hurt it, but not kill it. It would take at least three of these crits to even kill the beast (more than that actually, to take the dragon to negative 20 or more Body and with no chance of Impairing or Disabling wounds outside of a head hit!) But considering most rolls in Hero skew toward the average, especially when throwing that many dice, this should be a fairly rare occurrance. I would be okay with this in my game. I want the PCs to be able to take out normal opponents with only one or two well placed strikes (well placed meaning at least average damage or better) For more dangerous opponents, the danger comes less from being able to survive multiple solid blows and comes more from being able to competently dodge or deflect the PCs blows. The PC will begin to miss from time to time, allowing this enemy a chance to counter attack, now forcing the PC to dodge or block and now the tactical aspects of the system comes into play. The really dangerous opponents can both survive solid blows AND force the PCs to use tactics to defeat. That Dragon has a higher speed than the PCs (speed 5 vs 3 and 4), a higher natural OCV than the PCs, a wider variety of attacks than most PCs (including area of effect attacks to deal with those pesky high DCV rogues) and can survive even a critical hit or near max damage roll. Thats why they are so dangerous.

I think being able to add Martial Arts damage to weapons is one of the fundamentally cool aspects to Hero's combat system. In fact, it was one of the first games I saw that would allow this (Rolemaster as well) and to take it away diminishes the combat system, in my eyes. How you make a barehanded Martial Artist perform uniquely is by allowing them to develop special techniques (i.e. write up some offensive martial arts powers) which they can then use with Martial Maneuvers to keep up with the weapon weilders. Or you can rule that only barehanded Martial Artists can benefit from the Extra DC bonus in the Martial Arts rules.

How experienced is your GM at running Hero? If they are wanting to change things just to be closer to D&D, you might as well just play D&D. Hero has its own quirks, advantages and difficulties. If you learn how the default Hero system works before trying to change it, you may find it works better than D&D for a lot of situations.

I am of the opposite opinion here. I like Hero's skill range better than most other games Inhave encountered. I have zero issue with the lack of granularity. I feel that two characters of a similar skill level should perform similarly. Hero does this. It only takes a couple of poijts difference for the contest to skew obviously in the favor of the greater skilled individual....as it should. Thus, it only takes a few points to make a huge difference. A +1 in Hero (GURPS as well) is a significant bonus, unlike in most d20 based task resolution systems. Inhave played games that take the opposite approach. One example is Rolemaster, where skills are on a percentage scale and can be ranked from as low as +5 to as high as +100 or more. Yes, I said "or more". You see, to simulate someone with super level skill in rolemaster, their skill roll needs to be more than +100 to do so. Skill rolls can climb as high as +150. I have seen characters with a weapon skill of +300 to represent their extreme skill. Hero doesnt need to do that to get the same result. A 5 point difference in combat value is akin to having a +100 skill bonus in RM. I find that range much, much easier to deal with.

I would never require someone to purchase the same maneuver more than once. Purchasing the KS simulates the time and effort studying the new art and learning to apply its techniques.

Assassins Unseen Strike. Killing attack with Invisible Power Effects on Requires Skill Roll (stealth). Thus a character can attack from stealth or invisibility without being exposed, or they can attack openly but gain complete suprise when doing so (if attacking out of combat). If used to attack while in combat, this attack is very difficult to Block or Missile Deflect. (However your group handles blocking invisible attacks....I use 1/2 OCV to block, or 0 OCV at range)

That can work together just fine. Its just that superheroic characters will run circles around the Heroic ones, which is as things should be. I find it quite fun to take Superheroic characters and to put them in a world with Heroic level rules....i.e. Hit Locations, Impairing rules, Bleeding etc. The end results are quite visceral which is what I was going for.

To me, the essential qualities are: 1: Reasoning from effect. The mechanics and sfx of powers and ability are seperate allowing the powers construction system its level of versatility without needing to simulate every conceivable variation of a power based upon its sfx. 2: the speed chart. Its brilliant. 3: its no limit scalability. Few other games can do it so well as Hero does 4: its flexibility. I find that I can simulate any situation without issue in Hero. Its not unique in this ability, but there are many games out there that lack this basic flexibility in their gameplay.

This is the problem I have with Hero is that the default assumption is that one is playing superheroes. That can be frustrating for those of us who use it for mostly Heroic level play because it works very, very well at that level. It only has problems if your default assumption is that of supers level play and your approach to the mechanics comes from that perspective.

I have always ruled that STR + the maneuvers damage equals the base damage for unarmed martial arts attacks. I also always observe the doubling limit.

Both RM and Hero have no upper limit built in. It is possible to represent god like characters in both systems without needing to handwave rulesf to make them work.