mallet

Hey, apologies for the late response... Christmas makes this time of year a little much.  If you are still interested, I can send you the rules to review.
 
To answer some of your questions:
There is no official website for Gemini I'm sort of using these forums and the unofficial Discord server as my home It's a fast-playing TTRPG game that takes a few design leads from Hero Power building should feel very familiar to a Hero player The math is much more straightforward (pro or con, depends on your viewpoint) It's designed to be genre-agnostic in that it's unopinionated on the subject of genre DM me on this site or via Discord (Sentry0 is my tag).  Email me at phil.guinchard@slackdaystudio.com if you are like me, old.
 

Lots of other factors in this as well (sorry if covered already. I read through most of the posts but might have missed if these were brought up already):
 
First, Fighters can lose their weapons and armor (and/or maybe have to put their armor on, find and draw their weapons, etc...) while a spellcaster always has access to their spells (in most magic builds).
 
Second, the rules have to be looked at as a whole. Fighters, more then most, have to worry about encumbrance. You might need STR 17 to use that Great Sword, but it also has major weight when combined with full armor and other adventuring gear, that can make fighter's slow, and lose DEX, END, long term END, etc... Now if your game house rules away encumbrance that's fine, but then don't blame fighters for being overpowered compared to mages because they have tons of high damage weapons and can take a ton of damage. There is a reason Conan had a great sword but ran round fighting in a loin cloth, he didn't want to be slowed down by the weight and limitations of heavy armor. Same with the Spartans and Ninjas and many other examples. If you ignore the limitations and drawbacks of heavy, difficult gear (because no one wants to keep track of bookkeeping, and such) then the characters are getting major advantages without any of drawbacks so of course they will be overpowered in some instances then other characters. 
 
The same also with allowing Fighters to wear their heavy armor all the time. Like, how do they take a piss or dump when they are in plate mail and wearing gauntlets? How do they scratch an itch on their back? How long does it take to get sand or a rock out of their armored boots? If they have to spend ten minutes and make a lot of noise taking off some or all of their armor every time they need to go to the bathroom and then even longer to get back in the armor? How about sinking deep into mud or drowning in a lake or river? 
 
There are major limitations and disadvantages built into most fighter's gear, but if the GM doesn't bother with them that is on the GM for making things unbalanced, not the rules.

Lots of other factors in this as well (sorry if covered already. I read through most of the posts but might have missed if these were brought up already):
 
First, Fighters can lose their weapons and armor (and/or maybe have to put their armor on, find and draw their weapons, etc...) while a spellcaster always has access to their spells (in most magic builds).
 
Second, the rules have to be looked at as a whole. Fighters, more then most, have to worry about encumbrance. You might need STR 17 to use that Great Sword, but it also has major weight when combined with full armor and other adventuring gear, that can make fighter's slow, and lose DEX, END, long term END, etc... Now if your game house rules away encumbrance that's fine, but then don't blame fighters for being overpowered compared to mages because they have tons of high damage weapons and can take a ton of damage. There is a reason Conan had a great sword but ran round fighting in a loin cloth, he didn't want to be slowed down by the weight and limitations of heavy armor. Same with the Spartans and Ninjas and many other examples. If you ignore the limitations and drawbacks of heavy, difficult gear (because no one wants to keep track of bookkeeping, and such) then the characters are getting major advantages without any of drawbacks so of course they will be overpowered in some instances then other characters. 
 
The same also with allowing Fighters to wear their heavy armor all the time. Like, how do they take a piss or dump when they are in plate mail and wearing gauntlets? How do they scratch an itch on their back? How long does it take to get sand or a rock out of their armored boots? If they have to spend ten minutes and make a lot of noise taking off some or all of their armor every time they need to go to the bathroom and then even longer to get back in the armor? How about sinking deep into mud or drowning in a lake or river? 
 
There are major limitations and disadvantages built into most fighter's gear, but if the GM doesn't bother with them that is on the GM for making things unbalanced, not the rules.

I would say that a race is a form of combat between two or more competitors  (not all combat needs to be punching or shooting each other) so racing shouldn't use "noncombat" speeds or rules. 
 
Lightning Reflexes should be used to see "who goes first" in the combat as the difference between first and second (or third) in most professional sprints is a matter of milliseconds and who reacts and gets off the blocks first often wins in short sprints like 50 or 100 meter. In this sense it is much like a duel in the wild west. Who draws first/fastest often wins if everything else is equal. 
 
In a real race blocks should be considered necessary equipment, just like shoes. Using them is standard and allows you to do your best, not using them should have a negative effect.

As LoneWolf notes, the problem with this is not in the rules or how to build it, it's the base concept -- it's being defined not as an effect but as a rules construct. 

"The character can abort to defensive actions without losing his next Phase."  Great...what if the character is a SPD 4, it's Segment 3 and the character has already acted.  Can they take a defensive action in the same phase (effectively acting twice)?  What if they're attacked on Segment 4, abort to a defensive action, and then are attacked again on Segment 5 -- can they abort again to a different action? Not defining the power concept without directly referencing rules opens it up to a slew of inconsistencies and problems.

If you define it in terms of effect, you're able to follow one of the cardinal guidelines in HERO -- reasoning from effect.  

"The character is extremely skilled in combat, they're able to move so well that they are extremely difficult to hit."  Well, that's pretty easy to build -- increased DCV.  
 
"...but this only applies for melee combat. Ranged attackers are able to target the character without issue."  Good! We've just moved from straight DCV to defensive combat levels, HTH only.
 
"...and they're able to move in a manner that sets them up for their next attack."  Let's toss in some offensive combat levels with a few appropriate limitations.
 
And so on - the better you define the effect you're after the clearer the build becomes.
 

Most games do not really worry too much about forms of government.  When they do they tend just use monarchies because that is what everyone is familiar with.   This is kind of a shame because in a world where magic is real it could have a real impact on how society is organized.  Even the forms of government we are familiar with would be changed.
 
In the real world a theocracy is government by the church.   In a world where deities are able to be contacted and contact their worshipers that would not be the case.  In a world where the deity can be contacted a theocracy would be much different.   In such a world divine right could actually be real.  When the deity the country worships says that this is who they choose to rule the land people are not going to argue.
 
Another thing that could happen is the some people may be able to draw power from the land itself.   The idea of the rightful king being chosen by the land instead of the people could actually work.  The land may even grant the king and to a lesser extent the nobility powers that commoners do not have.  That would fit with the Celtic myths of the king being linked to the land.
 
There could be a lot of other forms of government in a fantasy world that do not exist in our world.   

Anyone who still continues to make 3rd Party content for D&D after this has only themselves to blame when in 3-5 years WotC tries to do this again and succeeds.
 
I actually find it very pathetic how many people who were crying and screaming about "never supporting WotC again", even if they went back on implementing OGL 1.1, who are now, like predictable lemmings, are going back to WotC and playing D&D.  

Anyone who still continues to make 3rd Party content for D&D after this has only themselves to blame when in 3-5 years WotC tries to do this again and succeeds.
 
I actually find it very pathetic how many people who were crying and screaming about "never supporting WotC again", even if they went back on implementing OGL 1.1, who are now, like predictable lemmings, are going back to WotC and playing D&D.  

Anyone who still continues to make 3rd Party content for D&D after this has only themselves to blame when in 3-5 years WotC tries to do this again and succeeds.
 
I actually find it very pathetic how many people who were crying and screaming about "never supporting WotC again", even if they went back on implementing OGL 1.1, who are now, like predictable lemmings, are going back to WotC and playing D&D.  

Have all your character's start with 8 in each main stat, rather then 10. Selling back those points gets them 14 extra character points to build their characters with.  This will provide more of a spread in their starting characteristics and allow them more points  to individualize their builds from each other. 
 

Best numbers I could find is that 12-16 million people play D&D regularly. Wizards of the Coast apparently made something like $400million profit last year, but easily 75% of that was from Magic: The Gathering. So D&D maybe accounted for less then $100 Million. 
D&D suffers from the same issue all other RPG's suffer from. Once a group buys the original books, they don't need to spend any more money. Adventures, new sourcebooks, more classes or whatever, are nice, but not necessary. As HERO System fans we are more then aware of this. If you have the 2 main rule books for 6th ed, you never needed to buy another Hero System book again if you didn't want to (and were willing to do all the building yourself). 
 
I know a few D&D groups where only the DM had all 3 core books, and the players only had the Player's guide (and not even all of them had it). If we average each core book at $50, and a table of 5 players and 1 DM, that means WotC made about $350.00 from that group. And maybe nothing more, even years after that group started playing the game. That is a business model that only survives if you keep constantly drawing in new players, and even then every few years you need a "new edition" to get the older player to re-buy the core books. 
 
I am 100% certain the the WotC game plan is to change that business model. They want to go all digital, all subscription based. Charge DM's $10/month for a subscription and players $5/month. Now that group of 6 people I mentioned earlier are going to be spending $35/month to play D&D. So in 10 months they will have paid what the originally spent on the books, and everything after that is more profit for WotC. 
 
Under this model, even if they lost 50% of their player base, so from 14 Million down to 7 million. They would still be making about $40million a month in subscription fees. In 3 months they would be making more then what D&D is currently making in a year. That works out to about $480 million a year. That would more then double WotC's profits in less then a year. And that is even after losing 50% of their players. 
 
And you know what, it would still be an amazing deal for people who played D&D. Subscription would give you access to every book, including all new books that would come out. All setting, all adventures, all monsters, all magic items, everything. The online character builder would allow players to build everything they want that was rule legal. Their VTT would be fantastic for at home and online play. You know they would have the budget to do that. And with all that extra money they could triple their output of new books and material, again all for "free" to subscribers. And they could connect players looking for games from around the world. You could play it on your PC, laptop, ipad/tablet or smartphone. And if you stopped playing D&D for a bit to try another system, you just stop paying for a few months, then re-subscribe when you want to play again. 
 
They would also sell this as being environmentally friendly. No physical books, means no cutting down tress for paper. No international shipping and delivery using gas and oil, no printing with harmful chemicals and glues and dyes. Plus it would save them tons of cash. No need for all those printing and international shipping expenses, especially in these days of supply chain disruption. No need for a whole department in the company that deals with publishing, printing, shipping, storage and delivery. All that money saved on wages. 
 
I'm sure something like this has been the dream of every game company in existence, but only recently has the technology reached the point where it is doable, and only D&D has reached the size and popularity where they could actually make it happen.  
 
The OLG 1.1 license is just the first step on the path to this. All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D. Looking at twitter at the height of #openD&D trending they was 20k tweets. You know a lot of those are the same people tweeting 2 or more times. so lets say 15k individuals. That is less then 0.001% of the people who play D&D regularly. Even if it was 1-2% that is still nothing. It is just all blown way out of size by the echo chamber that is social media. People on social media like to believe they speak for everyone, but they in fact speak for almost no one but themselves. Millions of D&D players around the world could careless about the OLG. They stick to playing their one game, refuse to play any other system, and are happy to do that. It is those people WotC is counting on. When they go all digital subscription base system, also long as they can keep around 50% of those players, then they will still be making more money then they ever dreamed of. 
 

Best numbers I could find is that 12-16 million people play D&D regularly. Wizards of the Coast apparently made something like $400million profit last year, but easily 75% of that was from Magic: The Gathering. So D&D maybe accounted for less then $100 Million. 
D&D suffers from the same issue all other RPG's suffer from. Once a group buys the original books, they don't need to spend any more money. Adventures, new sourcebooks, more classes or whatever, are nice, but not necessary. As HERO System fans we are more then aware of this. If you have the 2 main rule books for 6th ed, you never needed to buy another Hero System book again if you didn't want to (and were willing to do all the building yourself). 
 
I know a few D&D groups where only the DM had all 3 core books, and the players only had the Player's guide (and not even all of them had it). If we average each core book at $50, and a table of 5 players and 1 DM, that means WotC made about $350.00 from that group. And maybe nothing more, even years after that group started playing the game. That is a business model that only survives if you keep constantly drawing in new players, and even then every few years you need a "new edition" to get the older player to re-buy the core books. 
 
I am 100% certain the the WotC game plan is to change that business model. They want to go all digital, all subscription based. Charge DM's $10/month for a subscription and players $5/month. Now that group of 6 people I mentioned earlier are going to be spending $35/month to play D&D. So in 10 months they will have paid what the originally spent on the books, and everything after that is more profit for WotC. 
 
Under this model, even if they lost 50% of their player base, so from 14 Million down to 7 million. They would still be making about $40million a month in subscription fees. In 3 months they would be making more then what D&D is currently making in a year. That works out to about $480 million a year. That would more then double WotC's profits in less then a year. And that is even after losing 50% of their players. 
 
And you know what, it would still be an amazing deal for people who played D&D. Subscription would give you access to every book, including all new books that would come out. All setting, all adventures, all monsters, all magic items, everything. The online character builder would allow players to build everything they want that was rule legal. Their VTT would be fantastic for at home and online play. You know they would have the budget to do that. And with all that extra money they could triple their output of new books and material, again all for "free" to subscribers. And they could connect players looking for games from around the world. You could play it on your PC, laptop, ipad/tablet or smartphone. And if you stopped playing D&D for a bit to try another system, you just stop paying for a few months, then re-subscribe when you want to play again. 
 
They would also sell this as being environmentally friendly. No physical books, means no cutting down tress for paper. No international shipping and delivery using gas and oil, no printing with harmful chemicals and glues and dyes. Plus it would save them tons of cash. No need for all those printing and international shipping expenses, especially in these days of supply chain disruption. No need for a whole department in the company that deals with publishing, printing, shipping, storage and delivery. All that money saved on wages. 
 
I'm sure something like this has been the dream of every game company in existence, but only recently has the technology reached the point where it is doable, and only D&D has reached the size and popularity where they could actually make it happen.  
 
The OLG 1.1 license is just the first step on the path to this. All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D. Looking at twitter at the height of #openD&D trending they was 20k tweets. You know a lot of those are the same people tweeting 2 or more times. so lets say 15k individuals. That is less then 0.001% of the people who play D&D regularly. Even if it was 1-2% that is still nothing. It is just all blown way out of size by the echo chamber that is social media. People on social media like to believe they speak for everyone, but they in fact speak for almost no one but themselves. Millions of D&D players around the world could careless about the OLG. They stick to playing their one game, refuse to play any other system, and are happy to do that. It is those people WotC is counting on. When they go all digital subscription base system, also long as they can keep around 50% of those players, then they will still be making more money then they ever dreamed of. 
 

Best numbers I could find is that 12-16 million people play D&D regularly. Wizards of the Coast apparently made something like $400million profit last year, but easily 75% of that was from Magic: The Gathering. So D&D maybe accounted for less then $100 Million. 
D&D suffers from the same issue all other RPG's suffer from. Once a group buys the original books, they don't need to spend any more money. Adventures, new sourcebooks, more classes or whatever, are nice, but not necessary. As HERO System fans we are more then aware of this. If you have the 2 main rule books for 6th ed, you never needed to buy another Hero System book again if you didn't want to (and were willing to do all the building yourself). 
 
I know a few D&D groups where only the DM had all 3 core books, and the players only had the Player's guide (and not even all of them had it). If we average each core book at $50, and a table of 5 players and 1 DM, that means WotC made about $350.00 from that group. And maybe nothing more, even years after that group started playing the game. That is a business model that only survives if you keep constantly drawing in new players, and even then every few years you need a "new edition" to get the older player to re-buy the core books. 
 
I am 100% certain the the WotC game plan is to change that business model. They want to go all digital, all subscription based. Charge DM's $10/month for a subscription and players $5/month. Now that group of 6 people I mentioned earlier are going to be spending $35/month to play D&D. So in 10 months they will have paid what the originally spent on the books, and everything after that is more profit for WotC. 
 
Under this model, even if they lost 50% of their player base, so from 14 Million down to 7 million. They would still be making about $40million a month in subscription fees. In 3 months they would be making more then what D&D is currently making in a year. That works out to about $480 million a year. That would more then double WotC's profits in less then a year. And that is even after losing 50% of their players. 
 
And you know what, it would still be an amazing deal for people who played D&D. Subscription would give you access to every book, including all new books that would come out. All setting, all adventures, all monsters, all magic items, everything. The online character builder would allow players to build everything they want that was rule legal. Their VTT would be fantastic for at home and online play. You know they would have the budget to do that. And with all that extra money they could triple their output of new books and material, again all for "free" to subscribers. And they could connect players looking for games from around the world. You could play it on your PC, laptop, ipad/tablet or smartphone. And if you stopped playing D&D for a bit to try another system, you just stop paying for a few months, then re-subscribe when you want to play again. 
 
They would also sell this as being environmentally friendly. No physical books, means no cutting down tress for paper. No international shipping and delivery using gas and oil, no printing with harmful chemicals and glues and dyes. Plus it would save them tons of cash. No need for all those printing and international shipping expenses, especially in these days of supply chain disruption. No need for a whole department in the company that deals with publishing, printing, shipping, storage and delivery. All that money saved on wages. 
 
I'm sure something like this has been the dream of every game company in existence, but only recently has the technology reached the point where it is doable, and only D&D has reached the size and popularity where they could actually make it happen.  
 
The OLG 1.1 license is just the first step on the path to this. All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D. Looking at twitter at the height of #openD&D trending they was 20k tweets. You know a lot of those are the same people tweeting 2 or more times. so lets say 15k individuals. That is less then 0.001% of the people who play D&D regularly. Even if it was 1-2% that is still nothing. It is just all blown way out of size by the echo chamber that is social media. People on social media like to believe they speak for everyone, but they in fact speak for almost no one but themselves. Millions of D&D players around the world could careless about the OLG. They stick to playing their one game, refuse to play any other system, and are happy to do that. It is those people WotC is counting on. When they go all digital subscription base system, also long as they can keep around 50% of those players, then they will still be making more money then they ever dreamed of. 
 

Best numbers I could find is that 12-16 million people play D&D regularly. Wizards of the Coast apparently made something like $400million profit last year, but easily 75% of that was from Magic: The Gathering. So D&D maybe accounted for less then $100 Million. 
D&D suffers from the same issue all other RPG's suffer from. Once a group buys the original books, they don't need to spend any more money. Adventures, new sourcebooks, more classes or whatever, are nice, but not necessary. As HERO System fans we are more then aware of this. If you have the 2 main rule books for 6th ed, you never needed to buy another Hero System book again if you didn't want to (and were willing to do all the building yourself). 
 
I know a few D&D groups where only the DM had all 3 core books, and the players only had the Player's guide (and not even all of them had it). If we average each core book at $50, and a table of 5 players and 1 DM, that means WotC made about $350.00 from that group. And maybe nothing more, even years after that group started playing the game. That is a business model that only survives if you keep constantly drawing in new players, and even then every few years you need a "new edition" to get the older player to re-buy the core books. 
 
I am 100% certain the the WotC game plan is to change that business model. They want to go all digital, all subscription based. Charge DM's $10/month for a subscription and players $5/month. Now that group of 6 people I mentioned earlier are going to be spending $35/month to play D&D. So in 10 months they will have paid what the originally spent on the books, and everything after that is more profit for WotC. 
 
Under this model, even if they lost 50% of their player base, so from 14 Million down to 7 million. They would still be making about $40million a month in subscription fees. In 3 months they would be making more then what D&D is currently making in a year. That works out to about $480 million a year. That would more then double WotC's profits in less then a year. And that is even after losing 50% of their players. 
 
And you know what, it would still be an amazing deal for people who played D&D. Subscription would give you access to every book, including all new books that would come out. All setting, all adventures, all monsters, all magic items, everything. The online character builder would allow players to build everything they want that was rule legal. Their VTT would be fantastic for at home and online play. You know they would have the budget to do that. And with all that extra money they could triple their output of new books and material, again all for "free" to subscribers. And they could connect players looking for games from around the world. You could play it on your PC, laptop, ipad/tablet or smartphone. And if you stopped playing D&D for a bit to try another system, you just stop paying for a few months, then re-subscribe when you want to play again. 
 
They would also sell this as being environmentally friendly. No physical books, means no cutting down tress for paper. No international shipping and delivery using gas and oil, no printing with harmful chemicals and glues and dyes. Plus it would save them tons of cash. No need for all those printing and international shipping expenses, especially in these days of supply chain disruption. No need for a whole department in the company that deals with publishing, printing, shipping, storage and delivery. All that money saved on wages. 
 
I'm sure something like this has been the dream of every game company in existence, but only recently has the technology reached the point where it is doable, and only D&D has reached the size and popularity where they could actually make it happen.  
 
The OLG 1.1 license is just the first step on the path to this. All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D. Looking at twitter at the height of #openD&D trending they was 20k tweets. You know a lot of those are the same people tweeting 2 or more times. so lets say 15k individuals. That is less then 0.001% of the people who play D&D regularly. Even if it was 1-2% that is still nothing. It is just all blown way out of size by the echo chamber that is social media. People on social media like to believe they speak for everyone, but they in fact speak for almost no one but themselves. Millions of D&D players around the world could careless about the OLG. They stick to playing their one game, refuse to play any other system, and are happy to do that. It is those people WotC is counting on. When they go all digital subscription base system, also long as they can keep around 50% of those players, then they will still be making more money then they ever dreamed of. 
 

Best numbers I could find is that 12-16 million people play D&D regularly. Wizards of the Coast apparently made something like $400million profit last year, but easily 75% of that was from Magic: The Gathering. So D&D maybe accounted for less then $100 Million. 
D&D suffers from the same issue all other RPG's suffer from. Once a group buys the original books, they don't need to spend any more money. Adventures, new sourcebooks, more classes or whatever, are nice, but not necessary. As HERO System fans we are more then aware of this. If you have the 2 main rule books for 6th ed, you never needed to buy another Hero System book again if you didn't want to (and were willing to do all the building yourself). 
 
I know a few D&D groups where only the DM had all 3 core books, and the players only had the Player's guide (and not even all of them had it). If we average each core book at $50, and a table of 5 players and 1 DM, that means WotC made about $350.00 from that group. And maybe nothing more, even years after that group started playing the game. That is a business model that only survives if you keep constantly drawing in new players, and even then every few years you need a "new edition" to get the older player to re-buy the core books. 
 
I am 100% certain the the WotC game plan is to change that business model. They want to go all digital, all subscription based. Charge DM's $10/month for a subscription and players $5/month. Now that group of 6 people I mentioned earlier are going to be spending $35/month to play D&D. So in 10 months they will have paid what the originally spent on the books, and everything after that is more profit for WotC. 
 
Under this model, even if they lost 50% of their player base, so from 14 Million down to 7 million. They would still be making about $40million a month in subscription fees. In 3 months they would be making more then what D&D is currently making in a year. That works out to about $480 million a year. That would more then double WotC's profits in less then a year. And that is even after losing 50% of their players. 
 
And you know what, it would still be an amazing deal for people who played D&D. Subscription would give you access to every book, including all new books that would come out. All setting, all adventures, all monsters, all magic items, everything. The online character builder would allow players to build everything they want that was rule legal. Their VTT would be fantastic for at home and online play. You know they would have the budget to do that. And with all that extra money they could triple their output of new books and material, again all for "free" to subscribers. And they could connect players looking for games from around the world. You could play it on your PC, laptop, ipad/tablet or smartphone. And if you stopped playing D&D for a bit to try another system, you just stop paying for a few months, then re-subscribe when you want to play again. 
 
They would also sell this as being environmentally friendly. No physical books, means no cutting down tress for paper. No international shipping and delivery using gas and oil, no printing with harmful chemicals and glues and dyes. Plus it would save them tons of cash. No need for all those printing and international shipping expenses, especially in these days of supply chain disruption. No need for a whole department in the company that deals with publishing, printing, shipping, storage and delivery. All that money saved on wages. 
 
I'm sure something like this has been the dream of every game company in existence, but only recently has the technology reached the point where it is doable, and only D&D has reached the size and popularity where they could actually make it happen.  
 
The OLG 1.1 license is just the first step on the path to this. All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D. Looking at twitter at the height of #openD&D trending they was 20k tweets. You know a lot of those are the same people tweeting 2 or more times. so lets say 15k individuals. That is less then 0.001% of the people who play D&D regularly. Even if it was 1-2% that is still nothing. It is just all blown way out of size by the echo chamber that is social media. People on social media like to believe they speak for everyone, but they in fact speak for almost no one but themselves. Millions of D&D players around the world could careless about the OLG. They stick to playing their one game, refuse to play any other system, and are happy to do that. It is those people WotC is counting on. When they go all digital subscription base system, also long as they can keep around 50% of those players, then they will still be making more money then they ever dreamed of. 
 

Best numbers I could find is that 12-16 million people play D&D regularly. Wizards of the Coast apparently made something like $400million profit last year, but easily 75% of that was from Magic: The Gathering. So D&D maybe accounted for less then $100 Million. 
D&D suffers from the same issue all other RPG's suffer from. Once a group buys the original books, they don't need to spend any more money. Adventures, new sourcebooks, more classes or whatever, are nice, but not necessary. As HERO System fans we are more then aware of this. If you have the 2 main rule books for 6th ed, you never needed to buy another Hero System book again if you didn't want to (and were willing to do all the building yourself). 
 
I know a few D&D groups where only the DM had all 3 core books, and the players only had the Player's guide (and not even all of them had it). If we average each core book at $50, and a table of 5 players and 1 DM, that means WotC made about $350.00 from that group. And maybe nothing more, even years after that group started playing the game. That is a business model that only survives if you keep constantly drawing in new players, and even then every few years you need a "new edition" to get the older player to re-buy the core books. 
 
I am 100% certain the the WotC game plan is to change that business model. They want to go all digital, all subscription based. Charge DM's $10/month for a subscription and players $5/month. Now that group of 6 people I mentioned earlier are going to be spending $35/month to play D&D. So in 10 months they will have paid what the originally spent on the books, and everything after that is more profit for WotC. 
 
Under this model, even if they lost 50% of their player base, so from 14 Million down to 7 million. They would still be making about $40million a month in subscription fees. In 3 months they would be making more then what D&D is currently making in a year. That works out to about $480 million a year. That would more then double WotC's profits in less then a year. And that is even after losing 50% of their players. 
 
And you know what, it would still be an amazing deal for people who played D&D. Subscription would give you access to every book, including all new books that would come out. All setting, all adventures, all monsters, all magic items, everything. The online character builder would allow players to build everything they want that was rule legal. Their VTT would be fantastic for at home and online play. You know they would have the budget to do that. And with all that extra money they could triple their output of new books and material, again all for "free" to subscribers. And they could connect players looking for games from around the world. You could play it on your PC, laptop, ipad/tablet or smartphone. And if you stopped playing D&D for a bit to try another system, you just stop paying for a few months, then re-subscribe when you want to play again. 
 
They would also sell this as being environmentally friendly. No physical books, means no cutting down tress for paper. No international shipping and delivery using gas and oil, no printing with harmful chemicals and glues and dyes. Plus it would save them tons of cash. No need for all those printing and international shipping expenses, especially in these days of supply chain disruption. No need for a whole department in the company that deals with publishing, printing, shipping, storage and delivery. All that money saved on wages. 
 
I'm sure something like this has been the dream of every game company in existence, but only recently has the technology reached the point where it is doable, and only D&D has reached the size and popularity where they could actually make it happen.  
 
The OLG 1.1 license is just the first step on the path to this. All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D. Looking at twitter at the height of #openD&D trending they was 20k tweets. You know a lot of those are the same people tweeting 2 or more times. so lets say 15k individuals. That is less then 0.001% of the people who play D&D regularly. Even if it was 1-2% that is still nothing. It is just all blown way out of size by the echo chamber that is social media. People on social media like to believe they speak for everyone, but they in fact speak for almost no one but themselves. Millions of D&D players around the world could careless about the OLG. They stick to playing their one game, refuse to play any other system, and are happy to do that. It is those people WotC is counting on. When they go all digital subscription base system, also long as they can keep around 50% of those players, then they will still be making more money then they ever dreamed of. 
 

Best numbers I could find is that 12-16 million people play D&D regularly. Wizards of the Coast apparently made something like $400million profit last year, but easily 75% of that was from Magic: The Gathering. So D&D maybe accounted for less then $100 Million. 
D&D suffers from the same issue all other RPG's suffer from. Once a group buys the original books, they don't need to spend any more money. Adventures, new sourcebooks, more classes or whatever, are nice, but not necessary. As HERO System fans we are more then aware of this. If you have the 2 main rule books for 6th ed, you never needed to buy another Hero System book again if you didn't want to (and were willing to do all the building yourself). 
 
I know a few D&D groups where only the DM had all 3 core books, and the players only had the Player's guide (and not even all of them had it). If we average each core book at $50, and a table of 5 players and 1 DM, that means WotC made about $350.00 from that group. And maybe nothing more, even years after that group started playing the game. That is a business model that only survives if you keep constantly drawing in new players, and even then every few years you need a "new edition" to get the older player to re-buy the core books. 
 
I am 100% certain the the WotC game plan is to change that business model. They want to go all digital, all subscription based. Charge DM's $10/month for a subscription and players $5/month. Now that group of 6 people I mentioned earlier are going to be spending $35/month to play D&D. So in 10 months they will have paid what the originally spent on the books, and everything after that is more profit for WotC. 
 
Under this model, even if they lost 50% of their player base, so from 14 Million down to 7 million. They would still be making about $40million a month in subscription fees. In 3 months they would be making more then what D&D is currently making in a year. That works out to about $480 million a year. That would more then double WotC's profits in less then a year. And that is even after losing 50% of their players. 
 
And you know what, it would still be an amazing deal for people who played D&D. Subscription would give you access to every book, including all new books that would come out. All setting, all adventures, all monsters, all magic items, everything. The online character builder would allow players to build everything they want that was rule legal. Their VTT would be fantastic for at home and online play. You know they would have the budget to do that. And with all that extra money they could triple their output of new books and material, again all for "free" to subscribers. And they could connect players looking for games from around the world. You could play it on your PC, laptop, ipad/tablet or smartphone. And if you stopped playing D&D for a bit to try another system, you just stop paying for a few months, then re-subscribe when you want to play again. 
 
They would also sell this as being environmentally friendly. No physical books, means no cutting down tress for paper. No international shipping and delivery using gas and oil, no printing with harmful chemicals and glues and dyes. Plus it would save them tons of cash. No need for all those printing and international shipping expenses, especially in these days of supply chain disruption. No need for a whole department in the company that deals with publishing, printing, shipping, storage and delivery. All that money saved on wages. 
 
I'm sure something like this has been the dream of every game company in existence, but only recently has the technology reached the point where it is doable, and only D&D has reached the size and popularity where they could actually make it happen.  
 
The OLG 1.1 license is just the first step on the path to this. All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D. Looking at twitter at the height of #openD&D trending they was 20k tweets. You know a lot of those are the same people tweeting 2 or more times. so lets say 15k individuals. That is less then 0.001% of the people who play D&D regularly. Even if it was 1-2% that is still nothing. It is just all blown way out of size by the echo chamber that is social media. People on social media like to believe they speak for everyone, but they in fact speak for almost no one but themselves. Millions of D&D players around the world could careless about the OLG. They stick to playing their one game, refuse to play any other system, and are happy to do that. It is those people WotC is counting on. When they go all digital subscription base system, also long as they can keep around 50% of those players, then they will still be making more money then they ever dreamed of. 
 

Have all your character's start with 8 in each main stat, rather then 10. Selling back those points gets them 14 extra character points to build their characters with.  This will provide more of a spread in their starting characteristics and allow them more points  to individualize their builds from each other. 
 

You've got to have a special Crossroads somewhere out there. Maybe one where there was an already natural "crossroads" based on the geography, then over time it became first made by animal trails, then human trails and pathways, and now dirt roads. 
 
This Crossroads is the special place of Lady Luck/Trickery. It symbolizes: the unknown future/destiny and paradoxally also choosing your own fate/direction in life, chance encounters, the road less traveled, adventure, the unknown, and so on. 

You've got to have a special Crossroads somewhere out there. Maybe one where there was an already natural "crossroads" based on the geography, then over time it became first made by animal trails, then human trails and pathways, and now dirt roads. 
 
This Crossroads is the special place of Lady Luck/Trickery. It symbolizes: the unknown future/destiny and paradoxally also choosing your own fate/direction in life, chance encounters, the road less traveled, adventure, the unknown, and so on. 

In  a system like HERO where potentially there is no "class" restrictions against any character wearing any armor or heavy armor, I think if balance is to be maintained with the players having access to heavy armor like Plate Mail then the GM does need to make the disadvantages to wearing it come into play. It can mean extra book keeping, which no one enjoys, but otherwise it can be over powerful. What we should be trying to do is find ways of making the book keeping part of of wearing the armor simpler but still realistic. 
 
Off the top of my head, some options:
 
-Having the armor being an issue to carry around and transport when not wearing it. Especially if the characters are walking and have no horses or carts. Carrying 55 pounds of oddly shaped metal on your back, along with all the normal travelling gear would be a major hassle. If the characters know they are going to need to hike 20 miles through a swamp, then up a mountainside, then they know that they shouldn't bring the plate mail along this adventure. If they are riding their horses 5 miles up an old trail to an abandoned keep, then sure, no problem, bring it along. 
-The time it takes to put on and the fact that you need at least one other person to help the character put it on. 
-When it is on, no first aid/normal medical aid can be provided. You can't quickly bandage up a stab wound to the chest if the character is still in plate mail. The armor has to be taken off first. So only magical healing is possible. 
-Stealth check penalties 
-Maybe some version of Long Term Endurance specifically for characters wearing heavy armor. Derived by from average of STR, CON & EGO (ego because lots of things could drive you crazy while wearing heavy plate armor that the character would have to mentally block out (can't scratch an itch, adjust their clothing underneath, the sweat running down their faces and backs, the heat, and so on...)) this version of LTE would maybe calculate how many hours (non-combat) the person could wear the armor for, and then how many turns in combat, before suffering penalties. Then they would need a rest before they could put it on again. Maybe a character with 18 in STR, CON and EGO, could wear full plate armor for 6 hours (non-combat) then 10 TURNS of combat for each "hour" left from when combat starts. After all those Turns of combat run out, or 6 hours pass, the character starts taking penalties that increase as time goes on, until they remove the armor and spend X amount of time not wearing it before putting it on again. 
 
 

Hey Herophiles! On the evening of September 27 I'm appearing on Marc Tassin's awesome Out Of Character podcast! Please come give us a listen to hear us talk about fiction, gaming, and all sorts of related topics!
 
 

Yeah, to me that sounds like someone just having a higher base OCV then another character. 
 
Maybe have Improvised Weapons come with a -2 OCV to use, then make, like Steriaca suggested, a WF: Improvised Weapon (for 1pt) that negates the -2 OCV for using an Improvised Weapon. 
 
Characters who have the WF have an easier time using improvised weapons then characters who don't, but someone with a really high OCV and no WF, will still be better then someone with a low OCV and the WF when using Improvised Weapons, which is how it should be. 

I'd love for there to e a Fantasy Hero version!