lou_tennant

Don't get me wrong, I would love to do it Tasha's way, but I always run out of points - hence crippling the character, then chucking it away in favour of something very simple.

There are plenty of munchkins around that would happy to help you out with fitting your concept to a budget.  We like challenges.

Well, in response to the above 'posts' I have started a new thread to fit a concept to the points, have a look; http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/88297-go-on-make-my-gladiator/.

In response to a post by Hyperman (http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/76564-my-character-building-technique-how-to-build-hero-system-characters/?p=2333720) on Tasha's topic regarding character building techniques, I wish to throw down the gauntlet.

Hyperman said: 

SO... I challenge you. I personally have been building HERO characters for more than 25 years, but I would be interested how you make the concept fit the points.

A few caveats to consider:

• HERO 5er, Fantasy Hero in the Turakian Age setting
• 75+75pts
• Standard Everyman FH package deal
• Cultural package (allow 5 points) - can provide specifics
• Gladiator package deal, and ought to have (in my opinion) most/all of the MA moves given his skill level - can provide specifics
• I have highlighted elements in the background that I think have to be included in the build.
• His physique should be strong, tough and very efficient.

The background/concept.

Raegan the Bastard

Illegitimately born to a servant/slave women (unknown to Raegan, his father was the son of the Noble to whom his mother served) he was weaned and cared for until he was 2 years old. By then the noble could see that the baby was healthy and, whilst he wasn't mean, he knew he could not continue to support a Mother and baby in return for the Mother's duties. So he spoke to a noble he knew that owned a stable of Gladiators. Then he gave Raegan's mother the choice; leave his employ with the baby, or give up the baby to become a gladiator. It would at least give the boy a chance, probably better than he would have otherwise. What little he made from the sale, he would consider them even with regards his leniency and support of this bastard child.

So started Raegan's education & training. For the most part he was always called 'The Bastard' or similar; "Fetch the Bastard", "Where's the Bastard?" and "You little Bastard" where phrases he grew up with.

He had his first proper bout when he was 7, using wooden weapons. By the time he was 12 he was on the main 'circuit' - having had many successes and, whilst his body had yet to properly develop, his technique and concentration were beyond his years.

The next few years saw his techniques develop and gradually placed him firmly in the top few of the circuit. His owner was ready to take him farther a field and did so. He was a good match for many that he faced, and rather than just killing his opponents he respected them, giving them a chance to stay down once he was in a position to do so. During his bouts he was extremely focussed and his senses became more acute to possible threats, this seem to give him an appearance of Luck as he seemed to avoid all sorts of threats at the last minute perhaps with nothing more than a scratch.

Wounds (even serious ones) were treated by the various magical healers that stable owners and/or arena’s retained. This would mean that even beaten opponents with near-fatal injuries could be ready for the arena without too much of a delay. After a time Raegan (and his owner) discovered that his body seem to take on a portion of this healing, as such his body could heal moderate injuries in a matter of hours. Whilst this did not make him overtly confident (he couldn't be the only one) it did remove any lingering fear he had.

He became respected by the crowds and his opponents, but this success also meant less opportunities for his owner to make good money from his bouts. His fights featured more and more opponents and he quickly developed his style to allow him to move from one opponent to another with a calculating efficiency.

His owner looked at options, to make him a trainer, to setup more and more ridiculous fights (but that would cost a lot), or possibly sell him.  A shame really, Raegan’s success had become his downfall.

Before this could happen a wizard [the patron to be] from across the sea came to speak to Raegan’s master. He had seen him in action and wanted to know if he was for sale.  The wizard had need of a bodyguard and general all-round capable individual to do things for him. What luck, what a coincidence, Raegan could be sold without any need to pay the extortionate fees on the slave market and he could use the monies, this would not be IOU’s, nor credit against local services or other such bartering, this would be real money. He accepted, and Raegan’s new employer took him with him.

So begins a new chapter in Raegan’s life.  What he didn’t know was a couple of loyal followers had seen him leave and they decided to follow. On their arrival in [Aarn] they met with the Wizard to find out what was happening to Raegan, and was it anything that they could help with?

He told them that Raegan was not a free man, he would be earning his keep – that said, he would consider their help if they wished to offer it – he might even pay them something.

The hangers-on (25+25pt followers)

• An apprentice wizard who master & sponsor died before he completed his schooling, without the funds to stay he hasn’t been able to continue his training. His love of the arena and awe for fighters/gladiators/soldiers etc led him to study Aeromancy & Wizardy as he might be able to ‘rub-shoulders’ with some of these legends.

• A female fighter from over-the-seas that has been studying gladiators as they seem to be a purer form of combat master than other fighting types. She also has a thing for Raegan, his drive and focus are legendary.

My hurried build has him at 220 points at present (80 points of which are disadvantages).

Some nice characters there, I like the images as well.

Also makes me wonder whether I ought to be increasing the points level in my 5e Supers.

Yeah, I tend to spend time teaching the Noobies how to quickly add a handful of d6's and the shortcut for counting normal attack body. (subtract number of ones from 6's If there are more 6's then add the number to the number of dice thrown, otherwise subtract from number of dice thrown)

Yep, we use a simple '1 up' or '1 down' style for working out body on normal attacks.

@Tasha, at DC8 what is your opinion of 'enough points'? I also assume we are talking Champions rather than a Fantasy Hero or Star Hero type game.

We have been testing a version of this in Fantasy Hero. Using D6 rolled openly by the GM.

We have SPD 2-4, so each 'phase' a D6 is rolled if your SPD is equal or greater than you get to act, duplicate numbers are re-rolled. You then have a post-turn recovery.

I had a 4th Supers campaign that I am in the process of starting a new 'Season' with a sort of 'previously on Supers...' type of time lapse.

For this I have moved everything to 5th and everything new will be in 5th.

1-on-1 gaming can be fine but it depends largely on the amount of combat involved.

A starting HERO character can survive a lot more going solo than a similar starting character in D&D, Bushido, BRPS or other systems. If it is largely investigative/non-combat then the system is almost irrelevant. 

That sounds very familiar. I can come up with great backgrounds, concepts, powers, etc - but they never fit the points and when I trim them down I am never happy with them.

 

Over time though you consider the background stuff then build things within the points and crowbar the background to fit.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to do it Tasha's way, but I always run out of points - hence crippling the character, then chucking it away in favour of something very simple.

Tasha's character building process is much nicer than mine.  Mine goes something like:

 

1. Think of really cool character concept/name/costume/power combo

 

2. Invent a great origin story and background

 

3. Develop character personality and... character... from background and concept

 

4. Try to build character within point limitations

 

5. Fail miserably

 

6. Cripple concept to fit in points

 

7. Throw out origin story and background

 

8. Fill out the disads with enough psych lims to make character a basket case who belongs in an institution

 

9. Crumple up character sheet and make another brick instead

 

 

...only slightly exaggerated. 

That sounds very familiar. I can come up with great backgrounds, concepts, powers, etc - but they never fit the points and when I trim them down I am never happy with them.

Over time though you consider the background stuff then build things within the points and crowbar the background to fit.

A small two penneth (from England) to add to some of this.

I would have to agree and disagree with comments posted so far, and will not get into large amounts of discussion on what, for the most part, is personal preference and application of the HERO ruleset.

However, from my own experiences starting with 3rd (JInc, DI, FH & Champions) thru to 5th, the group of players I have continued to game with regularly over this time all agree on three points about HERO. There is plenty we don't agree on and many things we have each (those that have GM'ed) house-ruled and/or used optional rules for.

We agree that:

1. Combat in HERO takes a lot longer (generally we agree _too_ long) than other systems. This is across all of the genres, though some are worse than others.
2. The greatest strength of HERO is that you can build anything, and we have built a lot over the years.
3. The greatest weakness of HERO is that you can build anything, and players do.

All 3 of these _can_ make running/playing HERO hard-work. Once you accept that it will take more effort than picking up another system such as D&D PHB and DMG and rolling some dice, you can be rewarded with something special, and potentially completely unique.

In terms of the time taken to run a combat there are ways to help with this - Hero Combat Manager (I have had a little look, but have heard good things) could be one thing. Our group has also toy'ed with a couple of house-rules to simplify a few areas (the SPD chart, for example) and therefore speed things up a little.

Thanks for the support guys, I was sure I wasn't the only one out here interested in this kind of thing.

A 'support' pack of extras like the artwork, maps, etc. for each product would make sense - after all someone has gone to all the effort to create them and often only a small amount is seen/used.

I have posted an update here: http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/88014-turakian-age-digital-maps/ regarding the maps Keith Curtis did for the TA book.

The best that's legally available, from the "Free Stuff" section of this website, are JPG copies of the whole-world map from the TA book, in color or b&w, with text or without, in various sizes. You can download them from this webpage: http://www.herogames.com/freeStuff.htm?category=Maps

 

Frequent Hero Games cartographer Keith Curtis has some of his work from The Turakian Age and other sources among the samples hosted on his personal website, although none of the regional maps from TA. FWIW his samples are here: http://kacurtis.com/Map_Samples/

 

Your best available option may be to print out the map pages from your PDF copy of TA. Sorry I can't be of more help.

I have been in touch with Keith Curtis as suggested. He has been very helpful, but he will not release all of the other maps he has until HERO gives him the okay. I suggested to him that I thought it would be great if they were available to those that had purchased the PDF/book - or even just generally for download.

Portions of his recent email to me :

"... I can't release anything without some official word from someone like Jason Walters, who I believe is now in control of the IP. I just don't have the rights to release files. ...

 

... I will send an enquiry to Jason and see what he says. ..."

 

So, if you are reading this Jason, please can you get in touch with Keith and allow him to send things on, and/or get things added to the downloads section.

Cheers

Unfortunately I don't believe I ever created any.

That is a shame, there are details in the book but it doesn't quite fill in some of the blanks needed to create some of the other calendars. Perhaps I will have a go and send some over to see what you think.

There is quite a bit of extra content that the book uses or references that isn't available and could be. See my thread here: http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/88014-turakian-age-digital-maps/ and my comments on here : http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/60728-good-maps-of-aarn/

Are there calendar's available for other cultures/nations - other than Westerlands.

Is this still available anywhere?

Guys, any chance of posting the excel worksheet so I can get a copy, please.

Did this get any further?

Did this go anywhere?

Re: How do GMs out there handle late arrivals

Another possibility, especially if a player is new to the game as well as the gaming group, is to award him catchup xp. He starts off at 75+75 (in your example) then gets a much larger award every session till he gets "caught up" so to speak. This way he can get a feel for the game, and the group, and find a way to spend his points where they will fit better. This also can help prevent frequent rewrites of a new character as he finds out he doesn't fit.

 

Of course in that situation I would check with both the existing players and the new guy and try to find a diplomatic solution that makes everyone happy. New faces in an established campaign can be tricky unless you have the best of players. Some players could be just as resentful of the newbie getting all the xp that they have been working at getting for years. Doing everything you can to ensure a smooth integration for the new guy is just good GM'ing.

I have used this in the past for 'blocked' points as well (a house-rule that we have used since the 1980's), I allow an 'over-spend' of up to 5 points of disadvantages in order to allow players to get the right level of disadvantages - they have to really justify it though. These points become available on a 2 to 1 ratio with EPs. Every 2 EPs unlocks 1 blocked.

Re: How do GMs out there handle late arrivals

I have the new player start out a bit behind the others, but within shouting distance so he won't be a liability. In the above example, vets with 75+75+100xp would be joined by an experienced 75+75+50-75 'xp' character.

 

Of course, I'd also insist the new character be created at 75+75, and then add those 50-75 points to that base in similar proportions to the xp spending of the vets. They don't get to make a 150+75 character.

I'd agree with that - I certainly control the spending of the EPs - I might even put some basic 'story' to each set of EPs.

Re: Random elements in Character Construction

HERO is a very "toolkit" oriented system so you can technically do anything you want in the system, but I would not encourage anything like that. What you are basically doing is allowing a random die roll to determine how the character will develop. If a player wants to play a brick, but the dice say he has to pay twice as much for his strength than anyone else he is not going to be very happy. Same thing goes for one who wants to play a scientist, etc.

 

There are players that would be perfectly fine with letting a random factor determine how they build their characters (The grandfather of all RPG's started out that way after all) but I would highly recommend you check with your players before trying to introduce something like this into your campaign.

 

I would also state that if you are playing a superhero style game then things like how you are born really don't matter much. Radiation accidents, mystic or high tech items, super serums, etc all easily trump genetics in the source material.

Thanks for the reply.

I completely understand what you are saying, I am a veteran of a lot of different systems.

I certainly would not 'introduce' it to a current campaign, but design a campaign that had this as part of the house-rules for that particular game.

It would be a a game based in a more mundane world - possible FH, possibly a Sci-fi-ish modern day. I would never do it in a Champions game.

I don't mean players turning up late for a session - only one way to deal with that if it is a regular thing.

I mean characters arriving late in a campaign. HERO is based on points, 75+75 for instance. So the first group go out and gradually over the years they are whittled-down and only a couple remain, these veterans take on new guys and keep going... the story continues.

Along comes the day that the veterans can be sitting there on 75+75 +100 Eps (a lot of trips - I have campaigns going back to the 1980's) and a new player or two turns up and gets 75+75 to play with, then thinks... hang-on what about the 100 point difference?

In the real world this happens frequently, but for some reason (competitive nature perhaps) players can't stand to have less than others. If it is only a couple of trips 6-12 points it isn't as noticeable.

Just wondered what other do - if they have this problem at all.