Duke Bushido

Your half right: The characters you're studying were written by a very clever guy. Not a grognard, though. He's one of us who grew up with several versions of the rules over the years, which makes picking up the newer versions much easier: not only do you understand what the terms are, you _intuitively_ understand it from years of having done it yourself; all you really need to look for is what's changed. What you're asking about in regard to those sheets: the various ways that advantages and limitations interact-- a lot of that has to be intuited from what the individual elements do. There's less and less intuition with each edition, as the rules become more and more expansive, telling you what x does when conjoined to y, etc. The short version, though, is this: you will learn it. Like most anything else, it takes time and practice. As others have mentioned, knowing the edition you're trying to use would really make it easier to give suggestions. If you're using either version of 5e, then pick up a copy of HERO System Sidekick: it's essentially it's an abridged version of the rules without too terribly much stuff to add to confusion: it's almost nothing but the absolute basics of the rules. "Sidekick" for 6e was called "HERO System Basic Rulebook." Essentially, it's Sidekick. Champions Complete is pretty much this book and some flavor. Either one of these books would serve as excellent primers for 6e. I like Basic myself, as it weighs in at only a hundred pages. Either way, good luck!

Ha! When you put it that way, it rather makes sense, doesn't it? I'm _not_ claiming this is "the rules" or even remotely officially-endorsed. Just want to put that right up front. The way I have always looked at is from the point of view of a completely unbuilt character: the character sheet itself. If I pick up a blank character sheet, with just the default Tens, etc-- put at name on it and declare it to be an NPC, it is an absolutely valid (if particularly unexceptional) character. He has all the "normal person" abilities for someone with his everything-is-or-isn't-on-the-character-sheet. Make sense so far? I want to deviate from this. I want to be stronger: I buy STR. I want to run faster: I buy Running. Any ability that the base character does _not_ have, but I want _my_ character to have-- that ability I have to pay for. I want to be seven feet tall. I buy nothing: I declare I am seven feet tall. I want to be able to _grow_ to seven or nine or whatever feet tall, I buy Growth. Why? Because Growth has other stuff besides just being tall. In game terms, being tall adds _nothing_ to the base character. The base character has two limbs with which he can perform fine manipulations of objects. The centaur does, too. He doesn't have to pay for this. He can run faster than the base character, so he has to pay for that. However, his additional legs (and second heart, and third and fourth lung, and extra kidneys, bladder, and whatever other extras you get when you jam a man hip-deep into a horse's neck) don't provide him any leg-specific benefit, so there's no need to pay for those, either. No need to buy legs that don't really add anything. Don't need to buy arms that don't really add anything. No need to pay for a tail that's mostly just a stump with long hair, right? Now suppose you _do_ want the extra legs to add something: you declare that your centaur is harder to knock over because of his four-legged stance. You don't buy extra limbs. You buy Extra DEX: only for --- however you want to do it. Or maybe buy some "knockdown resistance" or something along those lines. However, anyone can buy this build, with or without extra limbs, so your centaur doesn't really need the limbs to make that happen, either. I'm going to stop. I'm pretty sure I'm making this harder than it needs to be. Duke

Okay guys; I've had a few minutes to look over things last night and currently. Go ahead and report instances of noise from the original import. Any black speckles, etc-- these are legitimate noise. And grey or pale speckles or "fuzz" that's only visible at magnification-- that's compression issues. I'm working on dealing with that.

Just got in a few minutes ago-- was looking to see which book had the table of contents listed as Fantasy Hero. If it was a 5e book (and I swear it was, but hey-- I turned 59 Wednesday, so who knows?), it was one I had borrowed, as it's not one of the four I actually own. Hmmm.... Now I'm wondering.... Though my favorite mismatch is from 4e: the adventure supplement Invaders from Below features the copyright blurb from Day of the Destroyer.

Not just back in the day. There is a 5e book- I think it's The UNTIL Super Powers Database (though it might be one of the Ultimate books) where the table of contents reads "Fantasy Hero Table of Contents". Though the most irritating screw up in typography was for the 3e revamp of Enemies, which gives it a copyright date of 1982 and lists itself as a first edition second printing or some such thing as that. It's irritating because book vendors are not HERO gamers (generally) and when you're hunting a first edition enemies book, you're going to buy a crap ton of that third edition book before you get there.....

I never built them with extra limbs, either. I tend to reserve that for those cases where the character gains something specifically from the limbs: The running is because he's half horse, not because he has four legs. Knock back resistance is because he's massive, not because of the legs, etc. I tend to use a distinctive feature: half horse / centaur and a phys lum: if horses don't fit, he doesn't either type build for them. Now those alien centaur-like critters who can use the forelegs as manipulating appendages (even if only clumsily so)? They buy extra limbs. That help any?

Reasonable, as always. Thank you, Hugh!

Already done, Sir; And I thank you for taking a helpful interest.

Well he's got GTFO vs WTF. And that ain't nothin'.

If you are still entertaining questions, may I ask-- seriously; I'm not really "up" on Harry Potter-- why you think that is? To clarify: I would like to know what reasons you think might lead to the spell not being used as a routine, go-to option of the bad guys. Knowing that might help get a build that more closely does what you want it to do or one that feels more like what you're trying for. Duke

Gotcha. Thanks.

Agreed, Scott; generally I work straight from PSDs. However, some of the art repair was above my skill level. I have a brother who is an artist and perfectly capable of doing-- likely in a few days-- what has taken me months to do (but I'm really enjoying it, so hey! ). I have no idea why, but the pages he fixed for me he returned as jpegs-- the most corruptible of all formats. Ugh.

How do you handle Held Actions, or do you allow them?

Gentlemen: Hold up a bit on the noise complaints. I am going back to the pre-pdf files when I make the corrections, and a lot of what we're finding in the PDF isn't there in the originals. I suspect we're up against a compression-induced problem. I doubly-suspect this, as this problem seems worse on those pages that were jpeg format as opposed to png or psd format. I may have to regroup here. Give me a a bit to work on it. Thanks. Duke

Oh, no; I'm sorry: I wasn't trying to imply that it was buried. I haven't had a lot of time to just browse the board the last three or four weeks, so I don't see all the threads. The title of this one implied tweaking the published stuff. As I don't use the published stuff, I didn't think I had anything to offer so I didn't read it. The page count got high enough that I opted to skim it last night, curious about what sort of discussion might be going on to weigh so many pages. As I was skimming, I might have missed that had it not been quoted a couple of times. That's all. Duke

Wow. With only a couple of small exceptions ( _none_ of the published characters and settings exist in my games; supers first appeared the late 1800s, the first one being Jack Brass, and others following in the early 1900s, DCs capped at 10 for starting out) and the difference in point distribution owing to different editions of the game, this is almost dead-on how all my supers campaigns start out. Build small characters and grow them. I can't help but like what you've done. If the two folks above hadn't quoted it, I'd have missed it entirely.

You, Sir, are a hero to all mankind. Thank you. and it gave me my now-favorite racial slur: "Colonizer."

Beautifulharmony Multimedia (sic) does not maintain a website. They _do_ maintain a Facebook page, and there may be some information there. I can't tell you, because you have to have a Facebook page to get in and look around, and I don't have nor want one. Good luck! Duke

I agree with Hugh. If it were me, I'd have to find out what my DNPC was investigating and why, and to start quietly checking her alibis, too....

P012, c2, bottom of page: noise under margin line, just right of center of c2 p026, c2, second paragraph under the heading "Role Playing." First line: the italicized "Western Hero" is chunked up with Noise. Same paragraph, last line: blob of noise over the word "character." P027, c2, paragraph 8: noise at end of line "upstanding officer of the law, etc. Define this character when you" Noise just right and above "you". Two lines later: exaggerate your character's quirks. After all, they're what [NOISE] make" Additional noise surrounding the work "make." P028, c2, bottom: Noise around lower margin marker line P029,c1, first line under header "Optional Combat Sequence": Last word "entirety" is filled with noise. Directly under that line, after closing parenthesis, "The" isn't noisy, but is blurred.

Peace, Bolo, on you and your family; on your friends, and all those who knew him. I sympathize for your loss.

https://giphy.com/gifs/wr1X9zZWLzxxC/html5

My apologies, Christopher: I did not get it as a Futurama reference; I'm much more familiar with "Earthican" from Futurama. The past few days, I have been helping my brother do some research (in exchange for some art restoration to my scan projects) online, (notice I haven't been here much lately? ) and have been to numerous "comments" sections that feature the done-to-death "American's be so ignant!" comments..... One of the high notes of this particular board has been the focus on constructive exchange. Having decided to give an hour to myself and log in here for some relaxation, that comment-- as noted, I missed it as a reference-- was something of an icepick through the peephole. I took it incorrectly (having been primed that way by a few days of other experiences) and I shouldn't have. My sincerest apology to you, SIr. Duke

All right: Round 2! For those still watching, the first round of proofreading has resulted in-- as you've seen-- a long list of corrections to make. Those have been made, a new PDF has been composed and distributed. We're getting closer and closer.