Duke Bushido

Interesting. I think that is the first time I have heard that sentiment. Typically, I hear the exact opposite: that doing,roughly the same damge ober and over feels too meta- like "okay, he hits you; deduct Standard Pistol Damage from your sheet..." Kind of thing. He hits you six times; deduct six instances of Standard Pistol Damage from,your sheet-- rhis is actually worse in HERO than most systems, as a list of one hundred real-world guns will do one of three or four damage values, eeally making it feel like "Standard Pistol Damage" ans "standard rifle damage" is a valid thing. At any rate, the odds of hitting someone six times and effecting them the exact same way each time are pretty slim. At some point you are going to hit a bone, or a nerve plexus, or puncture a lung, or do something- well, not unexpected, per se, but distinctly more (or less) significant than Standard Weapon 4 Damage. Now overall, it doesn2t matter. Some groups, knowingly or otherwise, prefer combats of methodic, predictable attrition; we have hundreds of campaign guidelines theeads over the years demonstrating that. If they are having a good time that way, great! Go for it, because you are doing ir right: you are having fun. That is the single reason that games- games of any kind- exist, after all. Other people prefer that bit of random- that swing up or down that could indicate a glancing blow that tears open a small flesh wound, and that spectacular shot thar pierces the liver. The find it less controlled, more chaotic, and more satisfying for whatever reason. As above, if they are having a good time, they are doing it right. The mechanic of exploding dice is refilling and adding any die that has maxed. That's it. For HERO, with it's count-damage-twice system, I would suggest adding a die instead of re-rollling a die, just to have all the data on hand for the final damage count. The rest of it- selecting damage dice, alterinf the odds of explosion, various gateways or requirements before exploding, limits on the number of dice or number of times a sie may explode- someone above suggested not letting the dice explode above what is possible on an all-sixes damage roll-- Those are controls; not necessarily mechanics. I will be honest, the only control I have ever used was that exploding dice could not increase the initial value of the roll more than 50 percent, sometimes 100 percent, but- and again, I dont do it very often, so I cant say this is normal, but I have never had it do either. As someone else noted, the larger the pool of dice, the less spectacular the results are: mathematically-speaking, every six has a one that it pairs with, and the extra die is going to average to 3.5, so you can expect every six to convert a 1 into a 4.5. Mathematically, there should be a roughly equal number of each number, so you still have twos, threes, fours, and fives in there as well, which remain unaffected. Looked at another way, very roughly: if 1/6 of your rolls are 6, then 2/6 of your rolls are 4(ish), and the rest are 2, 3, and 5. The average doesn't change much, particularly in a larger pool with so many other dice to average against. It can be spectacular, though, in a small pool. Witness the d4 story I opened this discussion with. Oh, yeah! I had forgotten about that! Though as a player, sixes felt extra good in Shadowrun, because they were _guaranteed_ to become at least a 7. We felt,like we were gettinf away with something....

Honestly, I always thoight that had more to do with setting of traps than anything else: The GM knows that the door is booby trapped at the latch handle, the peep hole, and the locking bar pivots. If the thief proclaims "I use a small mallet and a drift to remove the hinge pins," then he will not encounter the booby traps. Similarly, suppose there are pit traps on the left and right of a chest, and the thief has failed to detect them. If he approaches directly from the front of the chest, he is still safe. Of he remembers the acid spray trap in the last chest, however, and devides it is safer to siddle up edgewise, hw is going for a ride in the spikey chair fifteen feet below. Things like that are the reason I never batted an eye at "describe how you are doing it." It never struck me as "prove you know how tumblers or double-blind levers work" so much as "where are you standing (and are you crouching) and what bits do you touch? Which way are you looking? What are you prepared for?? That kind of thing there. Expecting a twelve year old kid to describe the inner workings of a twist-push-twist-pull-countertwist wood-and-iron lock is preposterous, and any GM demanding that has.... Problems...

How about a nice blend of Conan, Dune, and John Carter's Barsoom? Just- just _think_ of the lawsuits we could have with such a glorious setting!

My own "critical hit" system (when I use it) is that you must succeed (or fail) by 9. It makes a sort of sense to me that a person of average skill (11 or less) is not going to critically fail a routine task (modifier +/- 0 ), nor is he likely to blow anyone away with a spectacular success at a routine task: he is professionally competent at this level; no more, and no less. An easy task he might accomplish with spextacular results; a difficult task he might flub horribly, but foe the most part, he is comoetent at what he does. I used to do plus or minus 8, bases on the idea of 3 being 8 less than 11, but then the whole "hundreds of millions of competent people who never fail and never shine" reality hit me. They can still do either with the 9, but not on "routine" tasks. You can be impressive (succeed By 8 ) or abysmal (fail by 7), but not,"critical") without at least some small boost- excellent facilities, good assistance, easier-than-normal task, etc. Still, I tend to think about exploding dice now and again, and every once in a while, I play with them. I am much happier with the notion of Nat 20? Roll another one to get it crit. Seems like this would make a crit only about half as likely as it is in Champions, as opposed to ten times as likely.

Nope; this is not apropos of anything; it has nothing to do with anything we arw currently discussing (as far as I know: I tend to avoid the political thread and the news thread as if they contained a horribly mixture of syphilis and leprosy, so feel free to do le check me) I have heard so many opinions on exploding dice over the years-- even before Savage Worlds. I cant remember which ones, but it is little more than a board or smdice game mechanic applied to RPGs- well, at least one as part of the core rules; others as house rules. I have even played Exploding Dice in DnD- had a DM that, if you rolled a damage die at max, then you rolled it again and added them together. Id ir maxed again- well, you kept adding until it didn't max out. You'd still add it, but you didnt get another roll. I have a very fond memory of watching a young GI at the Rec Center back in the 80s..., first level magic user scoring twenty-two points off a magic missile. It was hilarious, and _amazing_. I know that this board is filled mostly with gaming grognarss and gurus from way back- I mean, it's not like HERO is pulling in new blood in number higher than ones or twos, and we are dying off faster than that. Most of what I hear about exploding dice-- outside of Savage Worlds-- is how awful it is because of how unpredictable it makes things. I have no intention- or interest- in changing your minds. Why should I? I dont use it much myself. I can honestly tell you, though, that this is because most of my games are in one way or another built on Champions (this is going to be one of those times were I avoid some tedious touchscreen work by dropping any pretense that I call it "HERO System" anywhere but this board), and while it took some time, I came to realize that typically, long-term Champions players _don't like_ unpredictability and have already decided how much damage they want to inflict and buy- after checking the campaign standards for Defenses- damage-dealing abilities custom Taylor's to get the some predetermined-as-acceptable amount (more or less) of damage inflicted by purchasing X dice, which will average roll Y, subtracting Z typical defenses means damage D is typically near N applies to the character, with a quick look at campaign guideines demontrating that I should drop a brick in 8 Phases rounds, a speedster in 6, a martial Arts "normal guy" in 4 phases, and an Energy blaster in 5. We tell newbies ans complainers that Champions isnt math heavy then spend forty years creating a perfect "character-building equation" to formulaicly resolve the entire game, satisfied that the bell curve of 36d and the average 3.5 per D6 damage assures of a range of damage that will typically fluctuate only some small number. We tell them that it is not "math heavy" then settle in for a six-hour session of light Algebra disguised as random chance, and are smug that our experience and skill means "standard Effects" is beneath us, because we have already learned how to program it in suring character generation. Why dont we just have tick boxes? Bricks get 8 ticks, etc. Why not just take Standard Effects and write down the actual number of damage that you want your power to inflict? It would suggest more complexity than just ticking off the boxes, I think. There wouldn't be, but it would be suggested. But now that no one (again: I _think_ ) is talking about exploding dice, let's talk about something else entirely. Let's talk about critical hits. DnD famously has this (or did; I dont care any more): roll a natural 20 and you have scored a critical hit! The single most common house rule in Champions: roll a natural 3, and you have achieved a critical hit! At least the Champions version is slightly more controlled- more predictable: instead of having our metixulius formulae upset one time in 20, we only suffer this indignity one timw in two-hundred and sixteen: less than one-half of one percent of the attack rolls made during a typical session. Our simple game of subtraction flows more regularly, and more smoothly. Now let's talk about another different thing: Joe the Plumber. You all know Joe! He is that guy who absolutely _bombed_ on Jeopardy, but managed to get on the show because the screening test was kind of heavy with Star Trek questions. Joe the Plumber plumbs, and he plumbs well. Joe knows his way around copper (Type L _and_ Type M, as well as type K!) In hard and soft. He is aces at both galvanized and malleable, and unbeatable at at cast iron, PVC, even the old soil pipe. He spent a lot of time and effort learning CPVC when it popped up, and misses the old polybutelyne because the PEX that replaced it is a serious pain in the butt to work with. He can join and mix and match any kind of supply lines, because he caught on instantly that once you adapt to IPS threads, you can go anywhere. He learned shark bites and pro bites and flow bites and jokes about overbites. When it comes to plumbing, no one is better, because he has spent his whole life studting and working toward and eventually in this field. Now forget Joe. Let's look at Hiro, the greatest swordsman who ever lived. Sold into service of the shotgun at age 4, Hiro has spent every waking moment with a swird in hand, practice, practice, practice, non-stop. Anyway, the short version of this is that Joe has to unclog a line at the shogun's place, and to ensure that he doesn't wander off, Hiro esxorts him to the nearest clean out. Well, ol' Joe gets it rodded out pretty quick- he is the best, after all, and starts rewinding his drain sugar, anxious to be fone from this strange holdover from a bygone era, but in his haste, he loses control of the cable, which whios its way out of the clean out, and absolutely _flings_ efluvium (and a bit of paper) all over Hiro. The insult is unforgivable, and Hiro reaches for his sword. Joe is going to die. Oh! No! The shogun tells Hiro rhis is a great opportunity to get some live practice in. Agreeing, Hiro looks about for a weapon to give Joe. Eventually, in the junk drawer in the kitchen, he finds an off-brand Leathermab Multiform and hands it to Joe. "There!" He declares. "We are know evenly matched!" Without further comment, he draws his sword..... Joe got a little lucky, because the author is using a D20, meaning that Joe has a one-in-twenty chance of actuallly hitting Hiro! Better still, they get the same number of turns! Jies odds went from "you dumb bastard" to "that poor, poor man..." The author feels that it makes absolutely no sense that Joe should be able to do that Well against Hiro, and puts down the d20. He picks up 3d6. Joe feels, impossibly, even more sick. Now he is only going to touch Hiro once every 256 attempts. Worse yet, Joe has a SPD2, while Hiro has trained his whole life foe a Ninja-like SPD 4, which means that Hiro gets two tuens to every one of Joe's! Joe contemplates reconfiguring the Leathermab into needle-noses pliers, pushing them up his nose, and stabbing himself in the brain just to end it all right now... The author picks up the dice, and he tries to reassure Joe that it is okay! He only has to hit once to win. See, Hiro will probably hit him three or four times bedire Joe can even act, but that's okay! Because if Joe hits him just once, Hiro will fall! How can that be?! Joe screams; that makes no science! I am not even certain I am holding this thing right! Well, Joe, you need to roll a 3 to hit. That is the only chance you have to hit him. I get that, and I kinda think it sucks! But Joe... That is _also_ the critical hit number.... I don't follow. You two are so unevenly matched- you are so hopelessly outclassed- that the only choices you have are to miss completely, or decapitate him in one shot. What?! Don't you see? If you hit, it is also the CH number. Every single hit you land is going to be a critical hit! But that's still pretty poor odds for me. I wont argue with the fundamental wrongness of it- for what I assume are obvious reasons- but is there no better way? I mean, that's not even an official rule in Champions! Okay, _fine_, the author sighs, and picks up the d20 "Sucker!" thinks Joe. "Now I have a dive percent chance of hitting him!" And every shot you land is going to automatically be a crit! Cheers the author, reminding Joe that his thoughts were being written for him.... This has _always_ been my problem with any game that makws "best possible attack roll is a critical." That, and the idea that a critical is usually a set reward: Insta-kill, double-damage, etc. Now, i understand that this level of predictability is appealing- or at least comforting- to today's HERO player, but it's.... Well, I want to say that it is a little odd, especially if the,only way you can hit someone at all results in a crit every time you do it, but the predictability of the odds and the repetitious payout are a bit fun-robbing. That is the advantage of exploding dice. It can happen for anyone, it can happen at any time- it isn't dependant on a miraculous Hail Mary attack roll, meaning that if you need a 3 or a 20 or a 12 to hit, it doesnr automatically trigger a critical hit. It pops up here and there, adding a tiny bit extra (a chunk in the defenses) here, then again later (an extra-powerful blow), and once in a blue moon, a significant increase to the results (a critical blow!). It shakes things up, but on average, not by a lot-- just enough to make everyone potentially dangerous, no matter how many times you ran through the character creation equation, or how many blows it _should_ take to fell a character of a specific type. Now to be fair, I don't use them a lot, ans when I do, I usually cap it (no die can explode more than twice), and if it _does- come for a third re-roll, I usually give something different: half endurance for the attack, or some such. For what it is worth, I dont usually,charge END on the "extra' dice, either: it is qssumes to be rhe exact same attack, just exceptionally well-places, or maybe stimulating the target's sword allergy or something. Why do I cap them? Because I believe if somethinf is available to the players, it should be for the villains as well, and I am,well-known for rolling an inordinate number of sixes. (Alas, this applies to attack rolls and skill chexks as well)... Anyway, while it was not a current topic or pushing toward an argument, I just wanted to take,a few minutes to remind dolks od the upside of exploding dice, and their value as an alternative to 'critical hits.'

Sorry, Hoss: I already forgot to shut up twice.

If I can find it again, I will try to link you to it- the last break I stumbled across a web comic where some,buxom lizard woman thief was using her curves to lure men into the alley where she robbed them. Then another lizard woman (equally buxom) come along, and they stare at each other for a panel, then one asks "so what's in yours?" "Snacks!" As she pulls out a handful of candies and breads. "Me, too!" As the other one pulls out a turkey leg. _that_, I can get behind.!

I particularly like the buxom lizard and dragon people. I mean, I don't, just like I dont like reed-thin bricks "bwcause they are girls," but as a source of amusement and reason to avoid playing, it's pretty high up there.

I am reading that as Conan on Dune, and there is nothing there that I don't love! Thanks!

Well, you could change the book titles slightly: The Atlantean Continent... The Valdoran Continent..... The Tuala Morn Continent.... And so on and so forth. Works just as well as DnD having a five hundred inter-fertile sentient races and seven thousand character classes for adventurers, I think. Maybe even better.

Dude, what the-?! A dungeon dull of redirected NPCs?! Honest Dedrick's Used Adventurers?! This is.... Man, it's just creepy....

Hey, Chris: how did your Star Wars go? I am only asking becayse I mentioned you were doing that to the youth group today. The response? "You can play Lego Star Wars with Champions?!"

From most of the fan fiction, webtoons, etc, and rhe jokes and re-caps the kids are making when they come home from their game, I rhink you have misspelled "yaoi," Sir. With furries. I mean, half-thisea and half-thats. If that"s your thing, go for it. It's not mine, but I dont play. It just seems to be a big part of the half-a-million sentient species live on this planet 5e experience.

Dungeon was TSR"s DnD-dedicated publication. Dragon waa prompted by the amiunt of advertising revenue that Dungeon was pulling in, and the fact that there were more requests for ads than one magazine could support. It was serendipitous in the long run, as TSR branched into other genres, they had a ready-made platform to print support for those, too. It wasnr until they bought the flounderinf wargaming magazine Ares that they started to over-extend themselves, and Ares was soon folded into a sci-go and supers section within Dragon. Once the published Star Frontiers, James Bond, and Marvel Super Heroes, though, Dragon became a lot less useful to those of us who were just non-plussed with TSR's products. 😕 There were still a few things here and there, now and again, for non-TSR games, but if the article could be replaced by two ads, it was.

Thanks, BJB! I notice that there _are_, in fact, four levels of effect. I should have thought of issue 100. If I am not mistaken, that was onw of only two "powers for Champions" articlws Dragon ever published. (One of them- the other one, I think-- is where I sourced Extra Life. Still use it today. of course, it is the same article that had the "Bouncing" power.... Gad... An intwresting idea from a guy who apparently hadn't realized that Leaping can already work that way.....)

It wasnt all lies. There were three- possibly four- sentences in there that meant absolutely _nothing_. Technically, those arent lies.

No. People don't want to change, even if there is something icky involved. Discussion amongst the local DnD groups with whom I am at least passingly familiar swung from "I can't believe they would attempt to fool us with that laundry list of lies!" to "well, they _did_ apologize" and then to "so the game is back on? Sunday? Two-thirty?" In almost the length of time it takes to smoke a cigarette. Consider the cost of investing in End-- in _any_ modern game! Crap! The Blue Books ran what- half a grand or so? There is at least that much investment in most DM"s go-to favorite references, and often quite a bit more. At 30 to fifty bucks a pop, a lot of us have over a grand in hero 5e, even though it seems,that 6e was being written even as we were spending. Then there are the players- finding them, their own investments, matching schedules and playstyles, history of fun together, adventures already built and in progress-- There are times when the Sunk Cost Fallacy is used as a _comfort_ to those who ultimately don't see how they were personally affected, and dont want to change anyway. This will ultimately be one of those times, when it is all said and done. Worst part is wizards will assume the relarively quick return to status quo was because of their brilliantly deceptive apology rather than a general lack of empathy for those who are going to get really, really screwed. Ultimately, people play DnD because they want to play DnD. Wether it is becauae they have heard of it, or their driends play it, or because some celebrity plays it- whatever. We have held and heard countless conversations about what is wrong with it, about how almost (_almost_) any other game,is better, etc, etc, till we are so tired of it we sont want to hear it any more than they do. But look at me: I play 2e. Released in- what was it? 82? There have been how many revisions, updates, and,new editions in the forty-one years since? I play it because I dont see any actual improvement in the new stuff. I can read; I can hear. I am familiar with all the various "this is better because-" arguments. I respectfully (and sometimes disrespectfully, if pushed too hard) disagree. They are _changes_; yes. For some,subset of the people, they might be easier or fall more in line with some personal conceit about 'should be,' but to date, I personally dont think any of them have made the game _better_. Frankly, I think some of them have some have done the exact opposite. At the end of the day, I play 2e because that is what I want to play. Most of the fan base is going to keep playing DnD, no matter what, because that is the game they want to play, period. This might get a gew xelebritiws off of for a while bevause of potential negative fallout, but ultimately, no permanent changes.

I might be able to help you there, Sir. Except for a few favorite 3rd party pieces, I have been slowly paring down my,Traveller collection: havent had anyone want to play more an a one shot or a three-session arc in over twenty years, and I don't need all the bits and pieces ever published for nostalgia. I dont have a lot of CT I haven"t winnowes through already, ut there arw a xouple of pieces. Shoot me a PM and let me,know what you arw looking for.

Right. What few miniatures did carry the GDW logo were mostly made by Martian Metals, and of such small size (most GDW games favored 15mm scale) as to be rather bland. I have no idea who paid who in those cases.

Agreed. That was about the time that gaming in general had this begun a move toward "darkness," which was probably supposed to be edgy, but just came off as absolutely cringe-inducing. Underground comes,to mind- gamers of the day wanted to deconstruct everything, and nothing says deconstruction like antiheroes fighting a losing battle in a dying world, crushed beneath the all-powerful authority that runs it all, be ir government, billionaire capitalists, an,oppressive government, or some council of gods- whatever. The challenge shifted from "fight the good fight against the bad guys!" To "this is an unbearable and overwhelming situation. Prove you can survive it. If you show any signs of thriving, next week's session will be more oppressive." Dude, _Why_?! Why? Why? Why? Why game at all? When you crawl out of your cubicle at dive-twenty or so, roll a d6 to see ir you take the elevator up ans leap out of the window. No? You made it? Fine roll a d6 to see if you are going to stop at the bar and get drunk or go straight home. Roll a d6 to decide if you acrually drive home or floor,it and,aim for a light pole. Made it home? Roll a d6. If it comes,up a 1, start a fight with your spouse. None of this sounds attractive? You only have to buy a single d6, and it allows you to live out the same,depression that thwsw games did. Not my bag. Not at all. TNE was..... I liked part of it: I liked the idea behind it: We let Fugate amet all get so carried away filling in the universe that there is now nowhere lefr to actually explore. We _did_ leave an off_limits area for GMs to put their own stuff, but at this point, it is laughably tiny, and we already know prerty much everything that lies beyond it already, so..... So hey- let's have a long night: the imperium collapsed; we lost all the road maps- and better! No computer networks or any of that because of a sentienr computer virus-- Okay, what I _liked_ was that there had been a xonscioua decision to turn back to exploration, discovery, etc. What I did not like: If you lookwd to closely, you werent actually doing rhat. All the stuff that was there before? It qas still there, in some form or other. Maybe individual worlds were different, but whatever world had been rolled up foe some previous version of Traveller were still there. You wetent exploring; you were making aure the old roadmaps still worked. The other thing? The idds werw stacked against you gar beyind "a heroic challenge." Vampire fleets, virus, militarized planets, the loonies feom the Sword Worlds... It was just another dead/ dark / dying / fading / forgotten whatever setting, thinly,disguised as Traveller. I _loved_ Fire, Fusion, and Steel, though. That is one of the best Traveller sourcebooks of all time! Though I guess fightinf the hopeless fight against the guaranteed-to-be-victorious powers that be worked for some people: Serenity is, I believe, a Cephus game, which is essentially Traveller: the universal game engine. Legend has it that Firefly was based on an old Traveller campaign in which Whedon played, so hey: if it isn't Cephus, it ought to be! Ha! I dont know anything about Dark Conspiracy; I saw it in the shops of the day, but I never picked it up. Why? Because the two biggest buzzwords of this grimdark era foe gaming were "conspiracy" and "dark." (Didnt buy Dark Champions for this same reason: too cringe-inducing a title, fitting right in amongst all these games of teenage angst and twenty-something chic. Ugh. Honestly, even knowing what it is, the title _still_ makes me wince in vicarious embarassment when I hear it). There was absolutely,no way I was going to buy a gamw called Dark Conspiracy. I do remember that the title logo looked super gothic edgelord, though. Can't fault them for failing to triple down, can we? Yep. Traveller was the first RPG I loved. It was the second onw I had played (unless you listen to every RPG author _ever_, who all fail to realize that we did not use _dice_ to play cops and robbers... . D and D was the first RPG someone had talked me into trying. Hated it. Nothing made sense, and the whole thing came off as a justification for playing with an assortment of polyhedrons. The next bunch almost _couldn't_ talk me into playing Traveller, but to this day, I thank them for their persistence. yeah, I used to own a lot more Traveller stuff than I do now, too. I have slowly just been parign down to those books with significanve to me, when means a handful of 3rd party stuff for Classic Traveller, the LBBs, a few favorite adventure and aupplement books (Scouts!), and just the core rules for non-classic Traveller. I traded my MegaTraveller away a couole dwcades ago, and truthfully, I dont care if I ever manage to replace it or not. While I hold it in slightly higher regard than TNE, I need to s tress just how _slightly_ I mean. I misswd the entirw Mongoose Traveller. I never knew it was a thinf until,it wasn't anymore. And again- I just bought the core rules, just to read and stack them up agaisnt the relatively pointless measurment of "could these rules have given me,the same,good,time,I had with the LBBs? With TTB? and yeah, the probably could have, if you added death back into charcater generarion and Dr-emphasised skills. biight the GURPS Traveller, too. I dont know if it could,have, simply because it came packed full of Imperium, but I proba ly xould have enjiyed it, if skills we deemphasized and death was added back in. Both systems,kept the lethality of the LBBs, which really,wnforves roleplaying over gunplay. I quute liked that. I mentionwd elsewhwrr that I just acquired T-20. Given D and D rules. I have a fear that a fourth level Traveller will be unkillable by a commoner (dont like that), but until I find the time to actually read it, I will reseve my judgement. I like,Champions, and I will probably keep playing it until I can't, but if someone asked me,to chose between Champions, I would have to go with mt first love.

Just a few minutes ago, I was pretty sure that any GM would understand that this refers to the effectiveness- in the case of fireball, the damage dice- of the magic. Unless,this was sarcastic obtuseness, of course. I swore off sarcasm over thirty years ago; as a result, I don't always pick up on it anymore. However, if that was the case, well done; very funny; forgive the intrusion.

I have always liked the overwhelming majority of people on these boards,but I have never had a higher respect dor anyone here than I do now, for you, after that comment. "Crapsack world's" seem to be the majority of games the last dwcade plus a bit: Dark Dying Forbidden Forgotten Dying again "Hey, gang! Let's put away our heroics and live the lives of a band of underlings powerless to help themselves in the face of encroaching entropy! I mean, why should _we_ not enjoy clinical depression, too?" If I enjoyed endless depression, I would browse memes....

I can'tnt say that I have ever seen it, but if you are looking for any sort of feedback: If it is an officially-endorsed build, it is going to be from before 4e. I say that because of your 1x, 2x, 3x notation. This was the mechanic for a number of mental or psyche-targeting powers: you rolled youe dice of effect then divided by (target characteristic+ appropriate defense) to determine hiw many levels of effect the attacker had achieved; that is to say, one times the target number, two times the target number, etc. That changed in 4e. From 4e and onward, the dice of effect were rolled, then (target characteristic + approoriate defenses) were subtracted. The results depended on how many points over the (characteristic + defenses). Then compare to a chart that says target number or greater then this result; target number plus 20 points then this result; target number plus 50 points- Etc. I play 2e, though I dabbled,in 4e back in the 90s, and in my own experience, most of us subtracted the target number (target characterisitc plus relevant defenses) then divided by whatever the step number was on the chart (usually a 10 or a 20, but I cant remember which) and rounded down to get a whole number, then went to that line on the chart. Same results, and for some reason was easier than subtracting 20 over and over until we talied up two or four or whatever. Anyway, had this been an _official endorsed_ build, it would have had to have come from any of the "how much more than the target characteristic did you roll" powers (which are pretty much, as I called them, the psyche-affecting powers-- essentially the traditionally "mental powers" plus Presence Attack- because those were the only powers featuring those charts, and those were the only powers where varying degrees of "damage" meant very different results: there is quite a chasm between the 1x and 3x results on your chart, for example. With all other powers, the greater the results, the more of the exavr same effect (usually damage) was applied to the target. Going with what you have presented here, I think it was created for 3rd edition or anythng before that, as the results are keyed to a multiple. I also strongly suspect that it is a home-brew creation (which saw life in many third party gaming magazines; I don't think Adventurers a club published anything that wasnt officially endorsed, even if it waant official (the Swarm rulws were made official for years, but they were officially endorsed, for example. I do not think this Vertigo was officially endorsed simply because there is no 4x entry. Even after the change from "multiples" to "success levels," there have always been _4_ levels for these charts. Not sure why, but I suspect that if this had been an AC article, they would have either requested the submitter rework it into dour levels, or would have done so themselves with an "inspired by" note in the article. If it was in a magazine, then it was truly a third party publucation such as Dragon or Different Worlds or White Dwarf (I can tell you that it wasnt actually in White Dwarf, if that helps) or one of the scores of fanzines and lower-profile gaming magazines of the day. Also, --and I like to think most importantly-- consider this to be extremely stolen. I want to compare it to my own build for vertigo; the similarities are intriguing.

I have been here for _years_, and honestly, I have wondered that, too. If you are opinion shopping, mine is that the internet let's millions of people with whom you would otherwise never have any truck share their opinions with you. You think you have your head wrapped around something, and hear people tell you that you clearly havent, or that something is too hard, or too broken, or some other thing that makes you question yourself, so you start hunting answers, looking for a "right" way. Why else would the rules have swollen to ten times their origin so size? Some people just dont trust themselves, and are hunting for a perfect right way. Some folks are just looking for ideas or another point of view. As an example, the guy looking to build the hologram character a couple of daya ago: he showed up with workable ideas. I suspecr he was just looking for inspiration as to other ideas for the character. HERO doesn't have a huge following, but it has a devoted following, with most of us falling in love with it at some point in the 80s or 90s. That didnt happen because we took special classes or held large online-discussions. It happened because it is fairly easy to grasp the five mechanics that run the game: Skill check: 11 or less adjust with modifiers. Opposed Skill checks (such as roll to hit) fall under this, as they are nothing more than a way to resolve two rolls at once. Count damage Determine multiples (later, this became levels of success Deduct Defenses Apply effects, though I dont count this as a mechanic because every game does this. Damage, endurance, multiple/ levels above target characteristic, sanity, whatever. Everything else falls into place. Even character building boils down to nothing more rhan determining how much of what kind of defense you want this character to deduct, how many and what modifiers you want to what skill checks, and what kind of damage or multiple/ levels of success you wish him to consistently return. Then color him up with special effects. We picked That up with one reading and two or three sessions of play- just like every other game out there. HERO isnt any more difficult to learn than any other game, and way easier than some (looking at you, Aftermath and Pheonix Command and Universe and Living Steel and so on). The only problem- and I have said this a lot, but recently- is the core rules _books_. Push Basic as the core rules. Do not push the massive encyclopedia. Rebrand That as Advanced. The problem is the core rules present a ridiculous number of options- so many that it is now possible to play a HERO game unrecognizable to any 1984 gaming table. Stop doing that. I have no idea why- probably tied to the increasing percentage of people with anxiety, but analysis paralysis is a real thing, and- again, if you are opinion shopping- _this_ is the only thing that makes HERO 'difficult.' Stop with all the God/×[%+ "options" and calling them core rules. "Advanced guides" are the place for options. Wait- we have those, too. Ans they are full of more options! Pur them all there, or cull them out completely; I don't care. But id you want to attract new players, get them out of the core rules. There is a significant number of potential customers who just cant handle it.

Well, I thank you again, but at this point, I am goinf to need a lawyer to explain to me how that entitles wizards to ownership of Traveller or Cephus.