PaycheckHero

That looks like a great approach. I'd definitely like to have it written up somewhere, and I think a future version of HEROes of the Dinner Table will have to have the option to re-skin in terms of the basic D&D quantities. We now have three different approaches documented in this thread, and there must be others out there. Are any of you guys interested in compiling these approaches into a single shared writeup? I could create a google doc Instead of an openoffice document so that different authors could have their own "chapters" to describe their impromptu system. At some appropriate point we could upload a static version to the downloads section of the website.

This is a very interesting approach--effectively creating meta-stats from package deals that encapsulate and hide the underlying hero quantities. I suspect a lot of things could be done with that, and I don't see it used much. I also like the fact that you did a different genre. My effort was tied to a very specific genre/setting, and I suspect a lot of it doesn't generalize--much of the simplification comes from the very low point total, which only works for zero-to-hero games. Yours is more general, and also orthogonal to mine so you could do both or either. I wonder how it would feel to implement the six D&D stats that way (say D&D Strength is Hero STR plus OCV, for example), and then not expose the underlying hero stats in any other way during chargen? I'd definitely like to see the notes--or better yet, a write-up. In fact, I'd like to see all of them collected together showing alternative ways of accomplishing similar things. I changed the name of my version, so "Impromptu Hero" is still available as a title for the whole collection.

Actually, the ideas are so close I think they're alternative ways to do the same thing. If mallet wanted to contribute it could basically include both approaches. In fact, my guess is that at least some of the differences are that he's emulating a later version of D&D than I am (one that doesn't start you as absolutely helpless as the original did). Guidelines for different D&D eras, as it were.

I'm slowly editing a new version to bring in some of mallet's excellent ideas, but I wanted to post some character built to those guidelines to show what a "first level" character looks like. The first one is the first character I ever built, to the specifications of my nine-year-old son Eric. Eric has some RPG experience (mostly with his Champions character built by normal 5e rules except I had his powers manifest and grow in play), and it shows, but I still think it is interesting to see how a child works with the guidelines I gave. He wrote his concept himself on paper except for the "alignment", which I think needed more explanation from me. The character's name is currently "John," though he may change that. Ioz is a character in the Pirates Of Dark Water cartoon series which we both have seen; some systems would call him something like "Corsair," essentially a fighter/thief in D&D terms. It's interesting that Eric downplayed combat, with the justification that his character has been avoiding combat and hasn't needed to learn. He's also specifying that John isn't a Corsair, so really he's just using Ioz for the overall feel and the range of skills, but not as a template to imitate. Actually, he didn't write that, he drew me a pie chart. I'm not quite sure where he wants to go with this, but it would justify some interesting side abilities at a modest level (a bit of magic for example, like the Grey Mouser). He gave me much more than the word or sentence I asked for, which of course is no problem at all. I think the journey is the beginning of the campaign. The "2 DEX for swordfighting" doesn't actually make sense in the Hero system, but he's communicating perfectly well that the character is not a skilled fighter. Obviously he's also established some possessions that I plan to turn into plot hooks in due time. He didn't write down an alignment, so I just pointed out that stealing was a bad thing to do and he'd have to think about why his character would do that. We talked about it, and what he gave me was this: So basically a nine-year-old with a bit of help can write a better psych lim than just "chaotic good." Based on this, I filled in the character sheet (this is 6e). I did skills first because his signature abilities are all skills, and so the characteristics would have to adjust in order to accomodate whatever skills seem necessary. For this game you get the everyman skills from FH, but with all of them except the PS on an 8-. First-level characters don't get good rolls. This meant that he had to pay the difference and buy up some of the everyman skills. The final result, including the skill rolls from the stats I haven't bought yet, is: The 9- skills are there because I'm treating a 1-point skill as -3, not as a flat 8-. Notice: no weapon familarity! He was insistent enough that his character hadn't learned to fight that after I warned him that it could be a problem, I quit talking and built to his concept rather than trying to apply an editorial hand. My logic is probably transparent: his primary abilities are Dex and Int skills, so I had to get those rolls up. To pay for that, I needed to drop some other stats. I imagine every non-magical character is going to want to buy back their OMCV, but I kept the DMCV because I'm going to base all spells on MCV as discussed in the writeup. I needed more points to pay for the skills, so I also dropped Str with the justification that he's a teenager now but still not at his full growth, and dropped Pre back because he didn't talk about any Pre-based skills. I did all this by hand, so there could be any number of errors in there, but otherwise that character balances at 10 points. And that's a HERO of the Dinner Table. I'm falling asleep, so I hope that didn't need more proofreading because it isn't getting it.

Personally in most campaigns I'd rule that it has to be metallic silver, because you don't think in terms of silver-containing compounds until you have a theory of chemistry. I believe the actual logic is that the moon has power over werewolves and silver is connected to the moon, so silver has power over weres as well--completely non-chemical reasoning. However, it's a GM's call, in some settings with the right connection between magic and technology it would absolutely work.

Thanks! That's very interesting. To start with, I see your idea of the number of hero CPs to a level is similar to mine (mostly 15 instead of 20, but on the other hand you didn't start them brutally low as I did), which is a much-needed reality check that I'm at least in the ballpark. That was one thing I thought such a conversion would be good for. Until I started this I hadn't thought through the fact that in addition to learning fundamentally different rules, there is a second hurdle we put in the path of playing Hero which isn't necessary: very different assumptions and play style. What I realized could be done, and I think you did, was bring in D&D assumptions so that their preconceptions about what the whole game is about are still mostly valid. That means they only have one initial hurdle to cross, and that must be much easier. Of course you could lead them across the second one later, but that can be done gradually in-play if that's where you want to go. And in any game a good GM can always run the game in "say what you want to do, I'll tell you what to roll" mode, the barrier could actually be made extremely low. This is a very clever notion that never occurred to me. Again, lowering the conceptual barrier still further so they only have the mechanical barrier between them and play. Absolutely, I'd be happy to have any material you have for that campaign to mine ideas from. It would be an excellent suggestion to make as one way to handle experience in an appropriately "D&D" fashion, and I can see that this would be part of the fun for people used to D&D. They're already conditioned to salivate on that stimulus, as it were. I think I wouldn't do it that way personally, but for a couple of reasons that won't apply to all games and all GMs. First, my kids aren't yet conditioned to that (though the older one got more interested when he realized it was like a certain computer game which uses a D&D like experience system). Second is philosophical. I don't actually like to give out XP for killing things and taking their stuff. That style of play is fun but if you're past a certain age eventually gets old. Of course, old-school D&D could be and was played very differently, but the experience system reinforced the notion that roleplaying isn't about anything more. Being who I am, even if I start with a good old dungeon crawl I'll move in the direction of other things as time goes on, and knowing that I'd like to start from the beginning with the idea that experience is for learning and achieving goals beyond killing things and taking their stuff. I think even my nine-year-old already gets that, kind of, and the younger one will learn it as well. But if I were running a game for people who were already used to XP for killing monsters and acquiring treasure, I might just do it exactly your way as a gateway drug and see if I couldn't move in other directions later. I dunno. I definitely hate the "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" effect and have no intention of importing *that*. It's true, what I wrote doesn't attempt to keep balance and could easily get very out of whack. A serious game might need to do exactly what you say. Though I'm kind of curious about the kind of characters we'd end up with if I didn't impose any controls at all--I think we'd end up with characters that I've never seen exercising the rules in regimes that probably aren't well tested. It would be an interesting experiment, but of course part of doing an experiment is it might all blow up. Thanks so much for all that, the next draft will have to incorporate some of your key ideas for sure.

Here is part II, which gives some clues as to how I imagined such games and such characters would be played. I'm not sure there aren't better ways, so that is as open to critique as anything else. Also, note how often the word "option" appears. You don't *have* to deviate from hero as usually played if you don't want to simplify that much. Oh, and thanks to a brilliant suggestion by pruttm, the game now has a much better name. --------------------------------- HEROes Of The Dinner Table, pt II Combat Simplification Options Eliminate the battlemat. Sketch the playing field in approximately move sized areas (eight hexes is most convenient for range computations, though it doesn't exactly match a typical full move). Everyone in an area can melee normally with no range penalties. It takes a full move to change areas, and ranged combat between ajacent areas is at -2 (since it's in the neighborhood of eight hexes). Extrapolate longer ranges assuming each area is about eight hexes across; -4 to shoot across one area, -5 (half way) across two, and -6 across three, and so on. (These are just the standard Hero range rules, in eight-hex increments.) Don't track end (except for magic, racial abilities, pushing, and other powers that cost end). End management isn't a big feature of fantasy literature, and you can do without it if it slows things down. Don't let people sell it to zero, just leave it as-is. Don't track stun either--if you take more than your con in stun in one hit you're stunned, but otherwise it's not cumulative (if you do this, eliminate the stat, don't let everyone sell it to zero for more points). This penalizes normal damage weapons, but most fantasy weapons are killing damage anyway. Eliminate energy as a separate attack category; all ordinary physical damage goes against a single defensive characteristic (PD or just DEF). You may want to charge two points for increasing it however. Flavor Customization Options Use the "arcane defense" optional characteristic from Fantasy Hero and apply all magical damage against it regardless of type, so that it functions as a kind of magic resistance. FH recommends it also cost at least two points per point of increase, which is nicely symmetric with a combined DEF costing two points as well. Make magic always work against mental CV (which we re-interpret as "Magic CV), so that mental DCV is also a kind of magic resistance. Working against MDCV is a +1/4 advantage, but you can houserule this away for simplicity. If you also use the "arcane defense" rule then non-magic users get a bit of defense against things they normally would not have, so it should balance out well enough. Monsters You probably won't be able to use any existing Hero monster write-ups for one simple reason: they're balanced for normal Fantasy Hero characters built on 150 pts or more. Instead, decide what "level" the monster is (i.e. go look in your old D&D monster manual) and write it up in hero on the same number of points a PC would have at that level. This conversion probably has little correspondence to D&D, but it will track PC level and enormously weaken low-level opponents like orcs and goblins to fit a zero-to-hero game. It's even better if any differences resulting from such a crude translation keep your players on their toes. Magic There are dozens of hero magic systems in Fantasy Hero and dozens more on the web, and there isn't space for an entire magic system in this document in its current form. Pick one you like and convince the GM. My own preference is for one of the improvised magic systems--to me, spell lists don't fit with the make-it-up-as-you-go ethos and free-form magic is part of what makes Hero a "better D&D than D&D." VPPs work except they require some bookkeeping ("wait, I need to recalculate my pool") that is in my opinion neither particularly genre nor particularly fun, but suit yourself. If you want a more D&D flavor and feel that Vancian magic is an important part of the setting, you might use the Prepared Casting variant of Killer Shrike's Vancian Magic system. You could use his spell lists, or if your wizard player is adept with the hero system you could let him develop his own spell list as the game progresses. Or try this: simply use the D&D spell lists. When a player wants to use a spell he hasn't before (or when he finds it, if you dole them out), make him do a quick write-up and then tweak for balance (of course it eventually goes in the campaign folder). From then on that is the writeup you use for that spell in that game. Depending on how adept the player is with Hero, he can convert new spells in between games or when everyone else is taking a break and getting Cheetos. I suspect (but did not verify) that many of Killer Shrike's Vancian spells are probably based on D&D spells, so you might be able to find a writeup for a lot of the D&D spells even if you're not using his spell lists in toto. GMing During chargen, the idea is to get playing quickly. When in doubt, allow the players to defer choices until after play begins if they wish. It can be fun to develop characters in-play rather than beforehand, particularly for children. Discovery during play works especially well for minor non-combat skills based on background, race, or class. Don't hesitate to make minor background or hobby skills free if they're not going to be decisive in play (non-combat skills are less decisive anyway if you're running dungeon crawls). This also constitutes an implicit reward for a good concept. As long as it's even-handed, there is no balance problem with being generous. Make it up as you go along. Instead of building a game world, bring an empty game folder. As you make up stuff, note down significant choices. If you draw a map on the battlemat, sketch it afterwards in the after-battle lull and put it in the folder. Write down the name of the king you just made up, and so on. Even better, make the players do the work whenever possible. When a player creates a new race, have them write down what it lets a character buy and what it forbids, and put that in the campaign folder. Any other characters of that race use the same description. In short, the player's choices fill out the world as you go. The kind of players that suit this sort of game will begin to cooperate with your laziness and intentionally help out--it's fun to be able to help create the world. Since all this is simply an unusual use of the standard hero rules, you can mix and match in any proportion, or use it to transition to a "normal game. For example you could treat this as a strange chargen method. Play this way until "8th level," at which point a character has 180 points. Then award experience on the normal schedule. The kinds of characters you'll end up with will be different, though, unless you eventually let the players buy up whatever they sold off initially in order to survive.

Thanks! That's exactly what I hope it is useful for. It's probably still more fiddly than a system designed from scratch for streamlined chargen, but I was trying to go as far as could be done in hero. It went further than I expected when I started. Another advantage is that the starting points ended up so low that characters can't afford to be anything but simple, so the players don't have much to learn but the very basics of hero. I thought that was nice for playing a pick-up game like you say, or just making for a gentle introduction.

Here's something I've been trying to get to a readable state for feedback. It's a complete change from my usual style, but I ended up liking it anyway. This is the first part, but it's more than long enough for one post already. --------------------- Impromptu Hero Introduction This is an attempt to re-create the fun features (as I see them) of old-school D&D without regard to the (in my opinion misguided) mechanics. I found I wanted a game with the "build a character in ten minutes, run with little to no preparation" style of many simpler Indy-game systems so I could run quick games with my kids at the dinner table. Unfortunately, I also wanted to play Hero, which doesn't usually lend itself to that style of play. Reasonable people would run something designed for quick play, like Savage Worlds or Fate. I was unreasonable, though. This is the result. Old-school D&D-style dungeon crawling lends itself to minimal GM preparation, so I chose that genre. I try to implement the key things I think are fun: generic, all-encompassing fantasy world, characters sketched with simple, bold lines, and zero-to-hero advancement with an enormous range of abilities coexisting in the same world. Though it's not as crucial, I also add advancement in sizeable, discrete chunks (i.e. leveling up is a significant event). I expect Hero, played this way, to be a far better D&D than D&D itself is. Playtesting will show whether it works out that way. Character Concept A character concept has four parts: Class (or Specialty), Race, Background, and alignment. Each is described by a word, phrase, or sentence. You can spend points on anything that is justified by at least one of those descriptions, and not on anything else except improving everyman skills. In play they also constitute character disadvantages. Alignment is specifically a psychological limitation (see below). For the others, if an action would conflict with your class, race, or background, figure out how strong the conflict is (use the psychological complication table) to see how easily you can go against it, if at all. Some player's descriptions of their concept will inevitably be broader or narrower than another's. The game is balanced by the hero point cost, not the concept descriptions, so this shouldn't be a big deal. However, other players or the GM should probably call BS on overly broad specialties that don't seem to imply any concrete limitations. A character's class is his specialty or current profession now that he's an adventurer--what he's especially good at. Try to make it iconic and instantly recognizable. You can describe a role like "Fighter," "knight-errant," "dunedain," or even (for a slightly different genre) "wuxia," name a well-known fantasy character as a pattern such as "like robin-hood" or "grey mouser" or a descriptive sentence in simple, iconic terms such as "a rider from the wind-blown steppe, lance and bow in hand." Race is the usual fantasy meaning. It can be a standard fantasy race like human, elf, dwarf, and so on, something from a book, movie, or TV show familiar to both the player and the GM work, or just a concise description. In the questionable-but-beloved tradition of humans being the all-purpose race in old-style games, you can assume that "human" is a null choice that generally will neither limit you nor justify buying anything special. Background is personal history--where the character came from, who they were and what they did before becoming an adventurer. Alignment is the set of ethics or beliefs that a character acts on (not simply intellectual beliefs that don't affect behavior). It won't justify purchasing abilities as often as the others (though "my devout priest would clearly have KS: scripture" is certainly valid). Instead, treat it as a 15-point psychological limitation, so that the lower the frequency with which it affects the play the stronger the intensity must be (i.e. you can take it as Uncommon/Total, Common/Strong, or Very Common/Moderate, depending on what makes sense to you and the GM for your particular alignment). If the different parts of your concept conflict, generally Race should trump the others when there is something a race *can't* do, perhaps because of physiology. Hobbits can't be immensely strong even if they're fighters. Similarly, the others should trump background when it is something the character could have learned or adapted to after leaving home; background is about what the character *was*, whereas the others are about what the character *is*. Finishing The Character Now spend 10 points on things related to your concept (or save them). You'll need to sell back some characteristics in order to get usable starting abilities in the things that matter to your concept. (In original D&D you rolled for stats and some would undoubtedly be below 10, and low stats were the only written character disadvantages you had.) Have fun exploring a lower characteristic regime than you've probably ever experienced before in Hero--you start as a zero, not a hero, remember? You can have the everyman skills in Fantasy Hero for free; but they're all on an 8- familarity; first-level characters don't get decent rolls. I recommend treating familarities as -3 on a characteristic-based roll rather than as a flat 8-. However, you can buy them up later even if they don't specifically fit your character concept. On the other hand, you can't have any everyman skill that conflicts with your concept, and you can't buy it later based on it being an everyman skill. In keeping with the quick and simple goal, explicit disads have been replaced by the Character Concept system, though nothing stops the GM from adding them back in. Keeping the total number low would probably be a good idea, maybe 25 points or so--zeroes haven't been around long enough to acquire a lot of disads, and writing up a long list takes time. Levels and Experience Lvl 0: 0 pts Lvl 0.5: 5 pts Beginning character (lvl 1): 10 pts Level 2: 20 pts Level 3: 40 pts ... (20 pts per level after the first) The players receive 10 XP when a significant goal is reached--something that is achievable with reasonably good play in one or two sessions. If it was not achieved but progress was made, that's worth five points. You don't get XP based on the monsters you kill and the loot you swipe; there is incentive enough to kill things and take their stuff already. XP only becomes spendable in complete level units. That is, it takes 10 banked xp to advance from level 1 to level 2, and 20 banked points for each succeeding level. At that point, those points may be spent (or saved, if you wish), but not any acquired after the latest level advance. You can buy up characteristics after character generation if improving them fits your concept--this mimics the general property of original D&D that abilities increase with level regardless of characteristic values. On the other hand, you can't buy up characteristics that aren't connected to your concept--those low characteristics are a kind of character disadvantage and shouldn't be bought off without good reason.

How about kindly not actually doing it to me? Here is a boring little story. When 6e came out I'd been inactive for quite a while, and I came to the hero boards to see if I really wanted to bother with it. The people who thought every change in 6e was perfect in every way were annoying, as were the people who thought every change was horrible. I call them fanboys because that's a pretty accurate and well-understood description of all the "it's all good" and "it's all bad" posts I had to wade through, though of course it's merely a shorthand of convenience to avoid the extra typing I'm using in this post. Would you prefer the more humorous (in English) "version otaku?" In any event, they obscured some things a bit, but they didn't stop me from at least learning what the changes were and some of the effects they have. The people who *really* made it hard were all the people who said "we can't talk about that." So I have no interest in censoring discussion of things people may need to know--things *I* needed to know at the time and had to drag out in spite of the "don't talk about it" mantra. The various features of 6e (the topic, since that's what the OP has and the only version in print) have consequences, good, bad, or mixed, just like the features of 5e, Pathfinder, or any other game in existence. I had to learn them one by one, first to decide if I even wanted 6e and then to start learning how to use it. The OP has to learn how to use 6e too, including the terminology whether it be clear or misleading. Why make it needlessly hard for him? The biggest impediment to actually pointing out features and stumbling blocks continues to be the "don't talk about it" mantra, along with the assumption that any attempt to do so makes you one of the all-or-nothing people advocating for a version. We've had both on this thread, and it's caused much more obscurity than anything else. I'd prefer not actually doing that, but people will do as they will. But I would appreciate not being assumed to be a version advocate, and most of all I would like people to just reconcile themselves to the fact that I won't help with the censorship program and quit suggesting I do if there is a point that actually bears on how you learn and play hero. I can't make anyone not engage in aggressive silence, but I can refrain myself. And interestingly, the digression (based on assuming I meant something other than terminology) seems to have produced a very nice post or two on effect vs. special effect and using Hero as a toolkit, which I think is on-topic and hopefully very useful for the OP (broader and more useful than my much smaller point about one misleading technical term). The "we can't talk about it posts," on the other hand, haven't produced anything useful, but they have unfortunately drug in all the issues they claim not to want to talk about. I suppose we could call it the "Banned in Boston" effect.

This is an excellent way to explain it. It isn't clear to me that it was so much following the herd as encouraging characteristics to be correlated in a way that matches its source material. Point costs aren't fundamentally about balance, exactly--they're about what kinds of characters are encouraged and discouraged. I suspect they encouraged characters whose initiative, ability to learn dexterity skills, ease of getting a hit, and difficulty of being hit were all correlated, because that's what they saw in comic books, and since there is a perfectly logical argument for what they did I don't know that it's fair to simply assume that they were only following D&D precedent. But I suppose we'd have to ask Steve and George to know for sure. In any event, it's certainly correct that the linking caused problems with characters that didn't fit those correlations. The clearest example are all the characters with a higher OCV to reflect fighting still, including a lot of bricks that don't appear dex-based. I think they knew that, and their solution was CSLs. That works for some concepts (the high-OCV bricks at least), but 6e certainly does handle odder examples better. You always could--it was just inefficient because of the cost structure. I don't think 6e gives you much you couldn't get before, it just refrains from giving the huge cost discount for characters that fit particular profiles (you could almost call those profiles hidden classes). So in practice, you're exactly correct, even if *in principle* it was already possible. I would appreciate not being assumed to be either one of the version fanboys, so that if you wish to hang me you can do so for what I say, and not what someone else said. My point was strictly about *naming*, not mechanics at all. I take no final position at this time, but 6e mechanics are probably an overall improvement. That's not relevant to the thread, but I say it so you will not assume that because I don't like the 6e fanboys I must be a 5e fanboy. My point was simply that it was probably a mistake to retain the same names for the primaries, because they are getting farther and farther from the standard meaning in the hobby as a whole, as well as the meaning of "primary characteristic." We already give new players a lot of papercuts on the way to understanding, and I would like to not invent new ones. "DCV" is a good name because it's clearly a Hero-specific technical term--people know to ask what it means and listen to the answer. "Dex" is becoming a poor name because people assume that we're part of the larger community and speak the common language, which is not so true anymore. I only make those points because I dislike version censorship even more than the all-or-nothing version fanboys. We have a lot of stuff that the OP will have to learn, and when our naming is confusing we have to explain it. Dex is confusing, so it merits a little warning post-it note, which I gave. Now version censorship has actually brought up issues I never mentioned and led to a wider discussion, but I thought your treatment was good and hopefully enlightening to the OP so maybe it's all good. If you don't get misled by the characteristic names, keep the "some assembly required" nature of hero in mind that you described so well, and get your head around effect vs. special effect so you can do the assembly, I think you've got what you need. Well, except maybe for knowing the scale, what is high and what is low for a particular point level and style of campaign, but I think the OP is getting that too.

Not really. It's easier in 6e to tell beginners "hmm, you should buy about N speed" than it is to explain the special rounding rule for that stat only, and then probably (in most campaigns I've seen, excepting some supers campaigns with a lower SPD range than the CU published material) still suggest buying a point or two on top of it. 6e removes one of the papercuts involved in making your first character when you don't know what is going on. It's extremely frustrating that the fanboys of particular versions are so all-or-nothing that everyone else is assumed to be equally silly.

I'm perfectly happy for you to hold whatever opinion will discourage you from trying to get me to cooperate with the version censorship brigade.

Hmm. Suppose instead of shuffling you stack each deck according to the speed chart. Now you have an alternate bookkeeping method for the standard system. If the cards are labeled with the character's dex instead of ordinary playing card faces, it even encodes the order. Hmm. That might actually work slicker than me fumbling around for where I put the speed chart, especially with new players. Perhaps I could find children's flashcards with larger numbers. (Or, maybe use playing cards but add 10 or 20 (depends on genre, and probably also Hero edition since 6e doesn't reward you for high DEX like previous editions do), since in many games few combatants have a DEX that low anyway. This is kind of a fun topic!

Very nice. The cards are a definite improvement over my chit suggestion. For one thing, if you hold an action you could just place the card in front of you as a reminder (though that won't say if you're holding a half-move or a full-move). I'm less clear on how to handle an abort--probably pull out a red card from your deck and then re-shuffle what remains. You could also have one of the red cards distinguishable for the seg-12 recovery if you like that variant.

If it's igniting the edition war to comment on a simple fact, then some people have problems that go far beyond games. I don't care what edition you play; in fact <5e didn't do a very good job of hinting on some of the other figureds (notably spd, which is probably better independent as in 6e than misleadingly suggesting that what you get from dex alone is typically enough as previously), it just wasn't relevant at that post. I don't actually argue for or against either edition, I would happily play or run any edition from 4th on (and probably wouldn't mind 3rd, I just don't have enough experience with it), but I'm also not going to write a bunch of disclaimers on every post that touches on the obvious differences simply to satisfy anyone who who has enough emotional problems to think that commenting on the obvious is edition fighting. I suppose I could put "for emotionally secure adults only" in my signature, however.

Fair enough, but I want my move-through and cannonball special damage to reflect the fact that I'm made of concrete and have a pointy concrete hat.

Hmm. A variant of this that would be a bit less random would be for each player to have twelve chits. A number of them equal to their SPD would say "move" and the rest would say "pass". Each segment they'd draw a chit and lay it aside, and move if it said "move". After segment 12, put them all back in the bag (or whatever use use to draw). This applies some correlation between segments so that over a full turn you'd still get exactly as many phases as you paid for, but it still wouldn't be as predictable as the standard spd chart. Though it would have the interesting effect of getting more predictable throughout the turn--by segment 12, you already know if you move in segment 12 or not. You could mess with it in similar ways to the dice method--for example, perhaps you eliminate turns but write "12" on one of the "move" chits. When you draw that chit, you take your post-segment 12 recovery and put the chits back in the bag.

Hmm, we may need a GM call on this--I figured all elves in the campaign world work in Santa's workshop at the North Pole. However, if you're offering to bring tasty snacks, I will happily drop my proposal and back yours. Personally, I intend to write up a garden gnome with the power to stand perfectly still for a very long time. He will ride a pink lawn flamingo with a suite of martial-arts kicks.

Oddly enough, I have no trouble reading the rules, nor is it really necessary since the figured stats do the same as before. However, I now have to do a bunch of explaining I didn't before to people who buy dex when what they want is to be harder to hit. I really don't think that's a terribly difficult concept--a lot of games condition people to associate dex with being harder to hit, and since that was one effect before they tended to get the effect they wanted with their first character before really knowing how hero does it. Now I tend to have to fix it for them. This is not a difficult concept to understand.

Hmm, I guess we need to discuss this. I was going to rule that female dwarves can't buy extra limb until their mid-thirties and never buy stretching, given their shorter beards. However, I was going to give them safe environment: cold based on leg hair, and if they have shaved recently they can also plane lumber without tools. :-p Sounds like a "campaign choice" to me. Discuss?

First thing is that your Dwarf package should use Extra Limbs to represent the long beards. Extremely venerable dwarves can buy stretching as well. -- Bizarro Paycheck Hero

Well, if you're up for it, then carry on. Keep in mind that the rabbit hole of the re-examination of core assumptions can go very deep, however. People look at the rules and can't find character classes and wonder "what is a priest?" I'm inclined to say it's a character with a perk that permits them to perform all of the sacraments except ordination. This greatly confuses people who think a priest is someone with fair fighting ability and spells, and that must be codified in the rules somewhere. :-) Hero is pretty dedicated to the motto of the Linux kernel: "mechanism, not policy." Just don't leave your players in the dust or they'll be too conceptually lost to want to play.

Hmm. Where is "Indecisive brooding procrastinator, very common, total"? He's just not the Prince of Denmark without that. I eagerly await your writeup of The Hulk: The Moor of Venice. Nobody acts prematurely like the big green guy.

I propose that we make this the Bizzaro-World thread where we give UbiquitousRat the opposite advice that we give in the main thread.