PaycheckHero

If that's the one that has yet another copy of the rules (I admit, I haven't been keeping up), I'm not interested. It would be nice to see more FH discussion, though.

I'm really glad you brought that to my attention, I hadn't noticed it. Scale -1 has about the same effect as that chart, though I claim that it *is* rescaling. The alternate STR chart is simply one more ad-hoc rescaling to patch a slight rough spot. We have too many ad-hoc systems associated with size, I'm trying to figure out a way to fix it once and for all in a general way. The very fact that my proposal is close to the alternate str chart is another indication to me that the suggested rule fits in with the rest of the system rather than fighting it. The point was to try to find something that feels natural within the system. That said, it's not quite the same effect. First of all, mechanically it ought to slightly change the DCV penalty breakpoints if other scales are used as well. The rate is -2 DCV (+2 OCV vs in 6e, but it's easier to discuss in the language of the old rule) per three levels, and you can get -1 for a size difference of two. Characters written up against scale -1 rather than scale 0 are halfway to the -1 difference. This may not come up often, but it is there. A different view of the same effect when other scales aren't being used: what this says is that the average humanoid at scale is 62" and 110 lbs rather than 78" and 220 lbs. Using the average human statistics (from here: http://www.statisticbrain.com/human-body-statistics/) of 69"/64" (male/female) and 195lb/165lb this puts humans toward the upper end of the scale rather than the lower end (and depending on how you build them may shift something like an orc or goblin into the same size range if you'd have built them one size lower before). A very large human might be able to justify taking a level of hero system size under the standard rules. That isn't good or bad, it's really just a matter of the dramatic reality you wish to create in your campaign, but it may be a better fit for the many stories of men of mighty stature. Anthropometry varies over more than a factor of two, but where the breakpoint is will have an effect on what it is reasonable to buy and thus how campaigns feel. And finally, it has a potentially large difference on how you use published characters. If you use the rules I suggested, escaling effectively makes them all stronger, as they'll do an extra damage class. This makes it simple to increase human max to 25 and not have to re-write everything else to maintain the same relationships. The APG rule applied to PCs without rewriting NPCs would be more akin to scaling all NPCs down a level, which is certainly OK (and possibly the intent of the APG) but might not be what the GM wanted. I'm very happy if in the end a standard special case rule just falls out of my general rule, as it suggests the general rule is on the right track.

I thought of another possible use of this type of scaling rule in games that are only played at one scale. I don't actually like the official hero real-world conversions that much for lower-level games, and this was brought home to me reading the writeups in the MHI handbook. There just isn't that much resolution for normals, with strength being possibly the worst in this regard. (6e probably makes this better in that it's now more feasible just to buy the secondaries without increasing your actual lifting ability, but as I haven't played much 6e I don't have detailed thoughts on that.) My games have tended to have the scale altered a bit, not with any kind of system but just by letting players buy stats that are supposed to be stunningly rare. One guy (not my game, but same group) had a 4e knight with a 25 strength, bought double after 20 and all. I know I'm not the only one who does this, since there were questions about the writeups from people who thought Owen should be stronger. The MHI writeups use the conversions exactly as written, but I think they probably don't usualy do so and so were surprised at the results. Now consider that you could run, say, a fantasy or pulp game with ordinary humans but written at a reference scale of -1. That means you have to buy 25 str to have the same lift as 20 at scale 0, and so on. In fact, everything in the rules works just as written, thanks to the scale rules. In fact, you don't need scale, right? Well, true, *except* if you use any published writeups, official or off the web, they will be at scale 0. So you really *do* have two scales in the game if you use those writeups. The old way was to just hack the writeups to whatever power level you wanted them to be at. I'm suggesting that if the scale rule actually works, you simply use them as written and scale the effects up and down when they interact with characters written up at scale -1. Workable? Problems I don't see?

They are, but if it's hard science then we're supposed to talk about logical consequences of known information, and the logical conclusion is that for the forseeable future the Air Force would have the ships. 0. The AF has more actual experience with space operations than any other service, so they actually are the logical service. Experience at sea in ways that look similar are simply not a substitute for actual experience in actual space. However, I've labeled this zero because it's a hard-SF like logical argument, which is the least important consideration in the world we live in (as opposed to the alternate history of hard SF where the engineers run everything by themselves). Let's look at what does actually matter: 1. The Air Force already has the primary oversight for military space. JFCC Space is commanded by a four-star Air Force general at Vandenberg Air Force Base. I rather suspect that it would automatically be under the Air Forces' command unless congress positively said otherwise. (A lot of the space stuff is 'joint', so likely there would be personnel from other services involved--I'm just talking about where the buck stops.) Why would congress spend the extra time, money, and trouble it would require for another service to duplicate what the AF already has? 2. Decisions like this are *not* made because of any chain of logic or argument, which is one reason why hard SF gets it wrong (hard SF tends to only want to be accurate on very specific things, and childish on things like politics). What actually happens in the real world when there is a major new pot of money for a major new military project is that the services get into a knife fight lobbying congress every way they know how. That suggests that unpredictable politics is more important than point #1, however in the past the AF has had the strongest lobby of any of the services and so they probably have the political high ground as well as incumbency. (Side note: in my more cynical moments I think their political strength comes from eternally promising that in the future they will win all the wars without congress having to go on record committing ground troops. They've been wrong *every single time*, but it doesn't matter because the politicians are more interested in the dream of not having to explain deaths to their constituents than any amount of logic or evidence. It's worked like a charm since WW II, and there is no sign of it failing to work in spite of the perfect record of failed predictions.) So again I claim that analogies with the navy are fair enough but completely irrelevant to what would actually happen. Whoever lobbies best will win, but the best lobbying track record plus incumbency is I think too strong an advantage. The only two outcomes that make sense to me are (1) AF control, and (2) a joint authority that rests disproportionately on AF technical skill and assets. I think #1 is much more likely in the near term, but #2 becomes more likely to the extent that it looks like space assets will become dominant and the other services see it as a fight for survival. (Or more accurately, their congressional supporters see it as a survival issue for the other services.) Yes, those factors could change, but by the time they do they won't be the services we know anymore and so I don't think we can predict much at that point anyway. It's a very good bet that politics will never be separated from large pots of money, however, and that technical considerations will remain a very distant second.

*dupe*

Good show. God forbid we inadvertently disallow *that*! If this is about the little (little?) houserule I offered, I know how the books says to calculate it. My point is that the book method makes absolutely no sense in terms of how guns actually function and how accuracy is achieved. If I hand you a rifle that has a match barrel, tight chambers, some careful throating, ammo with very low runout and extremely consistent charges driving match bullets, and so on, and then ask you to shoot it offhand in something like combat situations, *none* of that accurizing will make any difference in the result whatsoever compared to, say, shooting a stock Winchester lever-action (guns that are not noted tack-drivers). The *gun* is more consistent, in the sense that it will make smaller groups if it is clamped to the bench, but *you* are no more consistent in that situation and your own inconsistencies will completely dominate. So it's technically silly to give you bonuses for that. You need better conditions (better sights, more time, prone position or a bench, etc.) to take advantage of that nicely tuned rifle. If that weren't true, Winchester 30-30s wouldn't be such a popular rifle for hunting whitetail. They're not accurate, but *they're good enough for conditions*. My point was rather that few players and GMs *care* that the simple hero method doesn't make sense, so you do what is fun. The OP could possibly have players who think it is fun to use a somewhat more realistic system. *I* could have fun with it myself. For that matter, Larry Correia might too if he were actually playing in the game. But that's definitely an exception, and it shouldn't be used unless everyone thinks it sounds *fun*. For most cases, I think you and I and about everyone agrees to just drop the hero max range rule and let people shoot as far as they have the levels for, within line of sight. It's easy, and doesn't usually produce absurd results.

I probably wasn't very clear, but that's basically what I suggested. While the standard system doesn't actually make sense if you reason closely about it (and most people don't have enough knowledge to do this anyway), its easy and produces OK results. I wouldn't suggest anyone impose the alternative I described except in one specific case that, based on your description of your players, could actually apply to you: your players are such enthusiastic gunnies that they both notice the logical problems in the existing system and really enjoy arguing gun minutia and trying to "get it right." In that one case, I thought what I described would be more satisfying for gun geeks and still remain playable. What I tried to recommend was something like the following: just ignore the hero maximum range rules. If you want a logical fig-leaf for your fiat, say that "real-world maximum range" is part of the "real weapon" limitation (it's obviously not a limitation for guns, but hero allows a mix of good and bad in a limitation so long as the overall result is limiting). If and only if your players still want to argue about realism in hero, or are just hankering to get their gunnie on, and it isn't going to drive *you* crazy, then consider adding details like "inherent accuracy." But don't do it unless it is *fun*. If by chance you actually use inherent accuracy, beware that it's going to make it harder to get high bonuses because after a point you kind of need to get them twice--once to raise the weapon's Inherent Accuracy and once to get enough range levels to take advantage of it. I'm not sure this is actually a problem, but if you and your players think it is bump up some of the bonuses to compensate.

That was my idea. I was dismayed to find something hero simply didn't do workably and it stuck in my craw to fix it ad-hoc on a campaign by campaign basis. I hope so, but it needs playtesting. I'd like to know if it's robust enough to be worth writing up in permanent form.

I wonder how he'd react if I came into his D&D 2e game and then insisted that classes and levels are a bad idea? Are you sure he can't, or just doesn't want to because it would interfere with his powergaming? If the rule worked as he suggests, then Aunt May (somewhere between a str roll of 9 or 10) would have a non-negligible chance of outrolling a hero in a contest of strength. Opposed skill rolls are much, much chancier than opposed normal damage rolls. Hero uses normal damage for strength rolls mainly to prevent exactly what he wants to happen. I'll bet you anything that if your TK 40 NPC grabbed his STR 60 brick and you used his rule, he'd suddenly understand that he's so much stronger the chance of losing to the TK *should* be negligible, and he'd scream bloody murder for the system robbing him. Meh. Translation: he knows all the exploits in 2e and wants to be able to game the rules with equal effectiveness in Hero without having to expend any effort in reading the book and learning the rules. And D&D players have *no business at all* in complaining about rules inconsistencies.

Lots of people want TK to act like flight, usable against others. The reason it doesn't and lets someone break free with strength is probably as much game balance and comic-book reality as logic--it keeps TK from being the universal, cheap way to neutralize bricks. In the comics, we don't have telekinetics immobilizing the hulk simply by picking him up, so Hero doesn't want to have that either. The reason people usually want TK to act like Flight UaO is also not logic, it's powergaming. They notice that if it worked that way they could have a cheap power that would be super-powerful and completely neutralize many opponents, and then look for a post-hoc rationalization. This is especially obvious when they want to buy, say, 1" of flight UaO. Yes, I'm cynical. My players made me that way.

The hero range rules were really written for superhero energy blasts, not projectiles. I don't think it's an issue of game balance so much as just an issue of a general-purpose rule that can't possibly work equally well for the human torch's fire blast, a wizard's spell, and a bullet. Too the extent that there is a game balance problem, what happened was that they nerfed everyone's range just to control the guys that bought their powers No Range Penalty. In the end, someone made a simple rule that seemed to work for Champions. They ranges are probably quite long for magic, and are assuredly too short for most firearms (OTOH they might be too long for birdshot, given that what matters is not how far the projectile can go but rather how far out can we pretend it is still doing the same damage to targets as it does up close). Absolute ranges are usually not listed for firearms because they will depend on the bullet weight, muzzle velocity, and drag coefficient, not which firearm. For example I can handload rounds for the same rifle with very different muzzle velocities and very different drag coefficients, and thus very different absolute ranges. If you really must have such data the procedure is sort of tedious but would be something like this. You would first turn to the handloading data for your rifle, and pick a specific bullet and load. The bullet chosen gives you the bullet weight and drag coefficient, and the loading data gives you the muzzle velocity in, probably, a 24" or 26" barrel. You'll have to handwave what the velocity will be in barrels of other lengths, or find some rules of thumb. Then you use exterior ballistics data to find the elevation angle which gives the greatest range for a bullet of that weight and drag coefficient going at that velocity, and use the distance at that elevation angle. Good reloading books used to have tables for that kind of calculation, but I think these days you're expected to use software so they can use paper for other things besides repetitive tables. You can probably also find a calculator that will do this on the net, I think I used one once to determine maximum point blank range for a load I was working up. I'm too lazy to find it for you, but it shouldn't be hard. Also note that I probably forgot some detail, but I think that gives you an idea of how you would find the data you seek. Now let me try to convince you that you just don't need to do any of that. The fact is that any rifle bullet can carry, IIRC, 2-3 miles (don't quote me on that, but the exact number doesn't matter). That's why one of the basic safety rules is *don't shoot at or over the horizon*. The practical range limit on virtually any firearm is accuracy, not absolute range per se. One minute of arc (around 1" per hundred yards) is often used as a kind of dividing line between accurate and inaccurate rifles, with off the shelf factory rifles often not doing better than two or three MoA, and well tweaked competition doing under a MoA. (Warning: that was from memory and I don't absolutely guarantee I remembered the number right). That means that even a mediocre rifle is capable of a headshot at a couple hundred yards (your target is something like what, 4" in radius?), and a body shot at considerably further than that (you can afford to miss your aimpoint by more). Most shooters aren't capable of that without a bench, so in practice the average gun is better than the average shooter. At the other end of the spectrum an expert will demand and be able to use sub-MoA accuracy. Needless to say Julie uses a rifle good enough to let her use her skills. To be honest, I suggest that you simply ignore the hero maximum range rules and allow a rifle to shoot as far as necessary to let a character use his range levels--there is no real game balance issue, particularly since the bad guys can benefit from the same rule if they have the skills...heh, heh, heh. It's a game, make life simple. However, if wrangling over the details is part of the fun for your knowledgeable players, you'll basically have to re-write the range level rules because they make very little sense (in fact, the hero firearms rules don't make that much sense except in a comic-book reality sense, but I digress). The following is too complex for most games, but at least resembles reality a little: * Divide the accuracy-enhancing modifiers into two kinds--those that aid the shooter so he shoots better (e.g. telescopic sights) and those that improve the gun's own accuracy (e.g. a higher quality barrel). More accurate ammo, either premium match ammo or hand-loaded, would fall into the latter category. The kind of players who would actually like rules like these would probably enjoy arguing for an hour or two about what fits in to which categories. * Treat the shooter aids as per the usual rules--they're range levels built into the focus. The others instead increase a new firearm property: inherent accuracy. Inherent accuracy works like vehicle dex, in that a shooter can only use the lower of his total range levels (including those from maneuvers and those built into the firearm!) and the gun's inherent accuracy. Since the rmod bonuses for accurizing your gun are intended to all add together, and we're now separating them, the bonus values might need tweaking if you want to be picky about it. * Guesstimate what a factory rifle's inherent accuracy should be before tweaking. If you think for a while, you'll realize that this is basically the same as the range penalty at whatever distance you think the rifle has around a 50% chance (50% is close enough to 11-) of making a body shot. Here is my guesstimate; say that a decent quality rifle should have a 50% chance of making a body shot at 512m. Since the range penalty at range R in champions is essentially 2*lg(R/8m) (where lg is the base 2 logarithm) then this gives an inherent accuracy of 2*lg(512/8) = 2* lg(2^6) = 2*6*lg(2) = 12. Because hero range penalties are logarithmic, this number is fairly insensitive to the exact distance; a rifle that achieves this accuracy only out to 216m still has an inherent accuracy of 11. But don't take my word for it, let your group find a consensus. Any players that will tolerate this sort of thing can have endless hours of fun arguing about this kind of number, why deny them the pleasure? The only problem is they may have so much fun arguing that they forget to actually play. * Again, the second kind of accuracy bonuses add to this base maximum accuracy rather than adding range levels. The player still has to find enough range levels from maneuvers, optics, and the like to take advantage of the base accuracy bonuses. This is simplistic and ignores all sorts of things but does behave more realistically. An "rmax 12" factory firearm simply isn't capable of taking full advantage of those great +14 optics. That's life; it's pointless to put a competition scope on a factory Winchester lever-action that is only good to 3 MoA. On the other hand, a poor scope will prevent you from using a benchrest rifle to it's potential. This need to balance the quality of your optics against the quality of your firearm happens in the real world: there is a rule out there that suggests that you should spend as much on your scope as on your gun. Note also that an average shooter is incapable of taking full advantage of his rifle because he's not as good as the gun is--a shooter has to be able to muster a lot of range bonuses before he needs an accurized rifle. This is correct in general, but since hero doesn't try to model reality rmax=12 might not get the balance right. Feel free to tweak until it feels right rather than assume 12 is a magic number. I guess a group of players that are sufficiently dedicated gunnies might actually like rules like that. Just make sure that they *all* do. Take pity on that one guy that just stays quiet when the others are arguing guns.... If you actually try this out, I'd like to know the results.

Anyone have an idea of what the binding quality is like these days on a print-on-demand book?

I agree, but I think I said so plainly. What I don't like is involving gunsmithing in practical shooting skills, as it doesn't make sense for the reasons described. Fast-draw is effectively Hero's combat shooting skill (except for the basic parts subsumed in WF, like not blowing your foot off by getting your finger in the trigger guard while yanking the gun out of the holster), and clearing jams rapidly and smoothly is part of combat shooting.

I agree that it would be unreasonable to ask for a separate skill for clearing jams. The problem is only that they moved it into the wrong skill; fast-draw is the closest thing we have to "advanced weapon handling" such as would be taught in an intermediate or greater self-defense class or for competition (which for IDPA and IPSC are *supposed* to exercise the same skills, even though in some ways that's questionable). Everyone with a WF should be able to do a tap-rack-bang to clear a basic jam, and with fast-draw you should be able to do it faster because that's part of moving fast, smooth, and accurate. Certainly if you want to have that in a skill, I agree that a familiarity with weaponsmith is the way to do it. The only real question is whether you require the familiarity just to run a patch through the barrel. I'd say if you can't do a basic cleaning you probably don't even have the WF; technically you could certainly learn the one skill without the other, it's just that people don't usually do so. I guess if you *only* rented guns at the range, this would be possible. However, you can't practice realistic shooting at most ranges so you wouldn't be able to practice fast-draw there (positively forbidden at most indoor ranges here unless the range has been rented for a class). Probably not even the full WF since in Hero WF includes being able to draw without shooting yourself. Even if not trying to fast-draw doing it safely requires more practice and is much less universal than a basic cleaning, and most ranges here will not let you practice the draw at all without being in a class or something. Trying to do it fast without practice is definitely a recipe for trouble. Now for field-stripping, which you want to do for a full cleaning anyway, it starts to make sense to require the gunsmithing familiarity. So I guess I agree with your GM in general, though I don't know if he and I would agree on which parts are just implied in the basic WF. Rural kids FTW indeed. The army thinks so too--they did a study that said the backgrounds that best correlated with spotting IEDs and ambushes were rural kids who did a lot of hunting and urban kids that grew up in very bad neighborhoods. Worrying about jams is more or less a semi-auto concern anyway, which are less common in the country for some good reasons. A bolt-action shouldn't jam on you, and as for revolvers--what's a jam? And whether your semi-auto ever jams varies tremendously for reasons not easily captured with a rule. The reason I don't like games with jamming rules is that IRL you don't carry guns that are likely to jam at the rate most games think they might jam. 1911s are notorious for being finicky about hollow-point ammo (it being designed for military ball ammo), and before I decided to rely on mine I quit cleaning it and eyeballed how many rounds it took before it started to jam. I forget the number but I think it was in the neighborhood of 500, which I judged adequate since after the test I would be cleaning it after use. Of course, I also found out what precise hollowpoint ammo the manufacturer had specifically throated it for and only use that. The point of the boring story: if you want to use jamming rules, you should probably let players reduce that chance with appropriate gun-handling *and* gunsmithing skills. Gunsmithing if someone with the skill worked it over for a carry gun, and additionally gun-handling if you know how to shoot and care for a semi-auto. Honestly in many games it isn't worth the trouble. Good guns with a proper carry job and care just don't jam very often, if they did you better believe people wouldn't carry them. Absolute certainty that the thing will go off when asked is more important than the number of rounds you carry, which is why double-action revolvers still have their place. I guess the best place to use jamming rules would be for NPCs with poor training (I don't think ganstas are known for their technical firearms knowledge or their rigorous maintenance schedule) and people without a WF, who may limp-wrist it and force a failure-to-feed even if the gun itself is perfect. Huh, I never thought of that. How many gamers even know that incorrect shooting technique can make any recoil action fail to feed? Oh, well, few probably care either.

I just realized I didn't state a third important assumption and how it is implemented in my draft rule. The third assumption is this: scales are normally a campaign parameter chosen by the GM, not a character parameter chosen by the player. This is a direct generalization of existing hero rules: the existing rules choose Scale 0 as the single campaign scale and all characters are written up at this reference scale. That is correct for the majority of campaigns (if it weren't, it wouldn't have worked well enough for so long) simply because most campaigns are anthropocentric. Even in supers, the vast majority of characters are human scale or not too different from it, and so work well when written up to reference scale zero. The problem common to both cats and mecha is that campaigns centered on them break that assumption. In a supers game, a mecha or a cat written with the standard rules "work" because most of their interactions are with human-scale objects. Thus, it is convenient to have them written up with reference scale zero. But in the mecha game, while humans are present in game terms they're along for the ride, and the most common scale is "mecha scale." It is no longer convenient to write up the mecha with reference to human scale, because they don't generally do a lot of interaction with humans using the game mechanics ("OK, you squash the human" doesn't need many rules). Similarly, in a game of Cat PCs, most characters are at about a scale of -5 or so, and the GM would define this to be "cat scale." A player might want to play a collie at about size -2, but then again there might also be a fair amount of interaction with rats at scale -6 or mice at even smaller scales. So what I intend is for the GM to choose a small number of scales that will be sufficient for his campaign. For the Cat game, that probably means just scale -5 for PCs and scale 0 for humans and maybe writeups from the bestiary. A 50lb farm dog might be written up with three levels of size against the campaign standard reference scale of -5 rather than at scale -2. Why? Because -5 is about the median and mode for the sizes of things the PCs need to interact with, and this way we often don't even need to use the scale rules. This is yet another difference between using per-character size rules and campaign-wide Reference Scale rules; the scale rules mediate between different uses of the standard rules. Now it isn't *necessary* to do this--you can write everything up at their own natural reference scale, and if your campaign really has a wide range of sizes this might well be the best thing to do. (It might also be the best thing to do in a campaign full of re-scaled animals--giant mice, miniature blue whales, etc.) The system wouldn't be fully general if you couldn't do this, and maybe it will turn out this is the best way to do it. I really don't know yet. I'm just making the point that you don't *have* to do that, and may not want to do so. The scale-invariant scale rules are purposely "flavorless" in that queen bees fighting for control of the hive are going to feel more like mecha fighting (e.g. both average to STR 8-10 at their scale) than you might like. You can still use the non-scale-invariant hero size rules to make big things *feel* different than small things (e.g. the farm dog is a giant compared to the cats), while using two or three campaign standard scale rules to keep the variation under control and prevent small things from being all the same or melee strangely between themselves. IOW: the GM gets to choose, and we'd simply have to learn by experience what the "best practice" is at using the scale rule to customize a particular campaign.

The RAW were written by someone who didn't know guns and the shooting world that well, as is occasionally obvious. What lets you clear a jam fast is experience--experience in general, and experience with that particular gun (they can have quirks). A gunsmith generally has experience, but not uniquely so by virtue of being a gunsmith (and sometimes he doesn't get near as much time at the range as his better customers, because he's too busy gunsmithing). A competitor in one of the action shooting sports is likely to be better (though you can be both), because he's spending a lot more time practicing the relevant skills. Now if you manage to jam your gun so that it can't be cleared in combat time or even by most shooters at all (this could happen with malfunctioning or misloaded ammunition, for example), then gunsmithing would be a logical skill. Have a head separation that leaves a lot of the cartridge stuck in the chamber? That's a pain, and a gunsmith probably has the right tools at hand. If the head is still on the cartridge, then the best bet is probably to drill a hole, tap it for threads, and then screw in a machine screw so you can get a grip to pull it out. Could I do it? Well, yes, but a gunsmith would again have the tools at hand and do it much faster. The key here is that nothing in a gunsmith's area of expertise involves doing things *really fast*. IDPA and 3-Gun shooters do things really fast, but in fact you do not want your gunsmith to do things really fast for the same reason you don't want your guitar tech to do his work really fast. But the conversation is about clearing simple jams in combat time, for which gunsmithing is definitely not the relevant skill. You can use the RAW if you like. I never do when they conflict with basic knowledge I happen to have, but styles vary I guess.

"Gunsmith" can mean more than one thing--there are people who repair guns who couldn't build one. But a real gunsmith is essentially a specialized machinist, and take as long to train as a machinist. A real machinist can pick up the gun-specific stuff up pretty fast. But it's really a whole range of skills, from replacing sights (something simple enough that many of us can do it to our own guns) to building up a rifle from components (I could *probably* do at least some of this in simple cases where I was careful about buying components that didn't need modification, except for tools--I don't even have headspace gauges), to building one from scratch, which is where the real machinist's work comes in and which I certainly couldn't do). (The gunsmith in my old home town had the equipment, but told me that after he'd bored out his first barrel as a learning project he never made another one because it was so, shall we say, boring <grin>). Let's be clear: clearing a jam is part of knowing how to shoot. If you don't know how to tap and rack, then in real-world terms you don't even have the weapon familiarity yet. If you meet someone who "can shoot" but can't clear a jam, it means they can shoot at a range but aren't trained to shoot in a real situation. The hero WF is for people who can use their skill in, ah, "serious social situations." As for field-stripping, while that's a separate skill from basic operation it's too easy to be worth a separate Hero System skill. Anyone who is a serious user of guns also knows how to maintain their guns in the field so they remain actually useful. In most games, it would not make sense to split this out from the weapon familiarity. Certainly not for heroes. While true, it also doesn't even make you able to repair problems. I would say that does *not* come as part of the WF. I also would not distinguish between repair skills and actual gunmaking skills and just use the Hero gunsmith skill for both. If you really want to be realistic, you would just allow a higher gunsmithing skill to do more, since any gunsmith who can build up a firearm from scratch can also do simpler repairs. What I can get away with doing is probably just having an 8- *at best* and getting bonuses for simple things. You *do not* need fast draw to clear jams, at least in real life. Most shooters can clear a jam, since if they can't they really can't even shoot without a buddy who does have his WF. But most of them don't have fast draw and would be at risk of shooting themselves in the leg if they tried it. Clearing is part of the WF. However, I'd probably let someone make a fast-draw roll to attempt to clear the jam more quickly, since that process can be practiced just like the draw.

After having thought about this fruitlessly off and on since 4e, I think I've finally found a conceptual framework that, while suprising (to me), leads to a workable solution. Here is the core principle: Scale interactions, not characters. This means that you write up every character (including of course vehicles and any other hero system entity) using the normal rules without reference to their scale. All quantities on the sheet are assumed to be at the scale of that character, and when they are applied to another character we simply adjust quantities as necessary. For example, when a human attacks a cat or a mecha the damage is scaled upwards or downwards because that damage as written on the character sheet is assumed to be at the scale of the attacker, and in order to apply it we need to re-scale it to the defender. It also means that we don't adjust Body, PD, damage, or anything else for large or small scaled characters (even if we would for different sizes at the same scale). Note that this is specifically scale-invariant: a cat and a mecha can both have strength 10 and do 2d6 str damage to another character at their scale. That's convenient. The real-world is not scale invariant and actually scales in a *much* more complex fashion (reflexes get faster as the length of nerves shorten, for example, strength scales more slowly than mass), but then it also doesn't permit much of what we put into games. We need scale invariance to be the default for simplicity and to approximate genres with extremely large or small humanoids, and any other effects are something the GM has to choose based on the dramatic reality of a particular campaign. This also means that there are two overlapping systems in the game: the normal size rules and these scale rules. That also seems odd, and goes against the hero assumption that it's best to front-load as much as possible to character creation instead of during play, but I hope to convince you that, paradoxically, the dual system works better than a single one. Second core principle: The scale rules are their own rule with it's own mechanics and and are not constructed with existing powers (though the mechanics should resemble them so as to fit seamlessly with the rest of the rules). This also goes against a basic hero idea that the existing powers create a basis for doing anything, but that has not been working well for hero (probably because the powers are specifically fitted to superhero reality, and that's kind of a problem as NuSoardGraphite pointed out). It also turns out that making it a new rule is actually *much* simpler, and I think Steve Peterson and/or George MacDonald once said that you create a new power when it makes things simpler. OK, here is my first cut at a specific rule based on those principles: Hero Scaling v1.0: We introduce one new quantity, Reference Scale. Reference scales are logarithmic. Every point of scale difference corresponds to a doubling or halving of volume (and thus mass for objects of ordinary density), so that three points of scale difference corresponds to a doubling or halving of linear dimensions. Reference Scale 0 is the standard scale in the rules. Every character is written to a specific Reference Scale; if no Scale is written on the character sheet Scale 0 is assumed. This is not necessarily the size of the character since all the existing size powers and rules can still be used. For example, if cats are written to reference scale -5, then the GM could choose to write up all dogs at that scale and use the standard size rules for dogs larger than lapdog sized. Similarly, a very large or small mecha could use the size rules to adjust their size relative to whatever the GM has set as "mecha scale." Maps also have a Reference Scale, and again Scale 0 is the default unless specified otherwise (in earlier editions this would have been simple to say, since it would mean that 1 hex = 2m at scale 0, 1 hex = 1m at scale -3, and so on). Scale is used as follows: I. Whenever characters of different scales interact with each other, some (but not all) effects get scaled according to the *difference* in Reference Scale. If N = (attacker scale) - (defender scale), then we have 1. +N damage classes (N is a signed quantity, so if the attacker is smaller than the defender this reduces damage in a way that resembles damage negation) 2. -2N/3 OCV (so if the attacker is larger it is more difficult to hit). This may only apply to ranged combat--the rule should be the same as the GM is using for size powers. 3. There is NO scaling of Body, Stun, Knockback, or anything else having to do with applying this damage to the defender. We compute damage normally at the attacker's scale (i.e. as written on the attacker's character sheet), scale the resulting number of damage classes to the defender's scale, and then roll and apply that damage normally at the defender's scale (i.e. as written on the defender's character sheet). However, note that adding DCs will also add knockback, do more body, and vice versa, so that in practice the other things get effectively scaled simply by virtue of the rule. A small character who takes a -3d6 DC penalty against some large character is effectively taking a KB penalty as well, and also doing less body and stun. This is like giving the larger character KB resistance and extra body and stun, but it happens automatically by the scaling rules. This automatic handling of quantities is part of what convinced me I was on to something in scaling interactions during play instead of using the usual Hero front-loading system of putting size differences on a character sheet. 4. Other things I missed? These specific numbers could be debated, but they are consistent with long-standing hero practice; as spot checks, I verified that they fit both the 6e vehicle size chart and the 4e size powers. In 4e we might phrase it as +2N/3 DCV instead, but this is mechanically identical and so is a choice of computational method rather than part of the rule. II. Whenever a character interacts with the map, i.e. with something geometrical, effects are scaled to the difference between the character's reference scale and the map's scale. If M = (character scale) - (map scale), then we have: 1. Reach is multiplied by 2^(N/3), i.e. each three points doubles or halves reach. This uses the stretching rules, but of course is not actually the stretching power. 2. Movement is scaled by the same factor, i.e. each three points doubles or halves the character's movement. This is a bit like buying more/less movement and a bit like a non-combat multiple, but there is no precise power for this. You could think of it as "combat multiples" if you like. 3. Area effects, explosion, and the like will also have to be scaled, obviously. This could get complex in certain edge cases and requires further thought. 4. It will also interact with Megascale. 5. Other things I missed? This is already long, so I'll save further discussion for another message.

I agree with this, though I handled it rather differently. I think it's important to be able to write up things at large or small scales with the normal rules.

This makes a LOT of sense. I'm going to post version 0.1 of my proposal anyway because it demonstrates the basic idea, but I think for v0.2 I'll take this advice and try to base the specific numbers on the vehicle size chart as well as comments on the basic idea. Edit: now that I've gone over it and posted it, it seems that the parts of the chart I actually use have remained invariant between at least 4e and 6e, and between the character and vehicle rules. This is encouraging, since it suggests that that part (really just dealing with damage and CV) has been working better than the other parts and is the most important part to maintain.

I agree with this. I noticed it in 4e, where being big made you stronger but being small didn't make you weaker (and the size powers were used for inherent size differences as well as dynamic changes). That and some other asymmetries seem to fit comic book reality, but are weird otherwise. I will go so far as to say that I believe hero has *never* done size well, though this was masked somewhat by the fact that it comes up most often in supers where the rules were tweaked to work OK. This has bugged me ever since I learned the game, which was just about when 4e came out; it always bugs me when I find something it doesn't do. I never knew how to fix it before, but I think I do now. I look forward to seeing how well you think my forthcoming proposal works.

I wish I'd stumbled onto this thread earlier, because I've also been thinking about size/scale issues from the opposite direction; I wanted to write up a game with cat PCs and was dismayed to discover hero simply doesn't do it well since there are a lot of other critters of significantly different sizes. This is the converse of your problem, in that to cats humans are essentially mecha, albeit mecha without resistant defenses, something cats seem to be very well aware of. (Which brings up one difference: cats and humans can melee without the humans completely dominating as apparently mecha would. A really good solution should allow both your game and mine gracefully.) I concluded that the hero size system just simply can't do this well; certain things end up the same for all cats, too granular, or scale abysmally. Take the 6e bestiary writeup for a domestic cat. They have 1 pip of killing damage, which only gets through because they have no resistant defenses. So what about a less capable cat? Either it does the same damage, or it does none at all. Similarly, cats have 0d6 of STR damage, so they can't go STR on STR with each other. And if an unusually big tom is stronger, either it isn't modeled in the game or you have a cat that could conceivably win a STR contest with a normal human and has even odds against Aunt May. In reality all cats should have 0 str damage against humans, but should vary considerably against each other. Apparently hero not only can't do that but, thinking about older editions, *never* did that correctly. I noticed this back in 4e days and it bothered me then as now when I find something hero does poorly, but I didn't have a solution then. I have a start on one now that I'd like to make work for mecha, cats, humans shrunk to the size of insects, and so on. It needs much more thinking and debugging, and since your problem is different in detail than mine it would make for an excellent second test case. I didn't even think it was ready to bring up on the forum, but since there is so much good thinking in this thread I'll go ahead and post it for critique in a bit.

For the current services, I don't think the navy's experience in running ships on long-term missions is actually all that important--just because the missions have some similarities doesn't mean that those similarities are crucial. More important I suspect is the Air Forces' emphasis on technical excellence--it would be easier to find people with the right talents. I recall a lecture by an AF lieutenant mainly aimed at telling army brass what to expect from airmen assigned to their units (long story). It was fascinating precisely because he had to tell them quite specifically the differences between the services that are operationally relevant. In particular, he pointed out that technical skill is actually relevant to promotion in the AF, which got gasps and titters from the grunts--in the army, promotion is (theoretically anyway) about leadership first, last, and only. Technical skills are what you have Specialists and Warrant Officers for. My point is that it would be easier to find officers who can combine technical ability and leadership in the AF than in the other branches. Now to question my own premise: techie prejudices notwithstanding, it's not entirely clear to me that this matters much either. What you really need in leadership is probably the ability to listen to your experts and balance their recommendations. The navy has that, as do the other services. In any event, we wouldn't convert any service over to a new mission overnight, they would simply task a few people at a time as the new mission grew. Any service can find those people in sufficient numbers, just as the US Army found the right people for the air corps as it grew. And now to question the premise of the entire thread: this is all post-hoc justification for a phenomenon that was entirely based on dramatic choice and surface analogy. Writers model the space service on one of the existing ones simply because they plan to use historical models. You can often pin down the analogy much more specifically than just the service. Star Trek is Fantasy WW I in space because Roddenberry thought of it in terms of battlewagons and cruisers. You can just file off the serial numbers whether you want a big space battle (Jutland) or a small but complex confrontation (Battle of the River Platte). Star Wars is Fantasy WW II in space because Lucas thought in terms of carrier warfare. My point is that there is no reason to logically defend premises that were based on drama rather than logic in the first place. And finally, to again question the premise of the entire thread, it isn't the current services that will go into space anyway, it is whatever they become by that time, and they may not even be recognizable to us in the aspects that matter. The navy is quite technical now too, because they have to be and so they adapted. The best discussion of tropospheric radio propagation I've ever read was written for navy officers to be able to intelligently understand what their experts would tell them about things like why their over-the-horizon radar wasn't even seeing to the horizon or why it was seeing so far beyond the horizon that it is picking up irrelevant distant targets and making them appear close. In a military spacecraft they will be even farther from one man knowing every system than we already are, so I think *that* is the quality of an officer in the space force. He has a broad education in the bottom line on as many systems as possible, not so he can turn the knobs and interpret the results but rather so he can interact intelligently with the host of experts who are drowning him in information. Likewise, the AF was the army air corps until what, '47, the army in WW II generally embraced technology as never before, and so on and so forth. They have changed, they do change, they will change, and they won't be the same forces when they get spacecraft even if they have the same names. For that matter, there is no particular necessity for four forces--Israel has one and nobody claims they can't fight (actually some did, but we're still waiting for them to come back and report on the experimental results of their thesis). A combined space/ground force could probably be made to work, or a dual force model as in Starship Troopers, or any other combination. You don't *have* to model on our contemporary services. It's a good model, but, well, it's been done before and you might want something different. Our current services are essentially modeled on British practice in the Napoleonic era (army, navy, and the marines as the navy's contingent of seagoing soldiers on the larger ships), plus the AF which had a lot of politics involved. Given all that, maybe we should simply learn from the masters and make the choice for *dramatic* effect. That's a legitimate thing to do even in a Hard SF story. How do you want your space battles and military life to *feel*? Piper I think wanted more age-of-sail feel in his stories, and so you have men completely out of contact with home pursuing long-term hobbies that don't need the resources of a whole civilization in between moments of pounding the daylights out of each other in ship-on-ship actions. Go with any service, or a new one. Or notice that somehow most authors only use one or two forces even though it might well be that the right number has to do with size (the US has many to administer a very large military, while Israel has one to administer a far, far smaller force). If you have big fleet actions, why not question SF custom at a deeper level than what sounds like a football game (Navy vs. Air Force, final score 13-7)? Maybe the deep space service is different than the system defense service, which is different than the surface/atmosphere service. I've often thought that we'd be better off if we gave the A-10s and the close support back to the army, you could do that. Or you could go with something familiar because you *don't* want to distract the reader from the main point of your story. If you're throwing big ideas and logical consequences at your players right and left, maybe it's best if the space force is familiar and undistracting. Even in Hard SF, the details serve the story. It's just that the story wants consistency more than other stories.

I'd never heard of the books, so thanks for that!

Adjusted for people who would not appreciate actual space opera. *Physics*? Those shows are about as devoid of actual science as it is possible to be. They may be adjusted for people who believe Coast to Coast AM is a news source, I suppose, that wasn't a problem for the original Space Opera authors (they instead labored under difficulties like (greater) pressure to churn out product in quantity regardless of quality). This is hard because why? Because ignorant Hollywood scriptwriters (but I repeat myself) can't (or all too often might be able to but don't want to or can't sell it if they did want to) do it? Even with scriptwriters rather than actual SF authors (ignoring the small intersection of the sets), the primary reason they use artificial gravity rather than rotation is that it keeps the special effects budget within reason. They can't afford to do anything better, just as most of them can't afford anything better than rubber-forehead aliens. They also believe that most of you wouldn't know the difference anyway--in private, industry people tend to be kind of open about believing their audience is primarily idiots. The problem with that is that people who watch those shows and mistake them for anything other than the softest of SF have their imaginations shaped by the needs of a film or TV show budget and think that artificial gravity must be part and parcel of living in space. Which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy--if their audience wasn't already morons, they would be after watching too much Hollywood product. The great thing about the business model of both Hollywood and of drug dealers is that the product creates more customers. In the real world, it it not hard for a great many people to imagine; this is not subject to debate since they have imagined it and have written about it extensively both in fiction and the more blue-sky technical studies. If you want to learn something beyond the light science-fantasy of TV, the 'Space Habitat' article on Wikipedia will list many designs for you, and you can google from there. Good God. You actually believe all that scriptwriter gobblety-gook? The hazards of space and the technologies to cope with them aren't *precisely* what Gene Roddenberry might imagine. Once again, as with the other technologies you imagine are necessary, TV and movies have force fields because they are *cheap*. Often you just mention their existence once and never even have to have special-effects show them on-screen. You can do the same with 'shielding,' but the Rule of Cool comes into play: force fields are cooler. The media is addicted to the Rule of Cool, and with a handful of exceptions that is mutually exclusive on the screen with hard SF. Staggering as it may seem, people have imagined colonizing space without terraforming, though you can't get that from the screen--it can make sets cheaper to assume primarily planetary colonies with terrains that appear similar to some location Hollywood is used to shooting in. Even if it isn't cheaper for a particular script, planetary settings are also familiar to an audience which they assume would not even know why they might have chosen otherwise. It's bad business to waste a ton of money on things your audience won't care about, and the one thing Hollywood does know a great deal about is making a profit. By contrast, being true to science is somewhere below navel lint on the general media scale of importance. Also staggering may be the fact that people have imagined building enclosed colonies on planets--it isn't necessary to cover every inch of a planet in humans to call it colonized. The one thing that is hard to imagine is getting people to give up whatever future equivalent of TV and movies people are using then to kill off their brain cells so the general population has enough brain cells to not open both airlock doors at once or get a reeeaaally good tan from direct solar radiation. Mass entertainment may turn out to be the biggest barrier to space exploration....