JasonPacker

I guess I just want it to, to help inspire a more dynamic battlefield.

What of this rule, also from 6E2, 202: A +2m reach weapon is sufficient to attack someone on the other side of someone else - so either they're assuming you've abandoned hexes entirely in favor of free-form measurement of distance, or a guy with a Very Long weapon can attack you with a 2m hex of empty space between. I get that it's supposed to be an abstract depiction of what happens over time, but the rules should be consistent for both short-weapon and long-weapon attacker, and how they impact position on the tabletop. Or abandon any pretense of supporting something that could be considered tactical minis in play.

You're right - I think that might still demand an active power use to "turn on", and unless bought off cost END and be Constant but not Persistent.

Oh sure, but there's always that one guy - "I played First Edition, and if you started with Second, you're a young pup and have to listen to me!"

How are you building the spells themselves? Because for a single power, I'd be tempted to make a cheesy multipower, with one slot for the spell as normal, feeding off the mana pool, and the other the same effect with no mana pool and an always-happens Side Effect for the damage caused by using personal END.

I wonder if Gestures is right - maybe more of a Variable Disadvantage of either Recoverable Charge that requires a half-phase action and both hands, or Requires Skill Roll (fast-load Sonic Shotgun), but then is a zero-phase action and only requires one hand?

Reference is 6E2, 201-2 Combatants with weapons of differing length can inflict minor OCV penalties on one another depending on the reach of the weapon and who has the advantage at the time. The rule is that the shorter weapon is at -1 or -2 OCV (depending on the length differential) until he can take the advantage: Once this has happened, the longer-reach weapon wielder has two alternatives. He can also attempt to hit his opponent, sucking up the OCV penalty, or he can move: All well and good, but it does raise some questions for me as to how to handle this when you're making use of maps and minis. Specifically: When the wielder of the shorter weapon succeeds with his attack, and gets inside the longer weapon, does he move closer to his opponent as part of the maneuver (e.g. Where once there was a meter of open space between us, now there is no open space)? Should there be an option for the wielder of the shorter weapon to close the distance with a half-move prior to attacking, or is the assumption that the longer weapon keeps him at bay? And if that is the case, is there an argument allowing the distance to be closed anyway, and giving the longer weapon wielder a free attack? If the longer weapon wielder does refuse to budge, makes his attack with the penalty, and hits, does this move his opponent back one or more meters, effectively against his will? And if so, does either combatant get a say in where the shorter weapon wielder ends up - must it be straight back, can it be back and sidestepping to one side or another so long as the correct range is restored? What if there's an obstruction or bad footing where he would need to go? And a bonus question - for those of you who do still crack out the maps and minis, do you still stick with 2 meter hexes, like 5E? Have you moved on to more GURPSian 1 meter hexes? Do you go with squares (sacrilege!) or free form it and just measure distances?

One of the things that brings me back to Hero time and again is nostalgia. I learned how to play Champions back in '84 (which makes me something of a youngster to some of you) and it was the first point-buy system I ever encountered. I adored it, and the freedom it gave to character design. It had flaws, but I've yet to run into any system, no matter how many iterations along it is, that doesn't. Another thing is that I've yet to find a system that does the superhero genre any better than Hero does. There were games that came before Champions that were okay, but nothing like as detailed and rich, and many that have followed that feel like watered-down versions of Champions with different dice. There's also the perversity of having a system to call your own that isn't overrun by every gamer in the universe. A kind of self-imposed hipsteresque exclusivity to this club. It's an especially nice ego boost when people turn up their noses at the game because it's too hard - for them, but not for you. Finally, and this has been covered by others as well, Hero is a system system. It demands tinkering - which is fun. It allows an incredible amount of flexibility. And in the right hands, it can work for any genre you can come up with.

Agreed. It is a perfect candidate for "design from effect" - I've seen it be precognition, teleportation, mirror image spells, and I think I recall a character who could use a low level of mind control to make you think you were aiming for her, but not actually.

I've not played out this example, or consulted my rulebooks, but what if the guy punching Jackie has a damage shield going? Does the failure to land the blow still expose Jackie to the damage shield? If not, should it - meaning, should rolling with the punch in fact just be PD or damage negation?

That's definitely what Side Effects are for. If they fail their skill roll, some sort of detrimental effect occurs, and the higher the level of the spell (AP/10), the higher the penalty to their skill roll.

The only one I'd be worried about in your list of examples is the rolling with a hit. That implies that the blow landed, and if there were some carry-over effects, a high DCV would prevent them from happening. Otherwise yes, DCV is any ability to avoid being hit by any attack. If it's specific kinds of attacks, you'll likely want combat skill levels instead - say to represent the swordsman who can always parry, he'd be better served with "Hand to Hand Combat" levels, so as not to make him impossible to shoot as well.

Given that skills are all based on a bell curve, I think I'm inclined towards notion of having the Spell Level be a penalty to skill level instead of only a penalty if your skill is too low. This makes it possible to still have a relatively high skill (17-, say) and cast a spell that's level 3 at a 14-, that is most of the time, but still able to cast a much higher skill spell, say a level 7, half the time.

Except the example is of a spell that a wizard can cast on a lock to make it harder to open, not a power that is inherent to the lock itself. "To use Change Environment, the character must make an Attack Roll to hit his target" - CE is very much something that someone or something has to do to a target object or person (including self).

I suppose 3d6+1 Drain vs OCV (Standard Effect 10) and 6 1/2d6 Drain vs DCV (Standard Effect 20, halved) would work, where that's allowed?

Interestingly, 6E2 only gives to penalties for inebriation. -2 OCV, -2 DCV.

Just ordered a headset with a mic for G+ Hangout gaming. Might be I could be persuaded to use it for podcasting as well.

At least three factions, sometimes as many as eight. Rarely if ever is one of the irredeemably evil, or purely good - while characters can engage in black and white thinking, reality tends to be more nuanced, and I like that in my games as well. I'm also not a fan of monolithic societies. There are few if any actual "elf kingdoms" for example, opting instead to have elves fit into most if not all societies, in a broad range of roles as suit those kingdoms. It just feels more natural to me. That said, I'm totally stealing the template from Bluesguy for my future designs.

If you do decide to proceed with this train of thought, you might find useful inspiration in: Runequest - not the newest version, but Chaosium RQ2 or Avalon Hill RQIII. They use a system called Strike Rank that will feel very familiar based on your example. Shadowrun - 5E - they've returned to rolling a number of dice plus a static value to assign an initiative value, from which you subtract amounts based on defensive stances or attacks. Rolemaster - at least the new public Beta - they use a percentage system to assign fractions of a turn to specific actions.

Thinking more on this, Hero is even more of a game system toolkit than GURPS is. While many if not most folks who play Hero will use the system as presented to design the system they want, GURPS has a greater emphasis on a more old-school style of modding - you build something that you think is cool, test it out, tweak it, and hope for the best. Yes, there's a robust Powers system in there, but none of the magical styles presented in any of the supplements (Magic, Thaumatology, Ritual Path Magic, Chinese Elemental Magic, etc) is based on those Power rules. Psionics as presented in the three supplements (Psionic Powers, Psis and Psionic Campaigns) is based on powers, as is the Divine Favor rules for divine intervention, but it's not nearly as ubiquitous as it typically is with Hero. I definitely agree with whoever it was up there that said that every system has combats that either take four hours or half an hour, depending on who you talk to. Part of it is system mastery, part of it is the types of combats that are being run. The only system I've ever played that didn't have this sort of variability (aside from the earliest of Basic D&D) is Savage Worlds.

The fun part about the name is that it started out as a joke, just something to call the game in it's original form before it was completed. They were sure they'd come up with something better eventually, never did, and it stuck. And Narf, if it is any consolation, I taught myself Hero as well, back when it was still Champions - but then I was a much more flexibly-brained high schooler - and that was the basis that made GURPS 3e click for me. GURPS 4e's power system really gave me a hard time, as it was a departure from the old system, and one that just didn't gel for me for probably the first three reads through GURPS Powers.

The Lite rules are not great. They should be followable, but they're not terribly useful for any but the most narrow of games. The Ultra-lite rules are a joke, honestly. It definitely helps to either a) have an experienced player to explain the idiosyncrasies, or have played it from 1st edition, a million years ago.

I'm more and more taken with the notions of transhumanism. GURPS: Transhuman Space is an excellent resource for a mostly realistic SF setting in the near future that gives you variety without aliens, and manages to keep things pretty interesting. And folks RAVE about the setting of Eclipse Phase (though I've not read it all myself) with many of the same notions. Both are more than a little Cyberpunk Grows Up - less dark in many cases, but a logical progression.

I didn't really aim at anyone in particular, just saw some common notions that seem a bit outdated. In 4e, you do still have the 4 core characteristics, but they can be broken down (Strength into Lifting Strength, Striking Strength and HP, for example). While you can buy down skills to bump characteristics, but a) if you reduce that cost by selling back secondary characteristics, you start hitting disadvantage limits and with IQ and DX at 20/level, and no 1/2 point skills in 4e, it's much less likely to be as broadly useful. There are also rules that a GM can implement if he feels like this is still being abused, whereby skills can be changed to be associated with other characteristics in different situations, making "relative skill level" - that is, the level above your characteristic you buy it at, immediately valuable. If the GM isn't assiduous about ensuring that "selling back" secondary characteristics is included in the disadvantage total, and the limit to disads isn't maintained at a reasonable point, the system can definitely be "played" - much like you could in Hero 5 or earlier, with STR and CON being remarkably cheap if you sold back defenses and Stun. I definitely agree that it can be an issue if not nipped in the bud, and look forward to a 5th edition one day that may go so far as to do away with the basic 4 characteristics altogether, in favor of a standard base of 10 in all skills, and no figured stats at all.

As a staunch advocate of both systems, I would say that some of your experiences may be with earlier versions of the game, or perhaps early in the release of 4th edition? Because the system has continued to grow, sometimes in surprising directions, as time goes on. While no system is perfect, GURPS seems to do a pretty good job of modeling what folks want out of it, without being all that difficult in play. Like Hero, much is front-loaded in character creation, but once that's out of the way, things as diverse as wacky dungeon delves, modern monster hunter style games, and action movies are just as easy to play as hard science fiction transhumanism and grittily realistic post apocalypse games. They both get lumped together as "too complicated" - by which people mean they're too detailed - and "too math heavy" which tends to mean they don't want to need a calculator for simple arithmetic to build a character.