LordZorinthrox

Well bigbywolfe, I'm a hands-on kinda designer/engineer. I find the best way to learn how something works is to impose structured changes and see how it breaks the original. HERO in general is one of the better designed complex RPGs; there is a unified structure behind its rules and I'm doing this experiment to plumb the depths of its design. It's kind of like a dissection, I guess? Usually these things don't go over well; people get confused over why I'm messing with something in a such a weird and drastic way, but this is how I learn to make good games and develop the kind of proficiency Lucius seems to possess, though it seems doubtful anyone could beat his expertise.

I am only properly familiar with 5er, so this may be different in the details for 6th. I would try buying Martial Arts as a Skills power and buy Martial Block (and by the rules, you'll need a few other martial maneuvers to get the minimum 10 points), apply the Duration advantage for Continuous (+1) so you "don't need to make an attack roll for every phase the power is active". That get's you most of what you want, I think, with the added benefit of a better block modifier. As for making it a 0 Phase action...well I don't know, that is some serious power you are talking about. I do not believe there is a specific advantage for that, so you'll probably have to just fudge it and say that making a power 0-Phase would be at least a +2 or +3. Worst case, that is a power that has 50 active points. Did I do that right?

Now there we go; hadn't thought of that! About CON being in the 'mind' group: yeah, it is weird. I had it reorganized as a figured stat at one point, but it was getting weird and cramped so I moved it back to try to get a set of figured stats that could be sold back. It ended up in the Mind group only because there was room. However, DEX and CON sorta have a nebulous assignment in those two groups, anyway. You could make an argument either way, I think. But of course the point feedback loop in that form is a problem I was not aware of; I clearly misunderstood the issue which 5ER rules concerning figured stats are designed to deal with. Also I can't believed I missed the lack of a point incentive for buying figured stats! But each primary does indeed only appear once, but only in that group of four figured stats which can be sold back if you want. That is, you can't sell PD, ED, or PRE. What if all figured stats cost 2pts to buy and that group of 4 can be sold at 1pt, in the increments listed? Or maybe 3pts/2pts? If I buy 5 CON for 20, then it's 60 END which I could sell back for 5, which can buy 1 more CON, which is 12 END which gets you 1 pts. That way you can freely sell that group off but it isn't worth it to exploit it. Increasing the figured stats would also be cheaper than increasing the primary stats. Something I didn't mention: even though the normal Skill pricing fits into the new values nicely, it does mean that Skills are relatively more expensive. I also stated that BODY was both twice as cheap and twice as expensive relative to 5ER; it is purely the latter. An alternate rule that may also solve the problem: You can buy figured stats for 2 (or 3?) points, and you can shuffle points between figured stats at that rate, but you can't sell figured stats for points that you can use elsewhere. That keeps the flexibility I'm after but also disallows the point feedback loop.

Hello! Been playing HERO for good long while now; I guess about 10 years off and on? My friend is the better GM, but I've taken a good stab at it, as well as some other game design projects that have elements of HERO in them (the power pricing system, for instance). Anyway, I was just musing the other night about making HERO easier for new players. We play 5ER almost exclusively when we use HERO; 6th Edition just didn't sit well with us. No Figured Characteristics was my complaint, not because of power-playing, but because it is a good, or at least cool, idea to make some stats boosted based on some other core stats. A focus of 6th seemed to be simplifying some of the math you have to float just to do basic things, and that is a good thing as the math is a source of much of the consternation for new players. As usual, I have my own ideas and I would like to hear what anyone has to say at this stab at making the basic characteristic rules easier to understand; be forewarned, I have some weird alterations here and I've never been perfectly fluent in all the nuances of the system. I am NOT suggesting rules for the actual gamebook; I just want to talk game design, mechanics, and player experience. I could not find a 'spoiler' option in the editor here, so I apologize for wall-of-text; if there is such a feature please say something and I will edit it in. I envy the patience of someone who sits through this; I hope it is at least enjoyable and stimulates some interesting discussion. Thanks for your time! The 'simplifying the math' angle is a good one. But I think there is something we can do better: remove the factor of 1/5 from the stats (please forgive the use of 'stat' for 'characteristic'). Wherever a stat shows up, its mathematical effect is usually altered by dividing it by 5 (or a multiple thereof). A stat roll is 9 + CHAR/5, a number of the figured stat bases are mathed out relative to primary stats by dividing by 5, and you get another damage die for every 5 levels in a stat. The most basic and straightforward powers are also priced with multiples of 5. Fives everywhere! The problem with 5's is this: 5 is prime, and 10 is divisible only by 5 and 2. While 5's and 10's make addition easier, they make division very hard, and overall HERO System is a divisiophobe's own personal Sisyphean circle of Hades. Also, you have a situation where you spend points at a given amount per level in a stat only to divide the stat by 5 whenever you need to actually use it. That is the sort of cognitive load that stymies new players, and why 12 is a much better number to go with, because it is divisible by two, three, four, six, and divisible by 8 and 9 into simple fractions. That is the reason a Round consists of 12 segments and not 10 (and because how we measure time and calculate degrees and BABYLON). The reason behind this is obvious: stats start at 10, and you can't very well have everything balanced if you roll directly against the stat nor can you use it as a modifier itself because it is too large. If I were to guess (and a friend once explained), I'd say that the first edition of Champions had stats start at 10 because 10- is the roll on 3d6 that results in 50%, and only later was it altered to divide by five and add 9 because it was just toooo OP and such a change was compatible with existing character sheets without much work. But this is a thought experiment, and I'm not publishing a book, so let's go all-out. Instead of a base value of 10, I use a base value of 1. The stat now is the modifier itself and not an intermediate step in finding the modifier. You add this stat directly to 9, which means that a 'normal' character has a 50/50 chance when rolling. If you want you can say Heroes start at 2. That means I need to change the cost, since now each 'rank' of a stat is 5 times more powerful than a 'level' in a HERO stat. But I'm not using a cost of 5pts; I'm using 4pts. I offset this by shifting the 'cost' of a die for things like RKA from 15 to 12. Now a half-die costs 6pts, and +1 costs 3pts; the math is already getting easier. As far as things like the Strength Table go, you only lose a little bit of granularity which probably doesn't effect gameplay all that much for most purposes. Spending 2 points to get that extra granularity back isn't too much of an issue, either. Much like 6th Edition, I also specify that all stats are created equal and no stat (well, sorta) costs any different from any other. In 6th edition, I found this a problem because it didn't feel right, but I've reworked the stats in this experiment sooooo who knows. I like it, anyway . Now, the Primary Stats. I'm a fan of symmetry in game design, so I've stripped out and redone the stats into two groups with analogous stats between them: Mind and Body. - MIND - Will (WILL), Intellect (INT), and Acuity (ACU), Constitution (CON) Will is your 'motivation' of sorts; Will-power basically, and as such is, more or less, like 5ER 'Ego'. You could probably call it Ego and be fine I just wanted to give it a more 'common' name that needs less explanation to a new player. Intellect is basically the same, though some responsibilities are taken by Acuity, which is a measure of cognitive 'sharpness'; think Sherlock Holmes. Constitution is the same. - BODY - Body (BODY), Strength (STR), Agility (AGL), Dexterity (DEX) Body is the same mechanically, except shifted by 10ish and it is relatively half as expensive; it needs rescaling to compensate properly. Strength is of course the same. Agility is mostly the same as 5ER's Dexterity, except it excludes things that involve fine manipulation. I think the D&D-sourced and near ubiquitous convolution of dexterity and agility in RPGs is troubling. For instance, a gymnast is certainly agile, but they are not necessarily dexterous. Are dodging a bullet and picking a lock really using the same abilities of a character? I'm inclined not to think so, so I usually separate them when I can. It also allows a character to be physically focused without being a meat tank or highly dexterous and tinkery without having to be being insanely hard to hit. Combat value is calculated from Agility and not Dexterity; that calculation needs tweaking of course. On the usual HERO scale I divided by 5. Some algebra later, and CV = (5 x AGL) / 3, which is close enough to 2 x AGL that I can live with it; it compensates a little for BODY being twice as expensive. Alternatively you could say AGL x 1.5 which is plenty close enough to the actual math. Simply using Agility as the base Combat Value is another option which may adjust for the reduction in the cost of Agility relative to 5ER's Dexterity. Notice familiar stats are missing: Presence, Comeliness, and Ego have disappeared. Presence has been shifted into Figured Stats, Ego replaced by Will, and Comeliness dropped because I find it is just a convenient point fountain for players and anyone can be 'attractive' if they role play it well; 6th Edition agrees. For Figured Statistics, I brought in Presence (PRE). Presence is by far one of the better HERO stats, and here I've made it more coupled to the other stats. Since the division has been taken out of the base calculations, there is room for a different operation that makes it easier to have a functional character but is also easier to compute: greatest value, which I am here denoting with square brackets, or "[ ]". Presence now has a base value like this: [TABLE=width: 500] [TR] [TD]Characteristic[/TD] [TD]Base[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]PRE[/TD] [TD][WILL, INT, ACU, CON, BODY, STR, AGL, DEX][/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Now there is a 'hook' for the player about why their character has an imposing physical presence; your character has a higher Presence because its base value is the greatest primary stat you have. Ada Lovelace and the Hulk both have naturally higher Presence because they have a superlative primary stat that makes sense for them. Presence based interactions are thus colored by what is the highest stat of a character, which most GMs take into account anyway. ED and PD are still here, naturally. The three together are the 'Defense' group, and these are based thusly: [TABLE=width: 500] [TR] [TD]Characteristic[/TD] [TD]Base[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]ED[/TD] [TD]CON[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]PD[/TD] [TD]BODY[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] I like PD based on Body more than Strength, but it could go either way. Lastly there is the 'Action' group of our old friends Speed, Recovery, Stun, and Endurance. No changes there, except to base math and cost, making this the only place where costs are not 4pts per 1 level in the stat. However, for 4pts you get the multiplier for the base value in levels, which means the relative power of these stats is the same as all the others. Speed's multiplier is fractional and therefore its base always rounds down (no change there). [TABLE=width: 500] [TR] [TD]Characteristic[/TD] [TD]Base[/TD] [TD]Cost[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]SPD[/TD] [TD]1/4 x (AGL + DEX)[/TD] [TD]4pts per 1/4[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]REC[/TD] [TD]3 x (STR + WILL)[/TD] [TD]4pts per 3[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]STUN[/TD] [TD]6 x (BODY + ACU)[/TD] [TD]4pts per 6[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]END[/TD] [TD]12 x CON[/TD] [TD]4pts per 12[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Translating from the 5ER rules, 8 active points of a Power would cost 1 END to use (2/3 of the cost of RKA costs 1 END to use in the normal rules). Of these seven stats, Presence, PD, and ED are not allowed to be sold off, only increased. This is for two reasons: it is reasonable, since it is now clear that PD and ED are really just glosses for the modifiers of Body and Constitution themselves and both those stats measure things about the character that are indeed a feature of their design. Those stats are also good places for some character design, so taking a Disadvantage to give meat to why a character is weak to energy is a reasonable thing. Likewise for Presence; you'd have a hard time hiding the fact that you are massively muscular if Strength is your highest stat unless you take pains to do so. Secondly, the choice of Primary stats in the remaining four means that they can be freely purchased and sold because no Primary stat appears more than once, meaning point gerrymandering will affect no point gains. This also more evenly distributes the two families of stats so all your combat relevant stats are not entangled only with Strength and Constitution. Since a non-physical character will likely be using these stats but for non-physical things, you get some balance back and less focus on pure brawn to win. Intellect does not appear here, but that is because it dominates the Skill list, so everything should be about fair. I haven't gone through the tedious process of seeing how to rework costs of powers in detail, and the extant Skill points costs fit neatly into this re-pricing. The stat that each Skill uses, of course, would need to be changed to fit in. I did do that, but it isn't that interesting except for Skills that I think could use the 'greatest value' thing; Forgery, for instance, is applicable to both Intellect and Dexterity depending on what you are forging and each stat's value. The presence of Acuity also makes a number of Skills make more sense; Deduction, for instance, is a natural fit. Sooo...yeah. Kinda crazy, but maybe kinda good? Opinions? Indiscriminate ire? Anyone?