bpmasher

Not familiar enough with the vehicle creation rules, so I'll ask here. I'm looking into creating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for my modern combat hack of Hero System. How would one designate the fact that the UAV is remotely controlled? How to give different capabilities to the vehicle, like acting as a forward observers tool to direct precision artillery strikes against point targets? Then there's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M712_Copperhead Cannon launched smart bomb. Build the bomb as a vehicle with onboard computer? Hoping there are some military buffs with Hero knowledge here

Basic trained trooper: Generic WW2 soldier template ============================ CHAR VAL ROLL STR 10 11- DEX 10 11- CON 10 11- BODY 10 11- INT 10 11- EGO 10 11- PRE 10 11- PD 2 ED 2 SPD 2 Phases: 6, 12 REC 4 END 20 STUN 20 OCV 3 DCV 3 Deployment/Running (+2.5cm, cost 2) 18cm/30cm Combat Movement (+2.5cm) 9cm/15cm COST SKILLS 2 KS: Military world 11- 2 KS: Wehrmacht/US Army history and customs 11- 2 PS: Wehrmacht/US Army 11- 3 Tactics 11- 3 WF: Small arms, Knives 3 Stealth 11- 3 Interrogation 11- 4 Contacts (4 points) 24 0 Fringe Benefit: Private COST CHOOSE 3 (Medic) Paramedics 11- 3 (Engineer) Demolitions 11- 3 (Engineer) Civil engineering 11- 5 (Gunner) Accurate Sprayfire [Flat -1OCV using automatic/suppressive fire, ALL autofire: Full phase, half DCV) 5 (Gunner) Rapid Autofire [Multiple bursts, -2OCV after the first, same amount of rounds to each target) DISADVANTAGES VALUE Distinctive Features: Uniform 5 Hunted: Wehrmacht/US Army, watched 10 Subject to orders 20 Weapons Equipment

Pre-game preparation: While "buying" or creating a force, a side uses Character Points to recruit soldiers, vehicles, and weapons systems to be deployed during or before a battle. Using the points system, asymmetrical forces are easy to create and the sides should have similar chances of winning the skirmish. Deployment continued: Before a meeting engagement or ambush, Tactics skills rolls are made by the highest ranking officers or leaders in a force, and the side that made the roll by the most can freely position blinds on the battle map by the relative amount of roll made, and determine the units that are positioned there. The side can also choose to move first or second depending on their plan. During deployment, an ambushing side can assign a number of traps, IEDs or defensive weapons systems on designated points on the map, without having to mark them on the battle map, but making a note of them on his sides roster sheet. These weapons systems can be used to interrupt the opponents turn, while allowing the possible victims to make perception rolls before being attacked by hidden weapons. Pre-combat deployment continues until a side chooses to initiate combat, or when a blind is detected by a successful perception roll. If only one side makes successful perception rolls or wins the initial Tactics skill roll and chooses not to initiate combat, the deployment phase continues normally until forces are positioned. Character initiative: When using a large number of soldiers with similar stats, a player can decide which of their characters activate first, take actions with that character, and pass actions with the rest of their troops. Individual characters with higher initiative scores always come first before the "hordes" of similar infantry characters. Opposing sides' characters with same-phase actions and similar stats, roll a perception contest roll to determine which character goes first.

Using the set and brace modifiers, giving bipods +2 versus range and +1 ocv to hit sounds ok. Double the bonuses for tripods, to +4 and +2. Require a segment to setup the bipod, and three segments to setup the tripod. A MG42 on tripod will be a deadly weapon, as it's supposed to be.

What kind of bonuses would these devices give to a weapon? I was thinking increased range modifier (+2 for bipod, +4 tripod) and recoil compensation for fully automatic fire versus recoil penalties only. Say +2 OCV versus recoil for bipod, and +5 compensation for tripod.

I'm thinking Hero with miniatures for modern combat. Some of the stuff I've come up with for now, for miniatures skirmish combat using the Hero system rules: Deployment movement. Characters move up to their normal movement allowances during pre-combat maneuvering. Turn length is variable, and actions can be taken normally using the Hero system turn sequence. Characters can use skills normally without combat penalties (defusing an IED for example), or establishing a overwatch when using sniper rifles or crew-served weapons. Combat movement. Modern soldiers have to move in full kit during combat, under fire and using whatever cover they can find. Thus characters move in short bounds during combat, preferably from cover to cover. Take the normal movement values of a character and divide it with the number of phases a character can act in. This is the basis of combat movement allowance. Minimum movement is 1cm using quiet walking movement (1cm per meter of movement on the table) during a phase, moving stealthily and probably during close quarters combat inside a building. Clearing rooms safely inside buildings is slow going. Faster combat movement is simply the running distance divvied up by the number of phases a character has. This represents the quick dashes from cover to cover when in combat. Overwatch. The offensive version of aborting to dodge when in combat. When a field of fire is established during pre-combat movement and deployment phase (or during combat using a full phase action, full turn when setting up a crew-served weapon), characters can abort their upcoming action to fire on a character that is moving in their line of sight. Weapons stats. I used these calculations when coming up with damage by caliber and other weapon qualities: http://whitehall-paraindustries.com/Hero/Conversions/Firearms/rw_conversion.htm. I ignored the strength minimum given the fact that most characters are trained soldiers, and experts at using their weapons during combat. The armor multiplier rules are good and the main reason I used these rules. (M27 IAR: Armor Multiplier=0, Base Damage: 2d6 [5.56mm NATO], Armor Penetration Modifier: 0, Stun Modifier: 0, Per Mod: +4, CQB modifier: -1, Range Modifier: +2, OCV: +1, ROF: 14 rounds per phase) Blinds. Depending on the scenario, characters or groups of characters move under blinds until detected by a successful INT roll (sight, hearing, etc.). Movement during the deployment phase can be either hidden or in the "open" (a convoy of vehicles and soldiers). Detecting hostiles initiates normal combat, and all movement becomes combat movement. During combat, perception rolls are made when a direct line of sight can be contested (by cover, range, darkness or weather) and a perception roll is required by a character trying to spot a hostile. Suppressive and automatic fire. Take a weapons rate of fire, divide it by the beaten zone of the fire (in 2cm increments) and you get the possible number of hits per every 2cm of beaten zone. One can assign each beaten zone a number of rounds (volume of fire) used to suppress that area. Suppressive fire lasts a number of phases limited by the ROF and magazine size of the weapon used (a 30-round magazine with ROF of 14, can cover beaten zones with a maximum of 14 rounds per phase, divide the ROF between beaten zones, or choose to fire less rounds into a given beaten zone. This allowance assumes a trained soldier with strict fire discipline. Untrained soldiers would most likely use the full ROF of the weapon to cover a beaten zone, trying to get hits on anything that moves). Characters that were taking offensive actions inside the beaten zone prior to the automatic or suppressive fire, must abort to get back in to cover, or take a possible hit. Possible hits are resolved like normal attacks, taking cover, movement, visibility and other factors into account, rolling once for each possible hit. Characters that try to take actions inside a beaten zone of fire, must take a Grace Under Fire test to be able to act, and risk getting hit by possible hits in the beaten zone. That's it for now. I spend a couple of hours thinking things through and trying to fit Hero with some principles used in miniatures games that I know of. This should make Hero gameable with miniatures using small changes, and allows for relative realism in the end result.

Well the damage can seem overpowering, but the amount of powder that you use in these weapons combined with the size of the slug, it pretty much justifies the high damage ratings for these weapons. One can reason that a solid shotgun slug will do massive amounts of damage, even at slower velocities. And from a game balance perspective, the insane time you need to reload pretty much balances out the high damage output. I would still used 3d6 (shotgun slug) and +1 stun multiplier. 4d6 would be a bit too much I think.

So the damage might be a little too much. Maybe a compromise of 2½d6 would be optimal. I believe the huge ball the weapon shoots will justify the amount of damage, as it will break bones and at least disable a combatant. The damage to body only reflects the fact that the victim cannot carry on fighting, not necessarily a kill. Call it "realism". If hit locations are used, an arm shot or a leg shot would lead to impairing/disabling wound most likely. Inaccurate: well yes, the lack of rifling definitely affects accuracy, so maybe better shooters can buy penalty skill levels to reflect their mastery of the weapon. I read that engagement ranges can be as long as 240 yards, which is respectable for an old weapon. How about a long rifle next: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_rifle

So, I've been reading on the 18th century, and I started thinking about weapons of the era. I watched a couple of videos on muskets and I gleaned some useful information. Firstly, the damage. A Brown Bess for example is said to shoot a load of .75 caliber ball with the amount of powder equaling a 11 gauge shotgun. That would round either way to 10 gauge or 12 gauge shotgun shooting solid slugs. I think a safe compromise in damage is about 3d6 of Killing damage. A pistol .51 caliber ball would do maybe 2d6 Killing damage. The loading time. I saw a video of a guy shooting 3 rounds off a Brown Bess in 46 seconds. British soldiers were said to have fired at 3 rounds per minute. This rounds up to 20 segments in Hero terms. If a more heroic rate of fire is wanted, one could even round this to one turn per round fired, 12 segments. Depends on what you like best. The pistols of the era would use similar reloading times I think. The utility of these weapons in Hero combat comes into question. Will the players prefer their muskets, or will they fire off a round and charge into melee waving swords and tomahawks. I think it depends on the player. One could create heroic super skills to allow faster reloading, and Champions -level characters could load their muskets even faster at ungodly speeds. Would a Champions -level character need a musket? I doubt it. Now, I lack the Hero know-how at the moment to do a full write-up, but if someone wants to chime in and use these "tips" to create a point complete version, I would be happy to adopt it in my possible games for the era.

As a true backandforthrian, I take ages to decide which minis I purchase for example. My WW2 project is moving along slowly but steadily, but deciding on vehicles and minis can be a daunting task when seeking the optimal solution. Thanks for the suggestions.

This is a good conversion and has extensive notes on magic systems too. Thanks for the links.

Hmm. What would be the alternative? Having spells cost END the same way sword bearers use END for maneuvers? I like the idea of magic being limited in charges, since it would offer tactical decision making the same way for ex. if an anti-tank gun would run out of shells, or an MG running out of ammo or having to change barrels. The magic would have to be significantly more powerful than a sword if I'm going to use the charges/memorization framework. I'm open to options though, haven't invested in anything yet (rules or otherwise). Fantasy Hero apparently has guidelines for designing magic systems, so I might get it.

This way the spellcasters have ammo counts

Been working over some details for my fantasy skirmish game and I thought I might as well use the D&D established worlds to run some dungeon adventures with miniatures. I'll use the prestige classes and feats (powers) from D&D probably converted to Hero, and I was thinking about using a similar spell system as D&D uses. So, as a Hero newbie, I got as far as spells having variable charges (memorized spells) depending on character "levels", so spells get added charges as soon as the character grows in power (freestyle though, like Hero is). PCs can choose which spells they gain affinity with, and get to add character points to those spells in order to increase their power and amount of charges allowed. What sort of limitation would work as required rest period to charge up spells again? More exactly, how much worth is a limitation that requires rest after a set number of charges have been used? Downtime comes, the dungeon is cleared, and the PCs get some deserved R&R at the local tavern -> PCs get ready for another adventure/skirmish. Fighter types can use their looted gold to buy new weapons and learn new maneuvers, spellcasters use hard-earned experience to level up their skills and spells. Rinse and repeat. The challenge would come from the deadly combat and leveled fights by finding out proper monster character point amounts and gradually introducing more dangerous monsters into the game. So far the game is conceptually just a fantasy combat simulator, using optional combat rules from Hero to add depth to the skirmish -style combat, but as the characters grow in power, the scope of the game could grow too to include mass combat or such things for example. A campaign map could be used from any of the D&D setting books to establish locations and the type of terrain the battles will be fought in (what color the terrain mat is , so the game has a sense of adventure in it. One could even use ready-made adventure modules and just include the fluff as read text (or told in a dramatic voice, just for fun), in a similar vein that war games use scenario background info as flavor text. Then play out the battles that ensue in those adventures. Ready-made NPCs to use as cannon fodder or deadly bosses come included in adventure modules. All sorts of dungeons could be of course modeled, by using rules for generating, detecting and disarming traps, or getting burnt by them, and finding loot and random monster encounters. No need for pricey modules. Then of course, one can always set up their own little worlds and stories once people get fed up with the standard D&D campaign settings.

A quick search and I discovered the basics for a loot table. Originally I was going to make one using 3d6 roll on a 3-18 result table but this one uses d100 to roll for goods. www.dandwiki.com/Wiki/SRD:Treasure The 3-18 solution could spawn other tables that also roll on 3d6 to increase the variety in loot. Magic items: Maybe use a point basis for them, like minor magic item - 25 points, then 50 and 100 points for more powerful magic items. Just something off the top of my head.

Zombies, demons, whatever you got! I'd like to see them.

Good stuff. Somewhere along the lines I was thinking. I have a ton of stuff to do if I'm going to play this game though, hopefully I come up with something interesting. I need to come up with a setting and stick with it so I don't get lost on the way. A fantasy world based on a fallen Earth (no need to draw a map either would be fun I think, with all kinds of demons and angels about, and the PCs stuck in the middle of warring titans and celestial beings. If I want fantasy races, just throw in some Shadowrun for a good measure, heh. Calling in reinforcements should be fun: an archangel with godly powers, or a demon that's even worse. I should pick up Armageddon: The End Times RPG for additional ideas.

Anything the PCs can use in normal character creation is a go. The only things I might restrict are some of the skills, depending on the type of game planned. For example, a game about survival might include more useful skills to use in a down-time phase of the game, gathering resources and such. Then a pure arena game with powerful characters might not need to use most of the skills in-game. What I was planning has powerful dungeon delvers going against beasts of all kinds, where skill usage would be secondary, unless I include instances where a a skill is needed to progress in a "level", like lock picking or using magic to open doors or treasure chests. If I'd go the campaign route, I might include stuff like aborting a scenario to go find an ancient key from some other dungeon or city or needing a NPC to progress in a level, because they know stuff the PCs don't (Lore skills might be useful here). I'm still pretty much in the planning phase of things, but I enjoy the possibilities that Hero offers for all kinds of miniatures gaming. The D&D board games and Descent board game have stuff like this, but simplified due to them not being full RPG systems, whereas Hero is a complete RPG. To run the sort of games that excite me I'd need a load of terrain and lots of miniatures to keep things fresh, but for example dungeons could be formed by just using the dungeon tiles found in D&D games and other games come with dungeon environments.

I keep coming back to my original ideas with 400 point heroes battling demons in ancient temples and such. I could just roll up a few characters like that and see how it works. The source material has superhero types all over the place, bashing up countless of monsters along their way. Champions of Legend There are countless of well-made miniatures with angels, heroes and demons to include in a game like this.

This might affect the game more than I want to. I was thinking of being able to use really powerful characters against hordes of enemies possibly, the way you do it in most action rpgs. I should test my theories out though, some simple paper miniatures to start with, then possibly upgrade them to more expensive metal/plastic miniatures if the game works out ok. What I meant to do with campaign points was to enable a player generate completely new heroes or "units" for his skirmish group with them. You might play a few skirmish games with a few grunts and a leader, and then use the campaign points to update one of your guys into a chaos champion or a paladin or something like that, possibly using the events in past skirmishes as a starting point for the upgrade. A campaign session would be a couple of warriors going through a dungeon or something like that, like in the board game Descent or the numerous D&D board games that were discontinued. Maybe one of them finds a magical sword or something like that, and then you evolve the grunt or leader into a more powerful character. I would like to introduce some new mechanics into the game as well, like a chaos concept familiar from Diablo/Warhammer games, where the struggle is between forces of chaos and human empires. If a character gets killed by a chaos beast, the player that controls the chaos beasts can then choose to convert the other players character into his army, warped by the forces that killed him. Maybe a chaos beast could have an alternate attack that only does Soul or Ego damage and when that fills up, the character then gets converted into a chaos being. All this is familiar from Warhammer/Warcraft/Diablo canon and other PC RPGs, even Star Wars has this.

Looks good. A simple way to introduce warriors to the party. Now, leveling them up will probably be the fun part.

I've played some well-crafted PC/Xbox games like Darksiders, Diablo and Amalur, and I was wondering if I could cook up a game in the vein of this sort of source material, with miniatures and Hero. These are essentially action RPGs, so it would be cool if I could bend the mechanics of Hero system to cater to this sort of "quicker gratification" gaming, with similar power levels and speed of leveling the characters up. I was thinking of using "gothic" style miniatures to copy the presentation of these games a bit, and creating a mechanic to level up characters faster. This is again a no-GM concept I've been playing around with, so it's basically a skirmish game using miniatures. I'm still new to Hero so I was hoping for some help statting out characters from these games and possibly running a test game or two with the resulting PCs. These don't have to be exactly the characters in the games, but more in the same style as the games tend to be, like an uber powerful barbarian or a fledgling god incarnate or someone with huge shoulder pads (just kidding, sort of :=) Think Warhammer miniatures, or any of the other skirmish games that favor this neo-gothic art style. There is one mechanic I was going to use, called Campaign Points, where the players receive points for completing a game and more points for winning the game. These points could be worth anywhere from 5 Character points to 50 points, and could be used to "level up" the characters a player is using in the skirmish games. The character point totals would probably always be the same in straight-up skirmish battles despite what characters participate in the game, so upgrading characters would not be unbalancing. Campaign Points would be gained by participating in skirmish scenarios, where a party of (or a single) characters go through a map collecting quest tokens, clues or whatever and tries to solve the scenario against multiple monsters and possibly a single big baddie. Winning the scenario earns more Campaign Points. The other player would run the monsters in the scenario. When the points are divvied and spent, the other player can take a stab at earning some points for his characters to power up his PCs. Then maybe a bigger battle could be played between the resulting updated forces both players have. If a character dies during a skirmish game, some Campaign Points could be spent to resurrect him. The basis for this concept comes from wanting to run a story in the background of these games, and creating a world in the course of the game by coming up with new scenarios and twists of fate each session. Campaign points also allow for quicker character advancement where I don't have the luxury of a roleplaying group or years worth of adventuring in a roleplaying campaign. Hence the idea of an action rpg, without the computer.

Of course, if I'm at least party to designing the scenarios, why not give the skills at least some use? Heh. Many skills could be used in the down-time phase of a game, to gain an additional advantage or allies or something like that. Building shelter, fixing weapons (creating new ones), winning gold at a gambling table, there's a lot to do!

If I didn't already have my set of All Things Zombie rules, I might go ahead and create more stuff to be able to pull this version of zombie bashing together. ATZ is so well thought out though that it's nearly perfect for running long campaigns set in a zombie world. If I want to use sanity rules, I could implement them to the ATZ mechanics and see how it goes. I wanted to write out some of the stuff bouncing around in my head though. As for using Hero for skirmish gaming, I might create some guidelines for playing fantasy or modern-day campaigns with the system, with small teams of miniatures on each side. Something like bank robberies or dungeon romps would work very well with the system I think. I'd have to cut down the skill list to include only the skills that are applicable to skirmish gaming, like using devices, repair/gadgetry, stealth and tactics. Some skills would be pointless. The campaign approach is the driving force in using a RPG like this, so I would have to work out ways for characters to increase their power as the game goes on. Maybe use a party/faction experience mechanic, where experience is given to factions in play, and not the characters, so the points could be used to buy faction upgrades like weapons, new characters, contacts or other resources. That way the loss of a character would be less important, since heroic games can have pretty deadly combat. Champions would work very well with a team-based skirmish setup, where characters in combat are only knocked out most of the time, so the campaign could go on with the same characters for a long time, then you can have the game be about the story mostly. What happens in a scenario leads wouldn't be so final, but the game might get boring since there would be so little change in the character lineups, unless you allow characters to power-up with experience. I'll have to setup some combats with miniatures and see how the system holds up, and if it works very well I will start thinking up campaign rules and defining skills lists and whatever else an ongoing game might need to stay interesting.

I'm not familiar with the mass combat rules. I'd probably start tweaking them to suit my purposes to start with though. I was thinking of zombie survival stuff today. In the rules it says that a character that goes three days without food starts taking Body damage and lose characteristics. Useful stuff for figuring out food consumption. Take a serving of food, give it a weight and find out where the characters stash their stuff. It can get cumbersome fast if PCs are stockpiling food in their backpacks, so a car would be VERY useful to obtain in the first adventures (or chosen at character creation). In fact, why not give everything a weight value to increase the challenge of survival vs. hoarding stockpiles. All Things Zombie already has a pretty nifty inventory system in place, so one could always steal that one, but since I'm already inclined towards simulating everything in the game, I could work out Encumbrance for every car based on their Strength and give them a gasoline consumption value based on some variables like STR, DEF, and BODY values. Then I'd have to decide how much units of gasoline each car can hold, give then encumbrance values and find out how fast you can siphon gas out of cars. All in the name of zombie apocalypse simulation..hehe I guess I could write some stuff about character creation too. If I'm going for "realistic" zombie apocalypse feel, I would probably use 25 + 25 character points for starting characters. Concepts would be something like cops, athletes and bartenders. No powers to start, unless you want to emulate small things like luck, or a strong constitution, even special skills. Everyone is armed with pool cues and baseball bats to start, just to add some tension to initial combats and keep things exciting. If that works out, experience and campaign success gives you more toys to play with, and even Bases to call home and to defend or course. Nothing is secure in a zombie apocalypse, stuff can go downhill despite how much body armor or assault rifles you can find. Guys like Joe and his gang or the Governor from Walking Dead will show up and try to take all of your stuff, and kill you of course. Ideally stuff will be randomly generated, still keeping the concept of a GMless game, but things like character motivations and fears and stuff could come into play, like stealing Unknown Armies obsession and sanity rules. Nothing cooler than playing a group leader who is slowly suffering the consequences of a world gone to hell, like Rick in Walking Dead, who started seeing and hearing stuff that wasn't even there. One could apply the sanity rules to create more scenarios where a character needs to secure a goal that's been dictated by his personal fears or shaky mental health (even stuff that makes no sense to anyone else), by using EGO rolls as the basis of success or failure when taking mental health checks. These could work as the driving force of the campaign, so it wouldn't just be about killing stuff and hoarding goodies. Each character would of course have their own issues, and those will work to cause some friction and power struggles in certain situations, where choosing between objectives becomes an issue (social skills roll or even presence rolls) in the game.