Eyrie

A computer passing the Turing test doesn't frighten me nearly as much as a computer failing it on purpose. 

Isn't that just a re-skinning of Mark Zuckerberg?  

The private message said, "I'm sending you a public message," thus closing the circle and starting a paradoxical black hole.

One of the problems with the V&V conversions for HERO is that the V&V characters in their own game system vary wildly in power the original old system.  You can have characters that did 1d4+2 with characters that did 1d20+6.
 
It is better to use the system numbers and dice as a comparison to power level for the HERO conversion than to use a straight algorithm to convert.  Even if the conversion says that the power only does 6d6 Blast damage, if the character is in a 12d6 game, think about making it at least 10d6 if not 12. 

Buy your arrow multipower/charges/whathaveyou. Buy the bow as the range effect on the arrows.

If you asked a bicycle repairman if his business runs in cycles, would he refer you to a spokesperson?
 
....I'll show myself out now.

With the biggest rolled-up newspaper in the universe.

That's a really strange name for an invulnerable martial artist.

It also doesn't have all the spells and gear. It is the way to make the spells and gear, etc... but you have to manually do it or buy add on packs that have those things already pre-made and install it into the program. 

HERO Designer does not have rules in a manner that's accessible to the user.  It enforces character creation rules, but doesn't explain them nor does it have any other rules for user reference.  You will need to purchase the rules separately. 

I'm going to take your challenge as a call to open discourse and not argument, so please take anything I say with that perspective in mind.
 
Everybody's game, group, and players are different. I trust my players with character creation Rule #1: Don't cheese your character. If everyone follows that rule, then there are usually no issues, since Hero character creation really needs to be with a concept in mind (which is going to be narrative at that point).
 
I'm also never so wedded to my vision of the world and fiction that *I* want to create that I can't tweak things to fit the fiction that the *group* wants to create. I imagine creating everyone's characters would feel a little... on rails, after a couple times. Now, I also run short format campaigns, no more than six months (usually aimed at about three) because giant epic stories usually die out and never finish. So, new characters is a relatively frequent occurrence for us.
 
I'm also a firm believer in a session 0. The players come with their ideas and we all sit down and hash out the basics of what everyone expects, times (if it's not already my regular group), and everyone should leave with a mostly complete character. Everyone has buy-in, character creation with your friends sitting there is faster, and everyone can police for cheese or be clarified on a plot point that might be contradicted.
 
All that being said, everyone runs their game different and that's ok.

Every time this conversation comes around, it ends the same way:
 
"Because I can break it,  it is impossible to use it in any way that isn't broken." 
 
 
Every _time_! 
 
Given the desire, I- and without a doubt the majority of the people here-  can break every single part of the rules: all nine hundred pages of them. 
 
Guess we should just throw the frikkin things away, because there is _clearly_ no unbroken way to use any of them. 
 
 
Fizbin, anyone? 

Our team, Quadrant, pretty much uses the term "Oh, F***."

Gnope. Sorry.

I GM and have occasionally played in two games that use a hero/fate/whatever option.  That is Amazing Adventures and BASH.  AA uses fate points that can keep you from getting hit, effect the plot in a minor way as well as other stuff.  BASH uses hero points and hero dice.  Hero points let you spend dice to help with a success.  Let's say you need just 2 more points to keep that atom bomb from going off, you can do that.  Hero allows you do things like appear somewhere that would not normally appear at, add to a die roll by rolling an extra die, and my favorite, the power stunt that allows to do something unique with your one time in a creative way.  The key to these mechanics contrivances is that they are finite.  You don't have an unlimited number of these so they need to be used judiciously.  You basically save that mechanic for the time you need it.
 
So far it has worked out fine.

This is slightly off topic, and not addressed at anyone involved in this thread, but reading some of the comments has brought something to mind that I have been thinking about for some time.
 
Also, if the tone seems a bit heated, I apologize in advance, but this is a topic that has been bothering me for a while, again, none of this is addressed to those posting in this thread.
 
Over the many years of my sporadic RPG career, I have done a roughly equal amount of time as a GM and as a Player.
I enjoyed both.
I enjoyed playing because all I had to do was show up with a well-prepared character, or some good ideas if we were creating characters from scratch, and enjoy playing the game.
I enjoyed GM'ing, because it gave me the chance to try my hand at creating an adventure that the players would enjoy, find challenging, and want to continue into a campaign.
 
That is not the only difference.
 
GM'ing is a metric buttload of work.
 
I started out DM'ing AD&D.
You had to create a plot, maps, monsters, treasures, traps, NPC's, atmosphere, background information, interesting things for each character to potentially do (traps and locks for the thief, appropriate stuff for the fighters to fight, people for the cleric to convert or heal, interesting magic stuff for the magic user to find, etc.).
It might take a day of work for each hour the players were going to spend at the table.
 
Champions is a little different, not as much "treasure" but way more NPC's and combat and plot.
 
And I admit that I did enjoy the work I put into creating an adventure, mostly, but it was still work and took up a lot of time, which all of us seem to have less of as the years go by.
 
I also enjoy cooking, and from time to time I invite people over for dinner.
If I invite someone who does not like spicy food, I have no problem accomodating that.
If I invite someone who loves baked beans, I will do my best to work them into the menu.
However, since I am the one buying the ingredients, playing the host, and doing all the work preparing the food, I expect to get a certain amount of apprectiation for going to all the trouble.
After all, there are plenty of restaurants that will cook the food you want, pretty much the way you want it, you just have to pay for it, and the more demanding you are, the more you usually have to pay.
 
There are times when players, and I hope it is mainly players who have never GM'ed, give off a vibe like:
"I want you to go out and buy every possible ingredient for every possible dish.
Clean them, prep them, and have them waiting for my arrival.
When I get there, I expect you to produce exactly the dish I am in the mood for, even though I may not know myself what I want.
You think that you have to right to have some input into what you cook?
How dare you!
You can't bully me into accepting something that you enjoy too, this is all about me!"
 
That example may be a little extreme, but I find the concept that the GM is just another player, with no more right to have the game suit him than anyone else, to be ridiculous.
Maybe everyone else lives in a world that is crowded with GM's begging players to enter their games, but that has never been my experience.
I always felt lucky that someone else was willing to put in all that effort so I didn't have to.
That doesn't mean I would put up with a GM that was rude or abusive, but other than that, I was happy enough to be in a game to cut the GM some slack.
 
I am not saying that the players are just there to act out the GM's play so he can sit back and watch it.
But as much as the word "railroad" has been maligned in the RPG world, it is a great way to get a group of people to the same place at the same time!
Perhaps the concept of "carpool" is more appropriate.
Everyone is trying to get to the same basic place, at around the same time.
If one of the group wants to stop off to pick up some drycleaning, or drop something in the mailbox, that is fine too, as long as everyone gets where they are going in time.
But, if people are saying that if the guy who owns the car, buys the gas, and does all the driving, likes to stop off for a doughnut every morning, he doesn't have that right unless all the passengers want one too, that sounds like B.S. to me.
 
After all, if someone just wants to come up with a story where their character, and all the faceless drones that follow it around, does exactly what he wants in a world made to accomodate him, they can do that.
They call it writing a story.
But to expect someone else to spend their time writing one for you, that exactly matches your desires, with little to no input from them, seems a little selfish.
 
For one thing, if the GM is not the guiding the plot, who is?
 
I always see comments about "the players", but if you think about it, would all the players want exactly the same thing?
I mean obviously, if you start out with a bank being robbed, and one player wants to kill off the robbers by beheading them with her power sword, and one player wants to use his negotiation skills to talk the robbers out of a life of crime, and one player wants to go to the library across the street and research the history of the Federal Reserve, and the final player wants to have their character strike up a romance with one of the "rough-edged but dangerously attractive" bank robbers, you can't pursue all of those threads at the same moment, especially since the bank robbery is only being staged as a distraction while Viper is stealing the McGuffin across town and the players probably need to figure that out, if not now, at least soon.
 
So, do you stop for a vote after each turn so see which direction the players want to jump?
 
I believe that the problem is often not "The Players are not able to have Their characters do the things They want to."
but instead,
"I am not able to have My character do exactly what I want to, (and have all the other players and the rest of the game world go along with me)!"
 
I have never seen someone suggest that the players should take some sort of vote, or express their opinions on which direction the game should go, it always seems to be assumed that if that power-mad GM would just get out of the way of the person who is talking, everyone else could follow them to the promised land.
 
After all, if you are going to only please one person at the table, it might as well be the person who does all the work, not the person who does nothing but complain about the work that has been done, without actually contributing anything that would also make the other players happy.
 
For some reason, many players seem to think that if the game was just run the way they want it to be, every thing would be great.
 
And that's fine, if someone thinks they can do a better job than the GM, they should give it a try.
 
Do the work.
Spend the time.
Come up with the kind of plot you like.
Guide the game in the direction you see fit . . .
 
Oh, but wait, isn't that railroading?  
😁
 
ka.

I've got this idea for a fantasy game (or novel, I suppose) in which all the classic fantasy "races" exist: elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, giants, minotaurs, etc. Everything but humans. They're all the creations of a long-gone Ancient civilization. They were created at slaves, cannon fodder, "monsters" for hunts (the Ancients liked the most dangerous game), and playthings. Except humans. Because they're like breeds of dogs--unless you carefully police their bloodlines, they quickly degenerate into mongrels, i.e., humans. Given that the Ancients vanished long ago, there are a LOT of humans. They are, in fact, the majority of the humanoid population. All the other races exist as well, but mostly in their own lands, where they've carefully controlled their breeding for all these centuries. Sometimes they practice "exposure" of infants who aren't X enough. Sometimes they simply expel (or otherwise ostracize) someone who doesn't meet their standards. A lot of "elves" and "dwarves" wandering the world outside their own enclaves aren't *really* elves and dwarves, at least according to their own kind (though these individuals wi'l probably never admit it, and might even fight you for saying it). If you're sufficiently "off" from the ideal, you're a half-elf or half-orc or whatever. And even more reviled.
 
In fact, the only ones more reviled than half-breeds are complete mongrels--i.e., humans. Yes, they're the largest population, and they're not as strong as dwarves (on average), or as graceful as elves (on average), and so forth. But they're tough and overall pretty successful as a race, and they breed like rabbits. And with no regard for lineage--well, except the sad few who occasionally try to claim there's a Human standard, but even most other humans are like, "Dude--give it up. We're all mongrels. Embrace it."
 
Which handily explains why the various other races (or sub-races, if you like) all have fairly specific descriptions. If they don't meet that standard, they're not really that race. And why humans come in all shapes and sizes and colors (hair, eyes, skin). And why, of course, every race is convinced that *they* are the pinnacle of humanoid forms, and everyone else is inferior. Good enough for a traveling/adventuring companion, maybe, but you wouldn't want your sister to marry one. Especially those humans.

A lightning field that interferes with an attack
 
OR
 
A point defense ability where she shoots a target to stop it
 
OR
 
An electrically re-enforced skin
 
OR
 
This is super heroes, anything can make sense. 

I buy Skill Levels with All Combat if they suit the concept for the character I want to build. It doesn't have to always and only be about point efficiency.

That is another form of fudging, simply one which the GM applies rather than the players using some in-game metacurrency.  "Turning failure into success" should not be a freebie.  After much great planning and gaming, we have the perfect setup to prevent Mechanon's Kill All the Humans Maguffin.  Hawkeye is in place, braced and set, makes that perfect shot and...rolls an 18.
 
So we can depressingly put all the character sheets in the binders, their tales only half told.  Or we can figure out a way to Fail Forward.  Maybe that's a Hero Point.  Maybe it's just a GM call.  I'd look for an option to succeed, but not a perfect success, perhaps one which grants Mechanon new options ("an arc of power from the antenna strikes Mechanon - he glows brightly...then vanishes"), or even more power, or some such, ideally drawn from prior campaign events.  The danger is defeated for today, but a true victory will require further action by the heroes.
 
 
Again, another way to fudge.
 
 
If you change the odds of hitting or the amount of damage, how does that make rolling them in the open any more transparent?
 
A lot of these examples are simply placing the responsibility for preserving the narrative in the hands of the GM, rather than allowing the players some of that agency.  Did someone mention "writing a story" earlier?  I know many players would consider being scripted by the GM to be in that vein.
 
Sometimes, some on the fly adjustment (aka fudging) is necessary to manage the game. 

Emphasis added.  "Occasionally...to perform a heroic action" is not "Routinely...to gain a combat advantage".  Most characters had enough END and REC to last a few turns, so once we had "combat starts on Ph 12", you had only one segment of action followed by a full recovery.  An extra 10 END?  No big deal.
 
 
There seems to be this undercurrent of "if I use Heroic Action Points, they will be used for every action, especially the ones the heroes sucked at to begin with". The player wanted to play The Man of Steel, but every KA fired on him seems to roll a 6 Stun Multiple.  So, in our 12DC game, do we tell him "just buy defenses of 100 and enough STUN to weather a couple of 20 point hits past defenses"?  KA makes for a poor example since 6e sought to fix that issue, but then several of those most opposed to HAP on this thread also dislike 6e.
 
We have a lot of comments on this thread about the players designing and executing a brilliant plan.  But we don't have the "and then someone who should easily succeed with his element of that plan rolls an 18.  Too bad, game over, you lose, world destroyed".  That's the kind of result that I think some would suggest should be "fudged", or for which Hero Points are a valid fix.
 
But I agree I don't want them to become the equivalent of "I always open combat with a Pushed attack.  Why not?  I get all the END back immediately."  hmmm...maybe one use of Hero Points is to even be ALLOWED to push. 
 
 
And bring fixed dice so you don't roll an 18 trying to find a simple clue, only to watch the dullard with an Everyman roll score a 3.
 
 
See Superman example above.
 
Would we allow him his 100 defenses, so he can reduce the odds of getting instant KOd by one lucky killing attack roll?  Random chance has random results, and you can only "stack the odds" so much.
 
 
When my character concept IS to be good at detective work, but the dice never come up lower than 15 when I attempt it, should I buy 23- so I can offset some penalties and still succeed, as I would expect from The World's Greatest Detective?  If my character concept is not to be good at detective work, why would I not stand back and let the detective do his thing?  Waste a precious Hero Point on that?  WHY?  I will use a Hero Point most of the time, and he will only need one on a roll of 15+.
 
Hawkeye, who has lurked in the background waiting for that moment when the team's plan momentarily drops the Force Shield, fires that crucial shot for the team's plan, with his 21 OCV, against the DCV 6 Bullseye and ...18...misses.  The Shield goes back up, and Galactus eats the earth.  Wow, what a great game that was, huh?
 
 
Let's assume, for the moment, that this concept is "dumb as a post but very perceptive".  Poor INT skills, but a 17- PER roll.  Yet he keeps rolling a 15 when there is a -3 penalty, and Olaf the Average keeps rolling 8's.  You keep tossing out examples of players trying to do things their characters are ill-suited to do.  In my view, a decent Hero Point system will not give the characters enough Hero Points to make that work consistently, and may even penalize non-dramatically appropriate uses (like going right against the grain of the character concept).
 
The reality is that, sometimes, players ARE treated unfairly by the dice. 
 
The Hero Point need not be Autosuccess either.  Make it "you get a reroll", or perhaps "you can spend 1 point per point you modify the roll by".  Now we have Batman or Hawkeye spending 1 point to change that "one chance in 216" roll from an 18 to a 17 in a critical/dramatically appropriate situation.  But Koloth needs to spend 5 to turn his decent roll of 8 roll into the 3 he needs to beat the Master Strategist at chess.  Maybe he has 5 - will he blow them all on that trivial task, or save them for when he needs them for that poor attack roll against the Dragon later?
 
 
So if we called them Luck Points and made them a different mechanic for luck, instead of Hero Points for Heroic Action, all would be well?
 
In the comment about xp for Hero Points, my initial thought was an old Adventurers Club "Extra Life" power.  It was a fixed cost, use as desired, one shot ability that gave you 3d6 of Luck, all 6's.  Basically the same thing.
 
 
Even when the heroes have taken every step to maximize their odds, when the writers would not have Green Arrow roll an 18 for his role, the dice will.
 
I recall a comment in the original DC Heroes about lethal vs non-lethal combat and how it seemed odd to have guns default to non-lethal.  It was not the original plan.  But watching three lucky shots turn Batman into Batstain changed their minds.  The mechanics have to support the desired game.  Hero Points, at their best, are a mechanic designed to blunt the worst results of in-game random chance.  They can have other uses as well, of course.
 
 
I think there is some question whether it was ever legal.  Grab always required an attack roll, so it ends your phase.  It allowed you to "throw the target", but at no point did the rules say "at someone else with full OCV".  Whether "you can toss them away or slam them to the ground as part of the Grab, but accurately targeting someone else requires a second attack" was a rule change or a rule clarification is certainly debatable.
 
 
OK, 6 points for the desired size to Englobe (you left out the three base points), 28 for BOD, and let's make it 6 for Defenses is 40 x 1.5 = 60 points.  That +1/2 is a Yield Sign, so the GM should be paying careful attention.
 
I note you cannot move, nor can attacks of your SFX (or is it just YOUR attacks) cannot harm the barrier.  How do you get out later?  Maybe I'll just move away.  Or I'll put up a Darkness field.  An Indirect attack, Mental Attack, Telekinesis, Flash, gas attack and some area effects find it pretty easy to target you (and it's not like you can dive for cover!).  What a great place to lob a Tear Gas grenade!
 
The Hamster Ball of Doom is hardly unbeatable.
 
 
If the fate of the world is at stake (Supers), or you are fighting a dragon (Fantasy), losing pretty clearly means dead.  Or maybe you live and the world dies.  Or **snap** half the life in the Universe is snuffed out (even AFTER Thor used that Hero Point to lodge his axe in the Bad Guy's chest!).
 
 
And they can start by not rolling any more "18s" or getting hit by lucky attacks that roll 40+ on 8d6 (I rolled that the other day - as it was a Channel Energy to heal the group in Pathfinder, the group was pretty pleased; average of over 5 on 8d6 is pretty unusual).

That was Marvel Super Heroes, albeit in reverse.  MSH had Karma, which was primarily used to alter die rolls.   But you could save it up and use it for character improvement.
 
Otherwise, characters did not improve.  Just like we don't see Superman get tougher and stronger every few issues, your characters have the powers and abilities they started with, and they keep those,  but they don't grow over time.  Absent, no doubt, in-game "Radiation accidents".
 
As I recall, many gamers were unhappy with stagnant characters they could not "win the game" by improving over time.  Having a system geared around playing the characters you were handed by the module, rather than the ones you designed (or rolled) yourself wasn't too popular either, and the character creation system never did really gel.
 
Let's take a step back.  We are discussing Role Playing Games.  The dice are part of the "game" aspect.  We could play with characters who are all identical and have the exact same success and failure chances as everyone else at doing everything.  The dice (or the card, or whatever element of random chance resolves the in-game issues) fall where they may.  Lots of games do that.  Board games, for example.  But we wanted variation - we want to play different roles.  So some characters are better at some things than other characters are, and our chances of success vary.  We want to play Heroes, and not  be eliminated by a bad die roll, or drawing the wrong card from the Adventure Deck.  So we design games where "killed dead instantly", for example, is not the result of a typical attack in an average combat. 
 
Let's see an example of that random failure not being to one player's liking: 
 
So, if we all agree that sucks, and we put those cards to one side when we play, is that "cheating"?  I can tell you that the many Monopoly players who tuck $500 under the free parking space don't seem to think they are cheating.  I also find the Auction rules are often ignored.  Are those guys cheating?
 
Back in Hero, I see a lot of posts by players who figure you can just Push whenever you want to, say opening combat since you'll just get a PS12 right after and get that END back.  But the rules say Pushing is rare, and only allowed in extraordinarily heroic situations.  What if we said the same for Heroic Action Points?  The action you want to use them on must be extraordinary, extra-important and extra-heroic (or "extra-in-character").
 
We could certainly let the dice rule combat - roll 1d6 (or 3d6).  On a 6 (or 11-), you kill/defeat your enemy.  On a 1 (or 12+), your enemy kills/defeats you.  But we want more modifiers.  We want to influence the results in our games.  Hero Points are just one more means of allowing the players to influence the results of their actions.  Does everyone love the mechanic?  No.  Not everyone prefers a bell curve to a straight d20 roll, or characters built by design rather than rolled with random chance, or rolling low for success instead of rolling high.  But all of these are just game mechanics designed to provide a greater or lesser measure of player control over success and failure in the game.

Tactical play is not role playing.  Would an Overconfident and Flamboyent character hide in the shadows to creep closer to the enemy, increasing his odds through a surprise attack?  Does a Paranoid Loner rely on his teammates, filling them in on all of his abilities and weaknesses, to enhance his chances of success?  Does an Impatient, Impulsive character delay his action for a better shot after his teammates set him up?
 
It is very easy for tactical play to trade role playing for roll playing.
 
"So, he won't talk, huh?  Torch to the Groin!"
 
"Your Lawful Good, Honorable Paladin is going to torture the prisoners?"
 
"Well, it's important to get this info, and Torch to the Groin is the best modifier in the game for interrogation rolls."
 
 
Sure.  But having the player frustrated because their character consistently fails to achieve anything heroic is not "fun role playing".  The role he set out to play has been frustrated by the dice.
 
 
First off, Wheel of Fortune is competitive, not cooperative, so it makes for a poor analogy.  The objective is not for all of the players to have fun, but for one to win a bunch 0of money and two to go home losers.  Second, in WoF, buying all the vowels is permitted by the rules.
 
 
My recollection is that it was Hero System, some years later, that brought in "create the character you want to play". 
 
Why not roll all Hero successes and failures on pure percentile, rather than 3d6?  The bell curve markedly reduces randomness (notable even compared to d20 systems, much less d%).  Heroic Action Points allow a modifier to the randomness, the same as 3d6 reduces randomness from 1d20.
 
 
If the rules include hero points, then using them is no more "cheating" than Dodging, aborting to Dodge (after you see who he is going to attack?  Cheater!) or applying skill levels.
 
 
 
Exactly.  There is a big difference between "on a limited basis, you can smooth out the excesses of pure random chance" and "just pick the results of every roll you make".  In games with HAPs, I do not find them thrown around at random, for trivial tasks.
 
 
I have certainly seen posters over the years suggest that any "normal human" Super with a DEX of 23+ or a SPD over 4 is a "cheater build". 
 
 
How do you get those characters into play if they have not been created first?  Would HAP be OK if they were a base stat (1 HAP per scenario) and you could purchase more?  Now it is part of character creation, so all is right with the world?
 
 
Who has suggested a model where anyone has nearly enough resources to dictate the results of every die roll?
 
 
You know, there are some gamers who think removing the random chance element of rolling your character is also a "screw the dice" system, and part of the game is "role playing" the character the dice hand you.  And if that means (old Chaosium Stormbringer) your character is a beggar from Nadsakor in a party that otherwise consists of Melniboneans and Pan Tangians, so be it.  Role play what the dice handed you.  If your rolls get you Sweet Sue the Beautiful but Combat Ineffective Romantic Interest to the other players' Superman and Captain America, then you get to role play screaming, being useless in combat and being captured and used as a hostage.  What do you mean, let's try a point buy system?  That would be screwing the dice! 
 
note:  Stormbringer actually allowed you to re-roll the Nadsakor result - if you did not want "the challenge of role playing" such a disadvantaged character.
 
I do recall an old article on Top Secret on a James Bond style system to merge the character types that game allowed.  One of that "class"'es abilities included, once per level in the scenario, to say "that did not happen".  That trap was not sprung, or did not kill the character, for example.  Why?  Because highly skilled and competent characters should not be slaughtered by the random whims of the dice.  Wow, we're going to let players have characters who are competent, even if we violate the dice.
 
HAP do not have to allow a "whoever has the most points gets their way" result.  Options exist.  Just like we have the option to allow that Tarzan character to leap out of the window, scramble up a phone pole and swing across the street without a roll ("because he's effing Tarzan"), or to force that roll (because the dice fall where they may, and if Tarzan rolls an 18, his hands just slide off the vine).
 
At its core, Hero says you succeed on an 11- and fail on a 12+.  We use OCV, DCV, skill levels, characteristics, and on ad infinitum to change those odds, and no one suggests it is "screwing the dice", "poor role playing" or "cheating".  HAP is one more possible modifier to the dice.

It depends.  My group plays whether a focus is accessible or not is based off if you can remove/takeaway/disarm it during combat.  As an example, a ring was given.  When it was noted it was relatively easy to remove, they made a fist while wearing the ring and asked us to take it off.  So for our games, a focus is considered accessible if during combat, with the target resisting(generally not mind controlled, stunned, or unconscious), you could take the item away with a quick grab and yank or a martial maneuver.  Of course, this is our house definition and the person buying the power decides what it rates based on that definition.  Your group's definition may be different.

SocLims, Hunteds, Reputations, and a thin glaze of PsyLims.