Altair

I agree, holding some of your action is just one of those things I really like. We differ a bit on point #1 - the fact that you had to declare held actions in D&D always sat weirdly with me, and I wouldn't really want to introduce that limitation into Hero. But yeah, action stacking for block + riposte? Wicked awesome.

Ad-hoc AoO. I dig it!

Yeah, I think I saw the interpose maneuver somewhere in the 6e world, but yeah. But yeah, I do suppose you're correct - I was thinking in different terms. Supers have so many freakin' options. It's lovely.

Word. I tend to run mooks in the grand tradition of Feng Shui - one solid hit, and they're gone. I found, much to my delight, that this naturally occurred in our Champions skirmishes - running some competent normals with uzis, 100% by the book, led to a lot of unconscious mooks, and protagonists feeling pretty bulletproof. Immensely satisfying. And as far as house rules go, I definitely ran into that "unnecessary changes" problem in the game I'm currently running. I have some very opinionated players who formed some strong negative opinions on a couple things, which we then bent, and later had to go fix. It's why I'm such a huge proponent of taking a game on its own merits to start out. And yeah, then we change up the mechanics. It's a big part of the experience of gaming for us, that creative bit. We make games, we break games, it's a big part of the experience. But yeah, I can feel like an annoying kid around here, constantly asking "what does this do?" But it's worth knowing!

Pretty much this. Verisimilitude is the order of the day, and is often the concept that people are getting at when they talk about realism in a gaming context. Willing suspension of disbelief, and all that - the world needs to seem plausible, consistent, etc., otherwise people disengage.

Makes sense. Go & Chess are certainly tactical games, and their relative lack of options don't seem to have negatively impacted that.

The whole "cover for my teammate" thing, is that common? It seemed to be something that the rules didn't really support, though this may be a Heroic v. Superheroic scale question. In something like Pathfinder, mobility denial is more of a thing, due to AoEs, and the comparatively limited movement options. In Hero, let's say my homie's stunned, and I need to back them up until such a point as they're ok again. What do I do? I can stand in front of them, but unless the opposition has precisely enough movement to get in attack range, but no more, they just go around me. Unless I have a particular build for it, I don't really have any options to assist them, do I? I think one of the APGs has a maneuver that lets you take hits for someone else, but even that is diminishing returns. Narratively, in terms of the story, I 100% agree with the thought. I'm just not sure how it plays out within the rules. Still new. Maybe missing something? @Hugh Neilson: Losing the "last ditch" options is certainly a cost. I just haven't seen the scenario where someone is down a lot of stun, but has lots of END. Really, because END is so cheap, there's really no reason to not buy it to characteristic maxima. I haven't seen people using lower END versions of their powers, or any of that, because it's very plentiful. And I really, really like END conceptually. Think of fencers. This video shows how END is a real-world thing, you can see the Olympic fencers trying to buy time for recovery actions, because they're so drained by the end. It's conceptually one of the things that I like. In practice, it just hasn't translated well. It'd be awesome in a video game, or any scenario where a computer is tracking things. Or I guess if my brain worked in a way where bookeeping wasn't distracting to the game, or was a fun, immersive part of the experience. But basically, it feels like a "keep playing the game" tax to me. Like in a free-to-play mobile game.

@mhd: TFT? @Bluesguy: For sure. I moved towards that in my latest attempt at a combat sheet (down at the end of this post) which I haven't gotten a chance to use yet, but version 1.0 was useful to me. The 6e character sheet is really quite delightful, but there's a lot of stuff in very small print. So I made these for m'self; I've generally used both in play so far. As regards being stunned, I agree, it's part of the game. Just one that I don't think adds anything to my group. Certainly not telling anyone else how to play, it's just a pet peeve that a lot of us have - I really, really dislike player action denial. I have neither encountered nor envisioned a scenario in which a game is improved in the short, medium or long term by players losing actions. Many will disagree, and that's absolutely cool - I'm not knocking how other people play. It just doesn't do anything good for us - hence the ideas for tweaking it. Being knocked out? Totally part of the game, any game. I rather appreciate the stun/body dynamic in Hero, where being taken out of a fight =/= having to create a new character. It's value added. http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/267-hero-simplified-sheet/

I think for HERO, the Exalted Stunt model is really much more of the way to go. There's a lot of science on the relative merits of carrots v. sticks, and the short version is that rewards are fun and punishments suck. (See WoW changing its "you played too long" penalty into a "rest xp" bonus. Same mechanical effect, but one feels really negative, and the other is a nice little thing). One of the problems you can have with a stunt system, is it changing the genre in ways you didn't intend. If you're trying to do fairly grounded superhero combat, and then you give somebody a 3-point stunt for running along a stream of bullets, bouncing off the raindrops, or other such improbable things, your game will head into Dragon Ball Z territory quickly. That's by design in the source material. The idea here is to incentivize behaviors that you want to see more of, yes? Positive reinforcement has a lot to offer.

@Hyper-Man: Most definitely, yeah. The normal distribution (or close to it) in HERO is one of the things that drew me in - probability was a big part of my graduate program, and I love the stuff. And that's the thing - even a 1-point modifier can be huge, depending on skill level. Like, -11 to -12? That's a full standard deviation. That's massive. That's one point. It's also only one point, which isn't that big of a deal, considering that many characters will be much farther apart in CV. Highly Related: what are people's experiences with Change Environment? That's got some negative modifiers going for it. We haven't used it in play yet, so I can't say for certain, but it'd be a good way to get a feel for how much a given negative modifier affects gameplay. Also, I've tried the "chess timer" thing, and it didn't really work super great - some people got agitated, or felt that the timer was passive-aggressive. Interestingly enough, they didn't think that I was, just the timer. Anyway, I think I shall try that perspective shift - as I hadn't thought of things that way before - and see what that does. @ Netzilla: yeah, the idea is one of consolidation. In other games I've played, there's your physical pool, and your "other " pool - stress, strain, mental stress, whatever it's called in the system. Getting rid of END, and allowing for STUN pushing is actually closer to games I've got experience with, so it might be the way to go. As far as the representational aspects, I totally agree - I just think there's conceptual overlap. The MMA fighter who can endure an awful lot of physical toil, but can shake it off pretty quickly? That's either STUN or BOD, depending on how the strain arrives. It feels like measuring the same thing two different ways, little redundant. Hence this whole experiment. @ Nolgroth: yeah, that's probably worth trying, just to see what it's like.

Nolgroth's got a solid idea there, with the terrain. I think that's a big, big part of the dynamism of HERO combat, interaction with the environment. Also, maybe consider something like Exalted's stunt system? In that system you get a 1-3 die bonus based on your description, interacting with the terrain, things like that. As for the bonuses, ones are quite easy to get, and threes are pretty rare, about one per-combat maybe. The same conceit could work in HERO, maybe using Damage Classes instead of extra dice? As for the original idea, I've seen something very similar work quite well in Robin Laws' excellent Ashen Stars. It's a GUMSHOE game, so the focus is on investigation, and combat is usually an afterthought - but - it has a nifty starship combat system, that is based on varying one's approach. Their options are basically firing, outmaneuvering, hacking and what they call "Trickbag" which is where your Crazy Ivans, Picard Maneuvers and Ackbar Slashes come in. If you don't vary your approaches, you become predictable, which gives the opponent a +3 on showdowns (the opposed rolls that make up space combat) and an extra skirmish point (what you need to end the scenario) if they win. Considering that their system is 1d6+skill, three points is a heck of a lot. Anyway! That's what I thought of when you mentioned your proposed house rule. in Ashen Stars, it keeps everybody involved, and keeps things feeling dynamic. In Exalted, it keeps combat varied and cinematic. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but are systems that have stood up to a lot of use. Hope that's useful.

Yeah, I've also toyed with the idea of recovering from stunned taking a 1/2 phase, instead of a full one. I do like the negative modifier, though I myself tend to be hesitant to add negative modifiers when I'm still this new to the system. Like, what's a good amount? -2? Is that a lot? I guess it depends.

Oh yeah, for sure. Love that, I just don't love that when you take more damage than your CON, you lose an action. Being Stunned out? Yep. That. Awesome. Yeah, I should have clarified a bit. I totally get it from a game mechanics standpoint - it's quite clear. But from a representational standpoint, like if I am describing a person? I know what someone with high STR, DEX, whatever. But what STUN & END represent are kind of blurry. Maybe it's because I play a couple games that track damage as physical and stress/strain/stun (most notably Shadowrun 5 & Fantasy Flight Star Wars), which often fills the same role as END. Yeah, we considered just dropping END, but really liked pushing, and wanted to keep it. The idea was, and we haven't tried this yet, but the idea was just to merge the pools and change nothing else. 1x recovery. I've never seen a published NPC with those, and don't really use such resources, so it's unlikely to come up. If it did, then I'd probably just have it work on either, like classes of minds. Really, this is coming off of our ongoing game in Fantasy Flight Star Wars, which has two damage types; wounds and strain. Characters take strain from physical exertion, and can spend it to get a maneuver (essentially a non-attack 1/2 phase action), so the concept is one we've worked with an awful lot, and are comfortable with. It's possible that it's going to be more complicated than just dropping END altogether. We'll play with it and see, as right now, we're doing little casual wargaming things, with the intent to learn the system; there's no ongoing game occurring. Regardless, thanks for the feedback!

Oh, for sure. And also, to be fair, V:tM is not exactly a bastion of well-balanced mechanics. Kind of the other thing The thing that I really, really like about Hero System, is its ability to express wildly different characters in a way that feels distinct and satisfying. I hope that people will continue putting up with my various bits of newbie poking, trying to see what everything is. I'm a pretty firm believer in house rules, but I definitely agree that they can introduce more problems than they solve; hence my desire to understand the RAW. But regardless of how tactical, wargamey, or whatever this group winds up being, I've never seen anything run without house rules. And heck, the Champions MUSH has a really, really extensive house rule list, so there's certainly precedent. And I really appreciate all the input. I'm a tinkerer, I can't get my hands on something and not start wondering what would happen if I changed X. Guitars, survey instruments, game systems, it's just a thing I do. Sometimes the answer to "what happens" is "things are much worse!" Which is extremely useful, because then I've learned something. Like, if I take out characters getting stunned, will I miss it? Will it make the game unenjoyable in other ways? Is it just an assumption that people will get crazy high CON scores, and not doing so is like selling it back? Things to learn. Anyway, thanks again.

In my case, because I find it tedious, and more importantly, distracting? (Sorry for the tautology) I want to be invested in what's going on in the game, not waiting for my turn. Granted, there's a lot of time between turns, so bookeeping can be done in that interval. Again, it's not that I'm incapable of it or anything of the sort, I just find it distracting. Not the worst idea I've been using little counters from Sentinels of the Multiverse. Candy - or conversely, Cherries or Blueberries could do the trick. Agreed; it's a delightful skirmish-level wargame, which is pretty much what we've been doing with it. And while I wouldn't say the group is casual - that's actually how I would describe our Champions wargaming, it's been casual - it certainly leans more towards the dramatic than the procedural, to use the terms from Robin Laws' excellent Hamlet's Hit Points. Doing combat that is as wargame-rooted in the course of an ongoing RPG is less appealing to me - though not entirely so. It really depends on what I'm in the mood for. And yeah, hacking into something that long-time Champions players wouldn't recognize? M'doing that. Thus far, I don't see anything inherently wrong or broken with HERO - understand, I mean that as extremely high praise, there are plenty of games on the market that don't meet that criteria - but the thing it does well might not be what I want. Hence, changes. Yeah, I came in from pretty much the opposite direction - I was an acting student having difficulty with my improv class, and my roomate tricked me into NPCing for his vampire LARP. It would be a couple years before I played D&D, or anything that didn't involve costuming. I actually dedicated a spring break to experimenting with Pathfinder the way it's intended to be played - lots of combat, maps, minis - to see if this was a thing I enjoyed. And it turns out that I did! Even if that's not always what I want. But I'm very much coming from the opposite side of the hobby, very narratively & dramatically focused. I don't really like board or card games, and Champions is by far my favorite wargame . I'm hoping that experience continues to smooth it out, yeah.

In the course of poking around at the system, I found a couple things that my group liked/didn't like. (Explained in more detail here) Since my group contains a lot of game designers and tinkerers, we were always going to hack the system into a more pleasing shape, once we understood it more. Assuming roughly equal quality, a specific solution will outperform a general one; hence the tinkering. Anyway! Some of the things we haven't liked as much are tracking multiple pools, being stunned, and the length of combat (influenced by these, and other things). One of the ideas that we came up with was some consolidation. Specifically, dropping the whole "getting Stunned" bit, and in fact getting rid of STUN altogether and folding its concept into END. Conceptually, the two constructs are really close - Endurance is pretty clear, but what's Stun? Pain tolerance? What is this thing measuring? In game terms, it's an action limiter, and that's cool, but the implementation didn't really work for us. But combining the two, and specifically merging STUN into END, seems pretty attractive for our purposes. It removes one pool to track, recovery actions are still a thing, and consolidates a concept. This'll change some things! What I could use some advice on, is what exactly. Off the top of my head: END reserves will be the same - your giant batteries do not provide you with extra HP. Moving on. Nixing the "stunned" condition will have an interesting effect on CON, if that's its primary contribution. Is CON routinely used for "saving throw" type effects? Because otherwise, the things it might usually model are represented by END, BODY and the like, and it might be a tad redundant. Regardless, that's unlikely to be a huge difference-maker in terms of CP. Characters will have much higher END scores, as you'd basically dump their points from STUN into END. I'm not sure that I want to change the cost on END though. Yes, people will likely have higher scores, but they're also going to go through the resource faster. I want to see it in play before I make up my mind, but I'm open to ideas Anyway. That's about where we are. Feedback is super welcome! Objections to the existence of house rules are less so - if you never change things, that's cool! Glad it works for you! I'm more curious as to what effects people see from this - you introduce something new, and you get bugs. Happens. Anyway, thanks for reading.

So, rather than have another superhero smackdown last night, we wound up just hanging out. Conversation turned back to Champions, however, and we talked a bit about things that we liked and didn't like. Things that we liked! Creating characters - there's just an amazing ability to model different things, and when they come out in play, it's been satisfyingly distinct. Dynamism of movement - knockback, flight, running up walls, swinging - there's a lot of movement going on, and it feels very kinetic & dynamic The inherent biases of the HERO system - STUN being more likely than BODY, things like that. It's possible to be quite survivable. Things that we didn't like! Lots of Tracking - STUN, END, BOD, plus more if you've got absorption, Multipowers split between different abilities, there's a lot of moving parts. Some people mind this less, but on the whole, we found ourselves saying "this would be awesome in a video game" a whole bunch.Riffing off of that, END tracking is really cool in concept, but in general, we found it tedious in play Being Stunned out - one of the least fun things that can happen in an RPG (based on our experience! Maybe you like it? That's rad!) is player action denial. This is most forgivable in games like Savage Worlds, where your next turn will be up in < 5 minutes or so, so it's not that big a deal. But losing my turn because I took damage, then waiting what, 10 minutes? 20? 30? for my next turn? That is anti-fun. We all wound up building characters in a way that never engages with that part of the system, crazy high CONs and the like. I take that to mean that this part of the system isn't adding anything positive to our experience. In general, the granularity of the system makes combat long. I was told as much, and it's held pretty true. That's fine for wargaming - which is pretty much what we've been doing - but makes the game much less appealing as an RPG for us. Things that just kind of were! The game has been, thus far, really tied to maps & terrain. And I love the 3d terrain - I've been making more, and it's a lot of fun. But it's a strong contributor to that wargamey feel, and I'm not certain that the game will respond as well to the types of encounters that would likely come up in any game I was in/running. If I have to stop and set up the map & terrain, then any excitement and energy we've built up is pretty much gone. If I'm building up towards a scenario that I've built ahead of time, then I'm probably not getting the rest of the game how I want it, barring very big moments that seem kind of unavoidable, and are planned in advance. I know that others tend more towards this style, which is cool, just not as applicable to my needs. There are a lot of player choices at every juncture - how do I use my powers, what maneuvers do I want to do, a lot of cost-benefit analysis stuff. This is both great, insofar as it provides a lot of fun tactical options, and less great insofar as it adds to the amount of time spent in each turn, and can contribute to analysis paralysis. The learning curve is not small. Really at any point. As far as things that bothered me that seemed to be less troubling to others, I don't really like the core resolution for combat. It feels very THACO-y. It's not that it's a complicated equation that I don't understand, it's that it's not very intuitive; I find myself doing the equation each time I make an attack roll. This is, for me, a major negative. I know that there are rules for changing combat to work more like the skill system in one of the APGs, perhaps that will be appealing to me? Regardless, I've had tremendous fun thus far, and am looking at switching things up next week, to try some different options and approaches.

Good stuff. I rather enjoy the anthropological roots and influences of game design. I started on this kind of thing with musical genres, and it's fascinating to see where influences pop up (The Beatles in Green Day, Feng Shui in Exalted, and so it goes).

@La Rose Good catch - I 100% didn't notice that those were different posters. My bad. And apologies to the two posters for conflating you. I will reiterate the core of my argument, in that I don't necessarily think that the poster(s) were intending to come off in the fashion that they did. It's clear that the language isn't contentious to you. It's clear that it is to some others. Hence, my suggestion for some clarity. I think that holds. I think that it's very difficult to avoid misunderstanding on the internet (it's a poor channel on media richness scales, for those interested in such things), and that word choices can give incorrect impressions. Example: the use of "may" in the post you quote above; it doesn't read as a qualifer to me in the slightest, but rather a way to transition between topics. It clearly reads differently to you, and that's ok, that's how written communication works. And if it seems like I'm harping on this, I promise it's not an indictment of anyone, but rather that this stuff is important to me. It is, in fact, my field of study. Hence, my interest in seeing communication furthered by clarifying statements. If I've come across as condescending or hostile, I do apologize, as that's far from my intent. (Hey look! A clarifying statement! ) It does, however, support the assertion that clarifications can be useful, because misunderstanding is so easy within the medium. Anyway, I'mma dip out of this conversation, as I think the question's been answered in a couple different ways, and I'm not certain that me further contributing to the discussion is going to be productive.

At what point did this become a discussion of hand-grip strength? You said, and I quote: (Emphasis mine) Look, I don't think anyone is arguing that there are physical differences between biological sexes - Olympic times, and all that. It's more that your comments are coming off as rather arbitrary, and a bit out of touch. On top of this, moving the goalposts in the conversation doesn't strengthen your point, it portrays you as a troll. Maybe that's wrong! Maybe you're just trying to point out that there are some quantifiable differences in the point of central tendency across biological sexes, and modeling that might be worth doing as a multiform. Cool! That's a valid thing to consider. If that's the case, then some clarifying statements would be appreciated. It's generally a pretty friendly and welcoming community.

Picked it up, as I've been looking for some more templates, examples and so forth. Also, because I've been taking great joy in Champions this past month, and two bucks to encourage the continued production of resources is more than well spent.

Also, update. A player did whack someone else with that giant Steel "M" from earlier in the thread. Then somebody else did. Again and again and again. Everybody used it, that Sign did more damage than any single character, hands down. 3D scenery just changes up so much - I find it a very fulfilling expression of the "tactical representation" mode of gaming in a way that hex maps (also present!) by themselves haven't given me. It's pretty amazing. I'm still not sold on doing anything that requires that much preparation for an ongoing RPG - I strongly favor flexibility and improvisation, to the point where sketching anything more detailed than a Fate-style "zone" map doesn't usually pass my cost-benefit analysis - but for the casual, wargamey stuff we've been doing to learn the system? Massive, massive benefit. Cannot recommend highly enough.

I have not - but I will! Thanks! Yeah, I can see how the wrong type of music could be very distracting - if ever there's something with lyrics, it's because that's happening in the game world, like a Shadowrun at a goblin rock concert. (Though in that case, it's not like my players could understand the lyrics anyway ) I am curious - is your experience w/music during games something that's explicitly not game-related? Because I agree with that wholeheartedly, and would (and have) reacted pretty negatively to that happening at a game. For a little while, I was planning on going into theatrical sound design, and did a fair amount of that in college. So I tend to think more in terms of something that helps set the mood, ambiance and "feel" of a setting, genre, type of scene, etc., than anything else. Regardless of preference, I certainly agree with the sentiment that music shouldn't be detracting from the game experience. I simply have found it useful for increasing immersion, YMMV. Yep, 100% agree on the lyrics thing. The closest I'll get is some Two Steps From Hell, or Audiomachine - which has vocals, though no lyrics. And really, those groups are too much if they're playing constantly - but for big, epic scenes? They deliver.

Very this. I flat-out don't run games without a soundtrack anymore - I tend to have carefully curated playlists by mood & genre, often specific game. Hundreds of freakin' hours of music. It's so integral to the experience for me that I honestly forgot to mention. Haven't really hit on a solid playlist for Champions, though - most Superhero film scores are a bit too busy for my purposes, and I haven't hit on any artists or genres that really make me go "There, that's music for a Champions game."

This. A thousand times this. I mean, can you imagine: PC: "I want to slash the tires on this dude's armored limo." GM: "Ok, well, that's basically an armored car, so you'll need to do at least 9 BOD." PC: "To the tires?" GM: "Those are the rules." PC: "What about rule zero?" GM: "I am incapable of creative adaptation. Beep boop." And hey! Maybe somebody likes playing that way. Rock! Enjoy yourself. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that's an outlier.