Altair

Correct, in fact it might encourage players to be more tactical, use their terrain more, and think more in combat.  I think its one of those holdovers from wargaming that everyone has always assumed has to be that way but doesn't.

Incidentally, you can move after attacking in Savage Worlds.  You can even attack move, attack, and then move again.

 

Right. Or in Shadowrun, where you've got your movement for the turn, and that's how much you can move when you're up - if that's a straight sprint, great. If that's running around a corner, seeing three guards, popping off a manaball, then diving for cover, and scooching over so that your street Sam has room to set up a shot - that's cool.  It has, in my experience, made combat much more dynamic. 

The massive movement capabilities of HERO complicate matters, but I don't think it's an insurmountable issue. Zslane, I like where you're going with those ideas - I'm curious to see this take shape.

Not the greatest, but for somebody who hasn't touched foamcore in over a decade? One could do worse. I'm pretty pleased thus far.

I made a parking garage (now somewhat worse for wear after some mooks got put through it), and a skyscraper out of foam core.

I also got some extra counters from the excellent card game Heroes of the Multiverse, which I used to track END, and my homie used to track the points put into his character's absorption power. Our new player used them to track STUN & BOD. 

I enjoyed having them around.

I think it would take playtesting and some shift in tactics before you could absolutely declare letting people move after attacking a game breaker.  Would it make certain kinds of builds more attractive (particularly teleporters?) Very likely.  Speedsters would loom large in power.  But then, perhaps they should.  Perhaps it makes sense and would make for more dynamic, comic book-feeling combat for the speedster or teleporter to move around all over the combat field avoiding being hit.

Yeah, for sure. It's a game-changer. For now, I'm pretty pleased with the "attacking stops movement" mod; we'll see if it introduces any bugs.

Yep!

We had another casual rumble tonight, and wound up implementing an on-the-spot house rule that if you attacked, you could still take another half-phase action that wasn't movement or (obviously) attacking. That seemed to address the issue of movement being a dominant strategy pretty well. I don't know if there are other issues it introduces or not - we pretty much made the ruling to give a first-time player the opportunity to do more stuff. 

We seasoned vets with our 1 week of experience.

On that note, I was impressed by how much more intuitive everything was this time around. The mechanics have just taken less time to sink in than I was expecting, which is pretty awesome. I got to see just why double knockback is a stop sign, knocking the big bad through a couple floors, into a discotheque (which we had cleared out earlier). Very powerful. Possibly abusively so,.

Holy butt was it satisfying to volleyball spike that monster literally into the pavement.

So what difference does it make how much movement you have?  If I move 60 meters per phase, and you move 40, how does my superior movement get reflected in ToM play?

In my experience and estimation, it still shows up, though admittedly, ToM tends to be less granular, as a rule. Having said that, it matters as much, and in much the same way as any other implementation. 

True, if you ask the GM how far away mook x is, and they say "not too far, you can reach him," then your extra 20m of movement hasn't really been given a chance to shine.

The exact same thing is true if you're playing on a hexmap, and the GM always puts the opposition close enough that your movement doesn't matter. 

They're different experiences, but I think that's the point. I'll often use different techniques for different fights over the course of a campaign, because every method has its own strengths and weaknesses. They're tools.

I want a big toolbox. So I use them both, and other methods besides.

I'm sorry but could someone elaborate on how multiform is complicated?  Especially how its more complicated than a multipower and a modified shapeshift?

I'll take a shot. 

Not complicated as in, "I don't understand how to do this, and am having difficulty grasping the concepts."

Rather, complicated as in "Making two character sheets, and switching between them at combat speed, while tracking damage on both, adds additional steps which increase the complexity and bookkeeping of the character in play." 

That's what I took Xavier's meaning to be. Not I can't figure this out complicated, but unwanted extra work complicated. 

Anyway, that's my 2 CP.

Yeah, I've tended to use wikis to communicate information in the planning and early stages of a game, then move to a spreadsheet on Google Drive once the game's underway. In the above example for the Mass Effect game I'm running, the crew of their ship alone is 104 people (not counting them), each with backstories & motivations, etc. Spreadsheets all the way.

On that note, if everybody in the gaming group has a Google account, then Drive is incredibly handy. Dropbox works well too - any way to share files with a defined group. 

Although, if I'm going to show people an image during play, I usually just pull it up on my tablet, and pass it around the room.

Yeah, Shape Shift can also work if you want to do it that way. Which leads me to a question for the OP.

What's the context for this character?

Is the gender-swapping thing a big deal, or is it just supposed to be SFX? Is there any mechanical/social/metaphysical weight behind the change, or is it something that the player and GM just kind of want to be there?There's this maxim at the beginning of HERO books: you get what you pay for. That initial post, with the 3 CP power, leads me to believe that the player might not place as much weight on the change as I'm assuming there is. If it's a minor detail, a side thing without any huge metaphysical significance, then maybe work out something smaller.

If not, then Shape Shift with the senses + cellular will do the trick, right? If it's not changing your clothes, that's like 23 points, yes?

I made a campaign framework for MapTool. I tend to use that for online games. It isn't perfect and there are some limitations to it, but overall covers the basics. I've even recently delved back into it to see if I can "optimize" game flow.

 

Other than that, the typical stuff like dice, maps, character sheets, minis, a vinyl battlemat (hey, I'm old school), etc. Index cards are an absolute must for me, as they provide a small, self-contained space to jot down notes. Another reason I like MapTool is that I can add GM notes to each token (virtual mini) that only I or somebody signed in with GM privilege can read. Makes for handy character notes. 

 

The best prop I've ever used was built by me and a friend. We made our own papyrus scroll with Egyptian hieroglyphics. I'm sure our syntax was completely wrong, but it looked cool and served the purpose of an ancient, prophetic scroll. It was a big hit at the game. My friend, who did much of the work, kept that little scroll. I helped another friend take the Forgotten Realms maps and seal them to some heavy cardstock backing. We hung them on his gaming wall as a reference for our D&D games. I've used various techniques to age paper for clues, pieces of maps, etc.

 

I've used Tarot and Tarokka decks to ad lib a game. I've used poker chips as ammo counters or as HAP/Karma Pool/etc. points.

 

I suppose that, if there is a tool to be used, I've probably given it a shot at one point or another.

Nice! Ever use Roll20? That's my VTT of choice, generally. I've also used Obsidian Portal to make some campaign wikis. (Example)

The heiroglyphs thing now has me thinking... I actually learned Maya Hieroglyphs as my foreign language requirement in undergraduate... I could legitimately make some etchings... oh man. That would be completely boss for a Pulp Hero game, n'est-ce pas? 

  Now you're both in Jersey."  scribble scribble  "Just imagine these scribbles are piles of trash, used cars, and tanning salons."

I see somebody's been to Jersey. *Hides under a desk*

Kidding! I grew up in Cleveland, I can't really throw shade

Game balance. Otherwise you get someone that will hit you, run away, and you waste your turn trying to catch up to them.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking with the whole movement power thing. If I can poke you, then fly 100 meters up to end my turn, it does kind of make that conflict lopsided. What I want is for combat (especially with superheroes) to be exciting, dynamic and kinetic - basically not the "Rock-em-Sock-em Robots" type of slugfest that some games can turn into. 

Being objective about it, I'm not really that worried. 

I think its worth at least trying a few games to test not ending someone's phase with combat.  Even breaking moves down to smaller segments so you can move 1/4, attack, and move 1/4 would be worth trying.

Worth checking out, for sure. For now, I'm still planning on running things out of the book, because I really want to get a feel for the game on its own terms.

I disagree with a lot of things that have been said in the last dozen or so posts.

 

While Hero *can* be a tactical wargame, it doesn't have to be. Counting out hexes to see if you are within half-move range or what your exact range penalty will be is fine if that's what you are into, but it isn't required. You can abandon the battle map and it still be perfectly within the rules.

 

I have a character with 60" of combat flight. He doesn't violate any damage caps (there aren't any in that campaign) or other game rules. And it is pointless to have a hex map in that campaign because everyone moves so fast that they will be off the map in a phase. So we don't use one.

Yep. Different strokes! It's good that there are different game styles, it's so good. I'm quite pleased at the versatility of HERO so far. When I want something super-tactical (every now and then I get it in my head to run something based off of the excellent Jagged Alliance 2, and I think HERO would be sublime for that) it's right there. When I don't, the underlying physics of the game mechanics are there, modeling things for me. 

I'll probably try some brawls with Fate-style zones, and some that are 100% description-based, and see how that goes. 

Cool cool

Sorry if I came off as testy, I was cross at missing the "attack ends turn" rule, cross at its existence, then cross at myself for not seeing the reason behind it in HERO.

Kinetic energy has a serious consistency problem accross genres. Not its fault, really - as a friend of mine once said, it's not a superpower if it doesn't violate one of the laws of thermodynamics. 

And a Speedster can't use lots of movement to attack and move away in the same Phase, so that example is invalid (and I have to believe that someone who knows and uses the actual rules would know that, but whatever...)

 

Is there something in the rules that prohibits using a 1/2 phase to strike, then a 1/2 phase to move? I can't find it. Never mind, I found it. While I can't say that I'm happy with the rule -- it never made any logical or mechanical sense to me -- I'll try implementing that next time I play with this stuff, see what it does. I suppose that with the extraordinary amounts of movement that are possible in HERO, if people can attack-then-move, it might make high movement rates the dominant combat strategy.

Easy fix: the awesome thing my player did was a move-by attack. Still hits, just does an unnecessary amount of extra damage. With the movement speed and no turn radius, it still works. Might have even been the player's intent to do it as such, as the route was plotted before the attack roll was made, so that could just be one of the (many) details that I missed.

To your other points, I will simply posit that one buys things for all manner of reasons, as many people engage with roleplaying games in different ways, and derive enjoyment from different things. I absolutely believe that that is why you, and perhaps everyone that you game with does so, and they're all very valid, legitimate reasons. Awesome! 

Well, to do it as a Transform, I think you'd need something more significant. After all, a Cosmetic transform would change how someone looks, but it's not going to be altering internal organs, or what have you. So, that's gonna be a major transform. 

Also, what's the BOD of the character? 1d6 is not going to cut it, and I figured you'd want standard effect so it always works. Having said that, I tried to build something that I think might do the trick, based on your original:

Sex Change: Major Transform 4d6 (standard effect: 12 points) (transforms Male to Female, healed by Use of the Power), Trigger (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger resets automatically, immediately after it activates; +3/4) (70 Active Points); Limited Target ([Very Limited]; Self Only; -1) Total cost: 35 points.

Having said that, I would heartily recommend one of two things.

1. Multiform (see above)
2. If it's really a style thing, and you don't want or expect the biological sex change to have any meaningful gameplay impact, it's just their theme? Then make it a multipower, with the SFX of sexswapping, or use the 3 point version because that's what works for your game.

Hope that's useful!

Edit: you could knock the power down to 28 points by adding in the "All or Nothing" limitation, which man, that makes a lot of sense.

I have a fellow player looking to make a character that has two different power sets, each set attached to a particular gender.

 

I was thinking that the change in gender can be handled as easily as Instant Change is in the Transform example for clothes.

 

Cosmetic Transform 1d6 (one gender into another and vice-versa; method of healing back is the repeat use of the power), trigger (changing gender is a zero phase action, trigger immediately automatically resets; +¾) (5 active points); limited target (self only; -½). total cost: 3 points.

 

Is this enough to effect the change of gender?

Emphasis mine.

Two forms? Each with their own powers? This sounds like a classic example of Multiform to me. Having said that, I'm new here, so take that with a shaker of salt.

That Hit List is interesting,  I may try that.

I am a big, big proponent of physical representations of HAPs, Fate Points, Bennies, Destiny Points whatever they're called in this system. 

I have found that using Skittles incentivizes their use. 

Admittedly I'm relatively new to HERO, but I like Hex-grid and Map for fantasy, since movement for pretty much everyone is at a reasonable scale. It allows players to make use tactical combat, especially when a number of the players have either AoEs, 'Attacks of Opportunity' (essentially built as Naked Triggers on damage or other effects), or both, which require a reasonable knowledge of the area and the combatants therein.

Cool idea - I've been trying to figure out how I want to model AoE-type attacks, and naked triggers are worth exploring. 

I kind of feel that the benefits of having lots of combat movement are pretty intuitive? Crossing the map in a single half move is (mostly) pointless, but having the Flight ability to do so is not. There are many tactically valuable things you can do with that much Flight (or Running or whatever).

I think it depends on how interesting the tactical part is to what everybody's doing. Watching a speedster have enough movement to thwack somebody, then run around a city block to position themselves behind & out of sight of the boogum? That was a genuinely cool moment, and one that I think was aided by the map being there. 

I'm about to go overboard and build some foamcore skyscrapers. Reasons! 

Wow, thanks everybody! This is great, keep it coming!

@Lucius - This. This is absolutely the kind of thing that I was looking for. Awesome to see this see to awesome.

@ Pretty much everybody else: thanks for the variety of answers! It seems like there's a strong sentiment regarding the character, which is super rad, and pretty much in-line with my own preferences. I came into RPGs from a performing arts background, so my standard form of engagement is pretty much always personality-centric, fill in the mechanics afterward. It's one of the reasons why threads like this are so useful to me - really getting a feel for what people enjoy in the mechanics, or just enjoy in general, is a great way to get ideas, or maybe think about exploring something I normally don't do myself. 

This is super rad, keep it up

Sometimes if we are supposed to be in a real place, we will pull it up on Google maps. Then we point to wherever we're going. "I knock him back into that building there".

Ha! 

I briefly ran a GURPS superhero game (which I was mechanically very unsatisfied with, but that's another tirade) set at the university where we were all students. Like many urban universities, we have a parking crunch. 

So when the villains knocked a hero through the support structure of a parking garage, everybody was intensely upset. It was delightful.

I know I'm starting a massive pile of new threads, but I couldn't really find something that fit what I was looking for, and the community has been super rad in enabling my obsession here

Anyway! What I'm kind of missing out is something like The Class Guides from Pathfinder, which might seem a touch misleading at first. Those guides are purportedly about how to build effective, powergamy characters, and in a sense, they are. 

What I've actually found, however, is that they're really love letters to certain build types. 

So what I'd like to know, is what kinds of things have people found crazy fun? Do you love playing Super Bricks? Why? Is it piles of damage dice, the ability to juggle pickup trucks, or something else? Those who like playing fantasy psionics - what is it that makes that so awesome? 

Basically, I'm trying to get people to wax eloquent about things that they've found really satisfying in HERO. 

Hit Locations can be rolled at the same time as a to-hit roll, using different colored dice than you use for the to-hit roll. That's worked pretty well in past groups I've played with. If everyone has a copy of the hit location chart in front of them, they can usually calculate the damage easily enough. I've not often run into people who have difficulty multiplying by x1/2 up to x5, but it has happened.

 

I've sometimes used Critical Hits, basically doing maximum damage if a 3 is rolled to hit. If a character has Luck, they could roll those dice to see if the range was extended, but that slows things up a little. Since I don't see 3s, 4s, 5s or even 6s rolled very often, it doesn't seem to add a lot to the time involved.

 

Unless you want really gritty games, avoid using Bleeding. It is an extra roll to make on segment 1 each turn and can be a lot to keep track of for a GM when everyone begins accumulating BODY damage.

 

One suggestion on BODY damage that was suggested on the forums I often use is the 1 for 20 Rule: if a character takes 20 STUN past their defenses, they take a point of BODY damage. This nicely simulates bloodier combat when using characters with higher defenses and damage.

Noted! I'm planning on trying something with hit locations the next time we muck about, just to see if we like it or not. It isn't that I'm not interested in how mechanically streamlined that process is - I promise you, I'm quite interested - but I'm really curious as to how that changes what playing the game feels like.

Sorry if that's a really qualitative criterion, but qualitative feedback is what I'm looking for. The latter two points on Bleeding and the 1 for 20 rule are great examples of this - how do I change the "genre author" of my comic book game from J.M. Strazynski to Frank Miller? Now I know

There are quite a number of things in the Hero System that depend rather heavily on precise distances and relative positions. Knockback. Explosions. RMods. And then there are issues like LOS, where knowing for certain if something blocks it can make the difference between hitting or missing. There is no way you can execute any of that accurately without a battlemat. Estimating simply isn't good enough, not for me anyway.

While I think all of that can be executed without a hex map, I certainly find that it changes the feel of the game. Something fast, cinematic and highly narrative risks losing those qualities on a map. Likewise, something tactical, methodical and deeply strategic risks losing those qualities off of one. I'm guessing that HERO combat is more of a tactical thing in your interactions with it? 

No criticism, that's one of the deeply attractive things about HERO to me, though it's admittedly not my default state. But I'll bet that at least one of my players is going to be interacting primarily in that fashion, so understanding the things that are essential to have a fulfilling tactical experience is always good to hear. 

Basically, during the battle i try to make it as easy for my players as possible by doing as much of the math for them that I can so they can concentrate on tactical decisions. Which powers or maneuvers to use in any given circumstance. The only thing they have to do is calculate their final OCV and DCV fornthe phase and keep track of any damage they take.

 

Then i take all the mechanical and mathematical results and translate it into a visual description of what just happened incorporating the results into that description. It actually works quite well and when my players are on the ball with their decisions in combat, it runs smooth and quickly.

Yeah, the way to get to fast, smooth combat seems to be minimizing the amount of time dealing with issues extraneous to the matter at hand. Whether through system mastery accross the board, one person who's very familliar with the system and handles a lot of the mechanical details (like yourself), or external aids, I think that minimizing time spent on matters outside the game world is key.

I'm curious to hear more thoughts on Hit Locations, Critical Hits, things like that. How do they change the feel of the game? Both mechanically, and from a narrative perspective? I'll be honest, I haven't used any optional rules, and don't think I will until I get a better feel for the core game.

I've never encountered Champions players who used theatre of the mind for superheroics. Everyone I've ever played with wanted to use every bit of tactical detail available on the battlemat. The thinking was that if you're running supers and you're not trying to line up your opponents for maximum knockback damage, you're doing it wrong... ;-)

That's really interesting to me. My initial thought was that I'd never want to do supers combat with anything more granular than Fate's zones, and that using a map might be entirely counterproductive.  I will say that doing so worked very well - it added a lot - but I'm not certain if it doesn't also subtract a lot. Superhero combat specifically is very dynamic in my head - and elevation is kind of a big deal. That's difficult to model well on a hex map, at least in my experience.

Going forward with maps for now, but open to other ideas too.

It does make much less sense for most of Fantasy. Outside of your massive fantasy critters - trolls, ogres and the like - it doesn't make as much sense.