Altair

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.

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 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.

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. 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.

Heh. Fair, and that's what I get for typing so late. I've actually had a GM'ing Aide - lovely young woman who wrote down the names of all the NPC's I made up on the spot. In both RL and gaming, I am just rubbish with names. She also tracks total campaign XP, takes notes on where the game is, and sometimes cooks burritos. I highly recommend GMing AIdes. On the topic of aids, I think yeah, writing out the order might work better than something like making tokens and put them on a SPD chart.

I made a thing! An 8.5 x 11 SPD chart. I used Futura instead of Helvetica Neue so it doesn't get confused with the version from the book. Made my own grid & Icon in illustrator, thank you very much . So this should be good by all legal standards. Anyway! I'ma try using it during our next rumble session, see if I like it. http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/266-85-x-11-spd-chart/

So! This came up in my "what is HERO combat like" thread, and I wanted to expound upon it further. So game aides! Physical tools and peripherals. Some of us use them, some of us don't, but I imagine there's a range. What I want to know is, what kinds of tools do people use? Christopher Taylor made an awesome sheet regarding different options in combat, and the situations they apply to. In my brief experience, I used one of those big chessex roll-up hex mats; which kind of to my surprise, was super-useful. I'm thinking of making a SPD chart printout, for ease of tracking who's going where. Also, Hero Designer. I can't speak to Hero Combat Manager, but with some more funds, that might change. I recently ordered some damage trackers from the card game Sentinels of the Multiverse that I plan to use for keeping tabs on END and STUN, maybe BOD too. So, I suppose what I'd like to know is: what do people use when they're running HERO? What have you found useful? What would you find useful, if it existed?

The sheet that it's based on contributed highly to my interest in Savage Worlds. HERO benefits highly from its existence, and I want (and will possibly make) more cool stuff like it for this game. Actually gonna start a thread to that effect!

+1 for the joy of knockback. It's a legitimately unique feature of the system, and highly satisfying to engage with.

So, digging waaaaay back to my experience as a player, some 10 years ago, I sat down with my GM and told him what kind of character I wanted to play. He then wrote up the character, and explained how to do some basic things; attacks, rolling damage, etc. I'd do it differently - with a bit more of how the sausage is made - but I think that seeing a character concept satisfyingly come to life is exactly what's needed to spark curiosity in the system. Once that happens, people may want to do it on their own. The missing step for me, was that intermediary between "my character was built for me" and "I have the book and no one to explain anything." Having someone to answer questions is, I think, highly useful.

I'm pretty much with you on this: complications (flaws, hindrances, negative aspects, etc.) are a fantastic tool to add color to a character in a way that's meaningful, and having rules to support them helps them feel fair. If a character has a vulnerability to silver, 2X BOD, then when they get hit with a silver bullet, everybody knows what's up. If they just say "I'm a werewolf, so silver hurts me," then there's a lot of room for misunderstanding there. How much does it hurt? What does that mean? In a more abstract system, sure! Absolutely. But in HERO, I'm really here for granularity in expressing characters. That's a massive draw of the system for me.

I'm really uncomfortable with this line of reasoning. Frankly, there is nothing in HERO that requires high IQs, though there might be a correlation between people with a STEM focus and HERO system mastery. My hypothesis has more to do with the way that information is presented than anything else; simply put, until 6th edition, HERO has had a very dense presentation, and that's just not an effective way to communicate information to everybody. For some learning styles, it's great! But it is entirely disingenuous - and frankly unworthy of this community - to posit that people who "get" hero quickly must have a higher IQ than others.

Legit. I'm a big proponent of physical aides too, though I do tend to use a lot of digital stuff, even for very simple games. I tend to keep my character sheets on a tablet more often than not. Aides for everybody! Whoo!

Nope, nothing revolutionary about it at all - just trying to figure out how I want to represent such things physically is all. Cool. In my experience, very few players keep that stuff in their head naturally, and the more into the game they are, the less likely they are to remember it. Of course, there are exceptions - one of the guys I play with just has a memory that works like that - but it would be incongruous with my experience to positively correlate investment with remembering initiative. In my experience, the amount of time between turns that isn't spent dealing with in-world things really puts a drag on everyone's ability to engage with the game. Two scenarios: Scenario one: Fisto jumps up on the bar, knocking the pitcher of beer flying, shouting "Come and get me then!" He starts punching fools. (Rolls 3d20, 2 will hit, rolls damage) Scenario two: Fisto jumps up on the bar, knocking the pitcher of beer flying, shouting "Come and get me then!" He starts punching fools. Okay, so that's, um, that's a stunning fist, so I'm gonna roll (consults table) 3 attacks at +2... umm, add my strength, so +6. Lemme roll the first one. 12. Will that hit? Wait, crap, it's 14. No, it's 18. Does an 18 hit? Cool! What's my damage roll, one second... 2d4. Wait, I add STR right? Or is it half STR? (Proceed to do this three times) ... So, in example two, which is my attempt to faithfully recreate a real experience, it's difficult for others to stay engaged. And at least when I'm new to a system, that is, admittedly, what I'm like. I hope not as bad. Hard to keep people invested. So anyway, the point I'm getting at is, making things easier to remember/reference means that less time is spent remembering/referencing them, and more time doing cool stuff in the game world, which in turn, helps keep everybody invested. Cycle of reinforcement. Anyway, thanks for your sharing your play experiences. I know that, at least in my group, I tend to interact with this stuff from a very different angle, being the weird arty one. (Edited because I think that may have sounded snippy, which is nowhere near my intent )

That makes perfect sense, and if I had done anything resembling planning, probably would have happened. It was skeletons, because, well, I grabbed some minis, and that's what I got.

Noted! Had to pick up an export template, but it works ok now. Frontload the work, then you've got a nice thing there. On the note of frontloading: is there a good resource for mooks? Champions Complete seemed awfully scarce on them. HDC files would be cool, but really just trying to get a good idea for what those tend to look like. Our Skeleton mooks were pretty much the competent normal, if I recall correctly - 10's and 3's as far as the eye could see, 20 STUN, whassup?

Oh, for sure! I picked that example, because in my experience, remembering the common bonuses and power attack tends to be what most of my newbies have spent their time on. It might not be that way for everybody, but in my experience, that's what playing a fighter tends to look like. No argument that there's a lot in HERO - I mean, I'm at that stage where I can't remember how this ish is supposed to go - I forgot that STUN multipliers are a thing on literally every Killing Attack I rolled. So, yeah. Lots of stuff! My point was, that in my estimation, that "new game barrier" was pretty big for people learning Pathfinder too. Maybe skewed, because this was in a college gaming group where most of these lovely little newbies hadn't played tabletop RPGs before, so it kind of illuminated just how much stuff I'd taken for granted as being natural. We'll see how much that holds true for teaching HERO to people without advanced math-y degrees! Also, I ordered some damage trackers from the card game Sentinels of the Multiverse, that I plan to use to track END, and maybe STUN and BOD too. I found that I really liked that tactile element in the card game, and want to see if it translates well to HERO combat. THREAD FORK: what kinds of peripherals/aids do people tend to use? What have you found useful?

Yeah, when running Pathfinder, I had index cards with each character's name, and essential combat stats on them. When we did initiative, I'd order the cards accordingly. Then we had a pretty streamlined flow, call out whose turn it was, call out who was next, and have their AC, saves, HP and such in front of me. I'd mark down HP changes on the cards, so when they came up, I had a little reminder. The "X is up, Y is on deck" method in particular, really helped out. This way, Y could start thinking about what they wanted to do before the spotlight was on them, which is super helpful for people who get frazzled making decisions on the spot, and I've found it to be a nice little reminder for everybody. I'm not sure how I'd do that with the SPD chart yet.

Things! I can see the merit in both of those approaches. My S/O wrote up two versions of her character sheet for a V:tM LARP a few years back: character as she saw her coming in, and a filled-out with xp version. Now, did she deviate from that? Absolutely. But she found it useful to have that vision of the character in the future. I've never done it myself, but I can see the merit in that long view. Getting that without losing the dynamic, responsive quality that -- to me -- is central to the RPG experience? That's the best of both worlds. Maybe I'll try it? There is a thing! It showed up in the first reply to my first post! It is this thing! Super intimidating at first, but you're right on target - aim for the charts, and it's not so bad In my experience thus far - a newbie trying to teach and learn from other newbies - it's more to keep track of on the low end, and maybe even a little less on the high end? I haven't seen the high end yet. Still! A tanky fighter in D&D needs to: Remember their BaB & STR bonuses Modifiers from flanking How power attack works How attacks of opportunity work, and track how many they use per round And then track their HP. Having recently taught a total newbie Pathfinder, it's less intuitive than a lot of gamers remember it being - primarily because its internal logic doesn't make a ton of sense. (Now, I adore Pathfinder, even if I want a break from it. Me & PF? Nuthin' but hugs. But we're gonna see other people for a while.) Anyway. That same type of character, a Brick in Champions? Gotta remember: their OCV & DCV PD/ED Track END, BOD & STUN as appropriate Roll BOD, STUN and knockback when they attack. Is that a lot? Yes. They are both a lot. But I feel like HERO has had fewer "But that just doesn't make any sense" moments, at least for me. Having said that? Yesh. Mathy. No good way around that, and it's never going to be Feng Shui. I am very curious what our second attempt looks like.

So, after this conversation, I decided to watch Man of Steel, hadn't yet. I totally agree, that was overkill. ... ...... .............. In unrelated news, I very, very badly want a character who does double knockback now.

Maybe my take on this is a bit colored - I was living in Cleveland when the Avengers' New York scenes were filming there. Then I'd walk past all the decrepit Cleveland buildings on my way to university classes and think "Man, we're really doing a great job rebuilding from that Skrull Chituari invasion! Lookin' good, everybody!" Silly as it is, it gave a really strong feeling for what it's like when crap like that goes on in a city. Ordinary people? RUN RUN RUN and then live among the rebuilding scaffolds. I'm pretty much with Bigdamnhero here - give people a chance to rescue civilians, because these are heroes, man. That's what they do. Another fun thing from the brawl - my character got knocked into a storefront, which we'd written "Comic Shop" on. Clearing broken glass out of his hair, he suggested the guy behind the counter leave, which was met with "Are you kidding? This is the best day of my life!" ... At which point, you know, we tried to both protect, and put on a show for the dude.

Al the various maneuvers are appealing, I think they'll be more so when I get a feel for them. But the various abort options remind me of Shadowrun 5th edition's various interrupt actions, which is a very good thing. Yes, I know that HERO 6 predates SR5. But that's not the order I experienced them in. I expect a lot of blocking and dodging, because, y'know, why get hit when you could not? Says the guy who builds low DCV/high PD & BOD characters...

Your useful sheet was one of the things that got us to try this last night, so mondo kudos to you, Sir Taylor.