Altair

Yeah, there's definitely a balance to be struck. In our little rumble, our speedster used two actions to set up their shot - on phase 4, used a held action to evacuate the liquor store, on phase 5 ran accross a couple skyscrapers to build momentum, then hockey-checked the guy into it. I agree with both stances - collateral damage gives a solid superhero feel, and entirely ignoring the fact that urban centers are, by definition, full of people kicks me square in the verisimilitude.

Whee! Lots of good advice here. I like the different dials for adjustment. An example: Heavy Hitting Hero vs. Big Bad Boogum. HHH has CVs of 10, and does about 50 STUN per attack. I want BBB to take about 3-4 dedicated attacks to bring down, depending on dice luck. I can go about this a couple ways. BBB has a comparatively high DCV, something like 13. HHH has roughly a 26% chance to land a hit - so statistically speaking, 1/4 attacks should land. If I want it to go down in 4, then it shouldn't be able to eat more than 45 STUN, something like PD10, STUN 40, though I'd probably do 30 or so, just to play it safe. BBB has a comparatively high PD, something like 25. I can set the CVs roughly equal, give B^3 something like 60 STUN, and figure that 3-4 hits with dice probability will take it down. BBB has a comparatively high STUN, something bogus like 100. I don't know if that's a thing that ever shows up, but let's roll with it. I could up the DCV, but really, if he's got 100 stun, let's just embrace his role as punching bag, and give him like, DCV 3. Maybe like, 10 points of PD? It'll still take ~3 turns to knock him down, though probably 2 if they realize how easy to hit he is - Hay-Makin' time! Fundamentally, we've got a villain who takes 3-4 hits to go down. But those three feel very different. Personally, I find that missing tends to leave players feeling unsatisfied, so I usually tend towards things that are easy to hit, but can take a lot of punishment. Maybe it's from playing JRPGs growing up, but that seems to be how the psychological reward structure falls in me at least.

Yeah, the counting thing makes a ton of sense - though one of my players dropped it on me mid-counting, and I kind of tripped over myself. It's much quicker and more intuitive, though, for sure.

Ha, yeah, pretty much

I am now proud to say that I can add to this conversation from experience! We ran a little punchy thing, 3 Supers, a pile of skeletons and a fire demon threw down tonight. I probably got a lot of things wrong, and tripped over myself a couple times in remembering how to do what with damage rolls (forgetting about stun multipliers, for example), but on the whole it was a lot of fun. Takeaways: Velocity can lead to great big piles of dice when a speedster uses move by/through. Our rookie gymnast speedster knocked said fire demon into a liquor store, much to everyone's delight I am bad at counting dice. I can get a touch self-conscious if I take too long - probably going to practice some damage rolls in my free time As a group, we had undervalued defense a little - getting stunned and losing a turn is a much bigger deal in Hero then in Savage Worlds, where turns go by much quicker. I expect everybody to come back with juggernaut CON scores Holy butt, knockback is delightful It can be incredibly satisfying to have a high DCV & PD - my character (Normally, I can't stand mixing running opposition in addition to a party member, but this was just a straight-up brawl) wound up shrugging off 14 different skeleton attacks over the course of a phase, and it felt very satisfyingly brickish. Swinging is fun So is running up skyscrapers Or flying Making things up on the spot was easier than I feared - Fire demon dude wound up with a 10d6 blast, 7 CV, because that seemed about right. All told, it took a lot less time for 3 heroes to fight 1 demon and 14 skeletons than I thought; we made it to phase 5. Thanks for bunching up, guys! Lots to learn, gonna do this again soon.

Related: I'm going to have some friends over tonight - including the Physicist & Computer Programmer I've mentioned before from my gaming group. I have this idea in my head of printing out some character sheets, and hosting a battle royal over ice cream sundaes, in an attempt to learn HERO combat. What do we think: good idea? Bad Idea? Tips or hints? Advice on types of Ice cream? ... This last one is, perhaps, less on-topic. But if Black Harlequin gets punched through a giant banana split, I guarantee that'll be memorable.

Fascinating! My experience with Con games has been less than stellar, though it can be good for introducing new ideas. Some games just do better in those truncated time slots than others. Having said that, some of my most successful experiences in teaching new systems have come in those con-style, bite-sized events, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.

Behold my transmutation power, as I take thoughtful replies, and butcher them in paraphrasing! Cool! Nothing there really contradicts each other; I get the feeling the speed issue is very much a case of three factors: System mastery: how familiar are players/the GM with HERO? Do you have to look up how Stun multipliers work, or is it fresh off the top of your head? How good are players/the GM at making decisions quickly? How much bookeeping is involved, and how quickly/naturally does it come to players/the GM? That allows for a wiiiiiide range. Complicated characters + new players + indecisive types sounds like a recipe for disaster.

I know, I know. Awesome, right? Cool! But what are the defining traits that lead to that experience? Comparisons to other systems are useful, so long as they're not super-pejorative. Like, D&D 4th is slow, tactical, and greatly rewards coordination between one side of a conflict - a lot of its Big Cool Stuff is synergy-based. Or not! Someone who really likes D&D 4th (full disclosure: I'm not that guy) could probably describe it better. So what is HERO combat like? It seems to be a big part of many people's games - what makes it unique? How does it flow? What's the pace like? Most importantly, what does it look like when it's running well? Thanks!

Having been in pretty much the same situation very, very recently, here's my 2 CP. I have a paperback of Champions Complete. I have a .pdf of Fantasy Hero Complete, and a .pdf of 6E1. I also picked up Hero Designer. What I recommend is picking up either of the "complete" books as a book - if you have a friendly local gaming store, buy it there, because of "bits and mortar" - and then if you want more, pick up the .pdf of 6E1, characters. But CC or FHC should be more than enough. Frankly, the main things I've really benefited from in 6E1 are its plethora of charts, and informative examples. But I could do anything I want to do with HERO using just Champions Complete. Fantasy, Steampunk, Pulp, Sci-Fi, yes, even supers. Really, either "Complete" book will do you fine. Also, I absolutely, 100% recommend Hero Designer. $25 is a lot of money for chargen software, and I chafe a little since Shadowrun's exellent "Chummer" is a free, fan-made thing, but it's been legitimately indispensable for figuring out the system, and playing with things. Hope that helps! (Edit for typos - indispensable =/= indefensible)

As far as HERO v. something else, it really depends on the feel of the game you want to run, moreso than broad-stroke genre. "Fantasy" doesn't really communicate anything. Your standard Forgotten Realms-ish story can be done with D&D 3, 4, 5, Pathfinder, Fate, Savage Worlds, Imagine, Anima, Feng Shui, Cypher System, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Burning Whel or yes, HERO. And those will all feel very different. And that is very, very good! I am in no way a proponent of the "one system to rule them all" approach. SW has a very particular feel to its combat - fast, and frenetic, very pulp. If that's what I want - something like the excellent comic Skullkickers, then yes. Savage Worlds. Fate has its own little rhythm, its resolution has a pretty unique feel, and has a lot of shared narrative control between players and GM. D&D does what it does - I'm not super thrilled with it, but sometimes that's what you want. HERO is what I would consider if I was really looking for distinction between characters, and wanted... whatever HERO combat feels like. Because right now, I still don't know, and I'm a big proponent of feel. But if I were to try to run/play every game in the same system - even if I really like that system - then I would be robbing myself of a wealth of opportunities, and severely diminishing my enjoyment of the hobby. It's worth noting, that this is not an attack on people who want to do this! If you have something that works for you, and works for the type(s) of game you want to run, then awesome! You're awesome, everything is awesome. But it is hardly unsurprising to me that not everybody feels that way. I don't feel that way. I'm big on systems as toolkits - I use different tools for different situations. I'm super enamored with HERO, largely because it seems like a strong candidate for the high-granularity corner of my toolkit. This is why I'm trying to figure out what HERO is like, what it's good at.

I really like these ideas. Also, the recurring theme of "here are the caps/ranges/whatevers, everybody can bust those in one category" is really appealing to me. Just that little modification really changes the feel, provides context. Let's take Swifto the Speedster. He wants to be fast, and will express this in a lot of ways, but SPD feels like the big one. 350 point characters, he sets his SPD to, let's say 7. That sounds pretty fast, right? 60 CP, that's non-trivial. And it has benefits! So that is what it is, he's fast I guess? Now, let's say that Swifto's GM has set a campaign limit of SPD 7. Ok, Swifto has SPD 7. We know it's the cap, so we're good - Swifto is as fast as anybody on PC scale can be. That feels pretty solid. . Now, let's say that Swifto's GM has set an SPD range of 4-6 for Supers, and we know that you can't get to SPD 4 without powers. So, even the slowest PC is going to be more human than human. Cool! Swifto's player sets his SPD to 6, because, well, he's swift. But wait! Their GM informs them that Swifto can buy SPD 7, because that's his thing. Swifto is SPD 7, and can legitimately start making Flash-style "fastest man alive" claims. In all three cases, the character is SPD 7. But man, that third one feels very meaningful, doesn't it? It's all relative, all context. This way gives significant context, and therefore wins my affection.

Okay, sweet. I had missed that line, that makes things much more reasonable. Still highly exploitable to the point where I'd really expect a yield sign, but much more reasonable. And yeah, the GM is always gonna clamp down on things that are obviously unreasonable, but we're all still new enough that we're not sure what that is.

I think it's probably "Tiny Tapestry." That kind of rolls off the tongue, right?

Noted! Also, Hyper Man, your JLA builds have done a lot for helping me get a feel for the "weights" of different values. They were, quite frankly, one of my first touchstones for the system.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering too. And if that's implied, or stated outright somewhere, then cool! But otherwise, that's a good idea, frankly. Oh, for sure. In an actual game, with people that I'm pleased to play with, this is probably how it goes. Just trying to understand HERO on its own terms, to see, y'know, what I might be missing. I don't want to house rule things that I've never played. Starting with non-stop sign stuff is kind of where I want to be; hence my curiosity. I want to understand the system, just gradually.

Yessssssssssssss. Pretty sure my life is complete now.

Very exciting. I'm always down for some science! If people are interested in a more thorough study, I would be delighted to set something up. I have a masters' in this stuff, and I haven't used it in a hot minute, so I'd do it just to stay fresh.

Another thing that I'm sure there's a great reason for, but I'm not sure about. Why isn't there a Stop sign in front of Multiform? It seems to be a straight-up power increase, to say nothing of the versatility boost. I've not really heard any horror stories, so I'm sure there's something I'm missing, but I see a huge point imbalance there. If everybody in the group is spending ~200 CP on powers, you can have Dr. Tapestry built more or less the same as everybody else, but when he shifts into the Incredible Bulk (as a zero-phase action), he's now built on 975 points, most of which are spent on combat. What obvious thing am I missing that keeps this from being a problem? Because I feel like there's an obvious thing that I'm missing.

So, I'm curious on a couple points. Firstly, the Character Ability Guidelines Table (6E1, p.35) is a really handy thing that frankly, I wish was in Champions Complete. But I was curious on a couple points: How closely does that fit with people's experiences of play? Do you use those guidelines in your own games? If not, what do you do, and why? How does the feel of the game change at different levels? I've read the stuff on the distinction between Heroic and Superheroic, but I'm curious what changes, if any, there are between a game where everybody starts at SPD 5, and one where they start at SPD 2. Following up on that, I was curious: do people adjust point totals, or give things for free? If I say that the campaign minimum is OCV/DCV 7, and SPD 5, that's 70 points right out of the gate. My questions are thus: If everybody has it, do you just change the starting value, so in the above example characters base at 7 CV instead of 3? Do you give extra CP to start? Is this assumed to be part of the starting point value? Just curious.

I feel like you can swap out TES for Ultima based on the age of the gamer. I suppose I reveal myself, by saying that I never really got into Ultima, so Elder Scrolls is definitely what I'd want to see. The science fantasy weirdness of Morrowind remains one of the more compelling things I've seen in a fantasy setting. It's super regional that way - Cyrodill is basically stock Western-European fantasy, I think everybody knows about the fantasy vikings & dragons of Skyrim, Hammerfell is this interesting maritime imperial merchant riff on north Africa, and so on. When introduced to the hyper-customization of HERO, one of the first things my brain went to was TESIII: Morrowind's magic system, with its pile of stacking modifications.

Here's one of the reasons that I am starting to adore HERO. Because you could have both kinds of telekinetics in the same game, and it works fine. My power is not necessarily your power, and so forth.

I can't speak for everyone, but the way I see it, you've kind of got three possible scenarios here. Either The player has taken these separate vulnerabilities hoping to get hit with that at least once, hoping for a cool "Red Kryptonite" moment, or something like The player has taken these separate vulnerabilities hoping that the GM doesn't notice Or conversely, they're doing something specific, like a vampire who's not thrilled with garlic, holy water, wooden stakes, etc., but they're not looking for a super-whammy. Anyway. In scenario one - which, full disclosure, is what I would be doing if this showed up on my sheet - you gotta hit'm with the whammy. At least once. Make it a big deal. In scenario two, I kind of agree with Greywind - honor demands it. And it can still be a cool character moment. In scenario three, where someone's trying to express a particular flavor, but is neither looking for a super-wham, nor really trying to game the system, I'm kind of ambivalent. I feel like it would be really context-dependent. Is the player disruptive? Is the character balanced? What makes sense in the cosmology of your setting? And more to the point, how important are those things? /$.0.02 (Edited for grammar, clarity)

*Salutes*

Yeah, I feel like eventually, we'll be at enough comfortability with the system that certain things look much more appealing then they do when we're just starting out. Eventually we're all going to really like VPPs, for example. But man, that day is not today. Mostly, we've just been kicking around, doing context-light character creation to get a feel for things. It's been great, and eye-opening. @Doc Democracy - yeah, HERO seems quite front-loaded, both in play, and in getting started. That's a challenge, but also one of its more attractive features. @Lucius - thanks, that's actually quite helpful. I was, quite irrationally, cranky at the mechanic, without taking it in its own context first. !