Tholomyes

I'm not about to house rule it or anything, but I actually am the reverse: I like the split of Hardened, but don't really like the +1/4 price of AP. If you assume that for a campaign with average DC X and defenses 2-3 times X, a normal attack will do roughly 0.5-1.5 X stun, if you assume equally matched combatants. An armor piercing attack, though, at the same active points, will do 1.3-1.8 X stun. Comparatively, with it costing +1/2, the numbers would be roughly 0.833-1.333 X stun; on average, it's still often more damage (on average, by about 8%, rather than 55%), but it's not better in all cases: against a lightly armored enemy, a straight Xd6 attack will do more than (X/1.5)d6, AP, and I like that sort of approach for armor piercing. Now, there's a difficulty when it comes to characters who essentially need armor piercing to do any damage at all. A speedster who maxes at 45 active points, in a game where defenses are roughly 24-36 will go from doing about 3 stun to about 9.5 stun (which is still about 80% of campaign averages, assuming 60 AP average) with the +1/4 cost, and only about 6 with the +1/2 cost, but I think it's still better at +1/2 cost in most cases.

Interestingly, (while I don't disagree), the champions powers book breaks this rule and barely makes mention of it, with the "nega-beam"

That's actually a really cool idea. I've only played a couple fantasy games in HERO, but what always stuck out at me was that magic always seemed like it was either to "superhero-y" (albeit often with heavy limitations) or felt like it was skirting around the design philosophy of "you get what you pay for". I'd have to put a little more thought into how abusable it could be (not to say that it's a bad idea, but it would give an idea of what to look out for when approving characters, if I do end up using it), but it seems like a solid system for magic.

That actually changed in 3e. A round, in 3e and further, has been defined as 6 seconds. More time than in HERO, but not substantially more. Though I would agree that trying to kit HERO to use AC as anything other than a refactored form of DCV (fairly easy to accomplish: if OCV + 3d6 >= DCV + 10 it's a hit, thus DCV + 10 is "AC". Or if you want to keep the "roll low on 3d6 rolls" consistency that hero has, it'd be OCV - 3d6 >= DCV - 11, where AC would be DCV - 11). D20 is D20 and HERO is HERO, and they have completely different assumptions from one another about how damage works. Whenever I see an attempt to toolkit HERO, simply for the sake of making it more D20-esque, I have to wonder 'why?'. A lot of the time, it seems the answer is that either the players or the GM or both would just rather be playing D&D with slightly different variations.

If an attack does any body damage, it cannot do less stun damage than it did body. So through a roundabout way, penetrating does work for stun on killing attacks. -- 6e2 103/cc 157

Any reason 0-level spells are single use? In 5e cantrips are infinite use, and it seems strange to make them back to being single use

I actually disagree on the "If your players have the points to buy the maximum in [everything] then your campaign limits are too low". The actual point costs of all the CV, SPD, Damage, Defenses, ect can be large, but for the most part I'd say if your maximums can't be reached with points, then your maximums are too high. I don't mean this to say that players should have all stats at maximum, but rather that campaign maximums shouldn't be so far beyond campaign averages that reaching the maxima in all stats is impossible. How I would generally handle this would be to have a mix of a rule of X and a campaign averages/ranges system. Usually I have the following averages and ranges: DC: Average 12 (+/- 3) Defenses: Average 30 (+/- 10 PD/ED each; +/- 15 total) CVs: Average 9 (+/- 3) SPD: Average 5 (+/- 1) // Speedsters can have 7 SPD, but otherwise SPD 7 is outside normal ranges. and for Rule of X, I do 53 >= 2*SPD + (OCV+DCV+CSL) + DC + (ED+PD)/5 The way the math works out is that when you plug the campaign averages, you wind up at 1 under the rule of X number. That's for two reasons: One of which is the psychological benefit of feeling above average, at least on something. The second benefit is that even if multiple players decide that they want to just buy their abilities to campaign average, there's a greater possibility of differentiation. I would NOT do anything with NCM stats. It's too easy to get around if you want to game it, but it makes some legitimate concepts less viable. Also it doesn't really have any impact on many of the unbalancing aspects of HERO. If everyone is building their characters with Reduced Endurance, then you'll see far more reasonably done builds if you have Reduced endurance count towards their DC for limits and averages, than if you do NCM stats. Your problem, as you're describing it, is that a.) they've all bought off one of the balancing factors for powers: the endurance cost, and b.)they have stat inflation, because they don't really have any reason to stay below the maximum limits for those stats. NCM is a blunt instrument to solve the latter, but it's not even remotely the best tool for the job, and it really does nothing to solve the former.

Thank you all, you have been super helpful /s. I don't care that you can find panels where someone gets knocked back a ton. I can too, that's not the issue. I don't need the "Worf Effect" for my campaigns. I don't need your opinion on why Knockback is fine (especially if why it's 'fine' doesn't address any of my issues with knockback). I don't need brace, in any form: there's nothing I care to use from brace in any way, shape, or form, besides reducing knockback, which is better solved by other house rules. I have already found a house rule that seems adequate for what I want. If people have a better idea that solves the issues I have with knockback, as I have mentioned them , then feel free, but I don't need to solve Bracing, or the distance of knockback (without changing how often it occurs), or any of the other super helpful suggestions

I don't really like the CSLs in a framework approach, and generally would require CVs instead, or have CSLs bought outside the framework. Part of the cost savings for CSLs is the fact that they're limited in what attacks they're applied to, and bundling them into a framework slot gets largely around that limitation.

Emphasis mine, for how I want my campaigns. I think knockback isn't a bad mechanic, but it's one thing for Superman or the Hulk or even (relatively) lower STR bricks like Colossus or Rogue to knock someone back 30 feet or more in a punch, or someone with vague "force" beams, like for example Iron-man's repulsors on a high "repulse" setting, and it's another thing for Green Arrow to shoot a boxing-glove arrow and knock a foe back that same 30 feet. And again, I feel like part of my intent isn't getting through, RE: my opinion on the "must have" abilities like KB Resistance and Breakfall. They should still have their role, which is part of the reason I want to actually do more with knockback than I've been doing, but taking Breakfall 14- or KB Resistance -10m on any melee character doesn't seem like a reasonable way to make sure that (more often than not) they actually get to do something.

The problem isn't the damage. As you said, most of the time it's not even worth rolling. The problem is that if, on average, every successful hit knocks a character back roughly 10m, unless they have KB resistance or Breakfall, a melee character has to stand up (half phase) and move those 10m (half phase, assuming the character has enough movement), leaving no room to attack without using move-by/move-through. Even Killing attacks and Martial Maneuvers suffer the same problem, though not to as great a degree. The fact that it's 3m rather than 10 doesn't negate the fact that it's a half phase action to move those 3m. This seems heavily punative to melee characters (ranged characters at least can potentially still have someone within -0 range penalty, or if not, they can suck it up and take some degree of range penalty until they get a half phase to move again). I get that (at least for normal strikes) HtH is a limitation, so it covers this somewhat. However I wouldn't say that a -1/4 limitation is really justification for this. It doesn't even fit the genre all that well. Comic book characters aren't Pinballs. An especially powerful or well placed attack or an attack that hits an opponent unaware or while in midair might do knockback, as well as "concussive force" based powers, but that's not really the norm. Otherwise, most of the time, it's knockdown or what would effectively be no knockback at all, since they might just stagger back but not really need to get back to their feet as a half-phase action (and truth be told, even with knockdown characters rarely have to devote the equivalent of a half phase action to standing up).

That is actually a really good idea. I'm not sure if I'd do something based on the hit roll, since most characters with attacks that would feasibly do knockback more often (or would have knockback done against them less often) would have lower CVs, but a maneuver would be an interesting idea. Maybe subtract twice as many dice (for most cases 4d6), normally, but have some OCV or DCV penalty base maneuver that focuses on knockback, and has the normal number of dice. Probably also allowing for Penalty Skill levels, even though they don't typically work for maneuvers, so someone with an attack designed for knockback would be able to use it at no penalty (of course, I'm not sure about it as a general rule, but at least for attacks with "Does Knockback" or "Double Knockback" where it's clear that knockback is part of the point of the attack, and for which it's already lower than the DCs otherwise).

That actually makes Damage Negation a lot more cost effective than it seemed to me. Damage Negation costs 5cp for effectively 3.5 defenses, with roughly 1.167 of it being resistant, so it's a little more than 4cp of effect for all of that, but then you add, effectively 2m of KB resistance, so with that factored in, it's 6 cp of effect for 5 points. Granted part of that savings is that, vs killing attacks, it doesn't do as well as defenses in terms of stun (though stun modifiers reduce that to equal or greater savings) but still.

That is a thought, though it taking a half phase is a bit to my dissatisfaction, as well as the fact that it kind of expands the "must-buy" list to: one of KB Resistance, Breakfall, Flight, Strength, but it's a thought.

So, a bit of background: I've been working on coding a damage calculator of sorts for HERO, that is meant to be a way to give a clear view the rough effectiveness of characters during building: either as GM so I know the villains won't be too dangerous or too much of pushovers, as well as for players, so that they know roughly where their heroes stand in terms of effectiveness and they don't end up with characters that can't really do anything meaningful vs enemies. It would basically take relevant stats and advantages and spit out numbers like chance to hit, chance to deal any damage, chance to stun, number of attacks to KO on average and such. While doing this, I thought about adding in knockback. I generally haven't paid much attention to knockback, and it's mostly been forgotten during combat in my games, unless someone specifically intends to do something with it (knock an enemy into another, or the like) or has a power built with "does knockback" or "double knockback". But when I added it, I noticed that knockback seems highly inflated in superhero levels of damage. A 12 DC attack will deal roughly 12 Body, and Knockback will negate, on average 7 of that, yielding 10m of knockback. That doesn't seem terribly unreasonable, when you think about comics and other supers media (especially cartoons), but on roughly every attack that lands, that seems excessive. There's statistically only a less than 4% chance to do no knockback at all, and a roughly equivalent chance to only do knockdown, meaning there's a 92% chance that any given attack that hits will do knockback. Now, I don't want to eliminate knockback entirely. As much as I often forget or gloss over it in my games, I think it'd be nice to have as a mechanic, and would make combat fairly dynamic. However, I feel like introducing it to a greater extent, unchanged, wouldn't be preferable; Breakfall, knockback resistance and the like would become too much of "must-haves" and it would limit the effectiveness of hand-to-hand attacks to too much of an extent. So I'm wondering what an elegant solution for a happy medium would be. I still want knockback to happen occasionally (maybe half the time would be reasonable) and I want more powerful attacks to be more effective at knockback. Additionally, I want "Does Knockback" and "Double Knockback" to be reasonably effective (after all, if someone pays the points to have that be part of the power's schtick, then it should do something, possibly even having "Does Knockback" be more effective than regular attacks at causing knockback), but I have yet to find a way that I like. A static reduction, rather than rolling dice was my first choice, but there were flaws with that. Namely it's too dependant on the number of dice in the attack. A static reduction of 12 works fine (if perhaps underpowered) for 12d6 attacks, but 10d6 attacks will do Knockback less than 10% of the time, and Knockdown about 12%, while a 14d6 attack will do knockback 75% of the time and will do no knockdown or knockback only 12% of the time. Basing it on a static value depending on the number of dice also doesn't really work, as high damage characters are barely any more likely to deal knockback compared to low damage characters, although it does make "Double Knockback" retain much of its effectiveness, which I like. Increasing the dice doesn't do enough because there's not really enough granulaarity, while keeping with d6s, to get the range I want, without becoming fiddly (subtracting 3d6+1 gets me closest, and it's what I'm leaning towards, but it's still but not quite right for the range of DCs) Lastly, I thought about only counting 6s, and subtracting 2 (or 1/2 d6 perhaps) but that didn't really work for double knockback, so I went to double knockback counting 5s and 6s instead, and then everything got really fiddly, where it became count 5s and 6s, subtract 1d6, and double knockback would count 4s 5s and 6s, and count 6s as 2s (as I mentioned, really fiddly), and actually this seems like it works best for what I want (average attacks don't really do knockback, but powerful hits will, and the distribution seems good), but I can't, in good conscience, use it unless I'm running a virtual tabletop game with built in macros, and even then, it's fiddly as hell. So I'm asking the HERO community, what ideas do you have about reducing Knockback to more manageable levels?

I tend to do my own universe; part of the fun of GMing for me is that type of world building. Also, truth be told, the champions universe never really grabbed me. There are a couple interesting bits that I've mined for the bases of other ideas, but the issue I seem to have is that the characters tend to either be comic book expies of existing (mostly Marvel) characters, or are just there, filling an archetype: Kinematik is just Magneto, while Kinetik is just a speedster (with flash-esque bits in the origin), and Defender is just the Capital-"H" Hero. While this is kind of true for most superhero RPG settings, something about the champions setting makes it click even less for me. I don't know what it is, but other fictional comic book settings manage to grab me a lot more, even when doing the same thing. For example, I really like the card game, Sentinels of the Multiverse's setting, and have even considered running a game in that universe for friends who are a fan of the card game, but most of their characters are direct homages to comic book characters (often times a blend of at least one marvel and at least one DC character). Likewise, the Freedom City setting for M&M is much the same way, in that you can tell who is the Superman analogue, who's the Batman analogue, who's the Thor analogue, and so on, but there's enough that's changed that it feels more interesting: the Superman analogue never came back to life following the "Death of Superman" analogue. Batman's analogue has a really cool Edgar Allen Poe themed Rogue's Gallery, etc. I want to like the setting, because I like the system so much, and it'd be useful if I could get more out of the champions setting books I bought, but right now, all I can do is mostly borrow stat-blocks for villains if I'm feeling lazy.

I'd recommend just building them as though you were building any other characters, and try to get the feel right, rather than 1-to-1 damage conversion or what have you. Like the 3d6 blast might seem right, if you're judging based on the power of a glock, but compare that to even a PD/ED 20 character, and it'll never do any damage.

I feel like "overfiring" a bow is a good place where HERO's Reality vs Dramatic Reality dichotomy can be put to the test. For me, I would see no reason not to allow that to simply be the flavor; there are enough drawbacks to haymakering that it's clear you've passed the optimal firing power of the bow, but if you allow yourself to suspend disbelief for a moment, the "overdrawing" explanation makes more sense for the flavor if anything, and it doesn't prescribe bonuses and penalties based on special effect, which is something HERO tries not to do. Now, there may be the question of whether it should apply to ranged attacks in general, but that's largely dependant on the style of game you'd want: in a game where you want the Barbarian to be the hard-hitter, the Ranger to be the more accurate one, and the Mage to be the glass cannon, different rules about certain things, such as ranged haymakers, might be warranted, but as a baseline, I see no reason to allow dramatic realism to trump for the baseline RAW of "You can haymaker with a ranged attack".

As someone with limited experience in 5e, and most experience with 6e/CC, I see a lot of people refer to using a lot of 4e rules, and I was wondering what specifically people preferred about 4e as opposed to 5e/6e. I've seen a couple "Upgrading from Hero 4e to 5e" pages around, but it's difficult to reverse engineer the changes or even see what the good and bad of 4e were, since they're written with the assumption that you know 4e and don't know much about 5e, So what are the main 4e rules that people still like to include in their later-edition games?

In fact so much the same book that in the alphabetized skill descriptions, it goes Security Systems, Charm, Shadowing, since Charm is still alphabetized as Seduction.

One thing to consider is, if it's meant to be a truly universal thing, it might be acceptable to use the Megascale advantage. I know many GMs are (perhaps rightfully) suspect about megascale especially in heroic games, but I think that if the intent is to do something like this, it isn't too unreasonable, especially given that it's not a power that can be used offensively.

The skill system has always been a tough-spot in my eyes for HERO, for multiple reasons, so an overhaul wouldn't be unwanted for me. Though part of it, I feel, is fairly ingrained in the system: having target skill rolls vs the more d20 way of having skill mods and DCs, for example, or the way that the bell-curve lacks much granularity outside the ends (where you're so likely to succeed/fail anyway that the granularity isn't as noticeable). Though other things I think could more easily be changed. The "All or nothing" aspect of having a skill is a real sticking point, since it makes me feel like I have to buy every skill, just because it might be something my character would theoretically be capable of. And as such, it also means, if everyone has, for example, conversation, then the character for whom Conversation is a more key skill (maybe, a charming Bartender who fights crime as a street-level hero) isn't as notable. A concept that I'd toyed with was that all skills are base 6+CHAR/5, and are essentially "everyman skills" with the associated limitations, but scale with stats. That way the 20 PRE character doesn't need to feel like they have to take every interaction skill to be better than the "everyman" at social stuff, but generally even a baseline human with the skill purchased at normal levels will be as good or better at it than just someone, even someone immensely competent, who attempts it untrained. From there the first 3 +1 bonuses would be 1 point (allowing further granularity that is a bit lacking) representing different levels of training or experience. 1 rank might be a hobbyist. 2 ranks might be moderate training (on the level of "I took French Literature as a major/concentration in college, but I haven't done anything professionally or advanced with it") and 3 ranks would be professional level training, with the further, more expensive ranks, being more-advanced-than-average training. As well, EGO has a minimal role outside of games where psionic effects are frequent, mainly just as a way to overcome psychological complications (something else I could go on about; I have never been a fan of complications being simultaneously RP drivers and a points source. IMO M&M went the right way with having no real rules/points for complications, but if one of your complications affects you, you get a 'cookie' of sorts). When Figured Characteristics were a thing it may have made more sense (I only played a little 5er, so I can't even remember what it affected), but I think revising the skill list, and moving beyond "Agility Skills" "Intellect skills" and "Interaction skills" could give it more weight. As for the skills themselves, in terms of number of skills, and the like, I'm torn. On one hand, I like that there is a bit of opportunity for variation, but I feel like it might be better to do something like the knowledge skills rule in the skills book: Essentially you can buy any degree of granularity of knowledge skill, from KS: Everything in the Universe to KS: Movies in which Robert Duvall says the word "Toast", but when trying to use the skill in a broader or more narrow context gives a penalty for each level of broadness or narrowness you go. If I were to redo the skill system, I might try for something like that, extended. So you could take an average-breadth skill like "Stealth" and have no penalty, or a more narrow subset, like "Shadowing" where you'd be better at that specific sub skill, but other aspects of stealth you either wouldn't have access to, or maybe you'd have access to, but at a penalty. Likewise, you could take the "Thievery" super-skill but since it's so broad, you'd be using it at a penalty compared to someone who bought one of the individual skills, and you might not be able to do something specifically specialized within the broad category of "Thievery".

My timing was perhaps a bit unfortunate. While things had seemed to be getting back into the swing of things with that campaign, the GM in question (not much more than an hour after I posted, mind you) mentioned on twitter that he might be taking a break from GMing for a bit. Here is the link for the recordings of the first few sessions, though.

I know of at least 1 streamer who runs a semi-regular champions game on his stream. His audience isn't huge, but stuff like that can expose more people to the system, as well as take the very weighty (figuratively and literally) rules tomes and put things in a context of an actual game. However, while, I think that the idea could work, once people are already interested, I'm not sure how well how to/101 videos would work with HERO, as far as pushing awareness: as you mentioned SW is simpler, if less organized; the create a character videos I've seen for SW are about an hour; I could watch one of those in a lunch break, especially if I made use of youtube's speed controls. While creating a HERO character in an hour is reasonable, doing so in a step by step way that's accessible to new people is harder. Once a podcast or dedicated HERO streaming channel got enough viewers, people might be down to sit through a "How to" video, but I think the requirement of a longer or multi-part video would make it less accessible for potential fans, without something else initiating interest.

The main issues I see are two-fold. The first is that HERO is a toolkit system. Beyond books that have already been printed, such as Champions Powers or the Fantasy Hero Grimoire, there's not a whole lot that can be added on the rules-side to compare with the type of supplemental material that systems like D&D or Pathfinder can put out to add more content, and even with those books, it's not new content, just an easily accessible set of pre-built powers. Thus Setting and Premade adventure books are really the easiest way to keep producing content, and those types of books require a greater level of art direction and cohesion to do well, which can be more prohibitively expensive. The second issue is that HERO is a difficult system to get into without someone (usually the GM) who knows the system incredibly well, and even then it asks a lot of the players. This doesn't do well for groups that are completely new to the hobby. However, I think there are ways to make HERO, in it's current iteration more approachable. Flipping through my Champions book, I noticed the "Superhero Gallery" section. I had completely forgotten that it existed, but it would be a perfect way to introduce the system in an approachable way, while highlighting the strengths of customization, without asking players to struggle spending hours making a character from scratch. And it's stuck in the back of a sourcebook. I don't know the costs of such a thing, but I think a "Beginner's Box" would be great as an introductory product, which would have a simplified rulebook, a character archetypes booklet, which would have similar "Some assembly Required" archetypes with some suggestions on ways to tweak the special effects as desired, as well as an introductory adventure (and possibly a GM screen, though for the sake of price-point I could see not having one). While I don't necessarily agree that a Rules-Light(er) direction is what HERO needs (HERO has it's niche; giving that up to fight for ground with Mutants and Masterminds or FATE or whichever other systems I don't think will help), I think such a beginner's entry product would accomplish a lot of the benefits of such a HERO-Lite direction. The main issue would be getting it at a price point that's competitive enough, without squeezing Hero Games' budget.