Tholomyes

Personally how I would do it is just buy a 5 active point HKA. While it would theoretically allow for a 4d6+1 killing damage with strength, the game doesn't require that the character use their full strength. I don't particularly see a reason not to simply allow the player to add a (-0) limitation to their HKA power that says "May only add up to 35 STR to damage"

Not exactly new, but I was only a little more than a lurker when I first joined, and haven't been around in months, since my last HERO game fell through a couple sessions in. How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)? -- Originally, it was the Surname of a minor character, Felix Tholomyes, from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, which has been one of my favorite books since I was in middle school. I first started using it, however, due to the first one-shot game of D&D I played, where I came up with the character at the last minute, and had to think of some name that sounded good and somewhat memorable, and I've stuck with the handle since. What was the first tabletop RPG you played? -- I did a play-by-Forum game of second edition Mutants and Masterminds, when I didn't really have a gaming group around me, but my first face to face RPG I played was D&D 3.5. Having already played M&M, It was honestly a bit of a disappointment, since I'd gotten accustomed to the freedom of point buy and the more solidly scaling system math, but it was the default, if only by name recognition, so it's what people played. What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed? -- I GMed a Pathfinder game that didn't last more than a couple sessions, more or less due to my disinterest in the system (I could play it fine, though with some inner grumblings that it wasn't my first choice, but I discovered that GMing is a lot more work when you really don't have much interest in the system). The first fully off-the-ground game I GMed was a HERO Firefly game. What are you currently playing/GMing? Most recently played D&D 5e. Currently trying to get a Champions game off the ground, but I'm hitting scheduling problems, and, If I'm lucky, I can meet with everyone to work on characters before then, so the first session isn't just: "Ok, let me make all four of your characters for you".

Sure, go ahead

Yeah, I think I prefer the complications not giving points, but instead Hero points or Fortune tokens, or whatever the preferred nomenclature is. In pretty much every game I've played with Disadvantages or complications or flaws that give back points for simply taking the complication, it always feels like there's a level of Min-maxing to taking them, if only to try to meet but not exceed the maximum complication limit. With systems that give back expendable resources, it becomes a lot more justified in taking complications based on the character, since they have their effect proportional to how much they actually impact the character.

The way my current game does it (though, admittedly I'm not a caster) is that there are a certain number of "mandatory" limitations (in quotes, because they're semi flexible), such as Gestures, Incantations and Requires a Roll. So long as the powers have those limitations (or have been bought off with similar limitations, if they don't make sense, like a "Silence" spell won't have Incantations, but might have Extra Time, or something like that), they can be purchased for 1/5th the normal cost, though normal active point limits and the like still apply.In addition all magic users must buy Endurance Reserve which covers all their powers. Granted I'm not playing a magic user, so I don't know it it's broken, however it seems to be roughly comparable to the point-savings from weapons and martial arts. Other powers can be bought, but they tend to be more expensive, so mundane characters can be as interesting, mechanically, as casters, but you don't get the versatility. For example, I'm playing an unarmed bodyguard, who is mechanically like a D&D Monk with the serial numbers filed off. So I have a variable (limited group) naked advantage covering armor piercing strikes, A 'riposte' strike off of a successful block, Autofire, and Does knockback. It doesn't get the discount of magic, but it doesn't require the limitations of magic.

For a while I played Mutants and Masterminds fairly regularly before moving on to HERO, which on the whole, I think I like better, due to its greater degrees of customization and differentiation of effects, however there's one thing that I think M&M did a lot better, which I'd like to attempt to port over to HERO, and that's Hero points, and by extension, power-stunts. Hero points and power stunts, in my opinion, did a lot to help give the game a comic-book feel, and even with non-superhero games gave the players the ability to make their characters feel a bit more like Big Damn Heroes. For those unfamiliar with the system, Hero Points in M&M can be used a number of ways: -Edit Scene: essentially alter some aspect of the scene; good for if a player has a good idea for something, but it requires some alteration of the current scene to do so. An example given being to ensure that the chemicals to create a defoliant are present in a lab, in order to stop a plant based super-villain. In my opinion, not necessary for most cases (as a good GM will usually practice the "say yes" or "yes, and" or "yes, but" school of responding to players' ideas), but it can be useful when an idea begins to strain plausibility. In either event, this is non-mechanical, so it can be ported over as-is. -Heroic Feat: essentially you get an advantage (essentially equivolent to a low cost perk or talent) or power advantage (essentially equivalent to a low cost adder) for one turn. This I don't necessarily think needs to be ported over, though I'd say Maybe something like gaining 3-5 points worth of skill, perk or talent (with some appropriate exceptions) for an appropriate duration (one phase for combat stuff, or otherwise a single useage, such as Access lasting until the end of the scene, or until outside of the access-location). But on the whole, I think it's less necessary, and could do more harm than good trying to force its inclusion. -Improve Roll: Reroll any d20 roll (essentially every roll in the game, from skills to attack rolls, to resistance rolls, which includes damage) and add 10 to the result if it's 10 or under. I see splitting this up into two parts. Firstly, this is most often used to reroll a failed check and (usually) pass it, though it has the side benefit of allowing more difficult maneuvers than usual to be attempted with a greater opportunity for success than one would expect for 1-(1-success%)^2. With a bell-curve system, however, the same d20-based mechanics are less applicable. To that end I figure the reroll a failed check and (usually) succeed aspect could be fulfilled with a reroll of 4d6 drop highest. For most situations it works out to approximately similar effects: for example, the benchmarks for average tend to be natural 10+ or 11-, and a roll which needs a natural 10+ on a d20 will succeed 100% of the time with a Hero-point reroll, where a natural 11- 4d6 drop highest reroll will succeed about 82.5% of the time (or roughly 93.4% between both rolls), and between a 8- roll (26% success) and a 16+ roll (25% success), which are rough benchmarks for difficult checks. With the M&M system the reroll succeeds 50% of the time, and with the 4d6 drop highest system the reroll succeeds roughly 49% of the time. On the whole it's less powerful than the M&M system for average checks and about the same for difficult checks, which is about where I think it should be, since the M&M system is quite powerful and could do with being nerfed a bit (though, admittedly, the ability to automatically succeed at an average check shouldn't likely break the game for most genres, and certainly not superheroes, for which it is suited) -Inspiration: Essentially an out for stumped players to get information of of the DM when they're completely lost with respect to a puzzle or mystery. I've never seen it used, and even if it were to be used, it involves no mechanics. No need to waste diigital ink on it. Next! -Instant Counter: Based on the countering mechanics of M&M. Doesn't really apply to HERO, and probably doesn't need to be converted over, -Recover: This use of Hero Points serves 3 purposes, the first being, to remove damage. The second being removing certain status effects, the most important of which being stunned. The final being, the removal of fatigue, thus allowing effortless extra effort. Extra effort normally just does what pushing does: gain extra strength, speed or levels in a power at the cost of heavy fatigue, however it has another use in the form of "power stunt" which allows you to (roughly) turn a power into a multipower for a single use, allowing heroes to pull off one-time uses of a specific power as often seen in comics (spider-man parachuting down with webbing, for example, or an electric manipulator defibrillation someone to revive them, in complete unscientific fashion); essentially this is akin to many of the uses of the power-skill, however in my opinion Power-stunting better represents the source material since the cost to power stunt regulates its frequency of use, where the power-skill is limited by the GM's willingness to say "Alright, if you want to keep doing this, buy a VPP". Essentially the first two uses should be fairly simple: Spend a Hero Point to take a recovery or recover from being stunned as a zero-phase action instead of a full-phase action. The third use probably can piggy-back off the power-skill, and hopefully manipulate it into a more genre-fitting mechanic: essentially, a player can spend a Hero Point to use an appropriate power skill, whether the character has it or not (though you must have an appropriate power to the power-skill itself; an 8 Str hero doesn't get Brick Tricks), and, if the character does have the skill, automatically succeeds on the check, though a GM may still require a roll to determine the degree of success. This is essentially "free" of the many of the usual usage restrictions of the power skill, as the costs of a Hero Point can be assumed to pay for the repeated usage restriction and the like. This usage does not extend to Activation Rolls for powers, which use the power skill, however, and in such a case, the reroll function of Hero points would be more appropriate. anyway TL;DR: I'm thinking of porting over Hero points from Mutants and Masterminds over to Hero (mostly champions), with the following usage options: -Reroll a 3d6 roll, rolling 4d6 drop highest and choose either result. -Take a Recovery or Recover from being stunned as a zero-phase action instead of a full-phase action. -Use a Power skill you do not have or automatically succeed on a Power skill to use a "power stunt" -gain a small cost (less than ~5) perk or talent or skill for a single use (with some disallowed, on the basis of common sense [i.e. anonymity, for the most part] and balance [i.e. favor]) in addition to the non-mechanical options, such as Edit Scene and Inspiration. So does anyone with more experience see any glaring flaws or unintended consequences with this conversion?

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. In Superhero games, I don't see much of the need for a map, both from a logistics perspective (when the speedster can travel across literally every single hex on the map in a turn amd the guy in power armor can fly at Mach 5, what's the point of a map?), and a genre-convention perspective: I see Champions as effectively mirroring a comic book: every character's phase is a panel in which that character acts, Normal Damage calculation explains why Superman can beat up Lex Luthor, without killing him, despite being able to juggle planets, ect. It seems strange to try and ruin that good genre emulation with gritty details of hex movement and the like.

Depends on the setting/genre. In High Fantasy, I tend to typically like playing down-to-earth, usually non-magical characters. Unfortunately in most systems other than HErO, they're almost always the most boring subset of classes, mechanically. When I do stray from this, it's not usually that far to stray: for example I've played a Wizard who uses his great mastery of cosmic powers... for masonry and architecture. Same down-to-earth feel, just with a little magic. With Superheroes, I can't say I can pick a favorite. I've had a lot of fun with a variety of characters, simply because superheroes covers a very broad conceptual area. I'd say I most often like to go with a character with some versatility, meaning either a skill-monkey with a utility belt (or trick arrows or what have you) or a Powersuit character with a broad multipower, or the like. Speedsters can be interesting, but in my mind they're almost too versatile in that it's hard to be able to adequately represent all the cool speedster-tricks in a moderately-priced character. In Other games it's hard to specifically say a favorite, since it's so campaign dependent. Sci-fi is so broad that even after breaking it down to cyberpunk, or Space Opera, or Military or Mecha, I still can't say a "favorite" type of character for the subgenres. I rarely get to play stuff like pulp or action games, so I couldn't say for sure.

It's important to set your rough time period for the game's parallels to real medieval Europe. Depending on the time you're looking at, you'll see a different value for your money (to the extent it was used as currency); societal and environmental factors affected prices and wages, which can be evidenced by massive increases in labor wages following the Black Death, and slowly inflation began to increase wages and prices of goods, even into the Renaissance and beyond, where labor that would be worth 1d. per day would eventually be worth 1s. per day and eventually even greater wages. Remember, also, that much of the medieval economy was based on the feudal system, and as such, modern economic thought does not necessarily come into play with effect to wages and monetary gains. Many individuals in a feudal system were serfs who worked a lord's manor, in exchanging labor and produce for residence, protection and the ability to farm (or otherwise work) for their own subsistence, on lands unowned by them (though by law, nearly everything a serf had access to was still property of the lord). This contract was very difficult to break on either side, and continued through the progeny of serfs. As such, the notion of wages and currency is an alien concept with respect to serfs, as much of their work was either in fulfillment of feudal contract (for which they gained non-monetary compensation), or for their own benefit (working the lord's land to provide crops for the serf and their family). The rest was likely dealt with in barter, as a serf working in the lord's fields harvesting grain, and a serf working in the lord's woods, collecting wood for fires, would each require the others' goods, and thus transactions would be in barter, rather than coin. Only during the later middle ages would it be common for serfs to sell excess produce at the market, where they would see coin in exchange for their goods. In cities, you are more likely to see goods and services exchanged for coin, and at that point, you'll see far greater amounts of coinage in the hands of the populace, even commoners. As they were not directly bound by feudal contracts, and were more commonly freemen and artisans, their goods and services were more often exchanged for currency than through a barter system, due to the decreased feasibility of barter when fewer essential aspects of life were provided by a ruling lord. In such a place, a commoner may rarely see coins of high value (as they were rare for anyone to have, with denominations such as British Pounds and French Livres often serving as units of account, rather than coinage, and even when coins with higher values were minted, they were often used for bullion, rather than common currency). Pence or denier (or similar currency in other areas besides England and France) were common, and sous and shillings slowly became more common as wages and prices slowly inflated (though, due to the relative strength of the British Pound to the French Livre, the sou became commonplace much more quickly than the shilling). In most cases, however, nearly all common currency was silver, and only in the later middle ages did rarer gold coins become minted (and even then, their use outside of bullion was quite rare). As such, if you want to do a "Realistic" monetary system, you can't really avoid silver, as even British Farthings were silver (and often simply a penny cut into quarters) prior to well into the Renaissance, where copper farthings were eventually produced. While I tend to abstract things more that the normal "Realistic" seeking GM, how I would tend to try a realistic currency system would be to go with a 1:20:240 currency system (for the sake of referencing denominations by name, let's call them Crowns, Solars and Pence respectively), with possibly subdivided into various coins, however that's probably more book keeping than I'd put into the game, with the only possible exception being a method to subdivide pence into halves and quarters. A penny would be the most common coin, and would be small and silver, and rarely would anyone ever see any coins as large or larger than Solars, a silver coin, which would be occasionally by the more wealthy, but rarely seen outside of that. Crowns exist as bullion and unit of account only, and do not exist in coin form. Nobles have most of their wealth in the form of land and feudal contracts with serfs, knights and vassals, and when they do have monetary gains or expenses, they are often in units of account and bullion, rather than currency. Serfs, similarly do not own much currency, as the majority of their livelihood is gained by laboring for their lord, and working for subsistence on his lands, and trade within the manor is often done through barter. Any currency in the hands of serfs is often the result of a rare serf able to leave the lords' lands to sell excess goods at the market of a nearby town. Residents of towns and cities tend to be the primary users of currency, with the average wage for an unskilled laborer being 3 pence per day, and a skilled laborer can find wages between 6 pence and several solars as a daily wage. At the low end, unskilled laborers live barely better than serfs, though they were free of feudal contract and owned property, however towards the high end, the beginnings of a new social class can be seen to be forming, of freemen who are of lower status than nobles, but have sizable wealth beyond the realm of commoners. This new class of individuals are beginning to see greater legal rights afforded to them, through laws that provide rights based on the value of property ownership, often enacted by ruling monarchs who provide these rights in exchange for political support. Such individuals deal often with solars and money of account, and will be the ones most frequently using coins other than pence.

For me, I prefer Cinematic over realistic. I like HERO in its flexibility and ability to create any sort of effect or power desired in a roughly balanced (in the sort of "you get what you pay for" sort of way) manner. However there are a lot of rules, from hit-locations to the strange and vestigial-seeming optional combat rules to the CP-free equipment in heroic games that seem to run counter to this notion. For 16 points, you get 8 PSLs for a tight group of attacks (enough for a standard gunman's weapons multipower [excluding stuff like grenade launchers, and the like, for which it would make little sense), completely counteracts the penalty to fire at a target's head, resulting in x5 stun mod and x2 damage, which, assuming a 2d6+1 (7 DC, or 35 base points) rifle as the damage listed for three of the four rifles in the book comply with, would otherwise cost ~18 points more (assuming I factored in the right advantages and limitations), if the same effect were bought simply by enhancing the power of the rifle to a degree equal to the effect of a headshot, rather than buying the PSLs. It's stuff like this, in the name of 'realism' which seems so vestigial and alien to a system where, already any effect can be created by applyiing the correct special effect and limitations to a power. For example, I could replicate placed shots with a set of Ranged Maneuvers (Offensive Shot is a headshot, or a shot aimed at the vitals, rainged disarm is a called shot to the hand, Offensive Trip is a called shot to the legs, ect), and to me non-placed hit locations are just a description to a well-rolled KA, when describing an RKA that the player rolls a 5 and a 6 on 2d6+1, and then rolled a 3 on the stun multiplier, I'd say that the bullet flies straight through the target's skull (or, alternatively, if the target survives the attack, something to the same effect, without the implied lethality) As for the Random Character Generator stuff, I don't have much experience outside looking through an old Central Casting book a friend of mine used to have, which was a bit disappointing, since it had a couple interesting things, but generally the characters felt disjointed and strange, and it didn't even feel like it would be interesting to pick and choose the life events I wanted, since digging through d100 tables for things that weren't too mundane or too cliche wasn't any better than just making a character on my own. The only "random character" stuff I like anymore are point-buy systems who make character generators which randomly choose an archetype and then randomly select from options within that archetype, and my main interest in that (beyond the occasional "let's play a one-shot with randomized characters") is to provide a starting point for character creation, when I have no compelling reasons for one concept over any other, and even then, it's more often pick-and-choose rather than going randomly.

I'm relatively new to HERO, but based on my experience with similar systems, such as M&M, I tend to straddle the line for special effects: Generally, no, you won't get any bonuses or penalties for shooting fire from your hands vs lightning (unless an enemy has vulnerabilities or the like), however, if you have an especially interesting idea, I'll allow it on rare occasions, since the one big thing that I feel HERO lacks, especially with its basis in Superhero RPGs, is a way to pull off one-off 'power stunts' which are fairly in genre, and I think the "power" skill is a poor way of doing it. As for some of the other stuff in the rest of your post, I feel like I agree to only a certain extent. Yes, some rules are done for balance, but many rules are to enforce genre conventions, whether or not "Balance" is a factor. With a look at D&D, the rules about wizards casting in armor aren't really there for balance. Not when spells and magical items exist which do basically the same thing as having armor does. It's there because Gandalf and Merlin and the like never wore armor. As for AoOs, I don't understand what there's not to get about them: when I first read the rules for them, my first reaction was "Ok, that makes sense. You shouldn't just be able to run past the fighter without any penalty, or cast or shoot a bow, or the like". It feels very much like a blend of balance, yes, but also genre conventions, even if the specified genre convention is only class-based fantasy RPGs (Because D&D, at least for me, no longer represents fantasy but its' own thing).

Newbie Here, but I have a couple questions with regards to combat skill levels and Martial Arts: With combat skill levels, I don't understand why they are so expensive, when I could feasibly get a greater effect from something such as: Enhanced Characteristics (+1 OCV; -1/4: Useable only with HTH combat) plus Enhanced Characteristics (+1 DCV), for 9 points, compared to a HTH only CSL, which is only 1 point cheaper per CSL, and requires you to split up CSLs between OCV and DCV, and make the whatever DCV bonus you'd get only apply to HTH attacks against you. The 2-point one makes sense, as it could be argued to be roughly identical to Enhanced Characteristics (+1 OCV; -1: Useable only on [specified attack]), and the 3 point one sort of makes sense, too, but once you get to the 5+ points rank, it begins to seem strange why the costs are so high for what seems like less benefit. I understand there's the ability to use it to increase damage, but the return on that seems so low that it seems to not be worth it. And even if it is a worthwhile, it seems a multipower might just be more effective at it. As someone with very little familiarity with the system, I was able to parse out this which seems better than the normal CSLs at cheaper cost: Combat Skill level Multipower (5 active points -X Limited: [whatever limitation] on Multipower all slots) 1v Enhanced Characteristics (+1 OCV) 1v Ehnanced Characteristics (+1 DCV) 1v [specified blast attack] (+1d6 Damage) So is there anything I'm missing, or are CSLs just overpriced for what they do? Secondly, I was looking at Martial arts, and I don't understand why they are so cheap. The only main downside I can see is that you have to have 10 active points worth of martial maneuvers to use them, but assuming you can spare 10 points, the benefits you get seem much stronger than their point cost. for example Defensive strike nets you +1 OCV and +3 DCV when you use it, for the same cost as just +1 CV. Martial Strike costs less than a CV or +1 DC of extra damage, but it nets you ~20 active points worth of benefit. Is there anything I'm missing as to why martial arts are so cheap? I assume it's intended to enforce genre conventions and to reduce the cost for skill-monkeys and non-powered heroes like Batman, but there's nothing I see in the rules as to why anyone can't just (or shouldn't just) take martial arts and call it something related to the characters' power set. Examples already exist for Brick Tricks and Gun Fu, so it's not like it can't be used in conjunction with powers.