Brian Stanfield

I have a character with STR 14 in HERO Designer and a Dagger:HKA 1d6 (1d6+1 w/STR), Range Based On STR (+¼), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½) (26 Active Points); OAF (-1), Real Weapon (-¼), STR Minimum 4 (-¼), Beam (-¼) So here's what I can't figure out: The character has 10 points of STR over the STR minimum, but HD is only adding 1 DC to the attack (bolded above). Is the program charging the elevated DC cost because of the advantages of the weapon, despite their not really affecting the damage of the attack? The rule on this on 6e2 97 says that the Advantages in this case should not apply, since they don't directly affect the damage taken. Am I missing something in the rule, or am I missing something in HERO Designer?

Ok, still looking for some ideas for beginning adventures for my new group. I'd like to do several little mini-scenes that bring them together in pairs or something like that, and then they'll all end out meeting at the Carthage Club in Hudson City. I'd like some activities to teach them the rules: like a skill vs. skill challenge, a Presence attack, maybe a brief scuffle, in order to teach the basic game elements. But I'd like them to feed into a real adventure, and I'm struggling to settle on something. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Luckily it's at a place called "Half-Price Books," otherwise that price would have been sky high . . .

They used an air conditioner in the movie High Fidelity, so . . .

Got it after a lot of trial and error. More error than anything else. I think I have a handle on what everything's doing now. I can now use the same process of elimination with the other elements as I branch out into a more complete export template. This is level of customizability really is one of the most brilliant parts of your program. Alas, I am a babe in the woods here.

From what I can tell, it's not behaving in the way you suggest. The IF_MANEUVER and IF_NON_MANEUVER distinguish between maneuvers and weapon elements (and other non-maneuvers), but they both give all of each and don't distinguish between listed and non-listed Maneuvers. This is what was giving me problems. I expected it to act the way you describe, and it doesn't. BUT, the IS_LIST isolates the List headings, and IS_NOT_LIST shows the remaining maneuvers and non-maneuvers regardless of their being in a list. It's all a bit counter-intuitive, but I got it eventually. Anyway, a glossary of these elements would save us all some time. I do genuinely appreciate your taking the time to help out. Thanks again.

Just to make sure I wasn't confused, I fired up HERO Designer and created two Heroic level characters in 5th and 6th editions. They had identical starting Characteristics, except that the 6e character had twice as much movement. Regardless, I'm not sure how it comes across that the 5e character has more intuitive numbers than the 6e character, since they are identical. You want to bump up numbers in 5e, you purchase Characteristics, which may affect some of the figures. You want to bump up numbers in 6e, you purchase Characteristics to the level you want. So I'm not really sure what the complaint is here about starting Characteristics.

How many people leave their figured characteristics unchanged, heroic or superheroic or otherwise? In both cases, there are suggested ranges for Characteristics to start with in 6e, where heroes and superheroes have different starting values that you then add to. It’s really not all that different from 5e, which renders starting values that you add to. There really are no added steps here.

I got it figured out, Mr. Simon, just a little differently than I expected. Thanks for your help. Just a couple of questions: I used IS_LIST_ITEM and IS_NOT_LIST_ITEM like you suggested, but what I discovered is that IS_NOT_LIST_ITEM also includes the list heading (in this case Aikido, which is the list name). Is this an oversight, or is this intentional? I ask this, because it was the one thing that made my RTF output wonky. I've been using <!--IS_LIST--><!--MA_TEXT--> to get the name of each martial art style at the beginning of their list of maneuvers because it lets me bold the style name separately from the maneuver names. It seems like a much more discrete way of isolating the list heading. Second question: is there a converse to IFLIST, such as IF_NOT_LIST? I ask out of curiosity after fiddling with the elements for a while. Third question: although I've been getting a good feel for what the elements do, have you considered maybe adding a description of the elements along with the documentation at the end of the HERO Desinger manual? I realize this is only for a very few people who already probably know what they're doing, but it cold be useful in answering some of these questions so I don't have to keep bothering you. Thanks again for all your help.

Just a quick observation: 6e has starting values for heroes, just the same way 5e does, they're just not figured. They represent beginning settings that will work just as well as the beginning settings produced by figured characteristics.

Hey all, I'm starting a new Pulp HERO campaign in order to teach HERO System to some new players. After some preliminary planning and some brief correspondence with Steve Long, I've settled on Hudson City as the setting, and using the Carthage Club (Hudson City, p. 59) as the McGuffin to get all my players together as new adventurers. I'll eventually work them towards membership in the Empire Club, but that'll be after they've had some success as members of the Carthage Club first. I think it will be set in the 1930s, although there is a chance it may be set earlier if the players prefer it. What I'm looking for are some adventure seeds for the players' first few adventures. I'd like to keep it simple and varied in order to teach the rules (as many skill-based challenges as possible, some conflicts, Presence attacks, etc. Stuff to really show the rules at work as easily as possible). All the characters overlap a little bit to make the role playing interesting. A quick rundown of who I've got so far: A Romani woman who left Portugal when WWI hit Europe, moving with the circus to Brazil, and then eventually to the U.S. where she became a silent film star. Now that the talkies have taken over, her accent won't let her continue in that career, so she is a bit of an embittered diva. A life of adventure seems like an interesting option. (She is a bit jealous of the younger Russian woman below) An American private eye who is a former Federal Revenue Agent who was disgraced for taking kickbacks. After doing some prison time, he became an alcoholic and a private eye who specializes in some of the cases that others won't touch. He has some kind of past with . . . . . . An American WWI vet who returned home embittered by his experience. He wandered after the war, traveling the world wherever fortune took him and eventually started a new life of industrial espionage and other activities, calling himself a "shadow economy freelancer." He's gotten in some gambling trouble with the crime underworld in Hudson City. He's had some past dealings with . . . . . . The son of an American industrialist who made the family fortune supplying the war effort, including munitions and armaments. He is also a WWI vet who went to war at the behest of his family's honor, and as an ambulance driver he witnessed some of the worst consequences of what his family was selling the rest of the world. He began a new life in the family business, and has global business contacts, but is trying to convince the Executive Board that they ought to change that business to one of rebuilding the colonial areas that the Europeans and Americans have ravaged. There is also a Tsarist Russian woman who was trained as an unwilling young girl to be a specialist in an experimental "Red Sparrow" sort of program under Stalin. She eventually leaves the Soviet Union with Trotsky and makes it to Mexico City, where she eventually escapes the Communists and moves to the United States. She is trained in all the spy stuff that you'd expect, and is a linguist with PTSD and rage issues after her time in the Soviet Union. She and the Romani woman have a bit of a rivalry going on. There may be another woman playing, but I'm not sure yet. I'm open to suggestions for her. There's going to be a mysterious Mr. X operating in the background. I'm not sure about him yet, but he'll be an international industrialist as well with competing interests in the same areas that overlaps with our heros. He'll be the reason they gather together, and secretly watch them in action as they get together and become a team. (Think SPECTRE from James Bond, but in the 1930s) If you have any plot seed ideas for my first few adventures, that would be great. Thanks for your help.

The only problem with this is that it wouldn’t vary from person to person simultaneously. But I like where you’re going. How owe about buying DCV with a trigger for an activation roll every time the character is attacked? There’s only the need to keep track of Transdimensional Guy whenever there’s an attack roll against him, and not everyone else. The special effect explains the variable DCV for different attackers: “He was there a second ago . . . .” “No, wait, here he is . . . Oh, dang! He’s gone again!”

I'm sorry for not being clear, I'm scatterbrained this morning. I modified my example above to actually represent what I'm seeing with the costs being listed, etc. I think what you just gave me is what I was looking for. I didn't know how the IF_NOT_LIS and IF_LIST containers affected each other. You've given me a good lead to work with. Thank you! If you look at my example in the original edited post, you'll see that I'm getting "aikido" listed twice in the RTF output, and I'd like to remove the list heading that shows the cost of 0. Can you think of a way to do that? I tried various versions of what you've suggested, and now I'm wondering if it is considered a LIST_ITEM that can be eliminated? I'm not sure how each of the containers adjust each other in the ways you describe above. Admittedly, I'm wading in deeper waters than I'm used to, but this is how I'm learning. As always, I appreciate your help if you can give me another lead here. Or recommend a good XML book for me to read and leave you alone?

I'm really asking a HERO Designer question here (which I clarified above), and the HERO System Martial Arts doesn't really get into that sort of thing. I did check, however, just in case. Thanks for the suggestion.

I’m fiddling around with an export template in HERO Designer for a Martial Arts. The goal is to have an RTF output of maneuvers and non-maneuvers, some within lists based on a specific style of martial art, and some not in lists (chosen à la Carter in a mixed martial arts sort of way). I’d like each list to have a heading based on the name of the martial art, but without the title being shown as a list item with the cost of zero. Then I’d like to have the mixed stuff headed by the title “Other” in order to clarify that it is not part of a particular style. I’ve almost got it figured out, but the list headings and that “Other” heading are stumping me. This is an eclectic mix of things, admittedly, and may not work how I envision it. I've got a mixture of IS_LIST, IS_NOT_LIST, IF_MANEUVER, IF_NOT_MANEUVER, and several other tags involved, but I'm not exactly sure how they interact with each other. I have the documentation for HERO Designer with the raw list of tags for Martial Arts and Lists, but is there anywhere that the tags are described (how they function with each other, etc)? As a very brief example, here's what I'm getting as the output: Aikido 0 Aikido 4 1) Redirect 3 2) Throw 1 3) Weapon Element: Staffs 3 Jab 3 Eye Gouge 1 Weapon Element: Knives What I'd like to get is: Aikido 4 1) Redirect 3 2) Throw 1 3) Weapon Element: Staffs Other 3 Jab 3 Eye Gouge 1 Weapon Element: Knives

That 8 pound bow still put two arrows through chain mail, or at least appeared to do so. If this is true, I’d suppose that would be enough for any archer, even in game terms. Maybe not dragon scales though . . . 🐉

It's listed as HTML on the download page. This is intended to be RTF, correct?

Hero Designer has the option to "Print to PDF" which creates a fantastic character sheet that resembles the default sheet in the back of the 6e book. There are only a couple things I'd want to add to this (such as headings for Perks and Talents). Is there a template associated with this that can be modified a little bit to fit what I have in mind?

It's not opening for me in Word. The warning message says "Word was unable to read this document. It may be corrupt."

I don’t know how to do any of this, especially the xml. I used to do ok with html, but I’m looking for a good text output instead, and there aren’t many of them available. I’m curious to see, and it would be awesome if it saved me the trouble of having to learn xml.

Let me know when you get it done. I’d like to see it.

This seems reasonable to me, and is more in the spirit of what I was trying to figure out. Thanks for the excellent analysis.

I just got done doing a 6e Pulp HERO character with a mix of 5e and 6e HD files, so it doesn’t seem to matter. There may be small problems with the powers that have changed in 6e, but I’m dealing with a heroic campaign so there aren’t really many conflicts. It may make more of a difference in Star HERO, but you could probably build the offending items by hand if they don’t mesh.

I'm afraid the closest you're going to get is the Equipment Guide Character Pack. It has several folders of sci-fi stuff that may work for you, but mostly just the weapons from the Star HERO book itself.

I forgot to mention, one of the reasons I brought this up is because I was reading about the disarm maneuver and was reminded that when the weapon is disarmed, it takes a half phase to pick it up again. Which got me thinking about the half-move, roll, grab, attack stuff that I was taught to do. So the rules require a little more time to resolve a move like this than I was hoping for in a maneuver. Obviously I could just do the teleport, must cross the distance, etc. etc. power build, but I'm curious if there's a good solution just using the maneuvers as they're given. Maybe there's a martial arts maneuver that I'm not aware of. . . .