Brian Stanfield

2 hours ago, chall said:

Thank you both. I am trying to track down the hardcovers. I wasn't aware the Book of the Empress came in hardcover. I just have seen the softcover. Monster Hunters  was a hardcover, correct?

I don’t believe that Book of the Empress was a hardcover. I’ve never seen it at least. I was sure that is was hardcover until I went and looked on my shelf and saw the paper copy sitting there. Also, you probably won’t be able to find a hardcover of MHI at a reasonable price. Although it does exist, it’s rare. 
 

Good luck with your quest. It took me at least a couple of years to find all the hardcovers at reasonable prices. I think maybe Champions will be the hardest one to find. You can still get 6e2 right here through the store, so don’t fall for any of those “collectors’” prices. I used to search eBay pretty regularly for a couple of years and I eventually found all the others. It can be done, just be patient and don’t feel like you have to overpay to get a copy of something. It’ll show up eventually. 
 

By the way, for what it’s worth, you can get a lot of the books through the store here along with PDF copies in the same bundle. The series of blue paperbacks (Skills, Equipment, etc.) are available as POD and they’re much more useful for actual gameplay and are worth adding to your collection. All of these paper copies come with PDFs pretty much anywhere you get them, which is pretty useful. 

9 hours ago, pbemguy said:

 

Sorry, Duke. I missed this question! 

We didn't do a daily digest but I occasionally did recap threads (saying this for posterity--in case anyone is perusing this thread for how we did it). You're absolutely right about Gmail. We had a lot of problems with the players using Gmail. Strangely enough, Yahoo is perfect for PBEM. You have to make sure to set it up so that your messages are NOT kept in "conversation" groups. I'm not sure if that's an option in Gmail.

 

Anyway, to sum up, the Gmail users had trouble: threads were hard to follow after multiple replies. But as I said, Yahoo seems to maneuver well. I would recommend using Yahoo for a PBEM, even if it's the only time you ever use Yahoo mail.

After fiddling for a bit with it, I discovered that gmail changed the way they label messages and I had to make some changes to their default assumptions. You can still change the settings to ungroup messages and so on, but it’s less intuitive now than it used to be. 

Maybe I’m missing something here, and I’m seriously not trying to start some kind of political argument, but why is canceling their online event related in any way to either a protest, or being supportive of Black Lives Matter? I’m honestly inquiring because maybe I missed something they announced earlier. Any info would be much appreciated. 
 

Edit: never mind: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/origins-online-cancelled-gama-black-lives-matter/

Wow! That whole process was almost as complicated as making a Champions character by hand . . . 

6 hours ago, Korren9 said:

I downloaded the ZIP (after paying for it!) and Unzipped it and opened the .JAR file (on Mac AirBook) and it told me I need the JDK (Java Developers' Kit) so I downloaded and installed THAT, now when I open the .JAR file absolutely nothing happens. I mean, it makes the little animation like it's starting a program, but nothing is showing up, anywhere. {sigh}

If I recall correctly, I had the same problem on my Mac. I think I deleted every bit of the installed HD files, restarted and reinstalled and it ran fine. 

On 6/11/2020 at 2:07 PM, Doc Democracy said:

 

I think you'll find, Brian, that the phrase is BadWrongFun and has NO dashes.....

 

😄

 

Doc

I think you’re doing it backwards, just like you drive on the wrong side of the road! 

On 5/7/2020 at 11:17 AM, Panpiper said:

I have been away from Hero for so long, I had forgotten even whether we needed to roll high or low to hit. I probably need to dig my rule books out from storage and do a whole reread. What I like doing best though is building characters, and especially, creating write ups for them. My Hero Designer still works just fine, and rather than spend an hour just looking for the books and then days rereading, I'm hoping one or more sympathetic souls will just write a short response sufficient to give me some basic guidelines, so I can quickly get to the fun part.

 

How many points do you typically start new characters at? Teen superheros maybe? Do you enforce hard caps on active points in any given power, if so, what caps?

There are going to be a lot of Champions games offered at Origins Online this year, which I think is free. You should consider joining up in a couple of them from different GMs to get a feel for what people are doing these days. It really helped me a few years back when I got back into gaming after a very long hiatus like you.

1 hour ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

Thanks for the warning.  There are always trade-offs, but the great part of the Hero system is we get to choose which ones we want to make.

Yup! That's the best part, I think. I don't ever mean to ruffle anyone's feathers, and you'll never hear me telling anyone they're having wrong-bad-fun. I think we'd all do better if we remember that there are no "official" ways to apply the rules, and that all our brainstorming is dependent upon our own personal campaign settings, game baselines and stuff like that. We're just here to draw from hundreds of years of experience in all the members, and to offer some new ways of looking at things. Otherwise, we could just all go sit and read the rules ourselves and we wouldn't need these discussions.

Sorry, @Ockham's Spoon, I was editing my post while you reacted to it. I may have added something that you’ll decide you don’t like. Just a fair warning! 😉

11 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

Maybe if you created a gold to XP exchange rate you could smooth it out, so a warrior could spend 100 gold to buy enough character points for his new sword, while the wizard could spend a similar sum to purchase a scroll with a new spell.  Anyone ever tried something like that?

I mentioned something about this at the very end of my post. Danger International had a way to spend character points for more money to buy better equipment. It worked great. It seems like a Resource Pool could offer a similar result. 
 

11 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

From a balance standpoint, making characters pay for their equipment works, but that results in some odd situations.  Does my warrior have to pay character points to get a better sword?  Can he loan/give his old sword to a fellow PC or NPC?  When they find a magic sword, will he not be able to use it until he has earned the character points to do so?  When my rogue character steals a magic item from the bandit king, did he just get a bunch of free character points?  Now I can hand-wave around some of these issues to keep the flow of the campaign going, but they are conceptually odd and cumbersome.  In a superhero campaign, characters don't swap equipment around much, so having equipment as part of their power set is less clunky.  But in a fantasy setting where equipment upgrades and exchanges are fairly common it is a bit more awkward. 

The balance standpoint is the only reason I brought this up in this context. So, the “found” equipment (theft, treasure, gifts, purchase) used to be what garnered experience points in D&D (not to defend that game right now). So the equipment was the experience points that allowed one to advance. Fantasy HERO is fortunately set up differently, but the found magical equipment sets up a different kind of problem, as is always discussed in these forums: now everyone is carrying “free spells” in their flaming swords and exploding arrows and such, so why does a wizard have to pay for his magic? It’s obviously going to depend on the particular campaign setting, so can’t be answered in any “universal” way for all settings. But it’s still another balancing problem which kicks the can down the road. 
 

This is why I simply hypothesize the “pay for everything” approach. I don’t want people to have to build everything, as Old Man says. That’s a total pain. But the Equipment Guide is pretty thorough, so they won’t have to. But realistically speaking, who pays attention to all their mundane equipment? I’m playing in a D&D game right now where I have a bag full of stuff that I started with. I probably won’t use most of it. Let’s face it, the only equipment people really care about is their weapons, and we obsess over their  capabilities. That’s the quickest way to break a good D&D game, and Fantasy HERO suffers from a similar problem. 
 

Perhaps I say that if you keep that magic item you stole from the bandit king, then you should pay points for it, which is pretty much the approach that Fantasy HERO suggests in several places. Cool. It’s like a Power Trick in Champions: use it once, that’s ok, use it many times, you should pay points for it. I’d say the same thing with magic items in Fantasy HERO. What about the mundane equipment? Well, that’s why I suggested a Resource Pool. I’ve got my “adventurers pack” full of stuff that I never really think about. I’ve never stopped to lament that I only had ten torches when I should have bought five more. We almost never even us the first one, except perhaps for narrative effect. It’s just there, in the background where it belongs because who really cares about that crap anyway? So, let’s just make the adventurers pack a Resource Pool that I have a set number of points for, and I’ll fill it with equipment worth that many points, but maybe it’ll be rearranged when we get to town. I’m just spitballing here, but it works. It worked in Danger International too, all you have to do is justify how it works (how do you get the items, etc.) Any found item can be added to the pack, but if you want to keep it it will need to replace some other item. 
 

The “loaned” sword issue is already resolved in what I wrote above: everyone should have their own Attack Power defined with a “weapon of opportunity” Limitation. If swords are defined in my game as 2d6 KA on average, then I take that Power with the “weapon of opportunity” limitation. It could be my sword, your sword, or one I found in the lost temple of Thunder Mountain. If it’s a “magic” sword, maybe it simply adds Skill Levels to your ability to use a sword. Apply them to DCs or OCV, However you want. Remember, the “magic” on a sword is a special effect. I hand the sword to you, you get the Skill Levels that go with the magic sword.
 

What does that do to our accounting of our Character Points? Well, things get a bit wonky once I start lending out my magical equipment. This is why I suggest a Resource Pool, which is a fancy way in HERO-speak of saying, “I’m going to handwave this.” Seriously. If the magic sword, packaged as Skill Levels, gets lost or is lent to my friend, I’m out those specific points and I’m entitled to replace them with some other equipment of equivalent value. And the borrower would have to lose some points to be able to keep it. If it’s just temporary, who cares? Don’t do the accounting because it’s a pain. And let’s be honest, who does all the nit picky accounting for all their gear anyway? 
 

My point is this: we all choose to ignore or handwave certain things, and enforce others in our games. That’s GM fiat and not some universal RAW. Some people use Multipowers for magic, others don’t, others allow for a divisor to the real cost. Then they decide what to do about equipment, magic equipment, magic weapons, etc. plenty of different solutions have been offered in the forums. Again, it’s GM fiat, it’s campaign setting-specific, and it’s really up,to the taste of the group. Do we waste our time tallying every bit of weight that we carry around in order to enforce encumbrance  rules? Some do, some don’t. It’s important to some people that they are carrying 15 rather than 10 torches. Others will just handwave the problem away. I’m just offering an internally consistent way to address some of these problems. I don’t claim wrong-bad-fun if nobody else wants to try it out. 

12 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

I've literally spent decades fighting the misconception that Fantasy Hero requires players to work out point costs for every object their character picks up.  Simply making everything purchased solves the issue because you won't have any players.

I appreciate your fight against that misconception. I was, of course, proposing an alternative to the equally aggravating problem in Fantasy HERO of who pays, who doesn’t pay? I’m not taking the stance that people must play this way, but several people have already said that the did play this way already, so I don’t think it’s going to kill the HERO System. It’s just a hypothesis on my part. Your mileage obviously varies. 

3 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

My own words above are the sort of dismissive drive-by that I normally despise, so I'll illuminate a bit. 

No worries, I didn't take it that way. I already knew what you'd say and inserted it into my mind for you! 

3 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I'm pretty strongly against charging points for normal equipment.  I think it's for historical reasons; my preferences were pretty heavily formed by the standalone, Hero-as-house-system games, rather than the universal HERO System.  It's also partly because I don't want to have to work out all of the point costs for normal equipment.  (edit)  It's partly because, if a character's sword, or his sword and daggers, or his sword, daggers, shield, and crossbow, are part of a Multipower, it starts looking more like a "Brick Tricks" Multipower.  (/edit)  And partly because, to me, the combination of lower point values, Normal Characteristic Maxima, Strength Minima on weapons, encumbrance, and so on, seems to give a more organic feel than does building to caps.  

So I guess I should have been clearer. Multipowers aren't necessary for what I was saying. I'm riffing off of this conversation earlier this year, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. The whole discussion then was about dividing magic costs or not, a la Fantasy HERO Complete dividing spells by 3 to reduce cost (If I remember correctly). Again, this amounts to  Multipower without calling it a framework: you just get the cost benefit for free. 

So there's nothing that says you couldn't charge points for everything, as suggested by Doc Democracy in the link, but keep the DCs low. No need for Multipowers either. But the ongoing debate in Fantasy HERO is how to keep free equipment balanced with purchased spells. Simply making everything purchased solves the issue. The equipment builds are all available if you get the Equipment Guide, or any number of sources. Use those guidelines, and add another Limitation: weapon of opportunity, and you're good to go. So a fighter has a 2d6 KA with all the typical data (OAF, real weapon, roll required, etc., and add "weapon of opportunity") and he can use any weapon he has a Weapon Familiarity with. If he loses it, he's without his "power" until he finds another weapon. He can also have an RKA to go with it, with a similar build. Armor would follow the same model, with PD caps based on the campaign guidelines. Make them really low for low fantasy, or really high for Fantasy Champions. Levers, dials and switches to your taste, and we no longer have to argue about how much a spell should cost to "balance" the free sword that requires a WF of some sort. The arguments become moot (ok, who am I fooling? The arguments continue on just because . . .) and we have some internal consistency.

I know, I'm taking this discussion sideways, but it really comes back to the same issue as we usually see: how to balance magic with mundane equipment. All that mundane equipment, by the way, that was built with the Powers rules in the first place anyway. It's all just special effects for the powers. Giant sword-wielding plate-male wearing warrior? Same as a KA casting, Armor casting wizard. Just different special effects. Spell ends? Re-cast it. Sword breaks? Just get another one. 

Ok, that's just a little bit more description for what I'm proposing. Just another way to conceive of it.

One quick edit: I forgot that the discussion I linked was revolving around Resource Pools for magical items and equipment. I misremembered it as Multipowers and inserted my foot into this discussion. Sorry. But the point still holds: once people can start buying magic items in Fantasy HERO, all bets are off as to why we all shouldn’t be paying points for our equipment anyway. 
 

I actually prefer low fantasy with little to no magic, but it still holds, just with much lower campaign limits. Even heroic level games like Danger International offered ways to use character points to buy more money in order to get better equipment. So why not just eliminate that mediating step and just pay points for equipment?

1 hour ago, Grailknight said:

 

 

??????

Sorry, not in response to you, just the earlier discussion!

2 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Even so, a warrior type is likely to have around 5-6 DEF armor, a sword and shield, maybe a couple of daggers, maybe a crossbow and 10 quarrels.  That... sounds not unlike a Multipower to me, for which they've paid no points.  Maybe STR 18 and 6-8 normal PD, for 11-14 total PD.

 

The wizard type could have all of that stuff too, but why would they, when they have a flaming bolt spell that does 3d6 RKA, a mystic shield for 10 PD/10 ED, a gust of wind (TK, 10 STR, AoE, plus Life Support), and eyes of the cat (Nightvision), for which they did pay points.  Whether or not those are in a Multipower.  

 

My point of view is that if you're specializing in weapons and armor, you're not paying points for them; in exchange, you're not building to CV/DC/DEF, but approaching it through character concept, Normal Characteristic Maxima, and Skills and Talents.  Whereas, if you're specializing in magic, you might be able to exceed "normal" DEF and DC on a regular basis, but that's a privilege for which you're paying points, again whether or not you're doing it through a Multipower.  

Well, this is another good argument that has me thinking a lot more, lately, that all characters should be built with multi powers, some of which are limited by appropriate circumstances (weapons of opportunity, etc.), and let everyone build to concept without the argument over who pays points. Really, armor, weapons, equipment, etc., are all just special effects anyway, right?

2 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

Thank you Brian

You're most welcome. You'll find that the forums are a great resource! You've got centuries of cumulatively applied experience to draw from. You'll also find that if you ask one question, you'll get 18 answers! The real problem will be narrowing down the choices that work for you. 

I think Doc is on the right track here. Because the crystals hold the magic, you’re really looking at a Skill roll, whether it be a science skill, knowledge skill, magic skill, or whatever. You could even have the effectiveness determined on a scale based on how well your roll succeeds. Remember the basic rule of power construction, @vindcara: The mechanic and the special effects are separate. The crystals and the bombs are the special effect, while the driving mechanic overall seems to be the creation of runes out of the crystals. This is clearly a good fit for a skill roll,of some kind. 

3 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

We appreciate the Low Fantasy type worlds, but are discussing some dark magic, voodoo, witchcraft being in one of our campaigns.

The nice thing about low fantasy is that mundane weapons, STR minimums and CHAR maximums, etc., will make the damage doubling less of a problem. If you were going to play all-out animé fantasy with ten foot flaming swords or whatever, it's a lot harder to cap the damage. The magic that does exist in low fantasy is more ritualistic in nature, and is also inherently limited by extended time constraints, rituals, etc.

2 minutes ago, jfg17 said:

 

Super-helpful to know about this example as I refine my plan. I bet that in doing this advance work, I'll learn most of what I need to run an initial game as well!

That's kinda why I do it as well. I'm a first-time GM for HERO, and need to reinforce everything I can going into each session!

On 6/6/2020 at 4:57 PM, jfg17 said:

Thanks, all. I bought the 6e Basic Rules. Going to try reading them as my next step. I’m envisioning starting off with simple characters and character sheets, simplified combat,  getting practice, and growing into the rules from there.

I forgot to mention this before: pages 6-12 of the HERO System Basic Rulebook are an excellent introduction to the HERO System. Those 7 pages are a lot more useful than the "HERO in 2 Pages" document. It explains all the basic concepts, but also includes a guided tour through the character sheet, which I always find immensely useful for new players so they can become familiar with what they're looking at. 

As @Duke Bushido said, the Resource Kit is perhaps the best summary/introductory document HERO ever did, but it's for 5e. Most of the material is the same, but if you're committed to 6e (as I am), then there is some potential confusion that might result from using it (such as the figured characteristics, etc.). What I did was basically create my own mini-version of it with my own "starter kit" for my new players, many of whom have never done RPGs before. I used my PDF of the Basic Rulebook and ripped pages 6-12 out and created a "HERO in 7 pages" document that is the backbone for my "starter kit." I give each player a folder with some character sheets, campaign-specific info, etc., and these 7 pages to orient them to the basics.

2 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

Xotl

    Thank you so much for this!  I really appreciate it and super helpful.  Very easy to read and it steps you right through everything.  One question I had was the mention of an Armor roll for protection.  Where is that in the rules, did that come from Fantasy Hero Complete?

Without going through the entire document again, I'm guessing it may be an Activation Roll for armor, which is a pretty common strategy for creating sectional armor that may sometimes "fail" to cover an attack. 

19 hours ago, vindcara said:

My campaign has magic crystals that one of my players wants to be able to buy and carve into magic runes that produce various effects, being consumed in the process, and I was looking for a good way to represent which types of magic runes he knows/has the skill to make. Once he has the runes there wouldn't be any reason why he couldn't set off multiple at once, so long as he's linked them to a single activating method ahead of time.

 

(I'm starting to wonder if might actually just be easier to represent it by a bunch of weapon proficiencies...)

There is a doubling rule for gadget pools. I haven't really worked it out in full, but I was brainstorming something about charges, time delay between charges, etc. etc., for an additional 5 points per doubling. I'm not sure it'll get to where you want to go though, so it's a pretty half-baked idea.

On the other hand, and this is why I asked my original question, because you're buying the crystals as mundane equipment and then modifying them, you are effectively enchanting mundane objects, which implies all the limitations the other folks listed above (OAF, real weapon, etc.). It seems to me that you could do this to as many objects as you want. You just need to be very clear on the rules and restrictions for the magic rules. 

It’s going to depend, first, on what you mean by “get.” Is the bomb an actual piece of equipment, or part of a gadget pool? Is it a Power that is limited by a focus? Is it a spell that’s been cast in order to enchant a physical object? If you can fill in some of those details (which will obviously be campaign-dependent) it will help answer your question. 

5 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I also thought of  Gandalf  From LOTR movies and Allanon from Shanara series breaks the mould.

Someone brought up Gandalf a few pages ago as an example of an overly powerful wizard, and I forgot to point it out then: we almost never see him actually use magic! It's been too long since I've read the books, but the movies show him use magic maybe 4 times that I can think of off the top of my head. We also see him in a lot of combat with his staff and a sword. So he is a perfect example of a character with no class. (Heh. Makes me think of my favorite Fat Albert joke: you're just like school in the summertime . . . no class). 

I say this to point out that I think we're trained to see "classes" when they quite probably aren't actually there in the literature and media. Gandalf is just a really old, wise guy who's good at lore and has picked a lot of life skills. Just like anyone else, really. We've all been Dungeons & Dragons-ified to some degree. The more good examples we can remember, the better we can break that convention!

18 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

I was the same way when I came back to HERO System after 25 years. I jumped from 3e to 6e and my mind was blown. I've found that the 6e HERO System Basic Rulebook is a really good, concise introduction to the rules. It's also what the Complete books are based on, but I use the Basic Rulebook for my new players because it is genre-neutral and doesn't get hung up on setting or genre specific rulings. And it's much less intimidating at 130 pages.

By the way, this fits just as well in your other discussion about basic combat rules. I used the same approach as most everyone described, using the Basic Rulebook in order to minimize the technical shit-ton of information a new person has to sift through. This is truly a problem I deal with regularly as I'm teaching complete newbies to the HERO System, as well as some who are completely new to roleplaying in general.

One of the things I devised in a long, complex magic system (which I won't rehash here, but resembles what Chris Goodwin wrote earlier) is a Multipower associated with the wizard's spell book. They could "prepare" their slots via study and skill rolls, and if they ever wanted to change what they had available they'd have to study again and do their skill rolls. This was devised mostly as a buffer against the "just the right spell available for every possible situation" type of problems. Just another bit of gristle to chew on.