knasser2

Well the heart is in the chest and the solar plexus is in the stomach area, so I figured what was left to be meant by "vitals" is as how it is commonly used as a euphemism for the reproductive organs. Or at least historically has been used as such. I mean, most parts of the body are "vital" if you hit them hard enough, but if you refer to something as "the" vitals, that's usually what has been meant. At least around where I grew up. And the rest of the body is covered by other categories so it seemed logical. Every time someone rolls a hit on the vitals I hear Baldrick's voice from Blackadder remarking: "it's okay sir. By a thousand to one chance my willy got in the way." https://youtu.be/1BOzOxry6lA

Hi, I'd never really read Absorbtion. It didn't even occur to me that it would match what I wanted to do here. I likely glanced at it and figured it was some super-hero absorb materials consuming blob manner of power. My bad. Thank you - it does seem to fit what I had in mind with the exception that it must be real, actual taken Body damage, not soaked. Also, I don't really want the boost to be based directly on how much Body damage is taken. That could have worked, but I've gotten used to the idea that it's a flat amount. We played with the Aid version yesterday evening and it was pretty satisfying the way the character just kept getting back up again as their Recovery rose with every hit (up to the maximum). Still, very useful to learn a different way of doing things. Thank you all!

Indeed. The literary Conan is sharp-minded and filled with pithy insights. My favourite, one that I've come to believe is true, is Conan's comment that "uncivilised man is politer than civilised man, because the uncivilised man knows that an insult might be met with having their skull bashed in.". Also, when younger he was less of a warrior and more of a thief, iirc.

I didn't like having frequent blows to the reproductive organs in my game so I did re-work it. The greater reason though is that I was seeking ways to streamline play and so wanted to combine the hit and location rolls into one. Initially I was going to have the player roll all dice together and have the location dice be a different colour. But then you would endless questions as to which colour was which again so I reworked the table to work on 2d6. So you'd roll three blue dice, two red dice and it was fairly intuitive. But then you have to keep dice the same colours and also the 2d6 was a little restrictive on locations so I switched hit rolls to be 3d6+2d10 (percentile). This is easy to remember and always the same so you can just keep those dice to hand. My players very quickly got used to just rolling their "attack dice" and checking if they had hit and if so where all in one roll. If anyone is interested, the revised hit chart (sans "vitals") is as follows. Liklihood of locations is roughly the same as the 3d6 chart with vitals included under stomach. 1-6 Head 7-19 Shoulder (L/R) 20-37 Arm (L/R) 38-63 Chest 64-79 Abdomen 80-83 Hand (L/R) 84-91 Upper Legs 92-97 Lower Legs 98-00 Feet

Well I looked at the power levels as described in the book and figured 200CP was around where I wanted the initial campaign to wrap up as being around 10th-level D&D. I have scope for Paragon level play which is levels 11 - 20 if I choose, but I'm not factoring that in right now. So knowing I was starting at 100CP and progressing to 200CP, I simply kept the level progression and XP from D&D 5e and everyone gets 10CP per level. I've done similarly with Damage Classes, Active Points, OCV / DCV and Skill rolls to roughly grade where I think they should lie at different points on levels 1-10 and am using that to handle what and stat boosts powers get introduced when. I should have a better mathematical foundation for all this based on dice probabilities that let me create monsters and classes more easily in the near future. (Working out the chance of causing damage from 1-36 PD / ED on 1d6 to 20d6 for each combination was a fun challenge! :/ )

According to 6e Aid description Rec is a defensive power that halves the cost which is why I queried if I was missing something. For the Limitation, I did put in a -1 for it only kicking in when you take Body damage (and it has to actually damage you, tbc. If you soak it with defense it doesn't count). Does that sound about right? It seems a pretty serious qualifier to me. Thoughts?

Seconded on the CP totals! I recently started a port of D&D to Hero 6th and have set "first level" to be 100CP. Even within that I had to put some boundaries around how it was spent. I.e. a first level character in my game picks from a pre-defined list of species, each of which costs 20CP. This affects characteristics and provides some special abilities such as nightvision or whathaveyou. Then they buy a cultural package, which also costs 20CP and this brings some talents or skills. Then they pick a character class which also brings them 20CPs worth of powers or characteristic adjustments. Finally the 100CP startling level is rounded out by bonus characteristic points (10CP's worth), skills (12CP's worth), abilities (10CPs worth from a pre-defined list of powers and talents) and then finally starting equipment. As you can see, I have locked everything down WAY more than is normal and I have starting points significantly below recommended levels even for low power play. I'm sure some would read the above and think it's badwrong control freak DM'ery that makes players miserable with their lack of options. It isn't - it's a way to get everyone up and playing without spending two weeks focusing on the mechanics of their characters and it produces the feel I want which is heroic but vulnerable protagonists venturing through a dangerous world, rather than Hollywood badasses slaughtering minions. I don't recommend you lock it down as much as I have - mainly because it's a massive amount of effort to create all the "classes" and "powers" on behalf of your players, but if you want 1st level D&D or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay style low-levelness, then chop the recommended CP levels off at the knees, is my advice. And still be careful that nobody over-focuses on one area because it can make them too powerful too quickly. In particular look out for armour. As written it's spot on for how I want it, but make sure starting level PCs can't get their hands on too much too quickly. I converted my existing D&D group over and let them keep the same equipment for the sake of story continuity. That Paladin in chainmail is frightening in how much damage they can shrug off! Healing in Hero is also rather hinky in comparison to D&D. I think the reason is because it's not normal for powers in Hero to be rationed on a daily basis so healing powers would therefore allow PCs to prolong a fight indefinitely. So they introduced an arbitrary "can't be healed more often than" restriction on the recipient end. Unfortunately this clashes with a five-encounters-a-day style D&D play. Hope this helps. I've basically just started doing what you're doing and am about three weeks ahead of you down the road, so take my advice with no more confidence than it deserves, it's just what I've found so far.

Sorry, I appreciate the suggestion but in this case that's not what I want to do. I specifically want the bear to have a tactical choice it has to make - bite or claws. I really want to have the claws knock people over. Is there no way in Hero to make a power that knocks people over?

Thanks, both!. I get it about the Limitation, now. And those additional limitations you've added Tom are very helpful. I've also decided to drop the Expanded effect and just have the Stun gain come via the enhanced Recovery. So adding those in and changing the Trigger to how you suggest, I get this: Channel Pain: Aid (2d6) 12 CP Reduced Endurance +½ Trigger +3/4 (One condition +¼, takes no time +¼, character does not control trigger -¼, reset automaticaly +½ (activates every time character takes Body damage)) Only Aid to Self -1 Limited Power -1 (Only takes effect if Body is taken) Total Cost: 14CP (13.5 rounded up) Effect: Roll 1d6. For every point, gain +1 Recovery. This fades at the rate of 1 Recovery per turn. Additional activations continue to add to Recovery up to a maximum +6 Recovery. Fading time is unaffected by repeat activations. I'm confused by two things Christopher Taylor said which is why they're not in the above, yet. The "Activating the Trigger is an Action that takes no time". I'm not sure what it is for if it isn't allowing for the fact that the activation happens instantly. Is it meant for activating the trigger as in arming a bomb. I.e. it's nothing to do with the effect but to do with turning the trigger on or off? As this trigger is always on, that wouldn't apply therefore. Is that how it should be read? The other thing is why you say you can get +1 Rec per point on a 1d6. As points allocated to Rec by Aid are halved, isn't that +1 Rec per two points? I.e. a 1d6 will get you 1-3 (if you rounded up when rolling a 1).

Okay. So would I build the power like the following: Big Paws 15CP HKA 1d6 -¼ Reduced Penetration -¼ No Knockdown +3CP CSLs that offset the -1OCV, -2DCV for Trip I'm still a little confused about OCLs and how to add them to a power. I'm pretty sure the above is not right, but I can't find where or how to add a maneouvre to a power.

Thanks. I hadn't noticed Triggers before (or had forgotten about them if I have). It seems a little odd that they're an advantage in this case as what I'm essentially saying is that you can't use your power unless you're injured. Remove the "Advantage" and you'd actually be able to use the power more easily! I also decided that it would play faster if it simply upped the recovery stat. So my working version is as follows: Channel Pain: Aid (2d6) 12 CP Expanded Effect +½ (affects both Recovery and Stun) Trigger +3/4 (One condition +¼, takes no time +¼, character does not control trigger -¼, reset automaticaly +½ (activates every time character takes Body damage)) Limited Power -¼ Total Cost: 22CP Effect: Roll 1d6. For every point, gain +2 Stun and +1 Recovery. These fade at the rate of 2 Stun and 1 Recovery per turn. Additional activations continue to add to the attributes up to a maximum of +12 Stun and +6 Recovery. Fading time is unaffected by repeat activations. I'm pretty new at this so I'm as yet not confident in how much of a benefit the above will be, but 22CP seems quite a lot. And that's with me adding in an arbitrary Limited Power condition based on it requiring injury to activate. What do you think? Is it about right? I like the effect in that the character effectively becomes supercharged right up until they fall over dying. Thanks for your help. EDIT: Maybe I should drop the expanded effect as Recovery has a knock on effect on Stun anyway... Or perhaps build them as linked powers somehow?

I just want to say that this is sterling work. Very clear, gorgeously laid out, pitch-perfect level of detail for what you're setting out to achieve. It's proving very useful to me already.

Thanks. That would be much better than healing then because it even allows them to collapse unconscious after the battle is over which is thematic. How would you recommend handling tying it to loss of Body?

Hi and thanks for all the replies! I didn't mean to leave this one hanging but I was travelling for work in between my last reply and now and then I got bogged down juggling power calculations. So, not quite in chronological order but... To both of the above, I'm not worried about normal animals being not very scary at this point. The PCs are the equivalent of D&D 2nd level so a bear can be pretty nasty. And 2d6KA is actually pretty good as that is around what a two-handed sword can do. Highest strength in the party currently is 16 and one of them has a OCV of +4 (once you factor in the HTH +1 bonus, they have). Characters are created at 100CP and gain 20CP "per level" thereafter. There are also maxima and all powers are from a list. For when they get more powerful, I'm creating upgraded versions of the druid wildshape power that let you progress. So the paths are: Bear -> Great Bear -> Dire Bear Hawk -> Eagle -> Great Eagle Serpent -> Large Snake -> Giant Snake I think it'll be fun if I can ever work out the balance and costs of everything! :/ Both of these replies confused me slightly. The FH 6e book says Knockback is seldom used with Fantasy games, but that KnockDOWN is. So I initially looked to see if there were a Double Knockdown power but no, it seems it really is only Knockback. Reading the rules, though, it seems to be intrinsically tied to the optional Impairing Wounds. I really don't want to use these. So should I basically just apply a rule that says "whenever a character takes more than half their Body they are knocked down". I presume that if I read "knockdown" for "knockback" in the power then I basically damage the amount of Body done for purposes of assessing if they suffer knockback. The trouble with that is that it doesn't represent what I want. Say the bear attacks a knight in platemail. The bear's claws do reduced penetration and even without that, it's pretty possible that the bear would fail to cause any Body damage to the knight. But the bear should still be able to knock the knight flat on her back. This all seems very awkward and innacurate for what I want which is: "when the bear hits you, you go prone." That is the power I want to give the bear. 100CP starting and rising to 200CP by the time they are "10th level". There are skill and characteristic maxima. Thanks for the example. Very helpful. My own bear has now come out as follows: Medium Bear: Str 20 Dex 10 Con 15 Int 8 Ego 5 Pre 12 OCV 4 DCV 4 OMCV 2 DMCV 2 Spd 2 PD 6 +4 ED 3 +1 REC 4 +0 END 20 +0 BODY 18 STUN 40 Bite HKA 1d6 Claws HKA 1d6 Reduced Penetration HTH Limitation Double Knockdown +2 PER with Smell/Taste Cold Resistance Safe Environment (Cold) Damage Negation (Cold) Reduce Damage Classes by 2 Only works against Cold -½ Chunky Mutha’ (-2m Leaping) -1CP Very Limited Manipulation -20CP Grand Total: 51CP As cost is based around the most expensive form at a rate of 1CP per 5CP of the form, then a starting character in my game would pay 20CP for the above power. They would also pay the same if I basically increased its stats and powers to nearly double the cost so long as I kept it below the 100CP mark. That doesn't sound right. A regular bear costs 20CP. A super-bear with much more strength, damage resistance, natural attacks, would cost... no more? That can't be right. Furthermore, everytime this character gets more powerful, they have to pay more for this power which is becoming increasingly less useful as it gets outpaced in power level. Again - this can't be right.

Hi, I want to make a power for a character that makes them fight harder the more damage they take. I'm considering a more advanced version that even lets you fight on once you're dead (allowing you to last to the end of the combat even though you know you have mortal wounds). But for now, I'd be content with just the basic version. What I have in mind: the character gains back Stun and Endurance when they take Body damage. I've looked at Aid, Healing and Endurance Reserve but I'm not sure what would be the best starting point or even how to progress once I'd picked. Or maybe there's a better starting point - I don't know! I'm certain that I want it based around losing Body points. I'm flexible on other things. For example, I am also considering granting HTH bonuses when injured. But Endurance and Stun recovery seem to be the most thematic for what I have in mind. All suggestions are welcome, though. I've thought about doing this by increasing the Recovery stat or by simply healing lost Stun and Endurance. My game is a fantasy one so Lethal damage is much more common than "Normal" damage. It's also fairly low level so I'm looking to design a cheapish power. Any suggestions on this one? Many thanks, K.

Thank you. Slowly, I am starting to get the hang of this, I guess! So my answers would be as follows: 1) 1CP ("to offset a specific negative OCV modifier with any single attack") 2) 2CP (for a +1 to a "single attack" which is the Block). 3) 1CP per additional target you want to not be charged a penalty for (I'm counting each one as a separate penalty). I'd note though that 6E1, pg. 84 under Penalty Skill Levels says that a character "cannot buy OpSLs to counteract the standard OCV penalty imposed by a Combat Maneouvre". And Block is listed as a Combat Maneouvre. So should I just ignore that or am I missing some reason it doesn't apply? Also, for the second question (the bonus) what if I want more than +1 bonus to it? Is that okay? Can you stack CSL's like that?

Depends on the game, genre, etc. For my Star Wars game I actually begin most sessions with an intro vignette which may involve the characters or more often is just a "meanwhile, in Gotham...". Sometimes it fleshes out a little bit about a character they have met, sometimes it's things that are taking place elsewhere at the same time as the adventure. I started doing it because I had a LOT of world-building needed and would struggle to convey it all in the adventure itself. So I used it both for entertainment, but also to build up the knowledge that the player's characters would actually have. I didn't read them out, though. I did them as one-side hand-outs at the start of a session whilst people are getting settled and as a way to bring people into the game. I have done things that are voice-based, however. Recently an NPC the party are travelling with told them a myth of his people and that was all done in-character with me reading out the story. I kept it short-ish, about three minutes. It was an experiment but it seemed to go well and certainly enriched the setting which is what my goal is. I also once asked on a forum for people to read a few lines for me and post them and I then took those lines and mixed them together with some special effects and radio interference to make the last received transmission of a ship being lost to the warp in a WH40K Dark Heresy game. That was fun. I played it when they got hold of the transmission for a "My god, it's full of stars..." style mystery. (That's a reference to the movie "2010" if you haven't seen it, where a main character endlessly replays David Bowman's last words trying to make sense of them).

Hi. I'm currently building class templates for my Hero-based D&D replacement (lets call it Warlords and Wyverns for now! ). I want one of the martial classes (analoguous to the paladin) to be a good protector of other characters and give it the ability to block attacks on other characters near him/her. Looking up the Block maneouvre that seems to be a good starting point and it allows one to block attacks on another. There's a -2 OCV penalty for it, though. Two newbie questions: 1) What would be the CP cost for an ability that lets you remove the -2 OCV penalty? 2) What would be the CP cost for an ability that lets you get a bonus? 3) What would be the CP cost for an ability that let you remove the cumulative penalty for x number of additional blocks. So for example, the character could now block twice with no penalty? Or would that be a bad idea? Ooops. Three questions! Sorry! :) Any help would be much appreciated - especially for the first two which are what I'm probably really after. Peace and coolness. K.

Well nothing you say is wrong, but then we have different purposes. You're looking for a way to teach people Hero. I'm looking for a way to sell people on it indirectly and create a popular game using it. Build a userbase, then get a portion of that userbase going "I want to build my own supplements / archetypes / spells / beasts / worlds". Big problem with Hero is that there's no picture on the box. You open it up and tip it out and you have lego pieces all over the floor. Now kids love to throw things together with wild abandon, but adults like to build something they recognize. We've all seen The Lego Movie here, right? OF COURSE the kid is right - creativity, imagination, lack of restriction and preconceptions. The kids are better than us. But most of us are the Dad, unfortunately. So there are really two different goals at play. Hero really would benefit from a friendlier more structured How To introduction to what it's capable of. Totally agree and applaud such efforts. But there's also a different market - people like me who just want to run a great game but find every other system out there flawed - D&D 5e is horribly balanced and has some terrible design decisions in it for example. I want a kit.

I'm a bit behind on this thread and catching up, but I feel a Red Box / Basic Set approach is the most likely to get people in. Few people these days have the time to spend a few weeks up front learning rules and preparing. Give them something they can play and see how good it is right away with enough novel ideas to hook them in and keep the "How We Built Them" supplement available but clearly distinct. I'd recommend three "books". A player's book - combat, pre-gens, some equipment and spells. A DM's book - some advice, some monsters, some treasure (incl. magic items) and an adventure. Then you can gave a third "System Builder" book that is very clearly indicated to not be a requirement.

I'd like the bear to knock people prone with its big shaggy paws. I think that would help differentiate the bear in combat vs., say the paladin which it is looking similar-ish to in battle. I've looked at the Knockback and Knockdown rules and am not quite sure how to do this. I see that it can trigger when someone does an Impairing Wound but I wasn't actually planning to use that optional rule. I really just want the bear to have a chance of knocking people over / away. Possibly when doing a Move Through. Is there any recommended way of doing this? It'll make a nice tactical decision as to whether to bite someone or knock a few goblins sideways.

Thanks. That's useful background and answers the question. Regretably I'm stuck with the concept. I'm trying to convert my D&D 5e campaign to Hero because I think it's a much better system. The game has already started however and characters are created. The player in question basically picked the druid class so they could be a bear. If there were a bear class, I have no doubt they would have bypassed druid and proceeded directly to bear. 1st level was merely something they endured with gritted teeth till they got to the Bear stage. In short, bear must happen! I will finish up more of the druid and design the bear part later on - maybe I can balance it. There are a lot of limitations that can be placed on a bear, I would think (no hands, can't speak, low intelligence, must balance on a ball, etc.). Possibly I can do a progressive version of the power that gets better with level - black bear, brown bear, dire bear and spread it out a little. I don't know if the player saw Brave or The Revenant or Jungle Book recently or something, but to sell my alternative system to the D&D group, I must find a way to turn him into a bear!

A reply on bears, by a bear. Thanks. So that confirms what I thought which is good. Any comments about the issue of one form becoming more expensive than the other over time?

That's one of the reasons I'm going with "character classes" for the Fantasy Basic set. Each one gets a theme and a potted summary which describes what it will be good at. So one of the first things a player sees is something like this: So instantly the player is getting a feel for what each class can do and how they will play. The Rager gets a lot of mass-damage, the Tempest eventually gets Speed increases, extra movement powers, etc. I think it will be a bit help.

One of the things that keeps me slogging forward through these rules is the way things like the above stir the imagination and bring interesting nuance to the game. For example, in D&D, +1 Plate armour is just that: +1. In one line above, I realise that I can have magical armour that is magic because it adds Energy Defence. In my game I'm currently working on, armour has full PD (and equal resistive) and half that in ED. I can add some rune-enscribed armour that doesn't at all increase Physical Defence (and therefore is fairly easy to account for balance wise in my game) but will still be sought after and valued by PCs because it provides them protection against all those fireballs and lightning bolts and bolts of eldritch darkness. Trying to do the same in D&D would be what - +1 Save vs. Spells? 5% chance spell resistance? Nowhere near as elegant or cool. Or balanced! In my Fantasy Basic Set that I'm working on at the moment, I don't only try to simplify and present the rules easily. I'm trying to put at the forefront all the cool nuance that Hero 6th provides. Things like this. If a project like this is going to be successful, it can't only focus on cleaning stuff up, it also needs to showcase Hero's strengths. I'm not very far through my Basic Set, yet. But it's going to be levels 1-3 of about eight different character classes, some level appropriate beasts and opponents and magic items, etc. I think it will not be a great introduction to the Hero system because a lot of the points calculations and workings will be obfuscated. But it will have the qualities of being something you can pick up and play very quickly and liberally peppered with "go look at this for more" references throughout. It's not really going to contain any rules but I reckon with a one or two page cheat-sheet of Hero systems (e.g. how to roll an attack and damage) it will be playable.