knasser2

If that's the case then I too read it incorrectly. I thought it had half-effect on Body and Stun and have built powers accordingly. Healing is one of the parts I've found trickiest to adapt, actually, with its restrictions on how often it can be applied. In D&D you have it controlled from the other end - a given source (e.g. cleric) can only cast it so many times. Here, a given recipient can only receive it so many times. It makes for an odd difference with the adventuring day being necessarily shorter but say a paladin being able to heal a long line of ailing peasants when she comes to town.

Ah. Of course - I start off in the +¼ column. Okay, now it makes a lot more sense. Thank you. I reckon I've got it now. Though I'm unsure exactly why the Warhammer has a +¼ in the first place. There doesn't seem to be anything special about it except for the +1x STUN which I would have thought is more than balanced by the -1OCV and higher strength minimum. Maybe I'm just underselling how good the +1x STUN bonus is. EDIT: I clicked on Mark Solved because I figured all my questions in this thread had now been answered, but it marked the above as the "Best Answer" which didn't seem fair when so very many replies in this thread have been so helpful (the above included). So I unticked it.

I need help! I'm trying to build an equivalent to the D&D Druid for my Heroic, low-CP (at least to start) fantasy game. We're starting gritty. I plan to progress to more epic levels as the campaign goes on. One thing a D&D druid can do is turn into a wildform. E.g. a bear / wolf / etc. I'm good with just picking a single form right now - not looking to have infinite shapechanging. I'm stumped by how to do this right. I want the character to have actual different physical statistics and abilities in bear form. I've therefore picked Multiform over Shapechange as this seems the appropriate power. I will pick the character's human form as their True Form in the power's parlance. It seems to me that currently the Bear form will have more points in characteristics however (the character is a sort of half-way warrior / magic user, so they're something of an even spread of powers and abilities). Though I haven't fixed everything yet, let us say that the Bear form currently costs around 130 points when I've calculated in all the characteristics and powers and complications (look ma - no hands!). That's more than their human form (I'm not entirely sure what powers I should and should not count towards their human form's cost, however). So as I understand it, this is a 26 point power for the character payable by the True Form. I want to put some Limitations on the power as well. For example, can only be used twice a day. A couple of the things that are stumping me - does the power itself count towards the cost of the True Form points total for comparision? I presume not or I'd enter a death-spiral of recursive calculations, but checking. Secondly, are the powers used by the True Form restricted from use in an alternative form? E.g. if the druid character has the power to shoot a lightning bolt in human form, is that power still available in bear form? The power description seems to imply no unless I also buy them separately for the bear. This actually suits me well as I want there to be a downside to being a bear. But again, double-checking my understanding. Finally, and this is the trickiest one unless any of the former I have misunderstood, is what happens if and when the True Form becomes the more expensive? With ever increasing stats and powers, I can see it happening. Do I then have to recalculate the cost of the alternate form? Wont it become increasingly more expensive to have this power even as it becomes progressively less useful (due to the alternative now being weaker than the True Form). This last one seems problematic. Thanks a lot for any replies.

I think so? Let me try this. The Warhammer is listed as doing 1d6+1 damage, has a length of M, an OCV modifier of -1, a STR Min of 13 and a +1 to STUNx. (It also has 1½H listed under Notes). N.b. this is a HTH KA. So If someone attacks and hits with the basic attack, that's just 1d6+1 Killing Damage. But if they do something that increases the damage by 4DC. Say some Martial Strike maneouvre, I would not step down the Damage Class Quick Reference table four rows, I would step down four rows and over to the right by one? Because the +¼ modifier means I have to divide the 4 DCs by 1.25. So the Warhammer would now do 2d6 Killing Damage for the extra four DC rather than the 3d6-1 if I went straight down?

A quick question close enough to the topic that it fits, imo. I notice in FH that the Warhammer has a little note reading: "Weapon has a +¼ Advantage that affects how damage is added with STR, velocity, and the like (see 6E2 99-102)" I've looked at the relevant pages but I don't quite understand it. Am I supposed to be moving one to the right on the DC table (in which case the damage drops from 1d6+1 to 1d6 which seems a weird sort of 'advantage' to me). And also why would you not simply put a different value in the damage column if that's what it does. Or is it supposed to be adding to the wielders Strength before calculation somehow? As with most cases of major confusion, I am probably missing something very fundamental.

Those old Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal boxed sets were excellent for their intended purpose. What I'm currently working on is a drop-in replacement for D&D with a bit of side inspiration from the little-known but excellent Iron Heroes (a low-magic D20 game which had some fantastic variants on Fighter). I'm doing four basic races as templates (human, elf, dwarf and goblin) and some core classes. I could well see breaking it out into a Basic / Expert / Etc. model as a way of managing the size of the project. If I have some free time this weekend, I'll see what I can produce as a draft. The website of KillerShrike linked to earlier is being collossally helpful and I'm using it as my lodestone for my own approach to it. When I get something in draft form, I'll throw it up on OneDrive or something which makes it fairly easy to present and even collaborate if people are interested.

There is variation within it, but firstly that variation is greatly reduced compared to Hero. A 10th level wizard might have higher or lower hit points than average, but they'll be within a reasonably predicatable margin. Secondly it doesn't really matter if there are outliers so long as you know they are outliers. If somebody can say "30hp is very low for 5th level fighter" then the problem has actually been solved because the problem isn't someone having low hit points for a fighter (at least the problem we're discussing isn't), it's someone building a character, faced with a sea of points costs for different abilities and not knowing if they've spent a lot of points on Body, not enough points on Body, etc. I'm coming to the conclusion that Hero is a great system, but needs some newbie-friendly context and power guide front and centre. Maybe that can be separated out into "Complete" books so that you maintain a programmer's reference and "powered by..." duality. That would probably actually be good business because I can well see people buying one of the Completes and then getting the Hero books for more depth and customization. Or maybe it should be in the core books. I don't know. The advantage of doing it in genre-specific books is that you can fine tune the examples beautifully. Imagine the Damage Class table with examples alongside the levels saying things: "soldier's sword-blow, bite from a tiger", "kick from a horse, an ogre's club", "the firebreath of an ancient dragon". And over in the Hero Modern book you have "a kitchen knife", "heavy pistol", "high powered rifle", "anti-tank missile" and such. I honestly don't think it would actually take that much. The rules system is elegant and consistent. People just need a starting point because there's so much of it. Even just a front page introduction something like the following might be a big help: "Welcome to Hero. Hero is a system that can support many different levels of play and infinite genres. You can build anything with it from a character that can throw (and take) a punch, to a godlike being that can hurl bolts of plasma with their bare hands. In many places in the rules you'll see values for damage, endurance, a character's strength and so forth. Because Hero supports a wide range of play, it's good to know what these numbers mean in context. Take a look at the tables on page XX and YY to get a feel for this." Or it could be at the start of character creation (which might be better). But anyway, just a thought.

I would be happy to port one of my introductory adventures to Hero with some sample characters to run through it as a Welcome To Fantasy Hero adventure. I'm still learning the system but I'm a strong writer with a good ear for dialogue, plot and character. If someone will help me with rules and stats, I'm very happy to try.

I guess the thread can be summed up in nutshell as "but which one is right?" What do people do? What is normal usual? If I make fireballs Killing Damage will my game become very lethal?

Being one of the people whose frustration spawned this thread, I'd just like to say that despite my frustration I have found the willingness of people to help on these forums unsurpassed and as I remarked in the other - question threads are like icebergs. You only see the complaint and not all the respect someone may also have for other parts of the system. Hero is impressive and rigorously thought out and I'd like to say that up front. I simply do not have time to reply properly to this thread today and it's fast moving. However I will write up a more full set of thoughts, impressions and what I think will help as soon as I get a chance. In the meantime I will just say a few very brief things from my own experience and opinions. The chief stumbling blocks for newbies as I see it are three. I'll name them but please don't read too much emotion into the names even if they're colourful. #1: Martian Logic. Martian logic is something that addresses a problem correctly and completely, but does so from scratch without building on previous approaches. In short, it is when you are presented with an approach that would be elegant and simple if your brain was a blank sheet with no preconceptions or existing solutions to a problem, but if you do have existing solutions or assumptions, is so disconnected from what's already there the attempt to reconcile the two approaches causes dissonance and confusion. See also General Relativity and Quantum Physics. The solution to Martian Logic is of course to clear one's mind of what one already knows (or thinks one knows) so that you can approach the new solutions as a blank slate. However, as generations of UI designers and great thinkers can tell you - this takes some doing. We should explore ways in which the books or the community can aid newbies in this Zen-like exercise. #2 Overlapping terms and profusion of terms. Overlapping terms are where existing familiar terms (typically natural language) have a different meaning in the Hero context. Profusion of terms is when someone is drowning in OCVs, OMCVs, PDs, EDs, DDs and Humvees. Overlapping terms is the sibbling to Martian Logic. The thread that triggered this was one where I was getting confused about "normal damage" which, in the context of FH it was anything but. The problem was firstly that "normal damage" is something I use as a regular phrase with an actual meaning already and then compounded by multiple instances in the book telling me that Normal Damage (capitalised) was indeed also normal damage (lower case) and that Killing Damage was the exception. Yet everywhere I looked it wasn't. Whilst I could understand the rules, the context and naming caused me to repeatedly question whether I had understood them right. I thought I was missing something because the suggestions and terms were implying that the right reading of the rules was wrong. With history of the game and awareness that it was a genre artifact explained to me, it began to become clearer but reading it without help gave me problems. The profusion of terms is somewhat unavoidable (as may be overlapping terms given that we're not starting from scratch and they already exist), but there are a lot to learn and the sheer number of them leaves one strugging. There's also something counter-intuitive about the terms that have been picked which is that the designer(s) clearly thought that consistency and pattern in the naming would help. You have Offensive Combat Values, Offensive Mental Combat Values, Defensive Combat Values and so forth. Structuring these names logically should help, yes? I'm not sure about that - you end up with OCV, OMCV, DCV, DMCV and on and on... It's a confusion of similar abbreviations everywhere you look. Contrast that with D&D where you have Hit Points, Armour Class, Attack Bonus. Can you predict what the name "Armour Class" was going to be when you learned the term "Attack Bonus"? No you can't. You would have guessed "Defence Bonus" or something. But on the other hand, have you ever heard anyone muddle up the terms "Armour Class" and "Attack Bonus" like you have "OCV" and "OMCV" or "rPD" and "rED" ? No, you haven't. Because the LACK of pattern makes them more distinct things in the human brain. What's the solution to Confusion of Terms and Profusion of Terms? Well, there are several but given that the game already exists and first principle approaches are off the table, I'd say the solution just has to be support for familiarisation and explanation. Better introductions and structured learning, maybe. #3 No rocks to cling to. Look at D&D 4e or 5e. You open the book and you see a bunch of classes. And they all have levels. Almost immediately you have a feel for what is powerful and what is not, what someone is good at and what someone is bad at. Open the Monster Manual and what do you see? Goblins are Challenge Rating 1, Dragons are Challenge Rating 15. And so on... Before anyone reaches for their keyboard to say how classes and levels aren't how Hero works, I know that. And I'm not advocating them per se. What I'm doing is highlighting that D&D provides context, familiarity. Put simply you have a picture of the completed jigsaw on the box. Hero doesn't because by design it is a "make the picture you want" jigsaw. Which is a tremendous strength and advantage. But how do you get that tremendous advantage without inviting the flipside which too much freedom gives? Here's a fact: The most useful thing in the 6e entire books I found when I was trying to understand it all the other day, was 6e. vol1, pg. 35. To save anyone looking it up that's the table labelled "Character Ability Guidelines" that says what a normal person has in OCV, DC, Char, etc. I want to repeat that because I think it's both surprising and important. The most useful thing to me in understanding the rules wasn't the basic concepts section or the introduction to Powers or the Character Creation guidelines. It was a table showing what values actually meant. There is no picture of the completed jigsaw on the box by design. But even with an infinite jigsaw (which would be a good alternative name for Hero, imo), you need to find a corner piece sometimes. I can read the Power sections till I can quote them backwards and recite the formula from memory, but it will remain forever confusing and unintuitive until I find some way to know not just how to calculate a 3d6 ranged kililng attack power, but know what a 3d6 ranged killing attack means. In D&D if a Dragon's breath does 10d6 damage and I can see a 1st level fighter has 10 hp, bang, I know how dangerous a dragon's breath is. IN Hero 6e, the formula for damage from a dragon's breath will be x range of Body damage, y range of Stun, factor in resistant or non-resistant defences and a random stun multiplier... Oh, and the fact that in the core books you don't actually have any dragons or 1st level fighters to work out comparisons from... A created character in Hero - what is their Body roughtly? I had no idea. I just have a formula for buying up increases to it but what is normal? How much should I spend on Body? How much will my players spend on Body? The problem isn't that the options aren't clear, it's that there's no weighting to the options. No sign that tells you what the consequences are in terms you understand. You have to read a lot before you start to understand this. And Heavens help anyone who tries to unearth such signs without being adequate at maths! Again, please don't get hung up on my using D&D and levels and classes as my examples of how to make values intuitive. I'm not saying that Hero should have classes and levels, merely that it needs to become more intuitive to become friendly for newbies. That table of different scores related to normal people or skilled heroes really was the most valuable thing as a newbie, I'm not joking. Maybe a more extended example-intro would help with this problem. As we're in the Fantasy section, maybe something like "here are four PCs. They do battle with these orcs. This is how it goes." Sure, people still have the whole ocean to swim in, but they now have a rock to sit on and swim out from rather than starting in the sea. Okay, I've typed a LOT more than I expected. I'll try and put something more solution-y together from my point of view when I have time. I feel as someone who is a newbie and is very ignorant, that I have a lot to contribute here. But please, let me really emphasise that despite the above criticisms (in the original meaning, not a negative sense) and that I started a whole thread to go "waaaaaahhhh!" elsewhere on this forum, Hero is one of the most impressive games I have seen and there is a very great deal about it I like. I believe I will get to grips with it and especially with so many helpful people in this community ready to help. I believe my greatest difficulty will be moving a D&D 5e group from that to this. That is the challenge I will ultimately face. Great thread. Thanks to Brian Stanfield for starting it.

I had to give you a Like for referencing one of the greatest fight scenes I've ever seen in a film. That extended punch-up in They Live is not only one of the most hillarious and brutal slugfests ever put to celluloid, but one of the most realistic too. I've had a fight that went like that. I think it's starting to slowly congeal now. EDIT: Okay, re-watching it now. Maybe not completely realistic in the number of straight-up punches to the face they take full on, but the way they keep stopping and then getting back into, talking and panting with exhaustion. That's spot on!

Okay. So I'm ready to give this another go. In particular I am prioritising how I can make this simple for my players both to learn and in practice. Thank you for all the help. The example is a sidebar on pg.98 of the main 6e book. It says "Armadillo then rolls 1/2d6 for his STUN Multiplier, rolling a 3. Thus the STUN damage done is 7 x 3 = 21 STUN". As another poster suggests, it probably means the player rolled a 5 or 6 which evaluates to 3. If it had either said "rolls a 3 on a 1d3" or more understandably "gets 3" or "scores 3", I would have not spent ten minutes trying to make sense of it and searching through the book for definitions of 1/2d6. That example is confusing as Hell. Thank you especially - the above is really helpful because one thing that I am finding hard is to get a feel for intent and scale in this system. I don't know whether I have a preference per se for whether I want the game to be more or less lethal. I certainly want a reasonable chance for people to die, I don't want them having to all roll up new characters because I misjudged how many goblins to put in an encounter by two. I like the idea of having stun damage, I'm just wary of the complexity and some of the examples don't make sense to me - e.g. a fireball example someone gave earlier of being Normal Damage when I would think being burnt is far more likely to do physical damage than to knock someone out. So I'm keeping both options on the table for now, I guess. I'm using the 6e books bought from the website. I have the bundle containing the two core books, FH and FHC. I would really like to use Hit Locations. I think if I stripped it down to two dice rather than three it might be a bit more intuitive for my players. E.g. "each attack, roll five dice. The three are whether you hit or not and the two are where you hit". Then I can give them each three blue dice, two red dice. I think the odd numbers would save a lot of "which colour is which" style conversations. I don't need all the locations on the list in the book. How does the following look as a draft? Head 2 Hand 3 Arm 4-5 Torso 6 - 8 Legs 9 - 10 Foot 12 Or I might go with percentile dice as I have a load of them around anyway. Not everything has to be d6, I guess. Anyway, removing the separate STUN Multiplier roll is a very big plus. I might also simplify the Stun multipliers too - x2 for Head, x1 for most of the rest. Okay. So I understand what you're saying and the maths, so it seems the issue is with the interpretation of the armour. On reading it a few more times it says it provides PD and ED in equal amounts. Immediately before that it talks about how armour is built with resistant protection. I misread it last night and thought it said equal amounts of resistant and non-resistant. In my defence, the total page count of these books is 1,250. It's a lot to take in! Thanks for explaining that with examples. Once I re-read it, it's hard to see how I read it wrong to begin with.

Okay. I realise that part of what I've said is contentious to some. I also realise that like an iceberg the complaint is the only visible part. I have a lot of respect for the Hero system which, though I am new to it, I have been very impressed by. It's just for the past hour and a half I have been giving myself an ever-increasing headache trying to work out how to create an alternative bear form for a druid. Figure out what power I want, try to figure out what counts towards the points value of a form and how to handle having the same mental stats and trying (and failing) to figure out what happens when the player spends points to improve their normal form and it suddenly tips over from being the cheaper form to the more expensive and if by having the multiform they have to pay twice to increase their mental stats now or what. And eyes still spinning from that I try to build the actual bear which involves a lot of looking back and forth at average human stats, at the wolf in FHC and then trying to figure out what sort of damage a bear's paws do, their jaws do and if they're in the woods if they do doo. I'm cross-referencing to the points cost of Stun vs. Body to try and figure out the intent of the system if it's meant that people typically pass out from Stun damage before dying, notice a hitherto unspotted rule about getting stunned if you take more stun points than some attribute in one go and all sorts of other things. It's a lot to manage and I stand by what I said - when everything you're looking at in the FH book is saying KA and all the examples you come up with seem to fit into KA, it IS confusing if the book keeps repeating that most damage is "Normal" damage. And I know my players - this is is already going to be very confusing for some of them to handle. Even the "take your OCV, add 11, subtract the number you roll, you can hit this or lower" is going to be hard for a couple of them. And then once they've worked out if they've hit, there's the two part damage roll where they take the first result, multiply by the second result, subtract each calculated outcome to the separate and appropriate attribute totals after deducting the appropriate damage negation value (which is different for each). Roll -> Add -> Subtract -> Compare -> Roll Again -> Multiply -> Separate -> Subtract twice (resistance) -> Subtract twice again (recording damage). Believe me - they are going to struggle and this is the system I want to sell them on as a replacement for D&D 5e! I will be trying to minimise confusing terminology as much as possible and I'm afraid that's going to include referring to something as "Normal damage" when it's actually "atypical damage". But like I say, in a question thread, all you see is the exhausted confusion. There is a lot of genuine respect for this system, I promise. Okay, these all confuse me, I'm afraid. Yes, all of them except I suppose the giant python. A pit trap is Normal Damage. If it has spikes at the bottom I presume it becomes Killing Damage? A warhammer is listed as killing damage in FH but on looking just now I see that a club or a quarterstaff are both listed as "N" (Normal damage). They also do a tonne more damage. Given that all armour in this book gives equivalent resistant and non-resistant armour at the same time. So looking at the taking damage summary in the book (6e, pg. 104), that seems to mean to me that armour counts for double against Normal Damage because you subtract both of them. Is that right? Doesn't that produce some weird artefacts such as if you're fighting naked people you're better off with a club than a sword? You're right. I was mistaken. What I had was for for Normal Damage and I was confused about that as well. Okay, it's starting to become a little clearer to me now - thank you. So a short sword in the book does 1d6 HKA, so you roll 1d6 and that's how much BODY damage the target takes (before deducting damage resistance). It will also do result times 1d3 Stun. A quarterstaff is 4d6 and ALL of that is Stun but it will ALSO do 4 points of BODY damage +1 for each six, -1 for each 1 (again before deductions). So we have two significantly different damage calculations for Killing and Normal, and Killing is the more complex. Killing is also the one I would normally expect to be using except for one player with a quarterstaff who will have to use a different system. I'm confused as Hell again now though because I thought you calculated the Stun damage from a HKA by rolling a d3 and multiplying the Body damage by the result. But in the example given it says the player rolls a 3 and therefore multiplies by three. TO me, a 1/2d6 is a 1d3. I.e. 1-2 = 1, 3-4 = 2, 5-6 = 3. I've just spent ten minutes looking through the book trying to find definitions for 1/4 d6, 1/2d6, etc. and failing. I would have thought it would be in the same block sa where it tells you what 1d6, 2d6 is, etc. (on page 12 at the start) but it doesn't seem to be. So I have no idea how to intuit what the different outcome likelihoods of HKA might be. I'm guessing that if it is a 1d3 then it will be something like a third of equivalent Normal Damage on average. BUT I CAN'T TELL. I was planning to use Hit Locations, but given the complexity I'm struggling with so far I think I'm just going to give up on that particular aspiration. I don't find Armour Class confusing. I never did. I do find this confusing. It's not an issue of familiarity. If you're talking terminology then you can start with the fact that Armour Class doesn't overlap with existing terminology - it's a unique phrase invented for the Dungeons and Dragons game and the first thing someone does on encountering it is to realise they don't know what it is and go find out. "Normal damage" is English language and the first thing someone does on encountering the phrase is assume that it means normal damage. The book compounds this by in a number of places telling you that it IS in fact the normal damage and killing damage is a rarer exception. Except it isn't. It does make more sense now, thank you. As you noticed, I was confusing it with Normal Damage. How much do I take for trying to understand all this and figure out how I'll ever explain it all to my players? I'm sorry - again, there's a lot about this system that is very impressive, but I am struggling here a lot. To the point that I'm doubting that I can run this. EDIT: I've just realised that you start off with 2 PD as your base value so the comment about switching to non-lethal weapons when fighting naked people may be wrong. I still need to find the definition of 1/2d6 in the book somewhere. I was sure it meant d3 but the example contadicts that or else is using some weird system where 1 and 4 = 1, 2 and 5 = 2 and so forth.

Which is as I said - were I computer capable of reassigning meanings to things arbitrarily, this is what I would do. But it actually requires mental effort to keep overcoming the cognitive dissonance of terms used in the game that are in conflict with what I consider accustomed meanings. This isn't the first time I've been tripped up by this with this game. It seems to happen a lot.

Thanks. So it's a genre artifact. I'd honestly quibble with it even in a comic book game given that it lists examples of killing attacks including claws or a dagger, but being whacked with an uprooted telephone pole is not. But I suppose a Normal Attack still does Body damage which could kill someone so it works in principle. So should I pretty much disregard "Normal Damage" except in rare circumstances such as the aforementioned bare-knuckle fight? I'm honestly struggling more and more with all of this as I go on. I'm sure if I were a computer for which terms like "Normal Damage" and "Killing Damage" were just labels with no intrinsic meaning, I would not find it so disorientating. But I am not and I find myself repeatedly having to detach words from their ordinary meaning in order to make sense of it. So if I disregard "Normal Damage", I'm basically left with the following: KA: roll a number of dice, damage is the number of dice plus or minus one for each six or one respectively. THEN roll 1d3 and multiply it to also do Stun damage. Subtract the Resistant Defence (whether Energy or Physical as appropriate) from the Body damage and the Resistant Defence + Non-Resistant Defence from the Stun damage. So if a character has a dagger (example from the book) and less than 15 Strength, they would roll 1d6 meaning they do 0-2 points of damage (depending on if they roll a 1, 2-5 or a 6). Assuming that the target had no Resistant Defence. If the target has 1 point of Resistant Defence, then the attacker not only needs to hit, but then needs to roll a six in addition in order to damage. A level of Resistant Defence that even the lightest of armours provide. I think my players are really, really going to struggle with this. And I'm definitely going to have to simplify to keep away some of the more confusing terminology like "Normal Damage" being something you almost never see.

So in the 6th ed. book it says that "Most attacks do Normal Damage" and this is re-iterated in various places. And the game does seem to imply in a few places that you would normally be building powers with Normal Damage rather than Killing Damage. But barring a few uncommon examples, such as two unarmed people battering each other with their fists (and even that can easily be fatal in real life), nearly everthing I'm giving to a character or a monster is a Killing Attack. Swords, maces, a wolf's bite and a giant's hurled boulder. I'm just wondering if I'm missing something obvious or fundamental. Even the example creatures in FHC seem to have a lot of KA. Am I doing it wrong? Am I risking unbalance in the system. I mean pg.15 says right there that normal defences "offer no protection against the BODY of Killing Damage". Yet I've got warriors battering each other with swords and arrows and that means all of these "Normal Defences" wont have any effect. Basically, I'm just really confused because it seems like some attributes are close to worthless (e.g. Normal Defences) and that the game is explicitly telling me on the one hand that Killing Attacks are unusual but on the other hand keeps telling me to class things as Killing Attacks. E.g. FHC says melee weapons are normally HKA and it doesn't make sense to me that they wouldn't be, too. Help?

Hi. I felt it would be right to check in and say thanks for all the great suggestions, links and information. You've all been super helpful and I didn't want to just disappear without saying so. I've decided Hero is a better system for me than D&D. There's quite a lot of work to do to make it what I want but it seems the only way I'll actually get to a place I'm happy with. I'm going to grab Fantasy Hero (non-complete) for the equipment and magic suggestions, etc. I'm also going to get the full 6th edition rule book. I may or may not get the Grimoire. Regretably my game is probably going to go on hold or be cancelled with immediate effect, for meta-reasons. Basically, one of the player's enjoyment of the game is antithetical to my own and I can see no way to reconcile the two. Either I enjoy it or she does. Middle ground is eluding me. Furthermore, I've thought it through and there is no way to remove her from the group that wont cause massive offence and also destroy the group. So I'm not sure how much longer this group will go on. Hero is an extremely well-thought out system but even it can't help resolve the case of a GM whose goals / ideas of fun are so at odds with their players. However, I don't want people to think the advice has been wasted. I'm enjoying reading the rules and sketching out a new game system using them, and when I do get a new group, I'll put it all to good use! And especially, as I said, I didn't want to just vanish and not say how much I appreciate all the replies. Very helpful and when I get a new group together, I'll definitely be using Hero to do it. Thanks, K.

Hi, I haven't had much chance to reply here properly with the amount of work I've had on the past couple of weeks, which led to me failing to reply at all. The sword examples were very useful. I have more questions to come, I'm afraid. A couple of small ones in the meantime, though. Firstly, I bought Fantasy Hero Complete. This turns out to be considerably smaller than Fantasy Hero which is very counter-intuitive. I'm looking at the index for Fantasy Hero 6th edition in the DriveThruRPG store preview and it seems to have a lot of useful things that FHC does not - weapons lists, armour lists, rules for equipment breakage, different magic systems and templates for professions. It looks that I have bought the wrong one, yes? I can't be the only person who finds it massively misleading that Fantasy Hero Complete is incomplete and Fantasy Hero has the extra stuff. More constructively, I'm starting to look at how I would put together a magic system in this game. I've discovered "Charges" and this seems the way to replicate a D&D wizards "memorize spells in the morning" system. How in general should I handle that a Wizard selects only X amount of spells? I.e. I could create a Fireball spell and a Lightning spell that both had three charges, but how would I simulate there being three charges in total that you could allocate between them so that a player has to choose which they think they'll need in advance? Is there a way?

I haven't had time to do a test combat yet, though I'm getting my head around the basics. This might be starting at the deep end but I'm trying to design a magic sword that exists in my campaign in this rules sytem. I think I'm sort of there, it's not worth its own thread I think. So: A flaming longsword. It has two effects - firstly it does additional fire damage to those it strikes. Secondly, the brightness of it dazzles (not blinds) those in close combat with the wielder. However, wielding such powerful magics drains the stamina of the one who does so. As you can see, there are a lot of complications (small 'c') in this. But here is what I have so far: Long Sword (Val -1/4) Focus, (Obvious Accessible, Easily Movable, Not Expended, Durable, Universal) (Val -1/4) Str Minimum 8 (Val -0) Required Hands (Val -1/4) Real Weapon (Val +1/2) Reduced Endurance (0 END) (1 CP) Reach +1m (20 CP) 1d6+1 HKA The character must have Weapon Familiarity (Longsword) to wield or suffer -3 OCV. Active Points = 21 x 1.5 = 31.5 AP Real Cost = 31.5AP / 0.25 = 7.75 CP. (I'm guessing I round up to 8CP). Now I want to make it magic! So first, I try to add the blinding effect. I look at Image Create Light and I look at the Blind effect. But one does too little and the other too much. So I settle on modelling it as a Characteristic bonus to DCV. I don't want to make this a game-changer. It's a thematic nice-to-have. At first, I try to simulate it with a Characteristic effect increasing DCV by 1 for 5CP. But I run into trouble when I try to make it apply to only those in HTH with the wielder. So I take another look at all this and realise I should probably be using Drain. So I add it as Drain (OCV) with an area effect. I'm not really sure about this. 1d6 is a Hell of a lot and all I really want to do is the equivalent of "-1 to hit" you might see in other game systems. Flash and Darkness also don't really seem appropriate. So I stick with what I've got for now: (10 CP) Drain (OCV) (Val +1/4) Area of Effect - Radius 4m. (Val -1/4) Limited Power - Does not work against creatures that do not rely on sight. Notes on the above: The duration of Drain is Instant. I looked at Nonpersistant but it only changes durations that are Persistent. I'm really looking for a way to make this affect enemies only whilst they are looking at the wielder. The moment they turn and attack someone else, they should have no penalty to their OCV. By this point, I think I should have gone with the increase to the wielder's DCV and figured out some way of making it work with a limitation. Oh well, I'll leave it as it is for now. Finally, I want to add some fire damage and add back in Endurance cost because I want wielding this sword to be taxing: (15 CP) HKA Energy (Fire) (Val -1/2) No STR Bonus (Val -1/4) Decreased STUN Multiplier (just seems to make sense?) Demon Sword (1 CP) Reach +1m (20 CP) 1d6+1 HKA (15 CP) 1d6 HKA Energy (Fire) (10 CP) Drain (OCV) (Val -1/4) Focus, (Obvious Accessible, Easily Movable, Not Expended, Durable, Universal) (Val -1/4) Str Minimum 8 (Val -0) Required Hands (Val -1/4) Real Weapon (Val +1/2) Reduced Endurance (0 END) (Val +1/4) Area of Effect - Radius 4m. (Val -1/4) Limited Power - Does not work against creatures that do not rely on sight. (Val -1/2) No STR Bonus (Val -1/4) Decreased STUN Multiplier (just seems to make sense?) Aaaaaand at this point I realise I need to build this as a framework because I've got different points and I think that I need to figure out which limitations apply to both powers, which only to one, and then figure out how to build this as a... Multipower Framework? And I also realise that it's seriously late. So I'm going to post this here because I don't want to leave a half-written post of this length in the browser and trust it will still be there in the morning. Am I on the right track? The system is impressive, but it's also seems rather complicated to, for example, do what is effectively the following: "This sword does an extra 1d6 damage and imposes a -1 penalty to hit on anyone trying to hit you in melee". Plus a set amount of endurance drain per phase. However, I'm sure this will get easier. I accept that I haven't really read through it all properly yet!

More excellent replies. This is all incredibly helpful. I've been hanging out on the Enworld 5e forum and I can't tell you the number of "you're playing it wrong" posts I kept reading. You're all being really helpful in guiding me to achieve what I actually want. MrKinster - that was a superb primer on the system and highlight the transition and comparisons from D&D. So... I have purchased FCH. I'm not 100% convinced it counts as complete having read the weapons section, but for the price I can't complain and it's helped me understand the system, most certainly. It's very interesting. I've seen RPGs that are complex and have lots of detail, I've seen RPGs that are simple and don't have a lot of detail. I don't think I have ever seen a system that is so simple yet at the same time has so much detail. The blend of minutiae with elegance is a combination I've never seen to such a degree before. It's like looking at a fractal - some basic rules expanding ever outwards into ever more facts and structure without ever losing the basic pattern. It's most certainly impressive. I also have my first rules question - in the actions table where it lists Soliliquy as "No Time", that indicates cannot completed in a single turn, yes? Anyway, there is a lot to like about this system. I like that it has hit locations, I like that those locations can be separately armoured and that armour reduces damage rather than makes one harder to hit. That alone simplifies away a lot of odd exception rules you get in systems like D&D. It feels a little like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition (to this day one of my favourite RPGs). Some downsides I know that one of my players will balk at having to do subtraction again and again every time she wants to hit something. It will also be a little annoying to have to roll for location after every hit. The most streamlined approach to this I ever saw was a percentage based system (indeed this was the WHFRP 1st ed. I mentioned earlier, iirc) where after checking the d% to see if you hit, then simply swapped the numbers around to see which location you hit. I.e. if you needed to score 67% to hit and you rolled 54%, then you immediately knew that not only had you landed a blow but that you had struck them in location 45. I might see if I can come up with something equivalent for this. Maybe with different coloured dice or something. I don't like Complications. Or to be more accurate, I don't like them today. I've enjoyed such systems in other games, e.g. Shadowrun and think they can really add a lot to a game. But in this instance I very much want all such things to be handled as a result of character decisions in game. I have clear ideas from what I want from this campaign, I am fanatically Watsonian in my approach to gaming, to the degree that at this point I don't want in-universe story events / circumstances to be balancing factors for outside game reasons. Story has supreme primacy to me and I cannot allow an exchange rate between it and mechanical advantages, no more than I can could agree to give a player +1 to hit for showing up with cake. It's an invalid exchange to me. At least for this campaign. I recognize that I may appear like a person showing up at a fancy restaurant and then asking for ketchup with my beautifully prepared meal, but I'm afraid I am such a barbarian. From my reading, I can ditch complications without any game balance effects, yes? It's essentially just a bribe from the GM to the player to give extra points for actually engaging with the world or adding some depth to their PCs, yes? I think I will have to get the Grimoire to really get a feel for this. And I think my next step is to run a couple of mock combats to help the rules stick. What's a good source of equipment - longswords, halberds, full plate, etc.?

Wow. I don't know what the game is like but the community around the game is great. Lots of responses, all of them helpful and understanding what I'm asking. I'm afraid there are too many and some overlap for me to reply without causing a quotepocalyose. So for the sake of readability I'll just reply generally. This is sounding really positive. The Fantasy Hero Complete 6e (http://www.herogames.com/forums/store/product/507-fantasy-hero-complete-pdf/) is cheap enough for me to buy speculatively and have a poke around. Am I right in understanding that this actually contains the rules system as well - at least in a form that would let me get started and gaming? I'd be happy enough to buy the full rule-book later if it works out, I just want to be sure if this will be enough to try it out with and get a bit of gaming in with. So many of my questions were answered but a few were raised. Templates sound useful for what I want to do - simulate classes. It sounds like they're more guiding than restricting, is that right? Could I effectively build a "Fighter" template that laid out what could be bought? E.g. if I don't WANT a player declaring that their fighter now has a power that lets them kill everyone in a 40' square, i.e. creating a spell effect and just declaring, "oh, these are my sword-chucks" for flavour? I get that this might be a little against the spirit of the system by the sounds of things, but can I do it? Can I make a template that is a menu? Or should I really, really not do that? The other two things that stood out to me very starkly were these. "A starting PC is like a seventh level D&D character". TOO MUCH! TOO MUCH! Can I make the PCs start off as equivalent to level 1 D&D characters? I have a whole goblin-war path planned out. Do not pass 'Go'. Do not proceed directly to Dragons. But if I do that, it sounds like progression out of the box is very slow. How tweakable is that? Secondly, that bit about "evenutally fighters will be swimming in lava". That's never going to be where I want my game to end up. Fighting giants? Yes. Battling beyond the point of human endurance against an endless tide of orcs like John Carter in the movie, uh, John Carter. But not out and out "lava only does 4d6 damage and I can soak that much easy" sort of stuff. D&D 5e has this concept of "Bounded Accuracy" which is one of the few things I really like about it. It's essentially "everything counts in large amounts", i.e. a hundred goblins will take down even a very high-level fighter. Anything like that in Hero? Maybe depleting endurance through combat or something? I think I'll probably grab FCH shortly and maybe I can start answering my own questions. But you're all really helpful and some of these are tricky to get from a quick read, such as power progression. Again, thank you so much for all replies. Especially Cantriped who I think got exactly where I was coming from. All really helpful.

Hello. First time poster here and utter newbie to the Hero system and FH. I will try not to ask too many questions I could find out just by doing a search though! I've a lot of experience as a GM but mainly with newer systems like World of Darkness (the newer stuff), FFG's Star Wars system, Shadowrun 4e. My group recently expressed a desire to do some old school fantasy and it being the big name in the genre, I went out and got D&D 5e. It was premature - honestly I'm finding it a little loose and woolly and not very well balanced. Hard to put my finger on it exactly and listing any one thing by itself just sounds like not a big deal but for example, the way everything seems very focused around four people having six encounters per day. I would think I could just drop things down to fewer and have a tougher monster but there seem to be a lot of abilities that are very nova and the game seems to expect challenge to come from PCs not being able to do this more than once per day so if you don't throw in enough attrition, it gets sticky. Bleh! Unnecessary pre-amble. Short version is we're very early in the campaign and I have this nagging feeling that there's probably something better out there for what I want. Someone suggested the Hero system. I said: "That one with the eight-inch rule-book?" and they said "no, no, well yes, but trust me - it's not how it seems!" So I'm looking at Hero and FH. I don't yet have FH to be clear. I want to ask a couple of things before I click buy on the books based on somebody's recommendation. So, particular things I'm curious on and haven't been able to get a feel for: 1. My vague awareness of Hero is as a super-heroes game system. I do believe that it can work for a generic fantasy game, swapping in spells for super-powers, etc. But how does it work for the non-magic or low-magic classes? Archers and Fighters and Paladins, etc. Does it / can it balance say some spell-casting wizard and a burly fighter all in the same party? And if so, does it do it in the same sort of way D&D 5e would do it where a fighter improves in core solid attributes like having extra hit points, harder to hit / damage, etc.? Or does it do it in a more D&D 4e way where the wizard has a room clearing ability called Fireball and the Fighter has a room clearing ability called "Barrage of Blows" but it all boils down to different flavours on the same thing. This is probably my biggest concern - I want to preserve differentiation between character types. E.g. fighter's progression is to become ever tougher and to hit people harder, magician gets more and more powerful spells and ability to control the environment, rogue gets faster and gets special ways to strike people, or dodge out of combat, etc. There was a game called Iron Heroes which I loved the class design of - you had barbarians, harriers, armigers - all of which played very differently. What I've read about Hero is that it is endlessly flexible in character development. I'm worried that this means I'll get fighters and wizards who play the same and are just described differently whereas I want very different character types. How does FH handle "classes", basically? 2. In rough terms, how does magic work in FH? Is it learn spells from a set list that are prepared? Is it "This round I will apply a fire effect to this area effect and that many damage dice" style of round-to-round flexibility? You'll notice that my questions are all of a theme here - how can I do D&D but better! 3. Is there a good source of cliché monsters I can find / buy somewhere? Orcs, goblins, dragons, etc? It will take me a while I imagine before I become comfortable designing my own monsters if I get this. Must have a ready source of goblins! 4. How "high-level" does this get? I know it can scale up very well and doesn't have levels as such (I think?) but what does a game look like at a very high level compared to starting out? The same but bigger numbers on both sides or does it start to play differently? And can it keep balance between "fighters" and "wizards" at high levels of play when one is focused mainly on physical power and the other is developing magical powers the whole time? Sorry - I know that's a long post. Maybe I should just buy the books and trust, but I think even if I did it would take me a lot of reading and time to really get a feel for it. My D&D 5e campaign is still very new so if I want to swap to a new system, now is probably the time to do something so drastic. ALL replies are appreciated! K.