Toxxus

This. All. Day.
 
Does it make sense for the players? Is it simple and fun?  Done.
 
More hair-splitting technical crunch is not what HERO needs to grow its player base.

Another thing to keep in mind -- if your game is all about combat, that's what players will spend their points on.  If you include other things in the game, players will feel like they're getting the most bang for their buck by diversifying.
 
 
For instance, let's take Aragorn from LOTR (movies, since I haven't read the books in about 30 years).  He starts off and he's a combat character, and he has a handful of wilderness survival skills as well.  Then when he's off doing some ranger stuff, the hobbits' players all blow their Int rolls.  They start a fire and are cooking food, until Frodo's player comes back from the bathroom.  When he finds out what they're doing, he says that he wouldn't let them do that, but the GM is all "no, you were asleep, you wake up and they're cooking bacon".  Then the Nazgul attack.  Aragorn comes in to save the day, driving off the ring wraiths, but Frodo gets dropped to negative Body in the process.  The GM starts rethinking how many combat levels he let Aragorn buy.  The Nazgul were supposed to be really tough opponents, and he just solo'd them.  Maybe Aragorn needs some other stuff to spend points on.
 
So Aragorn carries Frodo and they try to head for Rivendell, with Frodo's player bitching and moaning the whole time that it's not fair that he got stabbed when it was these other guys' fault.  Aragorn asks if he happens to know any sort of ranger healing techniques, maybe with his wilderness skills he knows of a healing plant or something.  The GM asks if he has either Paramedics or KS: Herbalism.  Aragorn says no.  The GM lets him make a roll anyway, but tells him that his next XP points have to go into that skill.  Aragon is like "I got this", then he rolls a 17 and totally fails to help Frodo.  Frodo's player starts complaining again, the GM sighs, and then he introduces Aragorn's elf girlfriend.  "After you buy Paramedic, you'll need to buy Contact: Elf Girlfriend" the GM says.  She's cool and has neat powers, so Aragon says okay.
 
As the story progresses, the GM drops the hint that maybe he's got some royal lineage or something.  Wouldn't it be cool to be a king?  That's something to spend points on later.  Oh and here's a magic sword that belongs to the king.  It's broken right now, so you will have to have it reforged before you can use it.  Be sure to save your points for that.  Aragorn thinks that sounds cool, and he's on board with it.  The GM decides that to be king of Gondor, Aragorn is going to have to buy a lot of stuff.  He can't just spend 10 points for Perk: Head of State.  He will have to buy that, but he'll need other stuff too.  Along the way, he's going to have to buy Contact: Elrond.  He's also going to have to buy up his Tracking roll when he goes and chases after those orcs who kidnap the hobbits.  He will encounter Eomer and Theoden, and he'll have to buy KS: Rohan (with the excuse "yeah, I've always known this stuff"), as well as Persuasion and High Society.  Of course his Presence will have to go up as well.  Then he'll have to lead an army at Helm's Deep, and so he has to buy Tactics.
 
The whole time, Aragorn keeps talking about how he wants to increase his damage, and get some more combat skill levels.  He didn't like having to run from that Balrog, and when he almost lost to that one badass orc that killed Boromir he got pissed off.  But the GM always puts him in a position where there are new skills and abilities that he needs as the game goes on.  Aragorn complains because the hobbits have started spending points on combat abilities, and he's not super head and shoulders above them anymore.  "Hey, you're working on being a king, remember?" the GM says.  Aragorn reluctantly accepts that he needs to spend points on other things.  But then Legolas will do something awesome and Aragorn gets mad again.  The GM finally says that Aragorn gets to command a ghost army for a while, and then he's happy.
 
Ultimately, he's spending 10 points on Head of State, then he's got to spend 15 on Wealth (all the riches of Gondor), several D6 of Reputation, he's got to buy up his Ego to use the Palantir, he has to pick up a bunch of skills, and then he's got the magic sword (and the GM doesn't really mention that it only has Affects Desolid and a couple D6 of Rep, without doing much more damage than a normal sword).  Being king ends up costing Aragorn at least 70-80 points, once all is said and done, but combat-wise he's not really any more effective than he was when he started.

I've found Combat Effectiveness caps effective in this regard as well.  I have a whole, painful spreadsheet for the characters.  You can't have the highest OCV and highest DCV and highest damage and highest speed and strongest crowd controls and highest movement and highest defenses and then have absolutely zero skills, talents, quirks, etc.
 
On my Wednesday night game the party's Anti-Paladin of Tiamat is maxed out.  He keeps asking to buy more combat upgrades while sitting on zero non-combat skills.  It's like the guy reached 30 years of age and learned nothing but how to smash things with his massive morning star and breathe fire for his goddess.
 
Last night after he claimed a sacred relic of another god (Baphomet) and used it repeatedly he lost his powers and was absolutely flummoxed as to what the problem might be.  I asked him to make a Religion check while praying.  He didn't have it.  He got nowhere.
By the end of the session - concerned he would not get his powers back for the foreseeable future he picks up Religion.  I can't just throw skill check challenges at the party as he'll just impatiently await the next chance to smash something.  I have to throw them at HIM so he feels the direct pain of not being able to do things.
 
Thankfully the rest of the table "gets it".

I've found Combat Effectiveness caps effective in this regard as well.  I have a whole, painful spreadsheet for the characters.  You can't have the highest OCV and highest DCV and highest damage and highest speed and strongest crowd controls and highest movement and highest defenses and then have absolutely zero skills, talents, quirks, etc.
 
On my Wednesday night game the party's Anti-Paladin of Tiamat is maxed out.  He keeps asking to buy more combat upgrades while sitting on zero non-combat skills.  It's like the guy reached 30 years of age and learned nothing but how to smash things with his massive morning star and breathe fire for his goddess.
 
Last night after he claimed a sacred relic of another god (Baphomet) and used it repeatedly he lost his powers and was absolutely flummoxed as to what the problem might be.  I asked him to make a Religion check while praying.  He didn't have it.  He got nowhere.
By the end of the session - concerned he would not get his powers back for the foreseeable future he picks up Religion.  I can't just throw skill check challenges at the party as he'll just impatiently await the next chance to smash something.  I have to throw them at HIM so he feels the direct pain of not being able to do things.
 
Thankfully the rest of the table "gets it".

I've found Combat Effectiveness caps effective in this regard as well.  I have a whole, painful spreadsheet for the characters.  You can't have the highest OCV and highest DCV and highest damage and highest speed and strongest crowd controls and highest movement and highest defenses and then have absolutely zero skills, talents, quirks, etc.
 
On my Wednesday night game the party's Anti-Paladin of Tiamat is maxed out.  He keeps asking to buy more combat upgrades while sitting on zero non-combat skills.  It's like the guy reached 30 years of age and learned nothing but how to smash things with his massive morning star and breathe fire for his goddess.
 
Last night after he claimed a sacred relic of another god (Baphomet) and used it repeatedly he lost his powers and was absolutely flummoxed as to what the problem might be.  I asked him to make a Religion check while praying.  He didn't have it.  He got nowhere.
By the end of the session - concerned he would not get his powers back for the foreseeable future he picks up Religion.  I can't just throw skill check challenges at the party as he'll just impatiently await the next chance to smash something.  I have to throw them at HIM so he feels the direct pain of not being able to do things.
 
Thankfully the rest of the table "gets it".

This is pretty much what I've steered them towards. Especially using active point caps to give them a reason to broaden out the characters rather than become uber-archtypes of specific powers. So the air mage now has more "airy" powers & spells, the bodyguard/fighter has "found" religion and is now on the march towards becoming a paladin (with deity specific powers). Damage and armor caps I have also found useful in taming the arms race 12-15 DC damage, armor set a little below that and additional limits on hardend/penetrating/armor piercing have also worked in that regard.

In my campaigns in the 80s the percentage of players with plate helms and mithril codpieces was quite high. 

It does if your villains have savoir faire and want to rain down the chunks of the defeated upon their allies.
 
Dead heroes are boring.  The grief-stricken terror-filled allies stunned into gaping horror by wearing the bits of their friend - exquisite. 

It does if your villains have savoir faire and want to rain down the chunks of the defeated upon their allies.
 
Dead heroes are boring.  The grief-stricken terror-filled allies stunned into gaping horror by wearing the bits of their friend - exquisite. 

I'd have to artificially insert something into a campaign that otherwise wouldn't have such items and the characters who sold off their MOCV would all turn to the mage and bard in the party who have actually raised their MOCVs and just hand it over.
 
There would be zero inconvenience unless I further contrived an encounter where the bard & mage get - say Webbed - where their spell casting is shut down and their low STR scores prevent them from escaping and then follow it up with making such an item only be within reach of the characters who sold it off and.. barf...  it would be so obvious I was targeting the character for the sell off that it would likely irritate the player.
 
And while I wouldn't characterize myself as lazy I do have a full time job and a family so the two tables a week I run are based on ready made campaigns (one Pathfinder the other D&D) that I convert on the fly.  I may sprinkle in some ad lib material here and there, but I lack the time for a fully home built campaign.
 
 

In my campaigns in the 80s the percentage of players with plate helms and mithril codpieces was quite high. 

Yeah, the main issue in a lethal damage game is a stagger / CON stunning can be synonymous with dead, as I'm sure you know. Quite often it's not fight to first blood or fight to the death, it's fight to first STUN greater than CON. 
 

In my campaigns in the 80s the percentage of players with plate helms and mithril codpieces was quite high. 

In my campaigns in the 80s the percentage of players with plate helms and mithril codpieces was quite high. 

No, but just an example of gaming the encumbrance rules and hit locations. 

The math wasn't "better" per se, it was just different, but it made some situations that I didn't like less common, and introduced some beneficial aspects which I did like. It was more of a sidegrade / tuning.
 
A few things. First, it sped up combat a bit and simplified the PD / rPD and ED / rED STUN math considerably. Secondly, it become a bit more likely that a character might be at negative BODY but positive STUN which is a feature of the Hero System I've always appreciated but which doesn't actually happen very often RAW...it creates really clutch and gritty situations when it does happen. Killing attacks were less likely overall to just knock targets out but it still sometimes happened which was particularly well suited to fantasy and urban games. Coup d' grace were rarely necessary; k dmg combats tended to be decisively lethal rather than end with one side or the other knocked out. It prevented the situations where a character took 1 or no BODY and got knocked out from a KA, which I never liked the feel of...the coma inducing paper cut. It moderated stun lotto without getting rid of it entirely, and it also made attacks vs an opponent without rDEF even more effective which was again genre appropriate for gritty heroic and gritty cinematic play. It was friendlier to the PC's, who are in more combats over their lifespan than NPCs, as they were less likely to get one shotted into stun comas. Combats tended to last a few phases longer with more back and forth body exchanges, but they were resolved faster so it didn't "slow combat down" in real time.
 
Basically the main theme there is it adjusted the propensity of k dmg to be more effective at knocking people out than actually killing them without getting rid of it entirely. Lets say someone is throwing a 2D6+1 K vs a target wearing Chainmail 6/6 rDEF. Average damage is 2 BODY past defense ad 6 STUN but sometimes the dice come up above average with a fat x5 STUN multiple cherry on top and you're looking at say 5 BODY and 25 STUN past defenses or worst case scenario max roll 7 BODY and 35 STUN. Meanwhile at the low end, attacks that fail to generate at least 6 BODY do no STUN preventing the death by a thousand cuts. 
 
I liked it, the players liked it (except for one player in my "Nine Arrows of the Machtig" fantasy campaign who complained about it, so I let him play his damage using RAW but damage dealt to him was also handled using RAW. He lasted one session after which he begged to go back on the house rule).
 
I'd suggest trying it for a session or two or do a fight club simulation and see what you think. It's an easy to implement adjustment as it doesn't require modification of character sheets or power builds and its commensurately easy to drop it again if you don't like it. 

Tangential to YOUR point I do wonder if in fact this isn't the issue.
 
Class\level progressions are so darned standardized in the gaming mindset. Power progression, enemy progression, spell progress, MORE AND BETTER MAGICAL ITEMS, all of that.
Most other games (CoC, WW, SR GURPS) revolve around pre-provided lists of advancement so that even though you aren't improving everything all over all the time (like the archetypal D&D standard) you are only improving discreet and pre-defined aspects of existing rules. 
So where you are still "spending XP" like you do in Hero the things you spend it on are....kinda prebalanced and limited and the XP progressions themselves usually limit things.
 
In Hero I can buy +1 OCV ("to-hit") for 2pts. And then another for 2pts. And then still another for 2pts.
 
In WW or SR (the older editions which I'm familiar with) the XP costs scale as the thing being improved scales. So my guy with the +3 OCV (equivalent) would pay 4pts for his +4, then 5pts for his +5, and so on and I don't know why I'm explaining this really, we're all gamers here and I'm sure the point I'm making is evident already, but...because of that increasing cost (and often a top level cap as well) XP spend balancing isn't quite the chore it can become in Hero. 
 
In Vampire (for example) I can boost my weak skills and stats for cheap, but if I want to continue to pump my already top-line combat stuff I'll reach diminishing returns and start to incur some serious opportunity costs. Should I leave my weak spots unprotected so I can continue to pump my main ability for marginal increases in utility? Or should I shore up weak spots because my XP dollar goes farther?
 
Hero doesn't (quite) have that same dilemma.
 
But, wait, then, the other thing: The ideas of what progression means are all built in to those rules\settings.
 
Hero doesn't have that..."problem".
 
Like most stuff in Hero the GM\players get to do all that work and I think there's a lot of emphasis (for reasonable reasons) on initial setup, initial concept, and, of course, CHARACTER CREATION, and then also, how you want to play the game (Wounding? Impairing? Hit Locs?) and so on.
 
Which is fine. And good. And very Hero-ey.
 
But it kinda leaves that whole entire "What happens after chargen\session1" stuff...well...also up to the GM\players also to decide and that's something that...I mean, really...do most games ever touch on this? 
 
Like D&D..you fight things, you get stuff, you level up, WIN!!! That's the game!!!!
White Wolf stuff is the same, you make your tragic vampire, you do your tragic vampire stuff, you get XP!
 
There's no real discussion in most games about how the progression works out, or is supposed to work out, or, generally, any end-state at all (hitting 20th level in D&D maybe) and since the "how should stuff progress?" question is handled by the rules, in an indirect way (the answer to the question: How does it progress? Being: Well instead let me just tell you what\how you can spend XP on....) then...nobody ever has to address it.
 
Hero often seems oriented around the idea that, "You can make ANYthing!", and spends all it's time on making the thing, rather than what happens after ("Whatever you want, maaaan!"). 
 
 
 

I crumbled a cinder block with my bare hands one time. The effect was very cool both to watch and to do.
 
The secret was that the cinder block had previously been heated until it was weak and brittle but not heated in such a way that the cinder block was charred in any way.
 
It looked and felt like a normal cinder block until you tried to apply a moderate amount of pressure upon it.

Firstly, I like the rule and this is largely tongue-in-cheek.  I am myself a black belt and have broken many boards and concrete blocks over the years and even a brick once.
 
Secondly, martial artists do these things using the following skills (in order of importance)
1-  Deception:  Most of the things they are breaking are either very breakable (pine vs. oak) or arranged in a way to maximize breakability (concrete slabs with spacers on the outer edges).
2-  Fitness:  A huge part of being a functional martial artist is being stronger and faster than your untrained counter-parts.  Lose the fitness and your many skills mean almost nothing at all.
3-  Conditioning:  By slamming your fists, shins and knuckles into hard objects on a repeat basis you eventually increase bone density and this helps a lot when it comes to not breaking your bones on the aforementioned objects.
 
Still, replace a stack of lame pine boards (I've broken 2 at once holding them by my finger tips while hitting with my free hand) with a single 1" thick piece of Oak and you'd see nothing but broken hands.
 
It's cheap stage magic folks and I say that as a former member of the cheap stage magicians guild. 

I'd have to artificially insert something into a campaign that otherwise wouldn't have such items and the characters who sold off their MOCV would all turn to the mage and bard in the party who have actually raised their MOCVs and just hand it over.
 
There would be zero inconvenience unless I further contrived an encounter where the bard & mage get - say Webbed - where their spell casting is shut down and their low STR scores prevent them from escaping and then follow it up with making such an item only be within reach of the characters who sold it off and.. barf...  it would be so obvious I was targeting the character for the sell off that it would likely irritate the player.
 
And while I wouldn't characterize myself as lazy I do have a full time job and a family so the two tables a week I run are based on ready made campaigns (one Pathfinder the other D&D) that I convert on the fly.  I may sprinkle in some ad lib material here and there, but I lack the time for a fully home built campaign.
 
 

I'd have to artificially insert something into a campaign that otherwise wouldn't have such items and the characters who sold off their MOCV would all turn to the mage and bard in the party who have actually raised their MOCVs and just hand it over.
 
There would be zero inconvenience unless I further contrived an encounter where the bard & mage get - say Webbed - where their spell casting is shut down and their low STR scores prevent them from escaping and then follow it up with making such an item only be within reach of the characters who sold it off and.. barf...  it would be so obvious I was targeting the character for the sell off that it would likely irritate the player.
 
And while I wouldn't characterize myself as lazy I do have a full time job and a family so the two tables a week I run are based on ready made campaigns (one Pathfinder the other D&D) that I convert on the fly.  I may sprinkle in some ad lib material here and there, but I lack the time for a fully home built campaign.
 
 

I am in the "drop it to zero if you want" camp.  I will say that I totally understand those folks who disagree with doing this, whatever the reasons are. 
 
What I would like some enlightenment on (because I really don't understand it) is the opinion voiced above that the character should somehow be made to suffer for this.   How is a player selling off say 6 points of OMCV (so he now has a 1) more of a hindrance than if everyone but him bought another two levels and he stayed at 3?
 
Yes; it's much harder for him to hit with a mental power (which he likely doesn't have anyway), but is that not also true if he stayed at 3 while everyone else went to 5?
 
I suppose I am having a difficult time rationalizing that we don't add penalties to characters who sell off some STR, or CON, or STUN, or DEX or anything else, because there are default problems associated with these reductions. However, there are default problems with reducing OMCV as well.   The fact that they may never come up for a given character in a given campaign doesn't make it cheesy, at least not anymore that the guy with the strength 5 is cheesy because he didn't buy enough STR to lift a bus.  And just like reducing OMCV (or anything else, for that matter), the player doesn't expect to be put in a situation where he would _have_ to lift a bus, either.  Further, I expect that few GMs would alter the campaign in such a way as to make this character regret not being able to lift a bus.  That being the case, why does reducing OMCV somehow "require" such a penalty? 
 
I'm with a lot of other folks who really think that it should have defaulted a zero anyway.  Though I confess to being intrigued by Shrike's idea of mental combat maneuvers...... 
 
How do we determine STR for mental attacks?  EGO seems traditional.  Maybe we need a special set of Mental Damage characteristics, too: mental STUN, mental BODY..... 
 
 
Great.  Now I'm thinking again.  I've got things to do besides think, you know.... 
 
 
 
 
Duke

This. All. Day.
 
Does it make sense for the players? Is it simple and fun?  Done.
 
More hair-splitting technical crunch is not what HERO needs to grow its player base.

Honestly, if I used invisibility in a Heroic setting and the GM told me that my armor, weapons, backpack, rope, etc. all did NOT turn invisible because they are built as Obvious Foci I would walk off the table and find a new GM.
 
That interpretation of the rules does nothing to enhance the fun of the players.
 
We could continue on with the torture of the rules:
* Your clothing doesn't disappear because it is OIF life support vs. 1 temperature level of cold.
* Your shoes don't disappear because they are OIF +1 Running / 1rPD/1rED area 18 only.
etc.
 
Horrible.
 
 

I'd personally rule that if you're invisible the Obvious Foci is only going to be obvious to people that can still see you.  So while Bob and Sue can't tell where your power comes from Red-Horned Blindsense Man can and he promptly performs a ranged disarm with his improbably little throwy club things.
 
Punishing the player by having their Foci visibly floating along while they are invisible effectively makes their invisibility not a thing.