Tryskhell

In a lot of my settings, a common custom is to bury the dead vertically, head down, so that if they ever rise as an undead they dig down and deeper instead of finding their way back to the surface. This leads to the -IMO- pretty cool idea of digging at a graveyard and finding that all the graves have turned into bottomless tunnels to the underdark or some other underground world.

There is, on page 101, but it's not really exact, and goes only up to +1 advantage

TLDR : In the AP dagger case, you gain a step of damage at STR 15, 21, 28, 35, 41 etc... Okay so : A DC is 5 Active Points worth of damage. In an unadvantaged NStun attack (blast, hth...), this is exactly 1d6, and 3d6 for an unadvantaged Killing attack. Armor Piercing is a +1/4 advantage (IIRC), this means that in order to add damage to it, you need 1.25 DC (1 + 1*(1/4)), or 6.25 Active Points worth of damage. Because there is a 0.25, the "price" of DCs is weird : while the power might be worth 12 Active Points (exactly 12.5, but averaged down), each additional step (+1 > +1/2d6 > +1d6...) is worth 7, then 6, then 7 Active Point, and so on. As you may know, STR min reduces the effective STR that can be used to increase damage by its value. 13 - 8 = 5. This is 5 Active Points worth of bonus damage, not enough to increase the damage to 1d6. If the guardsman now has 15 STR, you can go 15 - 8 = 7. Now this is definitely enough for additional damage. So, to sum it up, you gain 1 step of damage every 7 STR, alternating 6, above 8 (that's 15, 21, 28...). The calculation is slightly less weird if you take the STR in one big bunch and divide by 6.25, discarding decimals : (STR - STR min) / (5 * (1 + total advantage worth) = how many "advantaged DCs" you gain In your case : >with 13 STR : (13 - 8 ) / (5 * 1.25) = X 5 / 6.25 = 0.8 You discard decimals, so that's 0 DC. >with 15 STR : (15 - 8 ) / (5 * 1.25) = X 7 / 6.25 = 1.12 So that's 1 DC, or +1 For this calculation, additional DCs from martial maneuvers and the like are counted as 5 STR each : A +1 DC with 13 STR : (18 - 8 ) / (5 * 1.25) = X 10 / 6.25 = 1.6 So, again, +1. I hope I helped a little bit!

I don't know if this is vanilla or a homebrew, not proficient enough in the system to tell... But I let people block as one of the attacks in a multi-attack (6e). Essentially it turns the block into a tanking or even offensive tool, because the halved DCV makes you a very easy target...but if you block, you don't get hit, making you draw attacks without taking too much damage, and you can follow up with a counter if you have one, making that form of blocking a scary offensive move. I might also let people abort to counter immediately after a block (that was prepared using a non-aborted action), rendering any subsequent block impossible but potentially crippling a foe before they can continue attacking. Essentially, maybe you'd be able to chop their arm off before they can attack you a second time. Maybe you could take them off-guard, too, or have a easier time hitting hit locations.

Small necro, but the way I'd do it : Make bronze the baseline, but some things are not possible to make with bronze (longswords, for instance, wouldn't work in bronze). Then, steel is better than that. One way you could do it is make steel do more damage, another has been mentioned already : making it AP for weapons, and hardened for armor. Steel is decently harder than bronze, and bronze is quite soft period (as a weapon-grade material). Maybe if someone using a bronze weapon blocks a steel weapon, their weapon takes damage?

Using concentration to shut down an always on power is a proposed alternative to paying the full END cost

I'd say, I'm okay with specific working over general, but this quite specific character would maybe get a "shut up I'm the DM" pass, since basically his invisibility is his only power (and ability, he's a very intelligent and agile normal Joe besides that, more of a skill monkey than a fighter)

So the way I was seeing this, this guy, who's moniker is Da Vinci (because he really likes art) basically slips from the mind of other people. I bought him a complete invisibility to everything, no fringe, always on, inherent. Unless the guy concentrates to become visible, he could just as well not be there at all, there's basically no way to crack into his cloak. However, it doesn't work on machines and very simple minds : the simpler the mind, the lesser the effect. A fully-functional human will simply never register him besides a weird impression when reminding the events, a baby or a comatose human might perceive a shadow or a silhouette, a dog will feel his presence and might see a blurry picture etc etc This also means, while people might see his face when he concentrates to speak to them, it'll just vanish and they'll only remember bribes of the image (like how people imagine things or remember dreams, just patchwork of blurry elements, not even shapes or colors, memories of memories). They will remember what he said, the gestures he made, the way he was dressed, etc. At first I was thinking something along the lines of a distinctive feature "No Face", disadvantage... But now that I'm thinking about it, it really sounds more like just flavor?

How much would you rate a perk or power that makes people have a hard time remembering you ? Maybe with an INT or EGO roll ?

So what about with no malus?

So, something bothers me with Autofire : using autofire against a single target very much does not increase hit chances, despite the increased volume of fire... So I was wondering, what would break if, let's say... Autofire on a single target gave you a flat -2 OCV for the shots included in the attack but you rolled once for each shot? Instead of the "for each 2 above the enemy's DCV you hit with one more shot", obviously...

Thanks, Drunk, it ended up being maybe a bit too grim for my own tastes, but the grim parts are buried deep under a chunky layer of good and kind people. For instance, there's a very low-level super-villain called Dr. Mischievous, who is totally harmless and does some petty crime, like stealing candy or pets. He makes sure to harm no one and generally works with new rogues to get arrested by them in the most flashy fashion, to get their fame up. Also, each time he gets arrested, he's broken out by a mysterious super-villain group called the Black Parlor. They're all dressed in black owl costumes and only appear to break out low-level super-villains like Dr. Mischievous and rogues. In truth, the Black Parlor is made up of rogue super-heroes (from that group the ASHRRaD is investigating) who don a super-villain costume just to help their friends. They're a close knit, kind, cooperative and very wholesome community. They help each-other, get together every second Friday of the month for a barbecue, work with villains like Dr. Mischievous (who is actually an important part of the community, he's the one serving the sodas) to brighten up the day of the people, put stars in the eyes of children and make sure the community sees rogues with a good eye again. They also do things like giving blankets to homeless people, work as unpaid volunteer at shelters and might even try to work with schools to sensibilize children and teens to important matters, like drugs, sex, crime, bullying etc. Thanks Tjack! Unfortunately I'm French and I'm bad at DMing in another language, tried for 4 months, each Saturday, but it didn't really work 😕 I'll make sure to post session reports! And if there's enough demand, I might actually do that roleplay Discord server that's been in my drawers for almost a year now...

The Government's misdeeds As you can see, the government is kind of the overarching villain of the setting. They are indeed quite villainous, but it's only a limited, secret branch, and for instance cops aren't as anti-rogues as the rest. Since Rafael's apparition, the government created the ASHRRaD, the Agency for Super Human Regulation, Research a Development. While it was initially thought as an organisation aimed at peacefully regulating superhumans and helping superheroes (and some branches, like the ASCF, the Anti Super-Criminality Force, still do just that) it was quickly turned into a corrupt, power-hungry agency. In 2026, the ASHRRaD planned Excalibur's murder and worked with Vanguard to get him into the Guardians as a replacement. In 2034, the faked Thomas Parn's death. In 2038, they tested a theory and unlocking funds by preying on Gauss's weak sanity and pushing her to the limit by kidnapping all her superhero team. The same year, following the Induction Incident, they kickstarted the Constellation Program, aiming at turning Galaxy Rush's flesh, blood, bone marrow and cerebral fluids into a super-soldier serum. They used it to create the Constellation Squad, a super-secret squad of brainwashed super-soldier boosted with the Constellation serum and used to kidnap rogues and assassinate important targets. They are incredibly quick, extremely agile, insanely strong and have elite trainings. They can also regenerate at insane rates. In 2045, the setting present day, the ASHRRaD is still abducting female soldiers with good combat records (female because the Constellation Serum kills XY chromosome individuals by destroying their DNA) to put them in the Constellation Squad. They recently started investigating on a big group of rogues, the one the players are going to meet.

Hey, I'm the newbee who wondered what a Champions campaign was supposed to look like, and at some point I said I needed some feedback on my setting. I went homebrew because I'm simply better at homebrewing things than at following a pre-made thing, but I wont throw using premade thing like factions out the window either. This setting is very highly inspired by the web-novel "Worm", by Civil War and by the Incredibles. In short, heroes are outlawed unless chaperoned by the government. Rogue heroes are untrusted by the general populace and form a very underground, close knit and street culture. The government secretly kidnaps young rogues to make experiments on superheroes and develop super-soldier serums, weapons and turn them into brainwashed hounds to get more test subjects. Overall History (more info in the World Anvil Timeline here : https://www.worldanvil.com/w/earth-2045-tryskhell/t/global-earth-2045-history-timeline?preview=1 ) It is set in 2045. Up to 2020, our history is identical, but the 19 September 2020, a meteor crashes into a building, killing nearly everyone. A man named Charles Brook touches it and the glassed rock cracks, revealing an orb of light that enters his heart, turning him into the first -and certainly not the last- super-human. He becomes a super-hero with the moniker Rafael and founds the Guardians with four other super-heroes : Galaxy Rush (High-level energy projector/brick), The Mind (basically Iron Man), Heart Overdrive (can control masses of people and emotions) and Escalibur (he gains super-human abilities when he holds his sword. He dies and is replaced with Vanguard, basically Superman). In 2034, he accidentally kills a young boy called Thomas Parn, and the government create the Thomas Part Act, making super-heroes illegal if they don't obey their orders. Rafael and Heart Overdrive disappear, The Mind and Galaxy Rush give themselves in and Vanguard takes over the Guardians, turning it into the Vanguard Corps, a squad of super-heroes under the thumb of the government. Heroes have the choice of declaring their powers to the government and working for them or becoming rogues. In 2038, a young low-level rogue nicknamed Gauss turns crazy and becomes the supe-rvillain Induction. For 10 hours, she lays destruction on a district of New-Manhattan (the fictional city built after the destruction of Manhattan by super-villains). No one seems able to stop her, not even Vanguard. In the end, at around 3 in the morning, the military drops a seismic bomb directly onto her. It is unknown what exactly happened to her, but a 60 meter radius sphere is turned into plasma and explodes, destroying the whole district. Nobody knows where she is, if she is alive, and the whole district has been black-sited by the government. This is called the Induction Incident, and made everyone very wary of rogues, since they could all be ticking bombs. Superpowers Superpowers initially come from meteors that crash down from space, but they mysteriously cannot be detected until they are too close to be intercepted. In total, there is 4 ways to get superpowers : - Originals : Touch a meteor. This is how brand new powers enter the pool of possibilities. These powers tend to depend on the circumstances of the crash, what was destroyed, the personality of the one who got the powers and the people who were killed by the crash. In quite a grim fashion, the more people died, the stronger the power. - Birth Rights : Be the children of a super-human, and you get similar powers. If both parents are super, you might get one, the other, both, or an original combination. - Legacy : If a super-human gives you an object linked to their powers (if Iron Man were to give you his suit, for instance) and you use it for an extended amount of time, you could end up getting similar powers. - Exposure : If you are exposed to a super-human's powers, you have a small chance of getting similar powers. The stronger, more violent, and/or more frequent the exposure, the higher the chance you get those powers. For instance, Excalibur was impaled by Mordred (a super-villain who's power is summoning swords and making them levitate) and survived miraculously. After the event, each time he held the sword, he was able to make it fly in various direction for limited amounts of time. Super-powers are classified by the government with a tool called the Frizzell's Scale. It gives a general understanding of their type and power-level. The power level goes from 0 to 2000, 0 being no powers at all (and not even human abilities) and 2000 being Rafael's level. As you can guess, this is the number of character points used in a character's creation. There is also 15 types of powers, Brick, Acrobat, Mystic, Breakout, Husher... I've made the full list on World Anvil, right here : https://www.worldanvil.com/w/earth-2045-tryskhell/a/power-type-list-article?preview=1 Most supers have a score bellow 1000 (a thousand being called the "Godhood threshold"). Officially, Rafael is the most powerful, but there's rumors that Induction's score was above 3000.

Damn, this is A LOT of excellent advice, and not only for HERO games either, most of it is actually applicable to my D&D games, thanks a thousand times guys! I'll try to give Strike Force a look, and I'll follow your advice, Spence and start writing plot lines. Since this has been asked multiple times, I generally have more combat-focused campaigns in D&D, but combats that matter. I'm also a sucker for very personal motivations, generally the foes are very close to the characters, or the characters have a DNPC on the line. I also like more mundane, less flashy and more nuanced campaigns, and my current HERO setting kinda reflects that (I'll probably post a thread about it shortly, because I might need a more expert opinion). My first campaign ever (also the only one I've finished so far) was in a completely homemade setting, where the party was a group of people who hunted a dragon cult for a while. As they fought the Gold Tooth, the lieutenant they encountered again and again, they started discovering that the Dragon Cult was working with alien technology. The final fight was against the Gold Tooth, in a wrecked spaceship that he was aiming at the planet to completely glass it. My current D&D campaign is set in a fantasy China, a world set on the skin of a huge sleeping dragon. The dragon is covered in mist that is made of his dreams and filled with spirits, and humans disperse the mist as they build and bring civilization. About ten years ago, the big human empire collapsed (a collapse that was at least 30 years in the making) and now it's a world of petty wars. The party is a duo (I have just two players) of "demon warriors", warriors that have a shard of evil spirit in them and exist to hunt demons and monsters, but were used like super soldiers during the collapse war.

I'm having the hardest time wrapping my head around this, but I can't for the life of me imagine what a Champions campaign looks like in action. I'm coming from D&D 5e where there's a clear path, clear maps, there's a dungeon and if not, at least the party sticks together... But I can't see this working with super heroes. Maybe the clear path part works, but clear maps ? I don't know, of lairs, maybe, but clearly not as much as in D&D, modern cities are much harder to map out... Also, the secret identity stuff really messes with my ability to visualize a "party" of super heroes. So far, I'm imagining it more like a west marshes game, where people join in with their characters if the characters are free and interested, and where there's a lot of one-on-one DM/Player short sessions, or sessions with much less people. But I don't know, I never actually played the game (I'd love to, though) and the books aren't very good at explaining it either (but overall I must admit I love them, theorycrafting powers is one hell of a hobby). So I come to you guys asking what your actual sessions look like, how do you manage the civilian/super dichotomy ? How do you manage a much more complex world ?

I'm using the HCM from the latest hcm-package.zip file in download (seems to be 1.12) and HERO Designer 6 [build 20180806] and I have a weird error : (( XMLParsering) Utilities.XMLParserExceptions: Utilities.XMLParserExceptions: While converting SPDEFENSES field a null (XMLParser.getNodeList) occured while converting XML element into the SPDEFENSES field.) Since the support forums given by the HCM seem to be down, here's the files... I have literally no idea where this could come from and since it's the first time I'm using the software... hcmlogging20191031122451.txt test.XML EDIT : I downloaded the latest version of HERO Designer and everything seems to be fine...I guess it was a version incompatibility ?

Hey, I'm designing some heroes (and villains) and I came to the idea of a hero not having powers himself, but having some kind of "persona" that has powers. The "stand user" has quite human characteristic, but he is accompanied by a proxy that has powers on its own (my specific concept has her being a brick, using a bow and being able to turn herself and her user invisible). The two can't really be separated from each other, and the proxy is always floating around the user. My main concern is that I want the proxy to have a mind of its own (this would probably be a flaw) and could be attacked and "killed" (temporarily so). Them attacking different targets is just a higher speed or doubling actions. How would you go around doing such a character ? I guess it can be done through basic "yo this is how this power works" but I'm sure there's more interesting ways to do it...

Okay, so let's say I have a character who can create a barrier, but has to use endurance to maintain it... When does the END is taxed ? At each Segment ? On the character's phases ? Each turn ?

I have the two 6th Ed base rule books and champion powers

Okay guys, thanks, I'll keep that in mind !

Hey guys, I'm quite new to the HERO system, but I want to GM for it with my pals One of the villain factions in my (totaly homebrew) setting is the Kureiji Warai, a very Yakuza-esque league of villains that aren't afraid to kill led by a super named Laughing Dragon. In the Kureiji, there is a super gadgeteer who builds weapons and robot henchmen -nicknamed Bunrakus- for the gang, Red Pupeteer, so I'd like to create a bunch of different bunbrakus for my players to "kill", but I have a whole lot of questions. My players will start with 400 points (75 complication points) characters, normal SPD between 3 and 5, up to 8 or 9 for speedsters. I want multiple levels of bunrakus, from simple grunts that fall in one hit to commanders that are just bellow them in terms of firepower. I would also like different types, from quick and agile ninjas to tanky samuraïs and deadly snipers. I don't know how many points I should give them, tho. I would imagine something like 150 for the grunts and maybe 350 for the more powerful, but I tried making a grunt ninja and I ended up being extremely short on martial manoeuvers and equipment. So, how many points should I attribute them ? Should I give them complications like any characters ? Should I account equipments in character points ? I tried to find references, but I couldn't find a lot. I'm short on money, so pricey PDFs are a no-no (unfortunately). So if some of you could share your work on the subject for me to get references, I would be soooo happy PS : I'm French, so my english might be broken as frick, sorry for that :x