Solitude

It's not truly "Mythic" without Aahz and Skeeve is it?

Of course,  within the genre conventions, killing is somewhat allowed in war even for supers.
Especially with alien invasions or invaders from another dimension  or as a situational necessity in a classic prehistoric lost world adventure. 
 
Game Masters who have players who want to hack and slash with their human tanks upon occasion should encourage their players to buy him the appropriate sourcebooks to run such crossover adventures.  I meant to say Game Masters should encourage their players to be paragons of virtue, they're supposed to be heroes. 

Perhaps a Drain: STR (area of effect, standard effects; buy down the recovery period, "dismissable" where dismissing restores all Drained points of STR) might give you what you are looking for? 
 
Character pays END once (and possibly lots of it for an AoE Drain!), no matter where the affected target moves, he will feel the effect of the Drain (your constantly-following gravity field-- assuming you were trying to model the example given). 
 
Just a thought. 
 
Other than that, didn't one of the editions give us a "sticky" advantage? 
 
I've got to get back to work on my compilation of published Advantages and Limitations.... 
 
 
 

It all depended on the game.
 
Generally killing even in self defense results in an inquest.
 
There are games which allow gray areas and games which do not and while those often depend on the maturity of the players,  sometimes the murderhobo is the players ginning up a reason to fight each other.
 
Generally in eighties games a player who went off the reservation became a potential mini adventure and a source of experience.  Or a way to write a darker story...or a way to launch an alien invasion plotline with the murderous player perfectly sane and also the only one who could detect doppelganger constructs.
 
The Hero tropes were enforced in other ways.
 
It was (at least in the Tulsa area and on some bases in Okinawa which had a lot of gamers) fairly common to have disasters where characters who had abilities to mitigate the disaster could pick up a bit of experience here and there which added up.
 
Get a bunch of people out of a burning appartment and you got a gold star. Put the fire itself out with suppression or drains or giant melting snowball entangles and you might get some actual experience, and even if it wasn't a lot it added up. 

Pretty much. 
And yes they had begun to write the killers and mental cases into comics, but they hadn't usurped the concept of Hero yet.  Even with the spike of killers that appeared, the superheroes were still superheroes and we were basing our games more on the lines we grew up reading in the 60/70's. 
 
I would be more inclined to believe that the decline in comic quality (from my point of view) was more likely to have influenced the feel of a ruleset and a game.  Not just Hero, but most of the other supers games since 2000 on just don't feel Heroic. Once again, they don't feel Heroic to me. 

Grab in 6e2 is over 6 pages by itself.  SIX pages for ONE maneuver.
 
6e feels to me like a GM detailing all of the rules calls they've had to make over the decades.  It's just too granular and the resulting book size is SO big that almost nobody will read it.
 
4th edition would have the largest FUN on my list, but I agree with you for the most part.
 
4th was the perfect blend of crunch and brevity (for me) and the game simultaneously failed to keep up with production values of competitors (Pathfinder and D&D are works of art AND game books) while suffering from terminal rules bloat.

I think the distinction is the actual effect.  Flash affects the sensory organs of the target, whereas Darkness affects the environment.  If I've got sunglasses to protect me from bright lights being shines in my eyes, that's not going to help me see through thick fog and smoke.  If I can smell with the accuracy of a bloodhound, I'm going to be affected differently by having raw garlic shoved up my nose as opposed to having a strong wind blow away all traces of scent.
 
Flash and Darkness do different things.  I think they need to remain different powers.
 
However!  You could certainly make the case for folding Darkness into Change Environment, as Duke Bushido mentions.  In essence, that's what Darkness is - a change to the environment.

Well, if you are coming from Squad Leader and Starfleet Battles then Hero System seems pretty straightforward. 

It's 2019.
Even boardgames are using apps to do the math and upkeep.
It has made a tremendous difference in trying to market heavier games like Mansions Of Madness.
 
The phone I am typing on is not a premium phone.
But it's as powerful as the computers that the hero software was designed to run on.
 
Why not have apps for the tablets and phones that most players probably own instead of gutting the math for people who don't want to or cannot do the math in their heads?

I recently had a new player submit a character for my FH game that had been output from Hero Designer, and I was very confused reading several paragraphs that turned out to be a description of a heavy bow, sword, and shield in his equipment list. It made the first combat that he was in difficult as well, as he didn't have the simple, one-line reference for his weapons on his character sheet.
 
On a related topic, I came to the realization when I was doing a personal Traveller conversion a number of years ago that the only equipment that required Hero stats were the ones that would be directly used in personal combat (weapons and protective gear, mainly). Everything else could be a "black box". I didn't have to build starships in Hero, I could just use the standard ones from a Traveller supplement, and plug in the rules as needed*. I didn't need to build the communicators in Hero, as what really mattered with them was already defined in a simple description (range, mass, duration, price) in an equipment list.
 
 
*In this case, the ship combat rules from High Guard.

I don't know how many people here are prone to order custom miniatures online, but the design software for Hero Forge fanally offers a set of mechanical wings. Not the style I would have chosen for a first offering but acceptable. 
 
 

I don't know how many people here are prone to order custom miniatures online, but the design software for Hero Forge fanally offers a set of mechanical wings. Not the style I would have chosen for a first offering but acceptable. 
 
 

Is there a transcript? 
 
The over-reliance on PODcasts and videos is the primary reason my gaming related spending has plummeted to a fraction of what it was.  I have very little free time and I'd rather actually play then waste hours grinding through audio/video on the off chance someone might accidentally answer a question.
 
I can read/skim the transcript of an hour long cast in minutes.  But 1, 2 or 3 HOURS of someone talking says: Go away I don't want your money.
 
A concise written description is how you sell something to employed adults.
 
It's not just this KS.  It is the overall laziness that has overtaken the gaming industry at large.  If I watched/listened all of the monthly 'cast/videos that now pass for company updates I would never be able to actually game again.
 

Doesn't Common Core Hero make you divide the cost by 1/4 plus another fraction which will be calculated from your figured characteristics using an equation which will appear in a future supplement?

The most annoying thing about Common Core Hero is that it is just so unsatisfying...even if you roll like crap, ignore the important clue that was out in the open, accidentally kill the hostages, and then you all die when you forget about that delayed effect killing explasion that was set up in the second round...everybody still advances to the next scenario in the campaign and gets six experience points.

It does work, it just wasn't explained perfectly.  Let me try again for him, but with more words. 
 
A power with no Modifiers has its base cost multiplied by 4/4 to get final cost.
Add Advantages directly to this: A +1/4 Advantage brings it to 5/4, a +1 Advantage on top of that brings it to 9/4, so on and so forth. 
"Add" Limitations to the denominator: A -1/4 Limitation brings it to 4/5, a -1/2 Limitation on top of that brings it to 4/7. 
If you have both, do both!  A +3/4 Advantage and -1/2 Limitation brings the multiplier to 7/6. 
More formally, what you're doing is taking Base ∙ ( 4 + 4 ∙ Σ(Advantages) ) / ( 4 - 4 ∙ Σ(Limitations) ).  The reason I phrased it as 1/1 was to rip out all those 4s.  I'd do it as Base ∙ ( 1 + Σ(Advantages) ) / ( 1 - Σ(Limitations) ). 
Once you've added everything up, multiply to get real cost.  If you're using the 1/1 method, you can also multiply base cost by numerator to get AP but the 4s screw that up. 
 
Of course, me saying it works doesn't mean it works, so I'll prove it works. 
Energy Blast 10d6, Penetrating (+1/2).  50 * (4+2) / (4) = 300/4 = 75. 
Energy Blast 10d6, Beam (-1/4).  60 * (4) / (4+1) = 200/5 = 40. 
Energy Blast 10d6, Penetrating (+1/2), Beam (-1/4).  50 * (4+2) / (4+1) = 300/5 = 60. 
Energy Blast 6d6, AOE 1" (+1/2), 1/2 END (+1/4), Reduced Penetration (-1/4), No KB (-1/4).  30 * (4+2+1) / (4+1+1) = 210/6 = 35. 
And HD agrees with all the numbers. 

Here’s the thing of practicality. As much as a Anniversary Edition would be best. And yes for that reason rerelease of 2ed is a good idea,  Hero system is really in no position to do something like this. Remember Champions Now is coming out. And as much has it was heralded as not being a nostalgic release. It Ron Edwards take on 3e. I’d say a fair amount of people will still look to it like that. What does Hero have in stock? I’ll check but I believe they have a bunch of 6th Basic still. So I would release VIPER’s Nest as 6th and maybe with standees and maybe a few extra Heroes/Villains (as they were done in 3ed.). The only build by the book that would be problematic as a straight conversion to 6th Basic would Crusader’s Missile Deflect. (I believe Ranged Block isn’t mention in 6thB  and Deflect is cut out but I’ll check).

I think it peaked there.
And really,  the one thing that fourth edition Champions gave me that I felt was needed wasn't a power or a framework or an advantage or a limitation. 
 
It was the campaign sheet to issue out power restrictions and requirements and forbidden combinations before my players designed characters so that I wouldn't need to reject as many power gamer monstrosities or broken basket cases.
 
If an anniversary edition is made please include disadvantages on the campaign sheet.
 
I never want to see a neophyte draw up a character who is a nurse which goes berserk at the sight of blood again...
 

Eh... not really.  They did put together stripped versions of both 5th and 6th.  The Basic books. 
But they were just like CC and FHC, incomplete and designed as if they intended them to fail.
 
Think of it this way. 
 
Lets imagine you have a two game consoles.  
Console one sells games on a disc like the PS4 and XBox.  Buy a disc, load it and play.
Console two has decided that anyone willing to play a game someone else designed is daft.  So they sell the console, the source code and some resources and say "have fun". 
 
Which console sells and which one fails?  Easy to pick.
 
When Fantasy Hero Complete was put out it was also incomplete.  It is even more sad because they actually had partially built the other half in the Val of Stalla which was given out as downloadable content but never mentioned in the book itself.  If the material had been polished up and included in FHC plus the equivalent of a 1st level spell list so the people who wanted to play a mage had a starting point to reference, it might have taken off. 
 
The Basic books were not bad at all........as one part of a complete product.
 
But after 3rd edition, Hero never tried to make "playable" games except for Champions in 4th. 
 
Hero in 5th and 6th stopped being a game played for fun, and became a dry programming language for mathematicians.
 
In my opinion Hero has ceased to be a game, and has become a system reference document.
 
 
 
 
 
 

In the years I game mastered I used to buy all of those detective magazines you found at news stands and insert real crimes into my campaigns. 
 
I did not (in general) run stories where the players could get by listening to the radio or a police scanner and hope to arrive on crime scenes.  They had to do detective work,  and buy enhanced senses and patrol. Normal people were robbed or killed the whole time,  often in secret.  Cops can't stop crimes they don't find out about. 
 
Failure was likely to be hard on one's NPCs or the manager for ones wealth perk...or even ones romantic rival.
 
Combat wasn't always on a level that was a serious threat to a team, but the team sometimes found themselves in a bunch of simultaneous fights that were a serious threat to the normals.
 
All of this was overlaid on top of standard superhero plots.
 
If players ignored the small stuff it was going to bite them hard eventually. 

You're not disagreeing.
 
You are missing what I am saying entirely.
 
And to make it more poignant, you're doing it with math.

Thank you.  A thousand times, thank you.  This has bugged me too, ever since.  I pulled hard for "decoupling" but wasn't thinking it would extend there.  
 
So, count me in.

See?  This is why there will never be a "perfect" or flawless edition of HERO:  we _all_ (on this board or not; it makes no difference) have different-- slightly? Radically?  "YES!" to all! -- different ideas about what is or is not "fundamentally HERO." 
 
That mechanic that you're wanting to remove?  That was the hook for me: that's the moment I knew there was something awesome under the hood of that little blue book with the boring superfight on the cover.   I understood it immediately, and I _loved_ it! 
 
Until Champions, I played either Traveller or D&D (Mostly because that's what there was back then, unless you were living in California and attending Cons to check out all the people peddling the home brews) 
 
 
No more "Roll your shoot this gun" skill to hit. No more "because he rolled his skill; that's why you're dead!". No more bulky armor makes you harder to hit. ". (dont; don't waste your breath: I'll be sixty in a couple of months.  I know damned good and well all the justifications about" but THAC0 doesn't mean they missed!  It means that you didn't take damage!  They might have been just whaling on that armor like a drum line! ". It stops holding water when that same extra-xumbersome armor makes it easier for me to hit the naked guy. 
 
And best of all, no more" okay, the wizard hits you with lightning!  Roll to not get hit! "
 
Wait; what? 
 
Saving throw!" 
 
Are you flickin' kidding me?  He hit me, fair and square; we saw it; you declared it.  Now I roll to not get hit?  
 
Well, to see if you took any damage, then. 
 
Why can't we roll the damage?  I've got some _great_ armor. 
 
Yeah, but that's not how it works. 
 
Excuse me? 
 
Armor doesn't protect you; it makes you harder to hit. 
 
What?  But you just said-
 
Well, yeah, but it boils down to the same thing.  Now roll to not get hit. 
 
. Yep.  Don't miss that crap _one bit_. 
 
I absolutely _loved_ (and still do) the idea that my natural Dex let me jockey for a good strike posture or to jerk aside and duck and weave, and that my skills (levels) could unbalance the odds.  I loved that there was a separate to-hit mechanic for things that are _not_ based on physical attacks (ECV, though later as we explored different themes and genres, we would expand on that). 
 
Are there other things that I like?  Oh, you betcha!  But if someone told me to pick the very best thing about HERO, that would be it.  Truth be told, and "point balance" be _damned_, the one thing I hate above all others in 6e is the divorcing of those CVs from their parent characteristics.  Do they work the same?  Yeah: math is math.  But I don't play recreational math; I play to create a story with my friends, to stir action excitement--to feel like something other than a powerless college kid or a rapidly-aging old man.  And that "liberation" of CV from parent characteristics liberated that wonderful and unique _feel_ right along with it. 
 
So no; I wouldn't get rid of that, not ever.  If I was going to change anything about that, it would be to change it back.  Seriously: there is a lot I don't like about 6e, but I can forgive it: all the editions are pretty much interchangeable anyway.  The only thing I can't forgive is that oft-applauded "advancement" that reads to me of little more than officially proclaiming that math is more important than the feel of the game ever should be. 
 
 
 
It already _is_ a skill contest; it's been simplified. 
 
However, to create a more skill-like mechanic, try this:
 
Create some Fight skills.  I'll keep it simple with two:
 
Fight: attack.and Fight:  defend. 
 
I'm not mocking, but without the character being active in his defense, you can't really replicate what makes Hero's combat unique. 
 
Attacker rolls his dice and succeeds by two. 
 
Defender rolls his dice and success by four.  Attacker fails. 
 
Or we can say attacker rolls his dice and success by six while defender succeeds by four again, and gets hit. 
 
If "shades" of victory are important, then subtract defender's success from attackers successes for that last round: attacker success by 2.  Or fails, or thee is a tie (wouldn't that be awkward?) 
 
What if you have a really wide difference in skill level, though?  It would become difficult if attacker had to roll 16 or under and defender had to roll four or under. 
 
At the end of the day, though, that's what the current method _does_, and it does it in one roll. 
 
Let's assume your attack skill is a Dex-based Skill (as CV used to be).  You've got a twenty Dex, right off you have a 14 or less roll, buy it up to 20 or less for next to nothing. 
 
Your defend skill is also 14 or less, etc. 
 
So you both succeed _a lot_, typically, and spend a lot of time subtracting your success from each other.  No biggee: it works fine. 
 
But it's not one quick roll. 
 
11 is the midpoint of results for 3d6.  It's also the thing you are most likely to roll, if you check every possible outcome. 
 
So start with a fight: attack skill dead-center at 11 or less.  That's what the 11 is for.  Then subtract his defend skill from your attack skill.  Roll that or less. 
 
It's beautiful in its simplicity.  I have no idea why the creator of it would want to change it, honestly, because not only does it handle a wide range of skill levels against each other, the built-in auto failure/auto success gives everyone a fighting chance.  But back on course:
You are essentially using "a skill type mechanic.". You're just skipping a coulle of tedious steps and keeping the game moving. 
 
I wouldn't change it for anything. 
 
 
 

Why not teach the game as a team, with a straightforward character for the new player, and more umm ornate characters for any experienced players but have the experienced characters at a significantly lower point cost?
 
That way he sees the players around him demonstating cool stuff you can accomplish with power advantages balnced by limitations but they dont run rings around his starting character. 
 
Use asymmetry to keep the game fun.
 

Hello.  Yet another old Former military player checking in, because I am stuck at work hurrying up and waiting and a Robot Hero search sent me to this thread. 
 
It looks like I have a fairly similar history with the game as a lot of people on this thread.