RDU Neil

It would make a terrific game, but unfortunately nearly everyone knows the plot so you can't really run it as is.  All the twists and surprises are spoiled.  Of course you'd need more bad guys to deal with more good guys, but it would make a nice intro scenario: the reporter might not be such a jackass, maybe one of the FBI guys survives and is a good guy, the cop working on the outside might help clear the basement, even the limo driver could be a PC.

I found, in decades of Supers play with HERO, that EXP worked fine. I had a 3 pts per standard adventure. 5 pts for showdown adventures and 10 points for Double Sized Issues! (Like when we'd game all weekend back when I was young enough to do that.) Supers gaining incremental power growth so that they start out at "New Mutant" or "New Warriors" level and then go up to "Teen Titans" and "X-Men" level... then eventually Avengers level... then Authority levels (we never got to, or wanted to go to absurdist JLA levels) of power worked well for us. It happened over the  years, and characters that started out at 250 were well over 600 plus, even as EXP plateaued in general. As characters became fully fleshed out and broadly powerful, adjustments to the characters became driven by story and plot more than simply power improvements.
 
Now, in Heroic level games, they tend to remain pretty static, as the characters are built as competent level for the campaign, and unless there is significant plot reason for them to become "other" than they were created, unlikely to change drastically. 

In the supers games, the heroes that struggled against a set of armored agents early in their career, might run into the same kind of agents later, and totally trounce them, because I had a certain power level set for the game world, and agents are agents are agents. If they fought some villains on equal footing at 300 points, maybe those villains got more powerful over time... maybe not. Maybe next time they faced them, they wiped the floor with them, because it wasn't with the Story for that particular villain to get more powerful. Sometimes those villains became even MORE powerful. That was plot driven. I loved how players, though, never felt they were powerful enough. I remember at one point, well into the campaign, a long term player saying, "Man, that was tough tonight... I always feel like we are eking things out by the skin of our teeth." And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? I threw two dozen 350 villains at you guys, and you essential brushed them aside and/or ignored them as you cut a swatch through the horde and went after the 1000 point mega-villain. Your characters ended WW3 in six days, over the course of two adventures. What are you talking about tough?" 

The player was like, "Those guys were 350 points... man... they were scary." I'm just shaking my head...

In my heroic games, when characters change, it tends to be based on the player saying, "I feel that x, y, z has happenened, and Agent Sureshot has developed x contact, or y skill because of that..."  I'll probably agree and the player adjusts their character. Growth happens because the story allowed for it.

I hate the "world levels up to match the PCs" concept completely. If you've played a character for 20 years and he has gone from fledgling to demi-god... he better damn well feel like a demi-god. He just now has to deal with OTHER demi-gods at times. But the players always make it harder than it has to be.  sigh.

I sum this up with "Character advancement is bullshit. What you want is character GROWTH!"  Now, that speaks to my personal play preference, as I could care less about EXP and "buying new stuff" for my character when it comes to RPGs. When it comes to video games, this seems essential to the way the game is built (huge FarCry fan, loved Fallout 4, etc.) but that is because video games are "games first" and I want "Story first" in my RPGs. Most Heroic level games of mine are pretty static in terms of characters, unless their "story arc" actually lends itself to advancement... but only because advancement is a result of GROWTH, not as an end in and of itself.

Now, psychologically, a large section of the human population is mentally rewarded by "numbers getting bigger." There is something satisfying to a large contingent of humans (I have never felt this) about seeing your 'score' go up. It is at the root of runaway capitalism and runaway D&D characters, alike. Players are "rewarded" for doing game stuff (abstract doings) by getting more points (abstract notation) that enables more game stuff, etc. This type of psychological reward is built into D&D and the like without most people examining what is going on. It is called "Overjustification" and it can change an intrinsic enjoyment of an activity ("I like to play D&D") into a difference in motivation ("I like to level up!") and if that new motivation is removed, then motivation to play is removed.  (Let's not even get into variable ratio reward schedules). I remember reflecting on this first back in 1980 when a certain RPG called Champions showed up that got rid of levels and classes and this idea of systematic rewards as the point of the game... and suddenly I was allowed to focus on things that DID matter to me... better simulation of the source material... better stories being told... etc. The quantifiable notation of advancement is a very strong motivator in a large part of the human population... just not everyone.

HERO as it stands can certainly be used to create a game with "Character advancement" as the motivation, but it, more than D&D and the like, is likely going to break. I've always seen the system as something that broke that connection and allowed for very different motivations... but probably because those different motivations are more my style. (i.e. I always wanted an RPG to let me emulate the tension and drama of say, Aragorn and the Hobbits fighting the Nazgul at Weathertop... not an RPG that "Let me take my Ranger up to 20th level!"

I sum this up with "Character advancement is bullshit. What you want is character GROWTH!"  Now, that speaks to my personal play preference, as I could care less about EXP and "buying new stuff" for my character when it comes to RPGs. When it comes to video games, this seems essential to the way the game is built (huge FarCry fan, loved Fallout 4, etc.) but that is because video games are "games first" and I want "Story first" in my RPGs. Most Heroic level games of mine are pretty static in terms of characters, unless their "story arc" actually lends itself to advancement... but only because advancement is a result of GROWTH, not as an end in and of itself.

Now, psychologically, a large section of the human population is mentally rewarded by "numbers getting bigger." There is something satisfying to a large contingent of humans (I have never felt this) about seeing your 'score' go up. It is at the root of runaway capitalism and runaway D&D characters, alike. Players are "rewarded" for doing game stuff (abstract doings) by getting more points (abstract notation) that enables more game stuff, etc. This type of psychological reward is built into D&D and the like without most people examining what is going on. It is called "Overjustification" and it can change an intrinsic enjoyment of an activity ("I like to play D&D") into a difference in motivation ("I like to level up!") and if that new motivation is removed, then motivation to play is removed.  (Let's not even get into variable ratio reward schedules). I remember reflecting on this first back in 1980 when a certain RPG called Champions showed up that got rid of levels and classes and this idea of systematic rewards as the point of the game... and suddenly I was allowed to focus on things that DID matter to me... better simulation of the source material... better stories being told... etc. The quantifiable notation of advancement is a very strong motivator in a large part of the human population... just not everyone.

HERO as it stands can certainly be used to create a game with "Character advancement" as the motivation, but it, more than D&D and the like, is likely going to break. I've always seen the system as something that broke that connection and allowed for very different motivations... but probably because those different motivations are more my style. (i.e. I always wanted an RPG to let me emulate the tension and drama of say, Aragorn and the Hobbits fighting the Nazgul at Weathertop... not an RPG that "Let me take my Ranger up to 20th level!"

See this is an issue I've long thought over and even discussed here several times. D&D presumed levels and advancement where the source material of almost all RPGs rarely includes this kind of thing.  Where it is included its almost always just "he started out a farm boy and became a Jedi in order to fight the big enemy" or "she started out a martial artist but had to learn a special technique to beat the big enemy."  Almost never, anywhere is the theme "they start out and continually over time become more and more powerful and learn forever as their enemies keep getting more powerful."  Its just not there.  Its an arc, a specific growth period for specific circumstances or because of maturity.
 
Gaming is just about the only place that's really found but it has become such a locked in constant theme that people just presume it now.  And that doesn't really simulate the genre well at all.

Another thing I think might be worth mentioning is that, particularly in comparison to that lumbering behemoth D&D, in Hero you can directly control the levers of power.
 
In D&D when you level up you get discreet things. Which are all probably good and happy and fun, but the main thing is you don't choose them.
 
When my Wizard hits level 2 I get more spells. In Hero when I get more XP...do I even need more spells? Do I want them?
Maybe I should just buff up my Power Bolt 'o Doom more and put more in +OCV with Power Bolt instead of concocting another spell that's...not really my thing ("Prismatic Spray or Entangle? Hmm...but I'm a Fire Mage...."). 
In D&D I don't have that option, so I don't think about it, so the game never has to deal with it. 
Happily....Hero ain't like that.  
But instead I gotta deal with figuring out where the game is headed in addition to figuring out what game I wanna run (AND actually running the game too).
 
Similarly some things get better for free as you go (in D&D again, but...I do think it's the standard against all others are measured). 
My Fighter doesn't need to decide if he needs more to-hit or more hit points. He gets both. 
My Wizard doesn't need to decide if I should bump Magic Missile damage or buy another spell. He gets both.
 
So the progressions in other games are both usually limited by the pre-built progression mechanics (increasing costs for increasingly increased abilities) and also by lack of access to the stuff you might actually want to buff up.
 
But mostly I don't think it's really something a lot of games deal with well or spend a lot of time on.
 
D&D, again, in some editions, rapidly becomes nearly unplayable at higher and higher power levels as the spells and items accumulate, but that often seems to be more accepted as a feature rather than a bug.
 
 
 
 

The easy way to do this would be campaign maximums of various kinds.
 
I do think the superhero legacy fits in there since (for the most part with plenty of exceptions and special cases and all of that) most heroes are more or less static in the source material (again with exceptions, special cases, and other caveats).
Cyclops has eyebeams, Wolvie has claws, Punisher has guns, and so on.
 
I think this is also emulative of other genre fiction. James Bond rarely picks up entirely new martial arts. Legolas didn't decide he'd be a bit more fun to play with a small VPP for elf-magic tricks. King Arthur doesn't usually decided he needs more points in Bases because Camelot is getting boring.
We can certainly say that maybe Samwise Gamgee leveled up of the course of LOTR, but...he didn't really acquire anything new. Or we can say that Picard\Worf\Kirk go though character growth and change but...did they really "level up"?
 
But then also I think it works in the reverse. The D&D expectation is that folks will improve *dramatically* over time. And part of the reason for that is because the badguys are going to scale up dramatically themselves.
 
That doesn't have to be true in Hero. Aragorn doesn't have to spend XP on CSLs and more stats and more stats and more stats. James Bond doesn't have to pick up some weird OIF Regen and Combat Luck x3 just because he's got points sitting around.
 
Same for the lich stats. Are there even "normal human" fighters at that point level?
 
 
But I do agree that the rules themselves are, as is typical, unhelpful in that regard. "You could do anything you can imagine, maaaaaan!", isn't actually useful guidance for much of anything.
 
I don't have any of the books "running the game" sections memorized but...is there discussion of this anywhere? How\what\why to limit\use\shape advancement over the course of a game?
 
 

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

In my current campaign of modern guns and knives and martial arts, I did make the rule that if a KA does not penetrate Hardened Defenses, it does no stun... flat out. Basically to simulate the "bullet hits the reinforced plate in your vest, you don't even notice" aspect that is duly documented in modern combat. It has served, when it comes up, to speed things up because the Body damage is clearly stopped by that particular hardened hit location... don't even bother calculating Stun.

This could be modified to something like "If Body done is less than half of the resistant defense, no Stun is done." Probably calculates out to be similar in effect as calculating the Stun for a bad body damage roll and have it be absorbed or minimal. Again... would speed things up.
 
Level II vest (7rPR without plates) gets hit with a 9mm, bad roll of 3 Body... "thwap, it hits, you barely notice" and move on.
 
On the other side of things, the low Stun multiple for limb shots and such is good for "unlikley to knock you unconscious" aspect, but bad for "holy $%!^ that hurts!" aspect. I'm loathe to increase the Stun multiple, because this is more a matter of Hero struggling for the effect of "Stunned" without taking lots of "Stun damage". That has been argued and debated in many other threads, but I think applies a lot to the "I just got stabbed and it hurts like hell and I'm staggered and not fighting back for the moment, but I'm not really close to be unconscious". 
 
It falls under the "Just how much simulation is good for the game, vs. bogging you down?" question.

Oh... I get it. It really seemed "wrong" to me years ago, and required me to come to terms with it. It is not what I want in every game, but is what I want in some... just like a don't want Gilgamesh in every game... sometimes I want Macbeth. 
 
Also, it is difficult to have any kind of dramatic story when all six people at the table want to be their own version of Gilgamesh, all the time. O'l Gil never took a backseat to Enkidu. 
 
I can only say that some of the most satisfying games  I've ever played were inherently tragic and involved very difficult and unpleasant things happening to the characters... not because the GM just decided that... but because the dice moved the story that way, and having the characters react and change to these events brought them fully to life. Top 3 games I've ever played in, a session of Velvet Glove, run by the creator, Sarah Richardson. We were all teenage girls in the '70s in our own gang. My character was supposedly the bad-ass, but she failed at every attempt to do anything tough, to protect her crew, to do anything right (the dice just went horribly wrong for me every time, so much so the other players were all super sympathetic and kept expecting me to get frustrated, and I was like "No... this is tragic gold!"). My wife's character was the smart, bookish, positive and care-free one, who ended up choking on her own vomit, dying because she was just a bit too carefree and things went badly. Friendships broke, betrayals happened, mistakes were made and it was one of the most bleak, baleful and beautiful gaming experiences I've ever been part of. It was the most literate of gaming experiences I ever had... not by intent, but by mechanics driving role playing that had great pathos.
 
Sometimes I want that in my game. Sometimes I want to just kick-ass and take names. Sometimes I want a mix of both. (Actually, most of the time I want a mix of both).

Right... the mantra is always "Stun multiple BEFORE... Body multiple AFTER"... for Killing Attacks because you have to know what the baseline Stun being done, is. But with Normal Attacks, you simply use the multiplier for both AFTER defenses... since Stun and Body are both determined by the damage roll. That is where it gets hinky.

(4d6 punch to the face... 14 stun 4 body vs. 4 PD + 3rPD CL... 7 stun gets through, no body... x2 so 14 stun is taken. 2d6K bullet to the face, 7 body done, first multiply 7x5 for 35 stun... then 7 body vs. 3rPDCL, 4 left over x2 = 8 Body taken... 35 stun vs. 4+3 = 28 stun taken. Really, the confusion is just compounded by Normal Attack vs. Killing Attack vs. Hit Location multiplier... I've done it so long it is quick, but it can be daunting if you aren't familiar with it.)

Isn't that exactly what it simulates?  The author does not want this character hurt too badly, so no one ever lands a solid hit, despite the lack of any reason that he never gets seriously injured other than pure, blind luck.  That is the cinematic ability we are trying to simulate in-game.

Mechanically, he was hit.  The damage shield would also hit.  I find it rare that defenses, including combat luck, block all damage anyway (STUN and BOD), which also means the target was hit.  That also means if I have Combat Luck and a DS, I was still hit so the attacker still takes damage

Yay, I have a niche!

I'm guessing I would be originally a strikingly handsome cambion. But then in an epic battle that resulted from my father striking out against my mother in a bid for freedom, my handsome form would be split into two "halves". I could then either appear in the form of a gnarled, old human male, or as a bloated, red-skinned demonic figure. In my demonic form, I would be seven feet tall, with reddish skin, pointed ears, and long, steely fingers. In my human form, I would be barely five feet in height, and could attack with a disgusting spittle that withers all that it touches.
 
I mean, hypothetically. Hard to be sure, specifically.

I have two in my basement

I'm a social democrat, which seems to terrify a lot of people. 



 

In our game this week, the ninja assassin and martial artist social terrorist (these are the PCs) facing off against the bruising professional hitman with a .460 S&W... they finally got in close after being scattered by massive shots through the walls and grenades... everyone in the room in temporarily deaf from all the concussive blasts... hitman almost cuts the social terrorist in half... ninja say, "If I'm right... I think he's out of bullets."  I have him roll an INT roll, and he gets a 3. "Yep... he's out of bullets. And I'll give you plusses to initiative because you are ready for that moment. (We use initiative and combat rounds, not the SPD chart.)
 
I immediately start cracking up as well, as I have to then tell them all about the "I rolled a 3 for that?" thread.

The big cross-over events are definitely not as good as the solo movies.
 
But that's big cross-over events for you. They will never have the character and plot development of a movie that can focus on a tight cast and plot.

In our game this week, the ninja assassin and martial artist social terrorist (these are the PCs) facing off against the bruising professional hitman with a .460 S&W... they finally got in close after being scattered by massive shots through the walls and grenades... everyone in the room in temporarily deaf from all the concussive blasts... hitman almost cuts the social terrorist in half... ninja say, "If I'm right... I think he's out of bullets."  I have him roll an INT roll, and he gets a 3. "Yep... he's out of bullets. And I'll give you plusses to initiative because you are ready for that moment. (We use initiative and combat rounds, not the SPD chart.)
 
I immediately start cracking up as well, as I have to then tell them all about the "I rolled a 3 for that?" thread.

Actually a good example of this in my bi-weekly game last night. Three PCs infiltrated the penthouse of a Milanese mob boss, got into a shoot out with some hired killers... named bad guys. One of the killers was surprised, out of combat, by a PC, who hit with 2 9mm rounds, one in his chest one through his arm... no Combat Luck as it doesn't apply when surprised out of combat. Bad guy was badly wounded but alive, but CON Stunned, so the follow up two shots to the head were, again, no Combat Luck applied (character incapacitated, even temporarily) and bad guy is gone, dropped without getting a chance to act.

In another part of the Penthouse, another bad guy made his Danger Sense roll and was prepared... started blowing holes through the walls with a .460 S&W. None of the characters had body armor, but all named characters have 1 level of Combat Luck. In this fight, the bad guy got one good look at a PC (lots of dodging down hallways, grenades going off, blowing through cheap interior walls going on... took a while for the fight to get face-to-face)... and hit... it was a leg shot, rolled badly... so with CL and 1/2 damage for hit location it ended up being a 2 body damage "nick" rather than blowing the limb off. Later, when the combat got in close, a PC got his 9mm close up and headshotted the big (very big) bad guy, but he had CL, so instead of likely dead and at least CON stunned, it was a bloody crease across the scalp and not enough to CON stun.

This fight was one of the most cinematic and fun fights, and it worked because we had nominally "unarmored" characters simply not going down with the first lucky hit. Nobody "wanted" to get hit and a decent roll to a dangerous hit location would still be really bad, but the difference in CL vs. non-CL is huge in actual play.

So after reading this whole thread I'm thinking that from now on I should make INT and PRE cost the same as DEX, ie 2cp per point.
 
Each CHAR gets you a base for a bunch'o'skills + one other thing. (go first, PER, and PRE attacks.)
 
Now if only I could work out how to program Hero Designer to accept the changes.

Actually a good example of this in my bi-weekly game last night. Three PCs infiltrated the penthouse of a Milanese mob boss, got into a shoot out with some hired killers... named bad guys. One of the killers was surprised, out of combat, by a PC, who hit with 2 9mm rounds, one in his chest one through his arm... no Combat Luck as it doesn't apply when surprised out of combat. Bad guy was badly wounded but alive, but CON Stunned, so the follow up two shots to the head were, again, no Combat Luck applied (character incapacitated, even temporarily) and bad guy is gone, dropped without getting a chance to act.

In another part of the Penthouse, another bad guy made his Danger Sense roll and was prepared... started blowing holes through the walls with a .460 S&W. None of the characters had body armor, but all named characters have 1 level of Combat Luck. In this fight, the bad guy got one good look at a PC (lots of dodging down hallways, grenades going off, blowing through cheap interior walls going on... took a while for the fight to get face-to-face)... and hit... it was a leg shot, rolled badly... so with CL and 1/2 damage for hit location it ended up being a 2 body damage "nick" rather than blowing the limb off. Later, when the combat got in close, a PC got his 9mm close up and headshotted the big (very big) bad guy, but he had CL, so instead of likely dead and at least CON stunned, it was a bloody crease across the scalp and not enough to CON stun.

This fight was one of the most cinematic and fun fights, and it worked because we had nominally "unarmored" characters simply not going down with the first lucky hit. Nobody "wanted" to get hit and a decent roll to a dangerous hit location would still be really bad, but the difference in CL vs. non-CL is huge in actual play.

We use PRE attacks all the time, and yes, there are times it is used on the PCs... moments when they are surprised and shocked outside of normal circumstances, a huge power is demonstrated, etc. I've often found it useful to get across my point as a GM... "The PC knows, whether they player agrees, that they are outclassed and in great danger" or whatever. Forcing a lost 1/2 phase or full action can be a very effective way of "attacking" the PCs in a cinematic way that isn't just damage dealing.
 
My only issue with PRE is that it is one stat, and only one stat, for all non-damage dealing/social combat. It probably is too cheap for the "always hits, area effect, mind control" it theoretically could be... but just because it MIGHT be abused doesn't mean I'm going to throw out one of the favorite mechanics at the table. 
 
Personally, I'm working on building a "social martial arts" based on PRE for attacking vs. EGO for defense, that breaks PRE down based on the various PRE skills. Like there is a Charm maneuver and a Persuasion maneuver, etc. To give those PRE skills more heft and make the PRE attack less "all encompassing."  Not sure how it will work, but we'll see.