Toadmaster

I've been there, I play mostly heroic games (Fantasy Hero etc), when there is a spread of speeds its not a big deal but when you run a speed 3 character and most of the other players and opponents are speed 4 or faster it is frustrating, it also results in all the characters being speed 4 which with 50 to 75pt chars really starts to cut into character color. About the only thing I can suggest is to get the GM to balance the game by limiting players speeds and the speeds of opponents. He should determine average, fast and really fast (generally 4, 5 and 6) and make sure the characters are balanced within this, if all the characters are speed 6 then 6 is not an exceptional speed. It may take the GM editing some of the characters to make sure there is a mix of speed, otherwise he should just stick to the max and accept that all characters will be that speed. In my opinion if 6 is max and standard humans are 2-3, then typical supers should be 4, a few 5 and 6 should be uncommon. Speed is one of HERO's great stats, but it can create many problems when its effects are not considered. One option is to set a "base" speed and require permission to be faster, the GM should not allow the whole group to be faster than this speed, the bulk of the group and opponents should be this speed with only a handful faster, another consideration is trying to avoid only one slow character to avoid the problem you mentioned.

I was going off of definitions of military units, under battery it said it was an artillery unit equivelent to a company, company said 4-5 platoons, platoons said 40-50 men. 500 does sound more reasonable, I just thought perhaps artillery crew eat good and have secretaries to write their letters home. And that is where I agree with you, damage is weird when you get this high, the +1DC per 2x works fine for small arms until you start getting into the .50 Browning range, as you go higher it gets weirder. Explosives don't seem to follow this pattern either.

I thought about that after the fact, I was just looking at the listing of weapons carried and didn't think about the fact that 1/2 are on the other side of the ship. As for the number of people required to crew the 155's? A Battery of guns is roughly a company, a company is about 200-250 people, a battery of guns includes 3-5 guns, so to get 20 guns you need 4 to 6 batteries 800-1500 people. You need more than just the SP gun and the 6 crew members to operate properly, just as the BB needs more than just the gun crews. Plus the BB is far more mobile and has a longer range between the 16" guns and Tomahawks. The BB doesn't do cross country well but the SP's don't swim so good either. Also if it makes you feel better the 16" gun with an AP shell would only do 8d6, the 120mm gun given in Fred is far too powerful going on previous versions of HERO, it caused quite a stir when 5th came out, it should only do 6d6, not 8d6 AP. HERO has always based damage doing +1DC for each doubling of energy, the 120mm gun which has 11-12 megajoules at the muzzle is not even in the same class as the 16' gun with its 350+ Mj but due to the doubling they are only 6DC apart. This is what I was refering to earlier about scaling at the high end, Steve Long (presumably, since he was the author) "boosted" the damage of a few items (.45ACP being another one, it should only do 1d6+1 not 1 1/2d6) which completely throws the rest off kilter, I don't mind the changes if a new way is produced but it screws everything up to only change a few things and leave the rest as they were. I've seen a write up for a nuke someplace and I think it did 20d6 and that caused a ruckus all on its own. Probably would have helped to bring this up earlier but I only just found my notes on the really big guns.

I wasn't sure about the AP but for explosive shells if the weight of explosive is less than 1/2 the weight of the shell, then they are considered semi AP, not HE so a 2700lb HE shell has at least 1350lbs of explosive and they don't pound a beach with AP shells for the most part, they didn't even use AP shells against many ships as they would tear right through the lighter ships without exploding.

There may be some truth to what you say, but do you really think that someone who would plop down $30-$40 for a game because it has a cool name or pretty pictures is going to take the time to learn HERO's rules? If the only way gamers buy games is on the internet or from TV commercials Fantasy HERO might not do so well, but considering that Fred is a large book and right on the back it says you can play anything, that sounds like a selling point to me, I read the description of a game, ask around about it, look for a game so I can try it out before I spend any money on it etc, I do some research and don't really care if it has a great name. Look at GURPS, that sounds more like something you get from dating a porn star not a game but it seems to do well.

You are completely mixing peaches and watermelons, a 16" shell is fired from a gun, a 15,000lb "daisy cutter" FAE bomb is pushed out the loading ramp of a cargo plane, a 16" gun has a range of about 30 miles, a bomb has a range of 0 feet without something to drop it. Using this logic you could argue that a scifi ray gun doesn't do enough damage because getting hit by a semi would do more. BTW FAE is rated at about 5x the force of TNT, so that 15,000 lb FAE is actually about equal to a 75,000 lb bomb. I've dealt with the FAE bomb, as for the missile they do not do more than a 16" gun, a Tomahawk carries a 1000 lb warhead, a 16" shell weighs 2700 lbs, at least 1/2 of this is explosive in an HE round, (or it would be semi AP) an AP round carries less than 1/2 but I'd guess its still close to 1000 lbs. Of course the Tomahawk can be nuke armed but then we are back to the FAE question above. Not necessarily, there are many ways to represent damage, AP, + Stun X, normal vs killing, NND etc, a HEAT round would most likely do an AP killing attack vs he target, an FAE is more likely a really big normal attack, the AP round is better for cutting through hard targets, the FAE for obliterating non armored targets. Explosives are also rated for their "shattering power", I read an article on the Oklahoma Federal building bombing and it claimed the ANFO used was actually one of the most effective explosives for that purpose although only about 1/2 the power of an equivelant amount of TNT it provided more of a push causing more structural damage than TNT which would have had more of a shock but less actual ability to knock the building down due to the distance, an explosion is not just an explosion, you can also compare this to a stick of dynamite and a frag grenade, if you drill a hole in a rock the dynamite will do more "damage" because the grenade has less explosive filler, but if you toss both out in a field the grenade is more likely to kill you because its fragments carry farther (more damage at range). Not really, the Iowa class carries 9x 16" (406mm) guns, 20x 5" (127mm) guns and some Tomahawk missile launchers, in WW2 it carried a crew of 2700, I believe that was reduced considerably when updated in the 1980's. To get 20+ 155mm guns you are talking about several batteries of guns so you're probably looking at 1500 soldiers to match the 5" guns, I'm guessing probably another batterey or 2 for each of the 16" guns. Of course a handfun of C-130s pushng BLU-82 "Daisy cutters" out the back could do it with less than 100 men and 2 B-52's with about 10 but now were back at the Apples and Bannanas discussion. I think were you are having problems is application not absolute technlogy, sure in a couple of centuries we will probably have the ability to demolish entire planets with hand held weapons, it is unlikely however that they will be issued a standard equipment, since the 1950's the technology has existed for nuclear bazookas, they were even issued for a time fired from a tripod or jeep, never used though (Hmmm, I wonder why?) so there you go a Jeep was better armed than a WW2 Battleship and now Cruisers are not as well armed as Coldwar Jeeps. Something must be wrong. I don't disagree in whole with you, as I mentioned sometime back, the upper end of HERO damage is a bit screwy, but don't agree with the conclussions of your technology arguments.

This brings up something I've seen mentioned before that I think is improtant to the whole idea of HERO being universal. While the whole HERO universe thing is an interesting idea, the all stats are the same in all genres is exactly the kind of thing that I think makes it fall apart. In a supers campaign it makes sense to reduce the damage of tanks, battleships and other impliments of destruction and to reduce their armor because with Supers its all about the heros and villians. In StarHERO or ModernActionAdventureEspionageWarHERO or even some low powered supers its more about the technology, sure the characters are important but how they interact with the available tech is more important than in a classic supers game, compare Batman to Superman, Batman is exceptional for his mind and resources, sure he has some good physical attributes but those are secondary to his gadgets and his brain, Superman is also very smart but his thing is his inherant powers, even if he were a little dense he would still be Superman the "Man of Steel", a dumb Batman would be Mongo, large thug #17943 or possibly Button pusher #7. I think a house rule like you mention is really the only way to work Supers and non Supers stuff, and to a lessor extent certain other genres, I mean if Gamma radiation can create the Hulk and Radioactive spiders make Spidermen why wouldn't tanks and guns and such be weaker, in our world Gamma radiation would kill me not turn me green and grant super strength, so guns that take 5 or 6 shots to stop me make just as much sense.

Ok, I liked the AF rules from DI (big surprise), bonuses to hit for AF etc. To represent this I guess it would be easiest to buy guns with AF, CSL's only with AF? (+1 OCV with 3 round burst, +2 with 5 rounds and +4 with 10 etc? I am assuming the lim on the CSL's would be minimal probably 1/4. How about a gatling (the old hand cranked type) AF with the lim "based on STR" Perhaps using the point value of the STR go towards buying levels of AF? How much of a lim do you think this would be worth. Any ideas?

I want to make a smoke screen effect that is weaker around the edges. I was thinking Darkness AE, Change environment (-3) AE (larger than the first) Change environment (-2) AE (larger than the second) Change environment (-1) (larger than the third) Or the easier but more twisting of the rules route Darkness explosion with the SFX that instead of losing dice the darkness begins to become a penalty instead of blocking sight as it loses points. Also would you allow a lim "follows the wind" for an AE or explosion, instead of making a radius the AE / EX spreads in an oblong shape with the direction of the wind, the amount of oblong dependant on the wind speed. Any other ideas for doing any of these?

How do you determine holding breath, are you just using the drowning rules and assuming that holding your breath works the same way?

Consider range too, a 16" gun on the Iowa has a range of approximately 30 miles, that won't get you very far in space. Also WW2 Battleships represent the high point in big gun heavy armor warships, modern ships can't even compare for blasting ground targets in support of infantry. In a similar concept the USSR has a much higher capability in transistor technology than the US because they did not begin to use micro chips until a much later date, so while in the US transistor technology is considered totally obsolete (really hasn't advanced since the 1960's) the Soviets were doing stuff with transistors we were thought you could only do with micro chips. Its all a matter of how the tech is used. You can not just assume that tech will advance endlessly, you have to consider the use.

I don't disagree that some work is needed on the upper end weapons which is one of the reasons I've been trying to build piercing among other things, the differance between a 75mm M3 gun as used on a Sherman tank and a 120mm gun as used on the Abrams are so close together that it is hard to make the Abrams immune to the Sherman without also making it immune to itself. However the idea that a 30th Century warship is related to a 20th Century Warship is not really an apples to apples comparison, a 21st century Warship is not equal in firepower to a 20th Century Battleship in reality either. They were built for entirely differant battlefields. A major problem when dealing with the high end is that HERO is based around +1DC for each 2x in power, so when you are dealing with pistols (generally 100-1000 Joules) you find a range of 1 pip to 2d6+1, but rifles (typically 1000-15,000 Joules) for the most part sit at 2d6+1 with a few exceptions, by the time you reach cannons you see megajoules of energy differance only getting you a +1DC. Then you also get into the issue of DEF which works in a similar way, so the problem is actually compounded, its not just DC that is tricky to scale, it has to be added to DEF which is also difficult to scale, and then you throw in Superheros who are suposed to be above all this as well (nothing like arguing "real world" physics with comic book and / or magical physics. Basically I see your point but don't have a solution at this time.

I used DI to play a Bureau 13 campaign and a short campaign using FTL2448. Not really much needed converting that I can remember, we just used the HERO rules with the Tri-tac setting. I always liked Tri-Tac, the rules were a little hit or miss (some I really liked some not so much) but the settings were great. Tri-tac still has a lot of stuff available in PDF.

This is the second one of these type of threads I've seen, I find it funny that some people apparantly are so threatend by HERO they feel compelled to take time out of their day to make a point by point explanation of why HERO is not the best game and go so far as to try to show that it is a bad game, of course it looks as though they don't take the time to actually learn the rules which would help them argue (actually it would probably cause them to lose their faith when they saw the true wonderfulness of Fred). There are a lot of games I don't like, and I might suggest they take a look at another system but it doesn't cause me to feel the need to "save" people from the system they are enjoying. Well I gotta go, Fred is going to need more glass cleaner to finish my windows (Yes, Fred even does windows).

I just picked this up for my computer, basically you build castles and defend them or besiege them. Not really related to Hero but I've found it is really getting me in the mood for FH, I love dumping the flaming oil over the walls. Not the greatest game ever but well worth the $19.99 I spent.

Or if you are relating to freezing combat how about the Psyc lim "deer in the headlights", must make an EGO roll when threatend with violence or surprised, failure results in stunned behavior until a successful EGO roll, taking damage provides a bonus (whap, whap, snap out of it man, whap, whap).

Sort of depends on how much the "laser tag gear fits into the game. The military uses MILES gear (I don't know what it stands for, something about military laser simulation) This uses blanks in real weapons with a laser emitter on the barrel triggered by the blanks, the soldier wears little detectors all over his helmet and torso, not sure about legs and arms. With a system like that I'd just take the normal weapons and add the lim only to trigger MILES gear (no damage or stun) these have a narrow laser which must be aimed like a regular gun and the laser is encoded with weapon info so a rifle can't kill a tank. For laser tag more like the toys you can buy I'd think they were AE line or a cone, they tend to have a broad beam like a flashlight so aiming for the chest mounted detector is not neccessary but aiming at the individual isn't that hard either since its like aiming a hollywood shotgun. I wouldn't bother with flash, I'd probably just make the vest images, sound and light (flashing lights and loud beeping) and have the gun be a special effect to trigger it, or you could add detect IR lasers to the vest and buy the gun as images (IR laser beam). Then again you could always go the paint ball route, 1d6 normal attack, 1/2 body (so a six could actually hurt someone, those things hurt if you get hit without padding), images (colored paint spot) and basically build it as a gun.

A couple of thoughts, one is the hexes are 2 meters (6 feet) side stepping and such are likely to be contained within the hex, so while on the game map they may look stationary that really is not the case, as already mentioned there are penalties for really just standing still (brace, set, concentration etc). The second is are you using the multiple attackers bonuses, these can result in a much more dynamic situation as PC's manuever to get multiple attackers on one enemy or try to prevent the enemy from doing the same to them, -1DCV for each attacker after the first adds up fast. Using sweep also affects how fighters line up, once sweep takes out a few targets at one time, opponents are less likely to allow themselves to be lined up to allow sweep manuevers. I have thought some of GURPS' manuevers such as feint would be useful for HERO, some of the ideas mentioned could be useful in a limited fashion, tied in with martial arts, tactics, WF etc.

I've noticed the same thing with Post apacalypse games, during the 80's when the Cold war was going strong this was a popular genre, ever since the rotten commie evil empire of the USSR became the cheerful enlightened Russian co-op the PA genre has been slowly dying off. We need some new commies pointing missiles at us banging shoes on the table, building walls nad just plain being intimidating, these darn terrorists just don't have the proper organizational skills to replace the USSR and the CCCP are too subtle for us Americans lending themselves far more to the espionage genre, when are the polititions going to learn that their actions screw up are gaming habits.

I think what you are missing is that the "danger" does not even need to know they are a danger, let alone "mask" their intent. For example a drunk driver is barrelling along towards spiderguy TM, the drunk has no ill will towards our hero but his arachnoidsense TM still kicks in warning him of the impending danger. There are exception I could see, such as out of sync with the current universe but that would be a big GM call on allowing. I suppose invisibility or darkness vs DS would be possible but should have a limitation only works against X method but this would apply more towards DS that has a lim of some kind that matches up with the invisibility / darkness sfx. Since DS isn't typically taken with these types of lims it would be fairly rare for these powers to work.

Both the d3 and the HERO dice are good ideas, but in the mean time there is this neat little invention called paint Just drop a couple dabs the same color as the die body to cover up the extra spots, for the d3 and paint one of the dots another color except for the one and paint two on the six. I may just have to pick up some dice with dots and try this out. Thanks for a great idea. I still need to rebuild my collection of six siders anyway, this is a good excuse.

Funny the past couple of days I've thought about posting a similar post. What I've played with HERO. Supers (I played a fair amount of Champions until DI came out, very little since) Fantasy (several D&D Grayhawk based campaigns, plus a number of generic fantasyhero campaigns) this is probably what I've used HERO for the most. Military Anti-terrorist Spy / espionage lots of Aftermath, Morrow Project and Twilight 2000 A few Call of Cthulhu games A few pulp games loosely following the Indiana Jones theme Stalking the night fantastic (modern horror) A WesternHERO campaign (well ok a few sessions) A dimension hopping / time travel campaign (I played a 2m tall jet black lizard necromancer named Nerbert who was armed with a Galil ARM and a S&W .44 magnum) unfortunately this game fell apart after a few sessions (the GM flaked out). A few scifi StarHERO type games (although we didn't have StarHERO since it didn't exist. A toon game I've also played in quite a few one shot games of various genres, the heyday of my HERO gaming was in the days of DI, JI and FH3 so its been alongtime for some of the games and I know I'm leaving some out. By the time HERO4 came out we were primarily into FH and Postapacalypse games. Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to break in Fred. I have yet to find a genre I was interested in that I couldn't use HERO for. Some games are better for some aspects, particularly detail but I've always been satisfied with HERO.

well first of all you have to add some COM to the car, it was a 1953 Corvette after all, some extra PRE seems likely too. Gliding is a given since the car clearly was under control during the decent and as I recall the parachute wasn't used to slow the decent, it was used once the car hit the ground to slow its forward velocty to a manageable level (and looked cool), ablative armor vs reentry seems likely since the driver used the windshild wipers to clear the windshield of ash. As mentioned the car is a convertible so the life support was probably provided by the space suit. Otherwise just a regular classic auto. How about Harry Canyons taxi, that may be a bit more difficult. remote laser gun, armor, disintogrator ray, big ol glove box of weapons, jet drive etc. If you have not seen Heavy Metal you must go, NOW, hurry up. Anyone see the second one, I never heard anything about it until it came out on DVD and was wondering if its worth while.

Or instead of tracking damage just say any hit that surpasses the Body of the armor in one blow reduces the DEF, so in the above example DEF 3 Body 5 armor a blow doing 8 or more damage in one hit would reduce the DEF, this makes the armor last longer and reduces book keeping (just one number 8+ to remember instead of tracking "hit points" over the life of the armor). Shields could work the same way or just say that when their body is exceeded the shield breaks or is otherwise useless. An advantage I see to damaging armor besides the "realistic" aspects is that it reduces the scavenger effect, you know those dungeon hauls where the party strips everything of value from the corpses, at least in some cases the armor, shields etc wouldn't be worth saving. It also might encourage players to take repair spells in addition to the obligatory healing spells. Also adding Body to armor could be used in addition to DEF for higher quality work creating a little more flavor to armor.

Ok, normally you use body for objects like doors, walls, swords, when the body is overcome you have broken the door open, knocked a hole in the wall or broken the sword. What if for armor you use the body for the value to reduce the DEF, so for example lets say boiled leather armor is DEF3, Body 5, for each five points that gets through the DEF you reduce the DEF by one (holes torn in the armor etc), this Body is not deducted from the damage the character wearing the armor takes, it is just used to keep track of the armor. So for example BoB is wearing his Boiled Leather armor DEF3, Body5 and takes a hit for 7 points of damage, the armor stops 3 points, the other four are applied to BoB and his armor (each take 4 Body), the armor is damaged but still fully functional, BoB takes another hit for 5 Body, so BoB takes another 2 Body as does his armor (for a total of 5 points), since this is equal to the armors Body of 5 it loses a point of DEF, the next hit does 12 points, the armors new DEF of 2 reduces the impact and BoB and his armor each take 10 points, the armor is reduced by 2 DEF (10 points is 2x 5body, so 2 DEF is lost) his armor is hanging in shreads (0 DEF) and BoB is probably not feeling so hot either. Had he been wearing Chainmail (DEF6 Body 10) this would look like 1 body vs BoB and armor for the first, 0 Body for the second and the third would have done 6 Body, so his armor is still at full value, if he were to take another 3 pts of body (total of 10)then his armor would lose a point of DEF. I don't have Fred handy so this is off the top of my head but armor might look like this Leather DEF 2, Body 4 Boiled Leather DEF3, Body 5 Chainmail DEF6, Body 10 Platemail DEF 10, Body 12 So damage to kill the wearer of light armor probably also cuts the armor to ribbons (no salvage) but chainmail while damaged would still be useful. It is a little extra work to keep track of the damage to the armor but really probably isn't to bad if you want the extra "realism". Hope this is a little more clear.