GeekySpaz

Something that has been bugging me for a while is the rules for adding damage. Specifically the idea that if you have any advantages that influence how damage is applied you have to factor that in when calculating how much damage is added by a specific number of DCs. Such as an attack with armor piercing requires 6.25 points to increase the damage when a DC is 5 additional points added to the power. While I agree with how this rule works from a balance standpoint, using it in game is a pain in the neck. So I've been trying to think of an alternative house rule that keeps the balance aspect but makes the math easier during play. I would ideally like to be able to say that every DC (5 AP) added is one 1 pip, 2 DC = 1/2d6, 3=1d6 etc. just like the normal progression without advantages. So here are a couple ways to accomplish this that I've thought of. 1. Double the modifier of any advantage that influences damage. So for example AP would be +1/2, Increased Stun Multiplier would be +1/2, etc. 2. Each killing attack that can have increased damage added to it adds to the cost a naked modifier for active points equal to the amount of damage that can be added. So an armor piercing attack 2d6K that can have an additional 2d6K added to it would buy armor piercing as a naked modifier for up to 30 AP. I tend to like the second option better for two reasons. For attacks that only add damage up to the limit of the naked modifier the points work out exactly as per the standard rules. Using the armor piercing attack as an example under the normal rules each DC added adds 5 AP to the attack but every 6.25 AP added to the attack increases the damage by one step. Now every DC added increases the damage one step but the extra 1.25 AP/DC have been paid for by the naked armor piercing advantage. The second reason I like it is that since the rules for capping the amount of damage that can be added to an attack are optional for 6E this gives a good way to design powers with a built in definition for how much damage can be added to them. The rule could be that damage can only be added up to what is specified for the naked modifier. Unless I can think of reason not to (or someone points one out to me) I think I'll use something like that in my upcoming fantasy game.

Something that has been bugging me for a while is the rules for adding damage. Specifically the idea that if you have any advantages that influence how damage is applied you have to factor that in when calculating how much damage is added by a specific number of DCs. Such as an attack with armor piercing requires 6.25 points to increase the damage when a DC is 5 additional points added to the power. While I agree with how this rule works from a balance standpoint, using it in game is a pain in the neck. So I've been trying to think of an alternative house rule that keeps the balance aspect but makes the math easier during play. I would ideally like to be able to say that every DC (5 AP) added is one 1 pip, 2 DC = 1/2d6, 3=1d6 etc. just like the normal progression without advantages. So here are a couple ways to accomplish this that I've thought of. 1. Double the modifier of any advantage that influences damage. So for example AP would be +1/2, Increased Stun Multiplier would be +1/2, etc. 2. Each killing attack that can have increased damage added to it adds to the cost a naked modifier for active points equal to the amount of damage that can be added. So an armor piercing attack 2d6K that can have an additional 2d6K added to it would buy armor piercing as a naked modifier for up to 30 AP. I tend to like the second option better for two reasons. For attacks that only add damage up to the limit of the naked modifier the points work out exactly as per the standard rules. Using the armor piercing attack as an example under the normal rules each DC added adds 5 AP to the attack but every 6.25 AP added to the attack increases the damage by one step. Now every DC added increases the damage one step but the extra 1.25 AP/DC have been paid for by the naked armor piercing advantage. The second reason I like it is that since the rules for capping the amount of damage that can be added to an attack are optional for 6E this gives a good way to design powers with a built in definition for how much damage can be added to them. The rule could be that damage can only be added up to what is specified for the naked modifier. Unless I can think of reason not to (or someone points one out to me) I think I'll use something like that in my upcoming fantasy game.

Re: HEROEs of Athas I find you suggestion intriguing. I will have to give that thought. To begin with I want to examine one of these as a bit of an experiment: For the martial tree there is an easy point to determine a couple of branches, between ranged and melee combat. One thing I've been giving some thought to lately is that there is very little need to specialize between ranged and melee combat. OCV applies equally to both and weapon familiarity is cheap enough (even with some of the optional weapons familiarity costs suggested in Fantasy Hero) that there is no real disincentive to buy familiarity in both melee and ranged weapons and really be equally effective with both barring talents that favor one over the other. If the martial tree has separate branches for melee and ranged combat that would force more specialization so that a character who takes power in both will not advance as quickly in either as a character who specializes in one. (These thought are rough at this point but I want to capture them and solicit feedback before progressing very far.)

Re: HEROEs of Athas I would ideally like to do something like the second one you mention. But I am forced to agree it is a nightmare to build. One of the beauties of the HERO system is that since players can build anything using the power system in HERO the GM is free to trust that the players will create the powers that they want and all he has to do is supervise and make sure the player doesn't make something too broken. Unfortunately such a system as the tree type structure removes much of that flexibility since the players are now constrained to choose from a list of pre-defined abilities. However I also feel that such a system could make character creation very fun. As I work on this campaign I find I will probably have to reign in my ambition a bit and favor player flexibility over the fun of an ability tree (and flexibility certainly is not a bad thing). What I have come up with thus far is this (all tentative of course): I will be using the standard normal characteristic maximums as defined in 6E1, but with a further restriction. Each characteristic has a finite number of points that may be applied to it (30 pts for most characteristics but fewer points for some). Every 25 xp earned and a character can raise the maximum point ceiling for some of the characteristics. The player chooses a subset of the characteristics (I'm thinking 5 out of the 20 characteristics) and the ceilings for those increase by a finite amount (5 pts for most characteristics but fewer for a couple of them, such as PD and ED). Powers are limited to 30 AP. Powers fall into one of a few categories, Martial Talents, Psionic abilities, and Magical abilities (divided into Arcane, and various types of Primal magic). At each 25 xp tier the character may raise the AP cap on one of these power categories by 5. That's what I've come up with so far, such as it is.

I'll have to admit this hasn't come up as frequently as I would have thought given that WOTC just released the 4th edition of Dark Sun which is the best DnD setting (in my humble opinion) EVER. But I am working on a Dark Sun campaign using Fantasy Hero as a base rather than 4th or some other edition of DnD. I've had some fun in DnD over the years but I find that HERO just meshes with me better and is the best system I know of for building characters to concept. That being said I need to establish some ground rules and maximums for characters in such a game to keep things balanced and working correctly. Most of the players in my game are fans of Rifts (hey nobody's perfect, the fact they are willing to play HERO is a step in the right direction I think). One player admitted to me that he prefers the structure of the class based system of Rifts to the free form point system of games like HERO. What I would like to develop for my game is a Talent tree style system similar to what many computer games have and what games like 4th ed DnD are headed towards, in order to provide a structure similar to what this player is talking about. Now being that this will be a HERO game everything is drawn up in HERO terms so that if a player doesn't feel that any of the options I've left them with fit with the character they have in mind we can always adjust to what they want and keep things relatively balanced since everything is based on points anyway. So I am trying to build talent trees based on at least 4 different branches, martial powers, arcane powers, psionic powers, and non-arcane magical powers. My basic concept is to have a small list of talents that unlock each of these branches that characters can buy. Each talent gives characters access to higher characteristics, and more talents/powers appropriate to the branch for which they have purchased the unlocking talent. As characters progress they must meet prerequisites for more advanced tiers within each branch, each of which will unlock more powerful abilities. I am thinking to limit the abilities within each tier based on active points. The problem I am having is developing the specifics of this concept. Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated. If am approaching this the wrong way, and anyone can suggest a better approach that will meet the same end goal that would be appreciated as well.

Re: Mortal Wounds No need to apologize. I probably should have been more clear from the start as to what I was getting at.

Re: Mortal Wounds Precisely Good point. I had overlooked that particular aspect of what is written about impairing and disabling wounds. For the grittiest of campaigns (and ONLY for them), why not.

Re: Mortal Wounds I don't think my gaming group would be up to playing out their final hours that way. However for a major NPC such as the king the PCs serve or someone similar, this sort of thing could be very important. For PC's in groups such as mine a mortal wound really should only serve as a motivation to get the necessary magical healing. But even in that regard its helpful to have something of a mechanic to cover this. In principal I agree with you. This is probably the sort of direction I would like to head in.

Re: Mortal Wounds

Re: Mortal Wounds Again, I'm not talking about how to build a specific power. The reason I started this thread was more to discuss this aspect of the nature of damage in RPGs, and maybe come up with a house rule for HERO that reflects this. For example a rough idea (and I just came up with this now so its not been thought out fully) is any impairing or disabling wound to the the torso or head has a chance (perhaps determined with a CON roll) of being mortal. If the wound is mortal then the character makes a CON roll every hour and if he fails the roll he looses another body. Maybe with a mercy rule, pass 5 con rolls in a row and the wound wasn't mortal after all and you can start healing.

Re: Mortal Wounds Not quite what I'm getting at. A wound that takes a character to less than 0 body causes them to bleed at 1 body per turn until they reach negative their starting body and die. Which is standard hero rules. But when loosing one body per turn a character will be dead in minutes and they can still be saved by a paramedics roll. What I am talking about is a situation where the character is still above 0 body but will die tomorrow from the wound and nothing short of magical healing in a fantasy game, or futuristic medicine in a sci-fi game can prevent the character's death. You can use the cumulative advantage can create a special power that has this effect every time it is used but then its really just a special ability of that power. What I am talking about is more a feature of combat itself. There are certain wounds that are fatal but in which death takes hours or day. For example I know that there are certain organs that if punctured will release toxins into the body that will eventually kill the person, and we are talking a slow death. Go back to times before modern medicine, say 1000 years ago, and there was nothing to be done for the wounded. They were done for and nothing could save them short of the sorts of sugeries that have really only been possible in modern times.

I've been thinking about something lately. I have not seen any damage system that I am aware of for any game that deals with mortal wounds, that is wounds that will kills the person who has recieved them, but not yet. The wound will result in death in hours or days and the wounded person may even be able to function for a while, maybe even in combat, before they finally succumb to it. But the wound is fatal and beyond the medical science of the setting to save the character's life. Obviously any player would probably not like it if there was a rule for this in place that affected their characters. How much would it suck to still be playing your character but to know that later this session or next session you would be drawing up a new one and that their was nothing you could do about it. But what about for NPCs? For minor NPCs in combat this is somewhat moot. Either the NPC can continue to fight in which case you haven't defeated that foe yet (who cares if the orc barbarian is going to die in two days from the wound you just gave him to the gut, when he's going to kill you next turn?), or they are unable to fight and then does it matter how long that NPC will linger from his wounds before dying? But for major NPCs significant story elements may revolve around wounds such as this. I don't think I've ever seen a system with rules for determining when a wound to a character is a mortal wound. Thoughts?

Re: Vehicle Damage And Body Though as a house rule I might actually prefer your interpretation.

Re: Vehicle Damage And Body According to the vehicle rules in chapter 7 of 6E2 when a vehicle has lost all of its body it falls apart or blows up (GM's choice).

Is it just me or are vehicles in HERO a bit too delicate relative to their real world counterparts? A typical car has def 3 body 13-14. Meaning that 3 or 4 shots from a 5.56mm assault rifle (RKA 2d6) would destroy the car (BODY depleted means vehicle is falls apart according to the rules). Three or four shots from an m-16 will not make a car fall apart. If one of the shots is lucky enough to damage a critical part of the engine then it may stop working or if a tire is hit the car's mobility is reduced but 3-4 shots couldn't possibly make the car fall to pieces. Or am I crazy (why do I open myself up with questions like that, here come the responses telling me how crazy I am). Where I really notice this is with the writeups for large age of sail warships in TUV and the vehicle sourcebook. Most writeups that I've seen give ships def 4-6 and BODY in the low to mid twenties. The ships carry 20-30+ cannons on each side doing 3d6 each. So the way I figure it a ship as written could survive 6 cannon hits before being reduced to driftwood. Now I've never seen two 17th century ships trading broadsides first hand but from what I've seen in movies (hey dramatic realism, that's what we're trying to simulate, right?) these types of ships could trade 2-3 broadsides before suffering enough damaged to be crippled (meaning that the ship is dead in the water, the hull is still intact meaning some BODY remains). Now naturally if I'm not totally off base here the solution to my problem is quite obvious. I just modify these writeups accordingly and give them more body and increase costs accordingly but before doing that I just want an idea if I'm totally off base on this or if I have a point.

I'm not sure where to look to see if this has been asked yet so I thought I'd just ask. I apologize if its already been asked. Will the Hero System Martial Arts book be in full color or black and white or are you unable to say at this point? Something about the martial arts genre seems to me to deserve the full color treatment but that's just my opinion. If this question has been asked and answered already could someone direct me to the post so as to avoid wasting Steve's time?

I am trying to enter the hand to hand weapon table on pg 204 of 6E2 into hero designer (my question does not pertain to the use to hero designer just something I noticed while using it) and I discovered a discrepancy in the AP values listed for the various weapons. I build all the weapons as HKA with reduced endurance (0 END), and consistently the AP values that I come up with are 2 AP less than those listed on the table. Where is the extra 2 AP coming from? Is there an adder that should be applied to the cost of hand to hand attacks that is not listed in the discussion of hand to hand weapons on pages 201-203?

I may be overlooking something but I can't seem to find it clearly stated anywhere. Is the optional velocity based DCV on page 564 of 5ER intended to be a DCV bonus or is it in place of the a character's normal DCV?

The question came up during my game tonight of how far a character can move while prone. When the question came up I realized I didn't know, off the top of my head, the answer to this question so I looked in the rulebook. I couldn't find this issue addressed anywhere in the book. I see plenty of references to the OCV and DCV modifiers involving prone characters and the fact that it takes a 1/2 phase action to stand up from being prone but nothing regarding how far a prone character can move. I even tried doing a search through my PDF copy of the 5th edition revised rulebook and couldn't find rules for prone movement. Am I missing something or is the rule not in there?

Re: Do you have any "deal breakers" when it comes 6th edition? I probably don't have any true dealbreakers unless they really break the system and turn it into something unrecognizable. If they can streamline the rules a bit and make things a bit easier but maintain the overall flexibility and power of the system I'll be pretty happy. I would love to be able to do all the math for character creation in my head but as long as it doesn't get any more complicated than it is now I'll be satisfied (and i really hope they don't try to simplify the math by replacing it with a bunch of charts. I've seen some suggestions to that effect over in the 6th edition discussion). The one thing I REALLY want to see is the physical quality of the books improve. Nice thick paper with a sturdy binding. Keep at least the core books hardcover. If the core books physically resembled the books from Games Workshop or White Wolf (in physical appearance only, not in content) that would be truly awesome.

If an entangle is bought with the advantage takes no damage from attacks how does the person caught in the entangle escape from it assuming they don't have any power such as teleport to escape?

I have a player in my game who want to teleport the pilot of an enemy vehicle from the vehicle. He's constructing teleport using a variable power pool so there is nothing stopping him from applying usable as an attack to teleport power when he makes it. The first time he tried this I allowed it partly because I wasn't sure what the rule should be and didn't want to pause in the middle of the game to read the rules, and partly because it was a clever use of his power and I wanted to reward his creativity. But now he want to do it every time the party is faced with an opponent in a vehicle. I don't quite understand what the official rules on this are. How do I make it sufficiently difficult for him to do this such that he can't always get away with it but still allowing him to attempt it? I think its way too powerful if he can defeat any vehicle by removing the pilot. I think it should be possible but challenging enough that it won't always work. Otherwise I'll never be able to challenge this party with a vehicle again .

Re: The cost of killing damage However in fantasy or dark champions a hero might not have the same reluctance to kill his/her enemies and therefore its more cost effective to buy killing damage.

Re: The cost of killing damage Your comparing apples to oranges there. 1d6 of killing damage is 3 damage classes and 1d6 of normal damage is 1 damage class. So the cost per damage class is the same.

I was wondering if anyone can clarify something for me. Generally speaking normal damage and killing damage cost the same amount (5 pts/damage class). It seems to me that killing damage has a distinct advantage over normal damage in that it ignores non-resistant defense. Is there a corresponding disadvantage to killing damage that justifies normal damage and killing damage costing the same? If so what is it? If not why do they cost the same? Am I missing something?