MrAgdesh

Just emailed my GM my 5E character and his copy of HD didn't have access to the advanced Combat Skill Levels options (such as 6pt ones from Ultimate Skill). As such, it showed errors in my build. But his copy of HD (2015) is later than mine (2013).

Did these get removed? He just has the standard block of options from 5rEd.

Gnope. Sorry.

1) I have several Battlemats in different scale hexes - for Champions I use 38mm hexes (1 1/2”) because that’s the scale of Heroclix and they are the figures I use.

For Fantasy Hero I am using 28mm heroic scale figures mounted on 30mm bases so I use 30mm hexes. I always equate the hex, whatever it’s real-world size, to 2 metres.

2) I write handouts for players with campaign info on them. I usually post these as PDF files on an FB group or blog site, along with adventure synopses so that people can refresh their memories. I run three systems a month and play in a fourth so each game runs once a month - having a reminder for people is crucial as not everyone takes notes and even those that did can miss vital points. 

3) I tend to write my own adventures with bullet points. I find it’s easier to pick bits out than from a wall of text. 

2 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

as a GM I dislike one player being able to take more than seven or eight actions in a round, especially if everyone else only has three or four actions.  I even persuaded one of my players to take his SPD 12 speedster down to SPD 9 and only that far because I knew he was likely going to need 2 or 3 phases of recovering during a fight every turn.

 

Duplication also ramps up the number of actions per turn which can seriously slowdown a game and make other players get much less spotlight during the game.

 

 

This. Speed is the broken part of the system.

Interested in this because I asked a similar question here;

Simply removing the Focus aspect works for say the main MacGuffin, but when you have someone who can teleport a vast variety of things to their hands then its different (E.g. A Porte sorcerer in 7th Sea can do this by blood marking (Floating Locations?) individual items).

On 12/7/2019 at 2:04 AM, zslane said:

I'm not so sure that leaning heavily, if not entirely, on published adventures is something that only aging GMs who lack time anymore are doing. It's a much more pervasive phenomenon, I think, reaching young (new) players as well. It feels like the old DIY ethos is just gone today.

I think that you have a point here.

Although we have a boom of 'normals' playing D&D, a lot of them are only casual roleplayers. They are people with a variety of pastimes who dip into the RPG hobby from other related interests such as console gaming, or  maybe watching 'Stranger Things'.

When we started playing D&D in the early 80's sessions would last the full 11 hours that we had the rooms at Uni and then we would go back to somebody's room on campus to discuss what had gone on.  Now, the students struggle with concentration on sessions lasting more than 3-4 hours. That, and they're tied with other pressing social engagements.

They obviously enjoy playing but its not the be all end all that it was to us. New players don't want to invest huge amounts of time and effort  in creating scenarios when they can just purchase them. Certainly this holds true in the local games clubs that I have recently visited. Whilst us older gamers may not have time to put our own stuff together due to life commitments I think that younger players are definitely more used to consuming than creating. To quote the Mandalorian; "This is The Way".

20 hours ago, steriaca said:

Yes. I'll add Capoeira.

 

Technically almost all martial arts pre-20th century is "available", but depending on the exact campaign, may not be available. For example, you could want to play a displaced Russian who knows Sambo. It might be acceptable in a campaign set in Alaska/Canada, but explain why a Russian is wandering the old west...

 

Sambo it seems is a very modern invention (like karate) in that its 20th century years old. It does seem to incorporate many features of older arts (such as Mongolian wrestling etc).

As for a Russian wandering the Old West, that's easy. He was the Cossack bodyguard of a late White Russian aristocrat on a hunting party expedition (Shalako!) who having failed to save his master from a marauding grizzly/injuns/bandits has become a lost soul in the Old West - ashamed to return home.

Incidentally... Googling Turkish Oil Wrestling brings up the question "Why do Turkish oil wrestlers put their hands in each other's pants?"

"Because they're Turkish" is not the answer apparently.

5 hours ago, PhilFleischmann said:

IMO, it would be better if the equipment doubler was an advantage (say +1/4), rather than an adder.  That way, you're paying more for more powerful equipment, as it should be.  And speaking of Life Support, suppose you have some limited life support equipment, after the Focus limitation and whatever other limitations it might have, it may well cost even less than 5 points!  Why should you have to pay 5 points for a backup of something that cost less than 5 points?

6E2; Pg 181:

"If a character wants to buy multiple items of equipment that cost less than 5 points, he can buy the items individually or using the 5-point rule,
whichever is cheaper."

This is a peculiarity of the system, and I agree with you in that it is glitchy, especially so for Hero games that emphasise 'realism' over 'dramatic realism.  I remember years ago, one of our group who was fairly new to Hero had set up a Justice Inc. game. He had a number of hoodlums holding tommy guns -  menacingly, but not pointed at anyone in particular  - across the far side of the street. Combat erupted on Phase 12 with both parties exchanging fire. Next turn when a player who was SPD 3  realised that the hoods were SPD 2, he used his Phase 8 to charge across some 40' distance with a 'Flying Tackle' (Move Through) on one of the hoods. The GM couldn't believe that RAW, the PC would be able to charge across the road to hit one of them before ANY of them got a chance to fire off a shot. It didn't suit his dramatic sense so he allowed half of them to fire off rolls as though they had the PC 'Covered' (which they hadn't previously announced of course, so effectively he was allowing them to abort their Phase 12's to an attack). 

Nobody had any issues with this as I seem to recall, including the target PC. It was just a system rule that sounded dumb to the guy in charge and his fix didn't seem unreasonable.

9 hours ago, steriaca said:

Martial Arts appropriate for Western Hero, via HERO System Martial Arts book.

 

 

 

Plus Capoeira. There was even an episode of Kung Fu where Caine encounters a capoeirista. 

8 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I'm not big on Westerns, or versed in the tech of the day.  Are there other issues specific to Western games which would create issues with a combined attack?

I think that you pretty much have it as is, Hugh. Both Guns Blazing against one opponent would be the classic Western trope. For a heroic game I'd put some kind of penalty on that, but not for the 'Two-Gun Kid' in a supers/western crossover game.

Only other combined attack I can think of would be all the shenanigans involved in a Weird West setting.

Has anybody running a Champions game that allows Combined Attacks found them to be overpowered? I run one and haven't, although I must admit, they don't crop up perhaps as often as they could/should mainly because my players or I forget that this is a thing from 5E onwards - despite me having reminded them. 

I would like to thank Tywll for pointing out the 'claw, claw bite' routine above. I haven't run FH for a good while (since 4th) and the Combined Attack makes perfect sense.

Chris, in regards to Western Hero for 6E, maybe make some kind of statement that Combined Attacks (no penalty) are only really appropriate for inclusion in Highly Cinematic Campaigns?

(I'm currently running Aces & Eights: Reloaded. Very nitty-gritty and extremely lethal once the guns come out).

First off, the only 'gear' they should be carrying/wearing whilst swimming is maybe their loin cloths and a dagger in their teeth. Anything else worn underwater isn't practical. Are there any respites via air pockets or is it fully submerged?

If these are 'standard' adventurers there should be at least four of them with 50' rope, right?  I'd be looking at utilising that (along with good knot-tying skills) and/or seeking out an alchemist for a potion of water breathing!

Mechanics wise, yeah add the amount of STR used to the encumbrance if they want to go fishing things out in dribs and drabs. Are they certain that there are no more threats down there?!

Those divers are just plain superhuman! I'm a pretty fit guy for my age - whenever I go swimming (which most recently has been in the Balearic, Adriatic, and Aegean seas) I have found that in recent years, the increased salinity of the Med in general has meant that in order to dive maybe only 10-15 feet of water to the ocean floor (I swim close to the shore) is a herculean effort. What hurts the most is that in order to go lower, you have to exhale excessively in order to sink down (the buoyancy of the salt is staggering), almost to the point of emptying your lungs. This is self defeating as you then have no spare oxygen to be able to swim and explore whilst down there. In other words, holding your breath is one thing. Holding it whilst exerting yourself is ridiculously hard (and not recommended generally,  but I always like to think of those times when these sort of things might come in useful - and as a firefighter conservation of air is something I practice).

Back to the case in (game) point. Yeah, I agree with Doc that 2 minutes in a *cinematic* game is not unreasonable. There are a good number of films where normals get up to all sorts of shenanigans underwater (rescuing people from sunken vehicles etc), hell, even *seeing* underwater (without goggles), is pretty impossible, but that doesn't make for a good movie.  😉

On 11/9/2019 at 2:53 AM, massey said:

I found that the simple act of counting makes it so much harder.  Normally counting is a 0 End activity, but trying to manage your breathing while you're in a deep stretch or doing a side kick, that wears me out faster than the kicking does.

 

Try playing Kabaddi.

8 hours ago, Spence said:

 

 

To me Hero is a classic example of a "chicken or the egg" vicious circle.  Building stuff in Hero and Playing Hero.  You need to play in order to really understand the build part.  But without someone that already knows the game as a guide, many (maybe most) of the new players will not invest the time needed to understand the system when they can play any number of RPG's that are far more easier to start. 

 

This.

With Hall of Champions I expect very different submissions from people as to what they expect is reasonable under the system. Perhaps a little foreword from each writer with "Why the characters and scenario are designed this way" and scalable options would help. 

6 hours ago, Tywyll said:

 

Being out for 3-4 turns seems a terribly long time in HERO. One of my players got stunned and basically didn't get to do anything for 45 minutes (I know because he timed it and I barely heard the end of it). How do your players handle losing their actions for long stretches? I mean I remember Pathfinder and I wasn't a fan of getting hit with a spell that meant I didn't get to act for an hour or more while the fight dragged on.

Way back, I think that it would have been quite a while, but that was may years ago in early days of playing the game and not really understanding the system. These days a Turn might take about 7-8 mins to resolve, max. So, a player might be out for half an hour at most. That's easily the length of time that players 'would be out of it' if say just one or two of the party went to see an NPC about something. I don't have younger players so they don't tend to lose interest in that short a period, or get easily distracted elsewhere (phones..?).

If somebody is out for awhile I make it up to them by focusing on their character a bit more in downtime and story progression etc. It seems to balance out.  Then again, myself and my Adversarial GM once kept a player waiting on IRC in 2000 for four hours, on Christmas Eve. Just to have to tell him that actually, he was dead. That player still plays in my games and we often laugh about that one.

Well. I do.

My fights now seldom go beyond 3-4 turns so if taken out they aren’t out for long. 

The other thing is that when you KO a villain they stay KOed. 

We're all on the same page really.

One thing that I have tried to instil is that there is no shame in getting one punched. Sometimes it has happened to characters (who make amends later in the scenario) and sometimes they have done it to the villains (usually when its a supers team vs villain team and there are individual fights). One PC was even prosecuted for excessive force against a villain because he badly injured him landing a blow. These days bad guys DO press charges.

6 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

Systems with hard rails - like D&D 5e - do take a good chunk of workload off the DM.  There's little haggling as what does or doesn't constitute a legal/fair/balanced character is set in stone.

That's the nail on the head for me. Hero's subjectivity.

If I buy a 5-6 level adventure for D&D I know that it will pretty much work for characters of those levels.

If I buy a Standard Superheroic 6E HERO adventure then I'm probably going to have to do a lot of work to tailor it to my game. The writer's idea of what is right for that sort of level is probably very different from mine.

2 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

My most recent campaign has average defences set to mean that being hit by three average attacks would take someone out of the fight.  I have allowed players the ability to raise their defences or attacks if, by doing so, they incur defence, CV or END penalties.  I did this to try and encourage players to think about their tactics, increasing defences at the cost of being able to hit opponents, able to do more damage at the cost of being easier to hit or becoming fatigued.  It is the ability to make significant decisions that makes combat interesting, this is probably more for knowledgeable players but it is the kind of thing that experienced gamers pick up reasonably quickly.

I did exactly the same. Playing the Heroclix game for some years actually took me back to the comics and how frequent it was for a couple of brick combatants to only land about three to four telling blows before one of them was KOed (Submariner#8). Agile dodging types, along with trained humans often got one punched if the Big Hitter landed. I came up with a set of loose rules about roughly what I was expecting from the various archetypes in things such as CV, damage soaking, SPD etc, so that they tended to play out to the source material. I'd played the game for years and realised that fights only drag on if you don't follow these kind of guidelines. That's just experience with the system though.

2 hours ago, GM Joe said:

 

That is a big one. Balance defenses against attacks and don't let them get too out of whack in either direction.

 

Regarding SPD, I agree that it can get out of hand easily. I tend to run lower-DEX, lower-SPD games when compared to the published materials. SPD is typically 1-2-3 for Normals, 2-3-4 for Heroes, and 3-4-5 for Supers. DEX is typically 11 +/- 3 for Normals, 17 +/- 3 for Heroes, and 20 +/- 3 for Supers.

 

What ranges do you use?

Pretty much the same ones as your good self  - across the board.

I'm about to grandfather some characters to 6E. Interestingly, some of the players have already talked about reducing their DEX as it isn't directly tied to CV anymore so this is a good and welcome change.

On 10/26/2019 at 11:53 PM, Tywyll said:

Other than the 1 hit or 2 hit minion rule from 4e FH, are there any good ideas on how to speed up combat? I mean beyond system mastery and electronic tools.

Limit Speed. It's broken.

Make everybody the same Speed or within 1 pip. For me, everybody at 3 SPD is enough for your generic heroic campaign. You may allow the odd exception. The Big Cats have SPD 4 - are your reflexes that good?

In Superheroic campaigns there have been enough builds and advice of late that means your Speedster doesn't have to have a higher SPD than your brick, just more movement and a higher DCV. 

Mooks don't block or dodge.

Don't allow big defences in the game that thwart attacks. If your average Supers attack is 8-10 dice then 30PD means fights will last forever - a complaint often lodged against the system. 

I popped out to a nearby village games club last night to say hello and see what was going on. There were three tables of D&D players in the local bowls club (a small venue).

They guys have a 3 hour timeslot - 18:30 - 21:30 so get straight into it. I arrived at 18:45. By this time two new players had rolled up their characters and were, more or less, good to go.

Hero needs this. Somehow.

I'll be interested to see contributions to Hall of Champions, just to see what everybody considers normal or reasonable builds/levels of power. I've always thought that the NPCs in supplements were way too overpowered (*) - certainly for my style of play,  so if I want to use them, I have to tone them down. Which equals more work, less play.

(*) exception being Mike Surbrook's stuff.

46 minutes ago, KawangaKid said:

Note: I'm not saying that we should entirely ditch the strengths of HERO. I've written some articles about it, and I believe that HERO is about characters and story as much as any other RPG, but a different kind of storytelling and tolerance for plausibility than others.

Agreed, it certainly is about characters as much as any other RPG, perhaps more so.

The single biggest and best thing that Hero has given me is the requirement to come up with a character concept prior to actually playing. This reverse-engineering was a major strength. Rather than roll up a set of numbers and decide what class and race you are going to squeeze them into, you think about your class and race first and then put the numbers where you want them. I like that as it encourages people to think about their characters more from the outset and that's when the Disdvantages/Complications form.

Of course, some players just want to start out with the bare bones of something and see how their character grows. They want to hit the floor running into an adventure and thinking about their character's past history and foibles isn't high on the agenda.

There is a guy near me (Bruce) who runs a game in a local pub on Tuesday nights. Its the Dungeon Crawl Classics system. He runs each of the sessions as self-contained adventures and always welcomes new players to drop in (and out) as required. One of my players tends to go most weeks and I've asked him about how it runs. If the scenario doesn't finish for example, he always leaves it at a position where new players can be added or drop out next week. So, never on a cliffhanger, but more like in a local village.

My friend says; "Its a fun game, very old school, and not the way we play, but its enjoyable and he's always fully subscribed".

I've noticed an 'Old Skool Resurgence' of late - people harkening back to less sophisticated times where you simply used to listen at the door, check for traps, pick lock etc, and go Monty Hauling from room to room. We've moved on from this with more elegant systems and requirements because most of us have played a very long time. But there are an awful lot of new gamers who have never experienced this style of play and quite enjoy it to kill a few hours before their next commitment comes up.

This might sound like gamer snobbery (it is to some degree) but I'm mainly trying to suggest that before any big campaigns get launched to draw people to Hero, you consider this style of popular play and how well suited it is to your system. If Bruce ran Hero at the pub for example, he's going to have to have pre-gens made (rather than you rolling up your own character which is admittedly part of the fun) and spend too much time explaining the intricacies of the system to new people, rather than just "Roll d20 to hit".