Doc Democracy

The vagaries of groups and experience.  If it is not an issue for you, ignore us! ? Everyone has to play the game in front of them, noone else's.

All I can say is that after 30 + years of actual play with critical I have NEVER came across the issues that many of you guys are griping about. (Except the GM when his villain is one-shoted!). 

Say you were rolling 4D6 blaster damage with one of the dice wild.  Your average roll is 14.  If one of those dice rolled 6, then the end average result is 17 or 18.  It is not a huge overpowered effect.  There is a small chance that the added dice is a six bringing and such events means the average damage goes up to 23.  If the wild dice rolls another six, the average damage goes up again, this time to about 29.
 
Given that the three sixes are about equal to the one in 216 chance of the 3 in HERO, this is worth looking at.  Damage has increased from 14 to about 29.  In SW you compare that against a strength roll.  If strength was 4D, then you have suddenly gone from, on average, getting a stunned result to 15 higher which is "Mortally wounded".  If strength was 3D then you are looking at going from"wounded" to "killed".
 
I would say that this is relatively equivalent switches - a critical roll that happens once in every 216 times changing a result from minor to possibly instant kill.  The big difference for me between the systems is that this is where I would, in Star Wars, use a force point to double my STR roll and keep me alive (punches the result back down to about 4 or 5 higher and merely wounded).  Vanilla HERO rules do not provide that potential for heroes to mitigate dice rolls of that nature.
 
Doc

I played a SPD 12 speedster (Swift) in a Golden Age campaign for three sessions before retiring him - my friends hated him.
 
He had Martial Arts, AP, Autofire and Reduced END on STR.
 
Each punch did very little damage but he threw an awful lot of them very quickly....
 
He could move in and attack and attack and move away before anyone got a bead on him.  He did steal the limelight as it was ALWAYS my turn.  All of the downsides folk have spoken about were true of Swift.  I got rid of him for a stage magician type with a tiny VPP.  Magnor the Magnificent.

It doesn't really break the game, particularly if it is a a villain and you're the GM: you know when to adjust tactics, etc, if the players aren't having a good time.
 
The problem from the player angle tends to be one of "screen time."  If everyone is running around with a SPD 5, the SPD 12 guy is going to get a lot more screen time.
 
Do remember the one "catch" to a high SPD: when you do twice as many things as everyone else, you burn twice as much END as everyone else.
 
Other than that, Speedsters are my personal favorite archetype, so I'm really not the guy to get a fair and unbiased answer from.

You know, suggestions of directions for Hero Games to take are always worth raising and discussing; but at this point I kind of shake my head when people take a position of, "if Hero would just do X everything would be better." The company tried a lot of different Xs over the years, as have third-party publishers. Don't forget that for a time Hero was quite successful. DOJ took a practical, business-based approach to publishing Hero products, and that paid off for years. But the nature of the gaming hobby has changed with the times. No tabletop games that don't resemble D&D are doing boffo business these days, and even D&D holds only a fraction of the market it once had. If there's one magic formula for success it remains elusive. It may be that the heyday of games like Hero is over, whatever tactic is tried.
 
But even if that's true, the system isn't ashes now. New product has continued to be published, albeit slowly and mostly under license. Books are still being sold here and elsewhere. The current lull is not comparable to the glaciation before Fifth Edition was published. And things may look up again one day. But we aren't here because the people who own Hero now are too dumb to read the right tea-leaves.

I have more issues with many con committees. but that's way off topic.

Even those books were broad and designed for a GM to build his own campaign/game.  You could not pick it up, create a few characters that were game specific and play five or six sessions.
 
In each one you had to get your head round the game system and everything else, it was like a Ferrari with no body work, all the nuts, bolts and infrastructure on show.  
 
My my thoughts for these would be that all the GM decisions would have been made and baked into the game.  A neophyte GM with neophyte players should be able to pick it up and play it almost immediately.  It would have no rules in it that were not needed for the game at hand and no powers/talents/skills just in case.  A fully baked cake rather than a pantry full of ingredients, or even a pantry with a few cookbooks.
 
My favourite of the old ones was Justice Inc, I LOVED that box set.  But instead of Justice Inc you would sell a game called The Shadow, or The Land that time Forgot, or The Untouchables.  Each one would be set up differently, with different aspects of the core rules exposed, just the ones needed for that particular game.
 
i would like a HERO nerd download to be available where the author explains, for those with access to the core rules (and an interest in such things), what decisions she made in setting up the game.
 
I would also expect a lot of design time given to the character sheets as these would be almost everything the players had and would need to ooze campaign detail and colour.
 
That is my vision.  I would want to launch each game with a “celebrity” group playing the first adventure online.  If you were really going to push the boat out, there would be Roll20 available packs for each one so that those inspired by the online videos could immediately go play the game...
 
Doc

One thing that is often mooted but I don't think has yet been done, is a Powered by HERO style game.  A ready to play game, using the HERO system underneath, but tailored for a particular genre.  The book would be all that anyone needed to lift and play.  Expert users would be able to tinker with things (if they had the core books) the assumptions/builds etc would be available online for those hardcore users.
 
For everyone else it would simply be a pick up and play set of rules with an adventure and characters all ready to go...
 
It is something I daydream about doing, perhaps when I retire and have endless days to fiddle again....
 
Doc

I have never won the day so I guess I had better take pleasure in the four downvotes that tell me I am doing a good job, huh??  Couldn't find a way to see what posts were downvoted to take even more pleasure in seeing whom I had offended.

?
 
Doc
 

Players don't need to know how the power is built.  They only need to see the effect.  Just generally know how you want it to work, and declare that it works that way.
 
"This is gonna be a 6D6 Entangle, and while they're in it they'll take 8D6 normal damage vs PD, and 2D6 NND from choking."  The exact build doesn't matter because the players never get to see the villain's character sheet.

On reread, I think I could have said that better. ?
 
 

If it's any consolation, Doc, 
 
You've inspired me out of more than one jam ;).  That's more important to me than any number of thumbs someone may have jammed your way. 

I think the question should be, if there were to be critical hits in your game, what would you want them to do in game terms.
 
sometimes the best thing is not to kill your opponent and, if you roll a critical hit it should benefit you rather than deliver a result (like a killing blow) which might be contrary to what you wanted to achieve.
 
I like a critical hit giving a bonus to your next action.  So, you might roll a critical in one action meaning that you get a +5, +8 or +10 (depending on your game) to your next related action.  This is the time to try that thing you would never do, like do a head shot, or shoot a gun out of your opponents hand, or any number of things that have large OCV penalties associated with them.
 
Doc

The campaign determines what role a disadvantage/complication such as secret identity has, if allowed. Superspeedsters cannot exist using actual science. Superheroic campaigns are above modern day rules, including forensics, dna, etc because that's the genre. For anyone to try to force real life rules on a superheroic game seems silly, since superheroes don't exist in real life anyways. Since superpowers exist, so does the possibility of secret identities and the ability to keep them secret. Alot of this emphasis seems to be applicable to a gritty-feel campaign.

In 6th, rarely, in every other edition, almost certainly....

Sounds like someone is talking mechanics instead of game effects.
 
 If a player tells me he wants to be immune to mental paralysis I ask what that looks like in game.  Why immune to just mental paralysis and not other mental powers?  What about mental paralysis with alternate defences?  Would he also be immune to that?
 
I would need more detail on the power intent before coming to an answer about a build.
 
Doc

The usual response for an absolute effect in HERO has been to take the largest such power in the campaign, build a defence that would effectively stop that and then, as GM fiat, describe it as Immunity to Mental Paralysis (encompassing EVERY power that might be so described).  It might be expensive but such an all-encompassing power probably should be.

Sounds like someone is talking mechanics instead of game effects.
 
 If a player tells me he wants to be immune to mental paralysis I ask what that looks like in game.  Why immune to just mental paralysis and not other mental powers?  What about mental paralysis with alternate defences?  Would he also be immune to that?
 
I would need more detail on the power intent before coming to an answer about a build.
 
Doc

Sounds like someone is talking mechanics instead of game effects.
 
 If a player tells me he wants to be immune to mental paralysis I ask what that looks like in game.  Why immune to just mental paralysis and not other mental powers?  What about mental paralysis with alternate defences?  Would he also be immune to that?
 
I would need more detail on the power intent before coming to an answer about a build.
 
Doc

You need to look for how you want to model it and then decide on what kind of limitation it is worth.
 
I think you could twist yourself in knots trying to replicate taking BODY, or using a kind of limited Barrier power. You would have to remember that the Barrier has to be advantaged to allow you to fire out while someone else cannot fire in.  Complicated and expensive very quickly.
 
Instead think about what you want.  
 
Will it function (when it is active) like regular armour?  If so, we have the right power.
 
Describe how it will fail.  If the armour is not breached will it lose coherence?  If so, does it lose more coherence when it is breached?  How many hits (whether they breach the defence or not) before the armour fails?  Will it be proportionate to the damage taken (more complex) or not? 
 
Once you have that detail, you will be able to see how often the armour is likely to fail in-game and you can assign a number to that.
 
My immediate thoughts, if you want to go with rules already written down, is use physical manifestation.  You can rule that damage that exceeds the defence goes through to damage both the physical manifestation of the defence as well as the character as normal.
 
Your instincts are good though, while this kind of thing feels aesthetically pleasing, it can quickly become burdensome in gameplay and slow things down.  It might be easier for the player to have a set of chips and every time they take damage they throw one away (decide the conditions under which they return - like a phase where the character is not hit or when the armour is switched off/repaired etc), when there are no chips left, the armour has failed.
 
Doc
 

My usual route for someone who wants to be able to do everything is to say yes but your "theme" is therefore versatility and because you can do everything you can do it less well than specialists, so if the usual energy blast is 10D6, every power man has 8d6 or 9d6.  If the usual force field is 20PD 20ED thenevery power man has 17 or 18.
 
everything, just a little bit less of it....
 
Doc

I have uploaded them for you.
 
 

I am convinced of the simplicity of sticking to enhancing your own attacks and not trying to make it better for everyone with similar SFX.  ?
 
I am also attracted to the flexibility of the environmental effects, a cosmetic transform to change a dry target to a drenched one, then SFX to deliver a bonus dice or two for everyone with ice powers...

If you take the code versus killing you are asking the GM to pitch you situations where it would make some kind of sense to kill someone...
 
Batman is a key example of this, who would not simply kill the Batman if they did not have a code versus killing....
 
Doc