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sun_tzu
2008-03-13, 03:39 PM
Ever since I heard about Champions Online (http://www.champions-online.com/), I've been developing an interest in the pen-and-paper RPG. I've been considering buying the HERO system and the Champions PDFs, but...well, it is expensive, and I'm mostly happy with Mutants&Masterminds.
So I was wondering: Anybody familiar with the system and setting? How is it?

Pyroconstruct
2008-03-13, 05:22 PM
HERO is a great game if you like customizing rules, changing fluff, and stuff like that, and a poor one if you like pre-made fluff and plug-and-play mechanics. I fall into the first group, and HERO is my favorite RPG.

The system is a very well-made and balanced framework for creating a campaign, and it's easy to run a HERO game in any setting you want, provided that you know clearly what you want to do. Superheroes is an example of something it does well, although not the only one.

The drawback is that you do need to think about what you want to do, and the game has a steep, steep learning curve coming from a "plug-and-play" system like D&D.

An example of how this works: In D&D, if you want to be able to fireball people, you make a wizard or sorcerer and learn Fireball. In HERO, if you want to fireball people, you figure out what your fireballs should do, and then use the rules to make a mechanic that does it. So, it works nicely if you tend to have clear ideas for campaigns or characters, and want a system that makes sure that any idea can be represented.

EvilJames
2008-03-13, 10:12 PM
There is a character maker program that they sell that I highley recomend if you get into it. The system is very math heavy so this cuts character creation time down by quite a bit because and is great for experimenting with ideas mechanics wise. Be sure you Understand the rules at least on a basic level before you play, other wise the game can get a bit crunchy.
Once you understand the rules, however the game is great, combat goes very quickly and smoothly and can very lively. Roleplaying can affect the mechanics of the game in many instances (I have a special love for presence attacks) I currently am running a Wierd West Campaign with this System and also play in a Star Wars game using these rules ( the D20 rules sucked and still do as far as we're concerned :smallyuk: )

I am sad that none of these rules or mechanics are going to be used in Champions Online. The video game company only bought the rights to the Champions Setting not the rules.

Brawls
2008-03-13, 11:25 PM
I used to play a lot in high school (so going on 20+ years ago). If the Hero system hasn't changed too much from then, I gurantee you will understand fractions after playing for a bit!

While math intensive for character creation, I felt the flexibility was phenomenal. Plus, you get to role a lot of dice, early in the game, which always feels good.

Brawls

sun_tzu
2008-03-14, 07:40 AM
Complex character creation isn't a problem so long as the game itself runs smoothly.
Anyone who can compare with Mutants&Masterminds?

Tsotha-lanti
2008-03-14, 07:47 AM
I was checking out superhero RPGs not many months ago, and ended up with Champions VS Mutants & Masterminds (2nd ed; 1st ed is the most awful abomination ever created, but 2nd ed is the greatest thing ever born of the d20 system).

The clincher was that, well, I couldn't read the freaking HERO System books. Character creation? There were pages upon pages of text with nothing about how you actually create the character.

M&M is so simple, quick, straighforward, flexible, and plain innovative.

sun_tzu
2008-03-14, 08:08 AM
I was checking out superhero RPGs not many months ago, and ended up with Champions VS Mutants & Masterminds (2nd ed; 1st ed is the most awful abomination ever created, but 2nd ed is the greatest thing ever born of the d20 system).
Having played both, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you there. 1st edition M&M is awesome.
2nd ed is beyond awesome.:smalltongue:

I'll admit, I'm a bit wary of the fact that the HERO book looks...well, like you could kill the Juggernaut by dropping it on his head.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-03-14, 08:30 AM
Having played both, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you there. 1st edition M&M is awesome.

You have to be kidding me. The first edition is just D&D with superheroes. It's like all other horrible d20 ports (Elric, what-have-you), plus clunky, poorly designed, and inconsistent. "This superpower is a feat, and his is a power, and this is both, and..." (And the worst movement rules/superpowers. Ugh.) The 2nd edition is an entirely different game, with a wonderful, streamlined, consistent mechanic (everything uses the same rules! Yay!).

I'd never consider playing 1st ed.

Krrth
2008-03-14, 08:54 AM
Well, My group and I play champions fairly regularly. It is fun, but....get a calculator. As other posters have mentioned, creating a character can be time cinsuming. I would highly recommend creating a group of "starter" characters, and once you understand the system a little better, change them. If you have a specific questions, let me know and I'll try to get an answer for ya.

Curmudgeon
2008-03-14, 10:48 AM
Complex character creation isn't a problem so long as the game itself runs smoothly. [I'll preface this by saying that I haven't played Champions in years, and am not up to speed on recent versions of the game.]
The game itself only runs smoothly sometimes. Some operations just fall into cracks in the rules and you get stuck. I'll give an example.

I created a character named Dynamo. Dynamo's MO was to take power from the enemies and charge up his allies. The Champions mechanic used for this was a multipower with Speed Transfer. This is an expensive power (because Speed is extremely important in the game), but straightforward to create using the rules. The problem is that Speed is used to determine whether you get to act in each of the 12 segments that makes up a chunk of game time, and is read off a fixed table. If you just work off the table then being slowed could make you act more frequently, and being sped up could delay your actions. :smalltongue:

Using Speed Transfer is an extreme example of how the game's mechanics can get clunky. But Champions is pretty unwieldy in all combat operations just because it's the most extreme version of the Hero System and uses lots of dice. Champions will frequently roll 20+ d6s whenever they act, and you have to count all your dice twice: first to add up the totals for the "stun" damage, then again because extreme values (1s and 6s) are counted differently for the "body" damage. If lots of other characters have higher Speeds than yours, you'll spend nearly all the game watching other players counting dice.

And yes, you'll need Hero Builder.

UserClone
2008-03-14, 02:55 PM
For the record, HERO 5E is bulletproof (sort of). A buddy of mine had his copy shot with a .22, and it has a dent in the cover, and that's all I have to say about that.

Brawls
2008-03-14, 03:19 PM
[I'll preface this by saying that I haven't played Champions in years, and am not up to speed on recent versions of the game.]
The game itself only runs smoothly sometimes. Some operations just fall into cracks in the rules and you get stuck. I'll give an example.

I created a character named Dynamo. Dynamo's MO was to take power from the enemies and charge up his allies. The Champions mechanic used for this was a multipower with Speed Transfer. This is an expensive power (because Speed is extremely important in the game), but straightforward to create using the rules. The problem is that Speed is used to determine whether you get to act in each of the 12 segments that makes up a chunk of game time, and is read off a fixed table. If you just work off the table then being slowed could make you act more frequently, and being sped up could delay your actions. :smalltongue:

Using Speed Transfer is an extreme example of how the game's mechanics can get clunky. But Champions is pretty unwieldy in all combat operations just because it's the most extreme version of the Hero System and uses lots of dice. Champions will frequently roll 20+ d6s whenever they act, and you have to count all your dice twice: first to add up the totals for the "stun" damage, then again because extreme values (1s and 6s) are counted differently for the "body" damage. If lots of other characters have higher Speeds than yours, you'll spend nearly all the game watching other players counting dice.

And yes, you'll need Hero Builder.

To clarify the above, Speed determines how many times within a 12 segment turn you act, with the normal range beeing between 4 and 7 for heroes. So a hero with a Speed of 6 acts every other segment (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12) and a hero with a Spedd of 3 acts every 4th segment (4, 8, 12), etc. If Mr. Dynamo reduces a target's Speed it may result in them switching from every even segment to a mix of odd and even segements, possibly meaning they will next act sooner than they would have before th effect. However, overall, they will be taking 1 or more fewer actions during a turn, which is a fairly significant hit. To put it in D&D terms, it is less like the effect of Slow and more like being Dazed in a given turn. You are litteraly loosing 1 entire action.

As for the dice, yes it can get a bit crazy. However, if you like rolling lots of dammage dice, it is a fun system. In my experience, most powers tend to use around 10d6 for dammage. As for resolving damage, the system uses two stats: Stun and Body. Stun, as one would infer is how much damage you can take before being rendered unconscious. Body is how much damage you can take before being killed. Standard attacks tend to do much more Stun damage than Body damage. So your typical energy blast type attack may be 10d6, which results in 35 Stun damage and 10 Body damage. You would then apply your defenses to this value. A character has three defenses by default: Physical Defense (PD), Energy Defense (ED), and Ego Defense. In the case above, you would subtract your ED from the damage and apply it to your character, so if your ED was 20, you would wind up taking 15 Stun and 0 Body damage. Powers like Force Field, armor, etc. are purchased to increase your defenses.

There are also a host of power modifications to allow it to by-pass portions of a defense, but such modifications drive up the cost of purchasing the power on a per d6 basis. It actually gives a lot lot of flexibility while being balanced. For example, a mercenary-type hero with a special gun that can fire multiple rounds per attack that are armor piercing (meaning they by-pass a portion of a target's PD), would have a higher cost per effective attack die, resulting in fewer d6 of damage relative to a power with no modifications. Similarly, all defenses can be modified to make them more resistant to attack properties. Also, most powers cost Endurance (which is a stat), so one has to balance their attack rate and Endurance cost per attack to make sure they can stay in a prolonged battle.

The above only scratches at the surface of the system's complexity. Heroes literally let's you build almost any kind of character you desire. Players who like to optimize may find ways to make especially effective characters in the same manner as D&D 3.5 players, but on the whole the system has limits built-in that most builds are balanced to specific point buy limits. Again, I haven't played in 10+ years, but I think the system is only complex during character creation. The combat mechanics actually were pretty straightforward after playing with a character a few times.

Brawls

Cyclone231
2008-03-14, 03:32 PM
[I'll preface this by saying that I haven't played Champions in years, and am not up to speed on recent versions of the game.]I swear to God, I grew up reading a copy of 1st ed Hero and then got a copy of 5th ed Hero and beyond Aid now costing 10 points, and (I believe) the new limitation Restrainable, I couldn't tell you what's different, mechanically. EBs, RKAs, and HKAs are still the same; Armor, Damage Resistance, Force Field are still basically the same power; Extra Dimensional Movement, Multiform, and Desolidification are still ready for you to cheese it up hardcore. I think Shrinking and Growth might be different or something, but I never really cared about them.


I created a character named Dynamo. Dynamo's MO was to take power from the enemies and charge up his allies. The Champions mechanic used for this was a multipower with Speed Transfer. This is an expensive power (because Speed is extremely important in the game), but straightforward to create using the rules. The problem is that Speed is used to determine whether you get to act in each of the 12 segments that makes up a chunk of game time, and is read off a fixed table. If you just work off the table then being slowed could make you act more frequently, and being sped up could delay your actions. :smalltongue: Yeah, Speed is certainly an unusual characteristic and if you want to effectively drain/aid it you should probably work to make it make sense (like, do some math or something - say they have a SPD 5 and have acted twice when you bump them down to a 3 SPD; count them as having spent 2/5ths of their actions and then round, so they've got two actions left).


Using Speed Transfer is an extreme example of how the game's mechanics can get clunky. But Champions is pretty unwieldy in all combat operations just because it's the most extreme version of the Hero System and uses lots of dice. Champions will frequently roll 20+ d6s whenever they act,Just use an online dice roller like Wizard's or something. Jeez.

But it's more like 16 dice, tops. And that's if you're vanilla-ing it up with a pure energy blast (no advantages like Autofire or 0 END or Area of Effect or Indirect) in the maximum range for a standard Champions game.


and you have to count all your dice twice: first to add up the totals for the "stun" damage, then again because extreme values (1s and 6s) are counted differently for the "body" damage. If lots of other characters have higher Speeds than yours, you'll spend nearly all the game watching other players counting dice.That's why always use RKAs. Well, that and the fact that they're imbalanced.


And yes, you'll need Hero Builder.Really? I just make a Courier-based character sheet like Surbrook (surbrook.devermore.net/index/) does.


The clincher was that, well, I couldn't read the freaking HERO System books. Character creation? There were pages upon pages of text with nothing about how you actually create the character.Could you describe your problem in more detail? I mean, early in the book it explains how to buy things and then tells you all the things you can buy.

A character has three defenses by default: Physical Defense (PD), Energy Defense (ED), and Ego Defense.Actually, it's Physical Defense (versus punches and gunshots), Energy Defense (versus fire and lasers), Mental Defense (versus psychic powers), and Power Defense (versus drains and transfers and transforms). There's also a couple more to defend against the more esoteric powers (Lack of Weakness defends against Detect Weakness, for example; that's the only one I can think of off the top of my head because literally no-one uses them.)

Pyroconstruct
2008-03-15, 12:19 PM
I'm not sure if it was a problem with an earlier edition, but the current edition of HERO doesn't have that speed reduction problem. If you change speed in the middle of a fight, you don't act until your old and new speeds "sync up," so you can't gain actions by having your speed drop and increase multiple times.

Combat is very straightforward and intuitive once you get used to it. There aren't any wierd sub-combat systems like Grappling or AoOs in d20, but there's still a lot of variety - the trick is that the resolution mechanics for everything follow the same basic logic, so it's easy to learn how things work.

Brawls
2008-03-15, 01:03 PM
Originally Posted by Brawls
A character has three defenses by default: Physical Defense (PD), Energy Defense (ED), and Ego Defense.

Actually, it's Physical Defense (versus punches and gunshots), Energy Defense (versus fire and lasers), Mental Defense (versus psychic powers), and Power Defense (versus drains and transfers and transforms). There's also a couple more to defend against the more esoteric powers (Lack of Weakness defends against Detect Weakness, for example; that's the only one I can think of off the top of my head because literally no-one uses them.)
Hmm, they didn't have Power Defense when I was playing. Good addition. Lack of Weakness and Flsah Defense were always available, but are not inherent to a character. I will say the only seeming problem I have with the game is that there are so many different type of attacks, it is very difficult to build a character that can defend against multiple type of effects. Your tank might be able to withstand machine gun fire and lasers and all manner of physichal and energy damage, then someone will come along and hit him with a autofire End drain attack and it is all over. This cuts both ways, of course, but it is harder for the player to defend against the multitude of villains the GM cooks up.

Brawls

Krrth
2008-03-15, 03:29 PM
It can get tricky, but some attacks are nastier than others. A mental entangle has ended fights before post segment twelve for us. Using the suggested limits on both active and real cost helps a lot.