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Thread: HEROS- Good or Bad?
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2014-02-14, 11:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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2014-02-14, 11:42 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Gender
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
The Hero System (Champions, Fantasy Hero, etc.) is great for some people, but not for others. It allows incredible flexibility in designing unique powers and skills.
But it comes at what some people consider a cost.
Creating a character involves a mild use of math - adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. If you aren't willing to do that, either on paper or in Excel, you will probably find character creation frustrating.
I love the game, and usually do the character creation for one or two friends. Then they have a great time playing.
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2014-02-14, 11:45 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2010
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
Pro's:
Amazing levels of power customization.
Interesting and different initative system.
Great customization of normal human stuff.
Cons:
Tendency to encourage "pissing contests" at character creation. You can just flat out buy attacks that do 6d6 or 8d6 or 10d6 and do typeless damage or esoteric damage types or you can have two attacks linked to always go off together. Then ther's Armor piercing abilities and hardened defenses and double armor piercing and double hardened.
This segways well into the fact that it's a very exploitable system and every build needs a thourough looking over and knowledgeof the system allows some real silliness.
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2014-02-14, 11:55 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2013
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
D&D retroclones:
SpoilerAdventurer Conqueror King
Basic Fantasy (free)
Dark Dungeons (free)
Dungeon Crawl Classics
Labyrinth Lord (free)
Lamentations of the Flame Princess (free)
Mazes & Minotaurs (free)
Myth & Magic (free)
OSRIC (free)
Swords & Wizardry (free)
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2014-02-14, 01:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Gender
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
One of your stats is speed. In twelve turns, you get as many actions as your speed. So a speed 5 character moves & attacks on turns 2, 5, 7, 10, and 12. A speed 3 character moves & attacks on turns 4, 8, & 12.
Within a turn, it's in DEX order.
DEX and SPEED are both expensive relative to STR, so a super-strong character gets fewer attacks than a speedy but less strong martial artist.
So there is a trade-off between how powerful your attacks are and how often you can use them.
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2014-02-14, 01:58 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2008
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2014-02-14, 03:36 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2011
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
For character design there are also dome very nice software packages which take the maths out of it . I like them and I am a keen mathmetician
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2014-02-14, 08:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
No, just no.
Both Wild Talents and Mutants and Masterminds do every single thing the HERO system does, but better and with less rules. It's a matter of choosing between a modern assault rifle, and a rifle from WW2. They both do the same thing, one(or two in this case) is just strictly better.When you are first born, the universe assigns you a secret luck value. The quality of your life, dice rolls, and how friendly your DM is are all influenced by the luck value. It is the universe's secret social experiment. So if you been rolling poor, it is only because you were assigned low luck value by the universe. You can raise your luck value only through proper dice rolling rituals.
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2014-02-15, 04:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2007
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
Char-gen is really not bad. It looks intimidating as hell, but with the use of example powers, and/or one experienced player helping, it's pretty straightforward. And the math is simple, there's just a lot of it.
The main trade-off for me is the combat speed. HERO combat is just not fast, even with experienced players, even with some houserules made to speed it up. It runs toward the slow end of 3.x D&D combat, which to me is definitely slower than ideal.
And with inexperienced or just disorganized players/GM, the combat can be molasses-like.
That said, it's an extremely powerful and flexible system, and really fun to build things in.Last edited by icefractal; 2014-02-15 at 04:42 AM.
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2014-02-15, 08:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
- Location
- Eastern US
- Gender
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
My gaming group decided to try HERO recently. (The GM and one other player are very familiar with the system. The other 3 players are not.)
Character creation was both awesome and nightmarish. It was awesome because I told the GM what I wanted my PC to be able to do, and he put together an amazing power set that is better than I dreamed. It was nightmarish because of the math involved in buying stats, skills, etc. (I'm saying this as someone who got a degree in engineering.)
Once we got playing, though, I'm enjoying it. I have yet to do a combat where everyone is powered up, though, so we'll see how that goes. (Our first session, we did a combat that led to us getting our powers. It took a long time because 3 of us had built with the assumption we would have powers. Without them, we didn't have a lot of combat options. The rest of the party has done a combat with powers, but I had to miss that session. However, we are set up for a fight to start next session.)Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
Proud member of the "I Love Anyway" Club
Thank you, Ceika, so much for the avatar!
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2014-02-15, 06:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
*Cough* 3, 5, 8, 10, 12 *Cough*
One advantage of Hero system is that it is hard to design a character that stands no chance at doing any damage. Also, one thing I like about it is that combat is more mobile.
Granted, I do Champions with Knockback, but it's fun to watch people get blown about the map :) I know my players got a kick out of every time they sent a villian flying :)
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2014-02-17, 12:26 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
In my experience, the Hero system is absolutely fantastic for character creation. I haven't come up with a single concept that the system hasn't been able to implement, in most cases doing it quickly, simply, and elegantly, and to an arbitrary level of detail. There can a fair amount of number-crunching involved, but none of it is very difficult.
The down side to this is that the system is not at all self-balancing. The GM must have enough system mastery to be able to tell how various abilities and powers will synergize, and be willing to modify or veto anything.
Running the game may be more work than many players or GMs are willing to deal with. Combat can be slow, as it involves keeping track of several different numbers for each character (instead of just hit points, for example, each character must track Body, Endurance, and Stun) and can involve rolling huge handfuls of dice. If every player has enough familiarity with the system to keep track of his own character, it goes fairly smoothly, in my experience, but a big combat can drag on.
Final advice: Don't let the min-maxer have a Variable Power Pool. Not because he'll break the game (though he'll try), but because he'll waste hours of game time figuring out the most efficient way to allocate his points.
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2014-02-17, 10:41 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Gender
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
Very true. It's an infinitely flexible system. The idea is that the power is a basic effect, with any number of modifiers worked out and paid for in advance. I once modeled the ability to leap onto a moving car safely as a short teleport with the modifiers "must pass through the intervening space, "must make an acrobatics skill roll", and "can change relative velocity".
This is quite true. It's an infinitely flexible system, but one of the drawbacks to that is that it's an infinitely flexible system. The introduction to my last campaign included the following rules:
"I know most of the ways to try to build a character worth much more than the rules intend. If you come up with such a strategy, I will congratulate you on your cleverness and ruthlessly disallow it."
"10. I reserve the right to put limitations on the following powers, to prevent game-warping effects: N-Ray Vision, Clairsentience, Desolidification, Extra-Dimensional Movement, Faster than Light Travel."
"14. I will add a –1/4 limitation of my own choice to any power of 60 or more active points. I will add a –1/2 limitation to any power of 80 or more active points. I will add limitations adding up to at least –3/4 to any power of 105 or more active points. I will decide on a case-by-case basis how much Limitation I will give any powers much above that level. These limitations will be chosen specifically to keep them fun and valuable, while limiting their ability to screw up my plans, so I will not tell you why I chose them. You may or may not know what this limitation is at the start of play. Limitations I choose are likely to include side effects, gestures, restrainable, Reduced by Range or Reduced Penetration, Gradual Effect, Extra Time, or something else that gives me as GM an opportunity to prevent their use at specific moments for story purposes."
If somebody doesn't have much system familiarity, design him a straightforward brick or energy blaster, with simple options.
There are two solutions for this. I will always allow a gadget Power Pool, with the restriction that every gadget you use must be designed in advance and written down. You have a laser, or a shrink ray, in your pool? Fine - but have its form pre-calculated and just show me what it does.
More importantly, never let a player's indecision slow down the game. It has "holding action" as an option. His lack of pre-planning limits him, not the rest of us.
DM: OK, The next three to act are Silver Surfer, Captain Sprocket, and Wonder Warthog. Spike, it's your turn. What is your Silver Surfer character doing?
Spike: Hold on. I'm trying to decide what my Power Cosmic will do this turn.
DM: Silver Surfer is holding action. When you figure it out, tell me, and you'll go next. Next three up are Captain Sprocket, Wonder Warthog, and Giant Turtle Boy. Sugar, what action does Captain Sprocket take?
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2014-02-25, 07:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Gender
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
From everything I've heard, this is the truth. I play M&M 3e, and literally every good thing posted here about flexibility in character creation applies to it as well as HERO... but the actual gameplay is simplicity itself, running off a single d20. Not to say that HERO is bad, but there's something else out there that does exactly the same thing, but better.
Last edited by Grod_The_Giant; 2014-02-25 at 07:41 PM.
Hill Giant Games
I make indie gaming books for you!Spoiler
STaRS: A non-narrativeist, generic rules-light system.
Grod's Guide to Greatness, 2e: A big book of player options for 5e.
Grod's Grimoire of the Grotesque: An even bigger book of variant and expanded rules for 5e.
Giants and Graveyards: My collected 3.5 class fixes and more.
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2014-02-25, 11:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2011
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2014-02-25, 11:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Gender
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
Hill Giant Games
I make indie gaming books for you!Spoiler
STaRS: A non-narrativeist, generic rules-light system.
Grod's Guide to Greatness, 2e: A big book of player options for 5e.
Grod's Grimoire of the Grotesque: An even bigger book of variant and expanded rules for 5e.
Giants and Graveyards: My collected 3.5 class fixes and more.
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2014-02-25, 11:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2011
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
That M&M is less complex, and any time you lose complexity you inherently lose some details of the model. Certain things are modeled with a LOT of handwaving in M&M and this is less (though not entirely removed) in HERO. There are advantages to HERO system though they aren't often discussed, because there are advantages to greater or increased complexity. For example the fact that faster characters take more actions (which is actually against M&M design principles), is one area where HERO system can produce something that would be difficult for M&M to replicate.
My Avatar is Glimtwizzle, a Gnomish Fighter/Illusionist by Cuthalion.
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2014-02-26, 09:35 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
With the caveat that I've never played M&M and know very little about it...Using only a D20 seems like a weakness for a superhero game to me...I like how the Hero system damage works, with likely you'll do 'x' damage, but it's possible to do more or less, which may enable characters to actually damage something else.
Also, the 3d6 to hit system allows defensive skill/agility to play a bigger role. It really enables the Brick and the Martial Artist archetypes to shine in different ways and have the vermisiltude (sp?) that they feel different in the ways that they 'should'.
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2014-02-26, 10:06 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
- Protecting my Horde (yes, I mean that kind)
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
It works, especially with the way damage works. Character don't have hit points and in fact get progressively worse at resisting damage the more they take damage.
As I understand HERO is basically has a hitpoint like stat. Its a different mechanic, but I figure either should work. The math in M&M tends to be easier only by virtue of using whole numbers for extras and flaws on effects.
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2014-02-26, 11:44 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
Re: HEROS- Good or Bad?
It has 2...Stun and Body. Stun represents pain/bruising...Stuff that knocks you out. Body represents actually physical injury...Stuff that kills you.
Stun is the one that is most often damaged (And for the most)...And it recovers slowly during a fight (And you can take actions to recover even more). I like the differentiation. It allows you to be concious and fighting, yet bleeding out...And it allows you to just go down without serious damage.