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Angry Bob
2011-06-10, 03:39 PM
I posted this in the Other Systems board and got no response.

Basically, I want to run a game in this system and I have some questions.

1: Are there any major game breakers I should be aware of, other than one ones specifically labeled as such in the Core Rulebook?

2: Does the system retain balance at very high power levels(like, say, at character point values of 1000 and up)?

3: How does it compare to D&D 3.5/PF in terms of the difference between highly-optimized and casually-optimized characters? I'm hoping for a system with a smaller divide, due to the problems I've had with 3.5/PF in the past.

4: Feel free to dispense other words of advice or warning appropriate for someone about to run Hero for the first time.

potatocubed
2011-06-10, 04:09 PM
Disclaimer: I can't stand the Hero system, so take what I'm about to say with a pinch of salt.

1. As I recall (it's been about ten years) any sort of attack linked with armour piercing and/or rapid fire is rather potent. Also keep an eye on disadvantages and make sure players earn their points.

1a. A bigger thing to worry about is making sure that all the powers the players have designed actually work as intended. I'm still bitter about my speedster who, it turned out, didn't have the right level of super-senses to cope with his speed - so as soon as he used his powers he'd run into something and die.

2. Not even remotely. An old edition of Champions I have has several examples of how the system breaks if you've got a lot of points to throw around, my favourite being The Landlord: a normal guy who's sunk enough points into his HQ to cover the entire surface of the Earth. Apparently it's not too tricky to pick up six billion loyal followers, either.

3. If you thought D&D had a chasm between optimized and unoptimized characters, Hero opens an interstellar gulf. A well-built character won't be overwhelming - they'll have an area or two of expertise where they're fantastic, but will be average or worse elsewhere - but a poorly built character will have powers that don't do anything, or act in strange ways because you forgot to buy the appropriate extras. See the above-mentioned speedster, or another character I made whose fire blast was incapable of setting things on fire because that was a different kind of attack.

3a. I did play in a Hero game which circumvented this by having the GM build our characters for us. We told him what we wanted and he used his system expertise to avoid the sort of pitfalls I would blithely wander into.

Seerow
2011-06-10, 04:19 PM
I played a short campaign with this system a year or two back, but I'm not sure what edition it was, so my thoughts may be worthless.

The biggest problem we ran across was there was no real standard for attack/defense values. This led to everyone having values scattered all over. For example, my character had really high defenses, to the point where for the GM to hit me with anything, he would one shot anyone else in the group. Another player had an attack that hit hard enough that anything that could defend against it would be basically immune to anything the rest of us could do.

This was by far the largest problem we ran into, and decided to make it work if we ever tried again, everyone would need to collaborate and have attacks/defenses somewhere within the same category as each other (not identical, but not anything within 10-20x more than someone else, like within a 50-200% range of the median at most).



Aside from that problem, the system was fun. The powers were pretty flexible, and things like the variable power pool were just really fun. Those things can mess with the point costs though, so that's another point you want to watch out for, clever use of combining powers/variable powers/etc can get you a lot more bang for your buck... which means someone who makes heavy use of it is going to be far stronger than someone who doesn't. Make sure people are using these options to similar degrees, or the game gets unbalanced quickly.

edit: Oh one other option that I remember being particularly cheesy: Items. Using items to grant your powers makes those powers way cheaper. While yeah, the super sword, or magic ring is a common hero trope, in hero it was pretty much the optimal solution for any concept, to the best I can remember.

Angry Bob
2011-06-10, 07:09 PM
Disclaimer: I can't stand the Hero system, so take what I'm about to say with a pinch of salt.

Why don't you like it? I'm still debating whether or not to use Hero, so if you know of a system that offers similar levels of customization while avoiding the pitfalls you describe, I'm all ears. If it's not GURPS or FUDGE. GURPS is way too simulationist and rules-intensive for me(not to mention I'd have to get all of the supplements to satisfy my ocd), and I feel FUDGE would not be well-received by my group.


@Seerow: Advice taken. Since almost everyone is new to the system, we'll be creating characters as a group anyway, but this is definitely helpful.

SPoD
2011-06-10, 10:15 PM
Have you considered Mutants & Masterminds? A lot of the same flexibility as HERO with less math. Even though it's loosely based on d20, the point-based nature of it keeps things within balance, and it avoids the problem Seerow mentioned for HERO by setting a campaign-based limit on your attack and defense. There's even a fantasy-setting book for it, Warriors & Warlocks.

TheEmerged
2011-06-10, 10:34 PM
I've played the system for roughly 20 years.

1> Powers themselves aren't usually the problem so much as combinations of powers and the way some of the advantages work (megascale, I'm looking at you). Over time I've worked out restrictions/systems that work for me. Here are some broad strokes you might want to look at -- most of which I apply to any system, really.

The A#1 rule with HERO -- just because you CAN build a power doesn't mean you should allow it. You have a mind, use it.

a> Carefully control any power with too much potential to ruin a mystery. Telepathy, Mind Control, even N-Ray vision can cause problems.
b> Put plot limits on powers that would make it too easy for your party to get away from a fight/consequences. Just because you can build a power that can teleport yourself and 4 others away in 2 seconds doesn't mean the players should be allowed to have that. Same with Extra Dimensional Movement, and Tunnelling can get out of hand too (just not as cheaply.

Perhaps the biggest trap is the Penetrating advantage -- Armor Piercing isn't always even worth its cost. Penetrating + Autofire = power that can sneak under an active point cap (a common form of balance) with more damage than it looks.

2> 1000 points? Uh, no. Under normal circumstances I'd hesitate to do a campaign at 500. The recommended power levels (start at 350 for superheroic) work pretty well.

It's like this: most of the powers scale fairly predictably. Some on the other hand "cap out" quite quickly -- you can get an awful lot of power from Find Weakness for example. At 350 that choice will cost you, at 500 you will get much more power for those same points.

3> The math in HERO is vastly overstated, and happens primarily away-from-table. That's a different thing from saying there is none -- there's a reason HERO was one of the earliest RPG's to sell character generation software. Did you pass the 8th grade? Can you use a spreadsheet or spring for the chargen software? Then you have nothing to fear. There is nothing more complicated than dividing by decimals. You're just doing it dozens of times, depending on the build.

Out of real-world time, I'll try to remember to come back later.

Angry Bob
2011-06-10, 10:34 PM
Have you considered Mutants & Masterminds? A lot of the same flexibility as HERO with less math. Even though it's loosely based on d20, the point-based nature of it keeps things within balance, and it avoids the problem Seerow mentioned for HERO by setting a campaign-based limit on your attack and defense. There's even a fantasy-setting book for it, Warriors & Warlocks.

The main reason I was looking for versatility and customizability is because the campaign I plan to run is a mishmash of settings and genres. Characters and setting run from traditional sword and sorcery, not-so-traditional sword and sorcery, space opera, soft science fiction, modern day supernatural masquerade, and a number of others. The NPCs alone run from an ancient lich to a telekinetic hipster to a firebreathing gnome to a hippie beekeeper with a berserking evil side. And who knows what the players will create.

So anything that ties itself to a particular setting or genre is right out. What attracted me to Hero in the first place was that it gave the groundwork for inventing abilities instead of simply giving me an index of pre-created abilities. This is mainly what I want out of it. If M&M lets me do that, I'll certainly give it a look.


Did you pass the 8th grade? Can you use a spreadsheet or spring for the chargen software? Then you have nothing to fear. There is nothing more complicated than dividing by decimals. You're just doing it dozens of times, depending on the build.

One of my players is a double Math/Physics major. We'll be fine.

SPoD
2011-06-10, 10:40 PM
The main reason I was looking for versatility and customizability is because the campaign I plan to run is a mishmash of settings and genres. Characters and setting run from traditional sword and sorcery, not-so-traditional sword and sorcery, space opera, soft science fiction, modern day supernatural masquerade, and a number of others. The NPCs alone run from an ancient lich to a telekinetic hipster to a firebreathing gnome to a hippie beekeeper with a berserking evil side. And who knows what the players will create.

So anything that ties itself to a particular setting or genre is right out. What attracted me to Hero in the first place was that it gave the groundwork for inventing abilities instead of simply giving me an index of pre-created abilities. This is mainly what I want out of it. If M&M lets me do that, I'll certainly give it a look.

You can pretty much play any genre with it, yes. The system is made originally for superheroes, but it takes no work at all to turn it into another genre (or mix genres).

Basically, if you create a hero who wields an object to fire energy blasts and teleport, you may have a wizard with a magic staff, or a superhero with power gauntlets, or a soldier from a star empire using a rifle and advanced nanotechnology--all depending on the setting and how you assign descriptor words to their powers. What matters is what the character can do, the fluff comes afterwards.

potatocubed
2011-06-11, 03:46 AM
Why don't you like it? I'm still debating whether or not to use Hero, so if you know of a system that offers similar levels of customization while avoiding the pitfalls you describe, I'm all ears.

I dislike Hero because I find it nigh-impossible to wrangle everything into a shape I want it. The maths isn't a problem - although the dice-rolling mechanic is on the complex side of things - but building anything complex never seems to work for me.

And combat in the game I played in took forever. It might be faster with system mastery, though.

As an alternative, I'd also recommend Mutants and Masterminds. It's every bit as flexible as Hero, but it's less complicated to build characters and is quicker and easier to play. It's marketed as a superhero game but the engine will let you simulate pretty much anything.

Although... one thing I have to admit that Hero does better than M&M is relatively low-power characters. Hero scales down quite well, but M&M has quite a narrow 'sweet spot' between power levels 8-12 or so.

Andrewmoreton
2011-06-11, 10:57 AM
I have run a lot of Hero games and recommend it for superhero and high fantasy games.
I would treat your game as a superhero game as that is the most flexible for characters from different genre's . In particular make everyone pay points for all equipment and buy it as a power that way you can guarantee that no one gets an advantage.

I like it because it is the only superhero system I have found which allows you to design whatever you want all the others I have tried (Golden heroes, Mutants and masterminds, DC, Palladium and Marvel) were too inflexible and had other problems .

Overall the GM needs to know the system and the players need to know their characters or things run slowly.

1) Be careful about allowing variable power pools because they can be abused if a player knows the rules better than you, are too flexible or if the player takes too long designing powers each time he changes it. (I insist players provide me a pre approved list of powers except in exceptional circumstances but in my current group none of the players know the rules well wnougth for me to allow any of them one of these)
1a) NEVER let anyone megascale knockback it sounds innocous until you realise that one of the bad guys just got punched 120 km away and will take 30 minutes to rejoin the fight .

2 Yes it does . Providing you make sure the characters are balanced to start with , the game recomends defining what acceptable levels of attack , defense, speed and CV are follow those recomendations then as your power level increases you can increase the caps. These caps keep the characters at the same level of effectiveness. Secondly make sure the characters are all designed to the same level of competence, I have played in a game where 2 players were experts and the other 2 did not know the rules all deisgned theri own characters and the 2 experts were much more effective if you have a mix of character design skill make sure you help the less experienced players design their characters efficiently (or get the expert players to help) . In my last game I designed everyones characters after they had described what they wanted to play I then made sure they were all comparably powerful

3) There is nowhere near the same problem as in 3.5 provided you enforce ability caps (if you have players who are trying to sneak things past the gm then there can be problems) Make sure all disadvantages and limitations on powers ARE disadvantages and limitations , if someone wants points for suceptability to Tomato's make sure he gets drenched in tomato juice on several occasions

4) Try the Hero boards at Hero Design . You can probably get help from experts there to critique and trouble shoot characters or on specific issues. You can try PMing me and if I have time I will look at such things but I am not the best expert and my be busy.
If you can get hold of Hero designer (software for designing charcters ) for 5th ed it really helps in character design as it stops a lot of mistakes

If you can get hold of one of the villain books even though you are not using the setting it can give you some nice examples of character design

I have never found a more flexible system although for a realistic game I would run GURPS for what it seems like you want HERO system is the way to go.

Jay R
2011-06-11, 11:19 AM
Don't allow high-powered characters. My last super-heroic game had a 225 point limit, and if I ran a fantasy campaign, it would have a 150 or 175 point limit.

There is no math at all in the Hero System, just arithmetic. If you have mastered sixth grade arithmetic, there's no problem with it at all. (The biggest knock on the game is that some people can't handle fractions on the sixth grade level.)

Any power can be controlled with the right Limitation. Just tell people that you reserve the right to add plot-inspired Limitations, which will give them spare points to put elsewhere. For a fantasy campaign, I would disallow long-distance senses (including ESP) without major limitations. I prefer Not in Player's Control, which allows the power except when the GM decides it will break the scenario.

Consider the powers they want, based on your scenario. If they have super-powerful one-target powers, throw hordes at them. If they have wide area effects, use individual powerful bad guys with large defenses.

A large monster with lots of STUN and BODY and Damage Reduction fixes many problems. Anyone can damage it; nobody can kill it quickly.

And when their power makes a battle trivial, let it. Then assume that bad guys can do the same thing, and be ready for next week, with monsters that require different tactics.

Oh, and if somebody builds a super-powerful physical fighter, then a mage with Desolidification Usable Against Others will take him out of the fight.

cattoy
2011-06-12, 04:33 AM
The secret to the Hero System is this:

No number on a character sheet has any meaning outside of context.

If I tell you I'm playing a PC that has a 20 Dex and a 4 Spd, you can't tell if I'm playing an acrobatic Ninja or a plodding Tank.

The same numbers might be the fastest PC in the campaign or the slowest. Unless you know the parameters of the campaign, you know nothing.

That said, you need to establish benchmarks for a Hero System game. Design a generic PC-level foe. Average attacks, average defenses, average SPD and average Combat Values.

Then let players pick things to be above average at, balanced by things to be below average at. Don't let them stray too far from the averages, as that is where the system starts to perform poorly. After you've played for a while, you'll get a feeling for where the game starts to get wobbly.

Study the probability chart for 3d6 if you haven't already done so. It will help you to build character that work the way you envision. It's very frustrating to build a character that can't do what you want because you haven't invested quite enough in this stat or that skill.

TheEmerged
2011-06-13, 06:33 PM
So, establishing benchmarks.

The first thing you want to do is decide where you want to set the active point cap (active point = cost of power after advantages but before disadvantages). Let's use 75 pts just for jollies (90 is also popular for superheroic campaigns; 60 is about as low as is feasible and typical for heroic campaigns).

Determine how many dice of an attack a base Energy Blast would do (15d6 in this case). That's your max DC.

Determine how many dice a base Energy Blast would have with a +1/2 advantage (10d6 in this case). That your "expected" DC.

Now it's time to set your defensive standards. This will vary a bit by taste -- some people prefer higher defenses believing it tend toward less spikey combat. I find what it actually does is force everyone to use non-advantaged powers. As such I based my defensive caps on the "expected" DC's instead of the max DC's.


Standard normal DEF = expected DC times 2.5 (so 25 for our example).
Maximum normal DEF, with exceptions = expected DC times 3.5 (so 35 in our example). Those exceptions should be pretty rare.
Minimum normal DEF = expected DC times 1.5 (so 15 in our example)
Non-standard DEF = take the .5 off of the standard & maximum numbers. This applies to Lack of Weakness, Flash Defense, Power Defense, and (depending on campaign) Mental Defense. There should be no minimum (these are non-standard DEF, after all, so most people will have a score of 0).


Now, let's pause for a moment to discuss Mental Defense. I have long played by (and recommend) a house rule that turns Mental Defense into a standard defense. It's sortof that way now (anybody that pays for MD gets a number of free MD points as if it were a normal defense).

Cumulative Advantage Maximum - this is not in the rules, but I personally enforce this and recommend it. To wit, consider limiting the maximum value of all the advantages on a power combined is +2.

The "Does Body" Advantage - I can't remember if this is in the rules with a Stop Sign or not; it should be. There are some hideous abuses with this you should be on the lookout for.

==================

Back to standards.

CV (Combat Values). This one is a little harder to adjudicate, because the first step involves a judgement call -- determining the expected DEX score. I usually set this to 18 for heroic campaigns and 24 for superheroic, your numbers may vary of course. This sets our expected CV at 6 for heroic and 8 for superheroic.

Because of the probability curve of the 3d6 HERO uses for combat, any more than a 2-3 point of CV difference can become problematic. The good news is, unless you're using a critical hit option or somesuch it also starts turning into diminishing returns. As such I establish 2 points of CV difference as the "standard deviation". 2 points fewer than expected and you're a tank-type; 2 points higher and you're a speedster/dex-monkey type. This gives us an expected range of 6-10 CV for superheroic. Add one more standard deviation to give us a cap/maximum of 12 CV.

Take a good look at the Penalty Skill Levels mechanic and lean your players in that direction instead of flat-out Combat Skill Levels.

Angry Bob
2011-06-13, 07:54 PM
Stuff

That is... really very helpful. Thanks.

cattoy
2011-06-14, 07:02 PM
If you're looking for advice about the Hero System, you might as well go to the source.

http://www.herogames.com/forums/forum.php

They're pretty tolerant of newcomers over there.

Tyndmyr
2011-06-14, 09:54 PM
Why don't you like it? I'm still debating whether or not to use Hero, so if you know of a system that offers similar levels of customization while avoiding the pitfalls you describe, I'm all ears. If it's not GURPS or FUDGE. GURPS is way too simulationist and rules-intensive for me(not to mention I'd have to get all of the supplements to satisfy my ocd), and I feel FUDGE would not be well-received by my group.


@Seerow: Advice taken. Since almost everyone is new to the system, we'll be creating characters as a group anyway, but this is definitely helpful.

I ran into the same problem. I'm not a fan of Hero or Gurps, and that really limits the metasystems available. Now, D20 probably counts....there's enough interoperable D20 stuff that if you fold in modern, past, future, and the magic things, you can make just about anything work. It has the advantage of being an easy transition from D&D, too. Helps get those lazy players going quickly.

But really, I decided to build my own(by "my own", I mean with a small team of experienced local GMs). I'll slap it up at some point, but it still needs a crapton of editing and playtesting.

qcbtnsrm
2011-06-14, 10:36 PM
Well TheEmerged made most the points I was going to. But I would like to add a couple of things. All of his benchmark stuff is solid. You may find you have different preferences. But the advice here is solid.


Cumulative Advantage Maximum - this is not in the rules, but I personally enforce this and recommend it. To wit, consider limiting the maximum value of all the advantages on a power combined is +2.
QFT - There is a huge difference in the capabilities of a 6d6 Ranged Killing attack and a 1d6 Ranged Killing Attack, Attack vs Limited Defense (Power Defense), Does Body, Area Affect, Megascale, Autofire, Reduced Endurance, Continuous, Uncontrolled. One of these will badly hurt an opponent. The other will level NYC in a handful of seconds, while still badly hurting your opponents. Advantages were not intended to be stacked limitlessly. An advantage max helps eliminate those kinds of shenanigans.

One other thing I would recommend is to pickup and use "Sidekick" if you can find that book. It is a rules light version of the system. It has about 99% of what you are likely to use and clocks in at only 125 pages. The main book can be a bit of a slog. For example compare the entries for Cryptography. (Hopefully the mods will agree that a single skill entry is acceptable fair use).

CRYPTOGRAPHY
Intellect: 9 + (INT/5)
Cost: 3 Character Points; +1 to roll per +2 points
Cryptography allows a character to solve ciphers and codes, encrypt or encode messages, and hide messages in ordinary text. In modern settings it may require the use of a computer.


CRYPTOGRAPHY
Intellect: 9 + (INT/5)
Cost: 3 Character Points; +1 to roll per +2 points
This Intellect Skill allows a character to solve ciphers and codes, encrypt or encode messages, and hide messages in ordinary text. Ciphers, which involve replacing letters and numbers in a message with other letters and numbers, range from the simple (alphabet-number substitutions) to the very complex (involving nulls [meaningless characters] or multiple substitutions). Codes, which involve substituting one word or phrase for another one, are very difficult to break unless there have been many messages or the codebook has been discovered. Science Skills (like Mathematics) and Computer Programming are usually complementary to Cryptography.
The main use of Cryptography is to decode and decipher messages. This can take a long time — sometimes years — unless the character has some clues to the nature of the code or cipher. Modern computer-generated codes and ciphers are virtually impossible to break without the aid of other computers (and sometimes not even then). A failed roll may mean an inability to decode the message, or an incorrect translation of the message.
A character with Cryptography may also encode and hide messages. This may involve invisible inks and other techniques for hiding data; it can take a long time unless the character has devices to help him. Secret messages may be imprinted on paper in ultraviolet, grown into crystal structures, or hidden until looked at through certain optic fibers. A failed roll may indicate improper encoding or a garbled message.
In some campaigns, Cryptography can also represent a character’s knowledge of ancient, obscure, and dead languages. While the character cannot speak these languages, or read them easily, he can, given sufficient time and reference materials, translate them — thus providing a means to read the grimoires of long-dead wizards, the instructions on treasure maps from empires that fell millennia ago, and so forth. If a character can only use Cryptography this way (i.e., he cannot decode and encode messages), he can buy it with a -˝ Limitation.