Grade the Hero System

[dbm]

A stripped down version of the rules is needed

I am really impressed with the Basic Rulebook for 6e in that regard - 136 pages covering character creation and playing the game and it didn’t seem to lack any key content in comparison to the combined 688 pages of the two core books.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I am really impressed with the Basic Rulebook for 6e in that regard - 136 pages covering character creation and playing the game and it didn’t seem to lack any key content in comparison to the combined 688 pages of the two core books.

Agreed. That was also the point of the Complete books, Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete, to get all the needed rules in one place and make them as compact as possible.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The figured stats are no longer figured; they're bought just like primaries, from a fixed base. So no free SPD from Dex 40, no free PD from high (I can't remember if that's STR or CON)...

If anything, 6th left the worst math in (VPPs, Multipowers, and ECs), and pulled out the most easily understood math out. No violence to the playing, only the designing.

They did get rid of ECs. Arguably, there's no way to have Multipowers or VPPs do what they're supposed to without the math looking strange from some angles.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Except being clear about where on the spectrum between Hero 4 and Interlock (Mekton, CP2013, CP2020) it was.

Fair.

CNM played ok... not great, and for real hero action, you needed a copy of HSR4 or the Champions Core (which included HSR 4) to develop new powers, new gadgets, etcetera.

Honestly, there was also the problem that the whole approach to the power plug in was flawed; you can't do what they did with Advantages and Limitations there without getting progressively more degenerate results as the power got larger or smaller.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hero is also one of the very few games where students of martial arts are not functionally indistinguishable. If it matters to you that karate and jiu-jitsu are not the same thing then Hero allows for that.

Yeah. It really does require getting into techniques in some fashion for that to work, and most places you see martial arts the system is unable or unwilling to do that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Agreed. That was also the point of the Complete books, Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete, to get all the needed rules in one place and make them as compact as possible.

Well, that's more a case of unspooling a choice that was made with 5e and 6e to fire off examples galore, which can make it easier to understand some things, but gods above does it bulk up the rules books.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I am really impressed with the Basic Rulebook for 6e in that regard - 136 pages covering character creation and playing the game and it didn’t seem to lack any key content in comparison to the combined 688 pages of the two core books.

There was less expansive Hero Systems Rulebook published along side the BBB, an FRED later was accompanied by the stripped-down Sidekick, IIRC.

And, I may have already mentioned, the original Champions, which really doesn't lack for much (beyond skill inflation and some closed loopholes) relative to later versions, was only 64 pages.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There was less expansive Hero Systems Rulebook published along side the BBB, an FRED later was accompanied by the stripped-down Sidekick, IIRC.

And, I may have already mentioned, the original Champions, which really doesn't lack for much (beyond skill inflation and some closed loopholes) relative to later versions, was only 64 pages.

Man, I have a long history with the Hero System (technically longer than it existed as a game) and that's a pretty hot take on Champs 1e. There were all kinds of problems with Champs 1e.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Man, I have a long history with the Hero System (technically longer than it existed as a game) and that's a pretty hot take on Champs 1e. There were all kinds of problems with Champs 1e.

I believe I acknowledged 'closed loopholes.' Like, "why do you have a 10,000 CON?" &c
I started with the 1st ed of Champions, and explored it very thoroughly, I'm well aware of how rough it could be. It's just it wasn't nearly as... incomplete... as one might expect a 64pg version of a game that eventually topped 600pgs...

 

[John Dallman]

It's my preferred system for superhero games. However, that is not one of my preferred genres. I've played one long and good Champions campaign, but it was very much helped by most of the characters and the main plot-line being about historical mythic archetypes, rather energy-blasters in technicolour tights.

Unfortunately, quite a few years ago, a friend whom I learned a lot about gaming from had a brainstorm, and decided that Hero System was the better version of both OD&D and AD&D1e and all the gaming he was involved with should be Hero. That has meant that he's spent decades trying to design the perfect campaign for his preferred styles of gaming (not helped by his subsequent decision that everything should be anime-flavoured) and mostly refusing to run his excellent homebrew D&D setting. That has soured me somewhat on Hero, because the campaigns he produces for it all fail to make sense, sometimes as early as the character-generation briefing.