Sidekick, the "Quick start for the HERO system" is a 128 page, "simplified" system designed to provide a low-cost and low-complexity entry point for new users to the HERO system. As such, any review of Sidekick will likely be mostly a review of the HERO system.
In this review, to try to make things simpler, I’ve decided to use the nomenclature of "Sidekick" when dealing with issues only found in the Sidekick book, "HERO" when discussing the shared system between Sidekick and HERO System 5th Edition, and "HERO 5th" when referring to issues only in the full version of the Hero System 5th Edition.
Sidekick, like HERO 5th, uses a point-buy system, using 3d6 roll-under for most "to-hit" or "skill" rolls.
Skill rolls are usually determined by some combination of adding 9 + a value determined by a controlling attribute + extra points placed in the skill. There are some exceptions, but generally, that’s how it works. Combat rolls are handled differently, at 11 + attackers "offensive combat value" – defenders "defensive combat value." These 9 and 11 bases are interesting in that they tend to prevent rolls from occurring on the "back end of the bell curve."
Allow me to explain. One of the advantages of the bell curve when designing systems is that a bonus for the novice is likely to be much more important than an equal bonus would be for the expert – similarly, a penalty for the novice would be devastating compared to only a trifle for the expert, and the big bonus towards higher numbers in the skill tend not to be that the character can succeed more often during normal conditions but can succeed much more often during poor conditions. The problem, however, occurs when the numbers on the "back end" of the bell curve work against this philosophy. For an incompetent – someone with, say, a 5 in the skill, a bonus or penalty isn’t going to affect his chances much – compared to the person in the middle of the bell curve. By starting off most skill and combat rolls in the middle of the bell-curve to begin with, HERO ensures that the biggest bonuses and penalties will occur to the novice. In addition, it also helps to keep most rolls even for a player’s least useful skill around the 50-60% success range, feeling, well, more "heroic" than many systems.
Like GURPS, once an attack roll succeeds, damage is rolled in a multiple of d6s. Killing damage – damage that does damage with the express purpose of killing someone, like a gunshot, usually does a low number of damage dice that’s applied directly against a body score (with a multiplier to determine the "stun".) Most other attacks – energy blasts and the like, have higher numbers but do stun damage as an addition to the dice – but the individual dice determine the body damage – with 1s resulting in no body damage, 2-5 resulting in 1 body damage, and 6s resulting in two body damage. The result is that "killing attacks" are designed to be gritty and final – "normal attacks" are designed to emulate the typical super-heroic brawl where people get beat up a lot but recover quickly.
Rather than relying on the "one move per turn" format that many games take, Sidekick uses a "phase" system that gives players a number of actions spaced roughly evenly along a 12 sectioned "turn." I.E, a character with a speed of 4 would take actions when the GM counts 3, 6, 9, and 12. While this does help eliminate the reliance on initiative rolls, "ties" require the traditional "move in order of DEX," so while it seems like this system would be simpler and better defined than a traditional "roll initiative" system, it can actually end up being more complex than a roll-initiative system.
The point buy system is generally standard fare – Characteristics (stats) cost X number of points, you can buy Skills, Perks and Talents (minor advantages), and Powers, and you can get points back by taking disadvantages. Most powers have "advantages" and "limitations" – advantages add to the ability of the power and increase it’s cost, limitations decrease the ability of the power and decrease it’s cost. There’s also "frameworks" – essentially ways to decrease the cost of powers by grouping them together.
COMPLEXITY
In many ways, like other systems of a 10-year-or-more run, Sidekick shows it's age. Perhaps the most telling: A "Reasoning from Special Effects" section explains that "most roleplaying games don't work the way that the HERO system does," a conceit, perhaps, of the days of Champions, but I'd say that many games require "reasoning from special effects" in the HERO sense - and nearly all (still viable) superhero games do. It makes the recently released Sidekick seem quaint.
It is not the only way in which Sidekick shows it's age - The math in HERO can, indeed, as rumor suggests, be daunting, but not for the reasons most people think. The math used (multiplication by fractions) was covered in the 5th grade. It’s not the difficulty of the actual math that proves to be the problem but the non-standard notation used. The idea that an advantage raises the point cost of an item by 25% isn’t a problem, and when you add percentages, you're really multiplying by 1.25 (and anyone who doesn’t can be quickly reminded in the sidebar just as quickly as it takes to explain the fractional formula.) However, a mere (+1/4) notation doesn't make it clear that that’s what you’re doing – you’re not adding a quarter point to the point cost – you’re adding 25% of the original cost. Since the notation is not "standard math" it is impossible for those even with PhDs in mathematics to comprehend what exactly is meant by those fractions at first glance and, unable to comprehend the process by which the final number was derived, the new player is left to imagine daunting hoops through which one must jump to create a new character. As simple as the system is, the inability for someone to recognize at a glance how someone gets from original cost to final result makes the system daunting and confusing.
Another problem is Sidekick's overemphasis on using acronyms. Abbreviations like "STR" are standard fare and easily guessed - acronyms such as PD, ED, HTH, OCV, DCV, RKA, EB, HKA, KS, LS, TF, DNPC, NCI, PS, RSL, TF, WF, FF, FW, HA, RKA, LS, HRRP, AP, BOECV, NND, OAF, OIF, IAF, IIF, OIHID, RSR, and EC – all found in Sidekick – are not. Indeed, acronyms litter Sidekick like they litter military speech, and only serve to obfuscate communication rather than illuminate concepts. In other words, HERO's reputation as complex and difficult is not entirely deserved, yet it is handily earned.
COMPARISIONS TO OTHER SYSTEMS:
For GURPS players, even though HERO may seem similar due to the point-buy philosophy and the 3d6 roll-under mechanic, HERO is very, very different from GURPS when you get down to design philosophy. HERO has a design philosophy of being able to do pretty much everything within the core rules. GURPS - or at least the 3rd edition of GURPS, all bets are off for 4e - seems to have a design philosophy of having a robust kernel of rules with additional modules to be added as needed. For example, in HERO 5th, magic could be a combination of skill rolls, they could be built with a Variable Points Pool for a free-form type of magic system (which is not in Sidekick,) it could be a collection of rigidly defined spells (which could be in Sidekick) – all of which are doable within the core rules and system itself. GURPS on the other hand relies greatly on modules (and makes it simple to insert them into play) – The rigidly defined Sword & Sorcery GURPS Magic competes with the ritual magic of GURPS Voodoo, competes with the freeform magic of GURPS Mage the Ascension – three different books and three different ways to do the same thing. HERO may have three different ways to do the same thing, but you don’t have to buy more books to do it.
This philosophy is never more evident when looking at the "basic" versions of the two systems - Sidekick and GURPS Lite - in comparison. GURPS Lite is 32 pages long but contains pretty much everything you need to run the GURPS system, although not everything you need to run every possible game under the GURPS system. Indeed, in this respect, many of the features of the "full" GURPS Basic Set can be seen as "modules" to GURPS Lite - and every GURPS supplement is, essentially, a module. (Here's your magic module, here's your psionics module, here's your space module, etc.) As if to prove the case in point – many of the GURPS supplements can be used solely with GURPS Lite due to the designed modularity of GURPS. Sidekick is 128 pages long and still leaves out key parts of the core HERO system - HERO is just a system that's designed to work together as a cohesive whole and can't really be redacted to a simpler form.
This "whole system" design proves to be Sidekick’s specific Achilles heel. Even at the 128-page mark, for example, Sidekick suffers in comparison to the 96 pages Tri-Stat DX as far as just general robustness goes. I find it difficult to think of a character I could create in Sidekick that I couldn't in Tri-Stat DX - I find it easy to think of the reverse. To be fair, the whole system design philosophy has made Sidekick more robust than GURPS Basic Set at 300 pages – but unlike GURPS, making changes to Sidekick in order to fill the gaps is much more daunting. When comparing to superhero-only systems, like Mutants and Masterminds and Aberrant, Sidekick’s gaps seem to be less prevalent, mostly because in those offerings, there’s less of an emphasis on providing everything possible and instead focused on providing specific super-heroic powers (even if the special effects for those powers are still left up in the air.)
What advantages Sidekick does have over Tri-Stat DX are ingrained in the core mechanics of the HERO system - Tri-Stat DX's variable dice core (with non-variable penalties and bonuses) makes the system cumbersome - it's combat damage system is too "simplistic" to actually be simple in play, and random damage rolls - simply make no sense. Indeed, an ideal system might replace Tri-Stat's "random damage rolls" with Sidekick's "stun/body" bellcurve/dicepool system, and Tri-Stat’s variable dice with Sidekick’s 3d6. Well, I can dream.
CONCLUSIONS
It is said that crunchy systems with rigidly defined rules - such as D&D - tend to put power in the hands of the player at the expense of the GM. This is certainly true of HERO. The player himself places nearly all the rules that apply to a player’s character in HERO upon it. There is extremely little wiggle room in HERO - even to the point of absurdity. In other words, it does an anal-retentively good job of eliminating the need for judgment for anything. If you like that, then HERO and Sidekick might be the system for you.
What Sidekick also has is a very solid, very thoroughly tested and simple set of core mechanics that simply make sense for the superhero genre, can be used for other genres without having to change the system, and simply works better than many other systems out there. My biggest problems with it stem from the design goals and not the design implementation – with the above mentioned caveats, I can’t help but be impressed with its construction.
