[OT] Hero System Fifth Ed Review

[coyote6]

Actually, I think in Champions/Hero, the Iron Golem would have a Vulnerability disadvantage of some kind to reflect it's weakness in the face of hot/cold attacks.

If a GM didn't think to write this up in the Golem's stats, it's the GM's problem/limitation, not the system's.

I played Champions for quite a while (for a couple of years, nothing but Champions, nearly every week); probably longer than I played AD&D, actually. I think I got to be pretty good at "thinking Champions" and creating characters.

However, if you can't "think Hero" -- whether due to inexperience, or just inability (people think in different ways, and have difficulties with different modes) -- making a character is a pain in the butt.

I got tired of it -- deciding whether X's laser was an EB, RKA, ALD, NND, Flash, with which Advantages & Limitations; deciding whether the golem was Vulnerable to some wacky combo of powers; deciding whether someone's powers were best/most cheaply expressed as an EC, a multipower, a VPP, a trained monkey, or what. And, for whatever reason, my group tended to think and speak in game terms -- to create a character, one needs to think like that, and for us, it tended to carry over to play. So, wizards didn't cast their Baleful Hellblast, they blasted a guy with their EB.

Even when someone did manage to say "Baleful Hellblast", they'd have to tell me what it was anyways, 'cause remembering the abilities of 4-5 PCs & a half dozen NPCs is enough trouble, nevermind remembering their cute individualized names.

So, I just got tired of "thinking Hero".

I still like Hero, am happy to see it come back, and will get Hero 5e (probably before I can really afford it ), and may play it again (if I ever think of a campaign) -- but I don't think it's the Greatest Thing Ever.

And arguing about it -- it's so passe, so 20th Century.

 

[Darkness]

GURPs seems to be marketed based on it's genre books. There are many, many books, including quite a number of licensed books. Admittedly, it seems only a handful of these books see anything more than a single book.

Right. This is slowly changing now, though; GURPS Traveller is an entire line with quite a lot of books. And the new GURPS World War II and Transhuman Space will also get many books.

 

[paqman]

Now in hero, the closest I'd be willing to allow is putting the points aside and letting them player spend them on the fly. Not too expensive if you have a multipower.

That is exactly what I do, my players have a tendency to keep themselves a reserve of about 10 character points for exactly that situation. they need to do something special with their powers, they put the points in it and voila!

It is a bit realted to the good ol' Marvel super heroes power feat system, where the player payed a certain amount of XPs to try to do a power feat. That was though to succeed IIRC though.

 

[Petrosian]

Ok some items here...

The specific nonsense about the Gm should have limited the iron golem... no... for evidence thats not how HERo did it in their fantasy hero supplements.... for better suggestions there is a rule in HERO4 and HERO3 for coordinating attacks to combine them to penetrate armor... this rule required no special vulnerability on the part of the monsters.

On HERO and fantasy... HERo does not IMO reprsent fantasy well. EFFECT based powers as very expensive in HERO compared to damage. While yes you can build a limited poly other that will turn a human into a carp that will work on normal commoners about 70% of the time and much less on hero types, it will cost you about the same as a 18d6firebolt would. It would exceed the normal DC limits for full fledged superhero games (10-15 dc) and be incredibly out of the reach of most fantasy level games where the characters are built on 50-150 pts.

So yes, technically, you can build a poly other, you just cannot afford it in any fantasy game in play.

Just like you can build a nuke which will disintigrate a city but cannnot afford it in any game in play.

(Assumes HERO4 as HERO5 is not in hand yet.)

HERO in general makes simple direct damage easy, firebolt rolls to hit and does Xd6.) Skilled players will also soon figure out the super-baby-power trick where you buy a very small power (2d6 EB or 1/2d6 drain) and apply a ton of synergizing advantages. SBP works well because even though their effects synergize well the cost for all those advantages is based off the original small power cost.

Pretty much everything else in between is fairly lame or gets priced out of the game, like poly other.

Consider that a good damage set for a melee fighter is about 6 DC per attack and a decent blasting spell does 6d6 to one target.(as a method for comparison)

Hold Person: needs about 11 DC Mind Control to have about a 50/50 chance of freezing a commoner for one turn (loses two-three actions.) For the same active cost you could get 11d6 blast. (real cost might be lower.)

Darkness to all sight with 18'radius is iirc going to run around the same cost as 8d6 blast.

Grease wont be in the ballpark since making a spell do two things (chance of fall and decrease run) is prohibitive.

Fireball wont work because in HERO the difference between an area spell and a single burst spell is TWICE the cost, so pretty much once the damage cap is in play (whether explicitly a cap or just a point limit) the area spells will work against minions only. If it can be touched by the area spell then in general it will be dropped one shot by the direct shot counterpart. GMs do not like one shot kills so the limits will be set based on the one target and the AOE spells are just out of luck (exception, SBPs can defeat the caps.)

just a few of the issues with HERo and Fantasy.

For campaigning, since HERO allows everything, the GM must therefore creat everything. How do you acquire and pay for magic spells? Can a stupid fighter with no brains develop his own magical disintigrate spell if he has the points? Is it uncommon for peasants to throw fireballs, even though they can afford them? In my experience by the time the Gm finishes detailing what is and is not common in the world, he has in effect created classes common for the world, whether they are called schools of magic or templates or packages or whatever "not the c-word" euphemism he chooses to embrace.

On HERO math... the general rhetoric and propaganda goes like this... "I loked at hero but the math...yech!" followed by snide "Ok sure, YOU are not right for HERO if you have trouble with simple multiplication and division, go back ti kindergarten."

What it fails to realize is its not that the math is hard, its that a LOT of people object to the amount of math, not its difficulty. Every single decision is a number crunch trade off doing your taxes sort of moment. Every skill is weighed off vs another dice of damage on the firebolt, another +1 to hit and another couple of points of stun. Of course, you can simply choose vanilla effects bought quickly but then you will realize you are not in the same league character power wize with the guys who did minimax everything. HERO encourage and presumes minimaxing at every turn. If you do not do so, you will find yourself a significant power level down if competitive at all. (Many longterm HERO players pride themselves on their "skill" at milking the system.)

 

[nharwell]

I have very mixed feelings about Hero, but I feel that I should bring up one point: Many of the complaints about Hero that have been mentioned are faults with GMs and players, not with the system. All too often, Champions proponents become obsessed with assigning a point value to every little thing, such as GMs who require a PC to buy Mind Link, charges, OAF, etc. to represent change to use a pay phone. Special Effects are ignored, or at least meaningless in such games.

Fortunately, Steve Long (the new head of Hero Games) does NOT view the game that way. Check out some of his discussions at the Hero Games discussion boards (www.herogames.com). He greatly encourages not charging points for minor effects and for giving actual meaning to the special effects of powers. Moreover, he mentions allowing occasional stunts and effects appropriate to a given situation (but not allowing a player to do such things "at will"). Steve's approach to the game, even more than 5th Ed. itself, gives me hope that Hero might be worth playing again. I think such a "fast and loose" take, combined with the point-structure of Hero, provides a great deal of flexibility and can work gangbusters.

 

[Psion]

On HERO and fantasy... HERo does not IMO reprsent fantasy well. EFFECT based powers as very expensive in HERO compared to damage. While yes you can build a limited poly other that will turn a human into a carp that will work on normal commoners about 70% of the time and much less on hero types, it will cost you about the same as a 18d6firebolt would. It would exceed the normal DC limits for full fledged superhero games (10-15 dc) and be incredibly out of the reach of most fantasy level games where the characters are built on 50-150 pts.

So yes, technically, you can build a poly other, you just cannot afford it in any fantasy game in play.

Just like you can build a nuke which will disintigrate a city but cannnot afford it in any game in play.

(Assumes HERO4 as HERO5 is not in hand yet.)

HERO in general makes simple direct damage easy, firebolt rolls to hit and does Xd6.) Skilled players will also soon figure out the super-baby-power trick where you buy a very small power (2d6 EB or 1/2d6 drain) and apply a ton of synergizing advantages. SBP works well because even though their effects synergize well the cost for all those advantages is based off the original small power cost.

Pretty much everything else in between is fairly lame or gets priced out of the game, like poly other.

Consider that a good damage set for a melee fighter is about 6 DC per attack and a decent blasting spell does 6d6 to one target.(as a method for comparison)

Hold Person: needs about 11 DC Mind Control to have about a 50/50 chance of freezing a commoner for one turn (loses two-three actions.) For the same active cost you could get 11d6 blast. (real cost might be lower.)

Darkness to all sight with 18'radius is iirc going to run around the same cost as 8d6 blast.

Grease wont be in the ballpark since making a spell do two things (chance of fall and decrease run) is prohibitive.

Fireball wont work because in HERO the difference between an area spell and a single burst spell is TWICE the cost, so pretty much once the damage cap is in play (whether explicitly a cap or just a point limit) the area spells will work against minions only. If it can be touched by the area spell then in general it will be dropped one shot by the direct shot counterpart. GMs do not like one shot kills so the limits will be set based on the one target and the AOE spells are just out of luck (exception, SBPs can defeat the caps.)

just a few of the issues with HERo and Fantasy.

The only real point you seem to have here is that Hero won't exactly model the same powers at the same level as D&D.

Big Deal.

Each game has different salient balance points and assign different power levels to different effects. The error in your thinking is that D&D is inherently right. I don't think that is a fair assumption at all. I have always thought that many D&D spells were a level too low compared to the bulk of remaining spells.

One of the salient assumptions of transforming things in HERO was if you could kill it, you could transform it. Okay, perhaps that is a little extreme, but really, is that so off? In D&D, does it make that much difference if you were polymorphed into a frog or killed? Yet D&D assigns these effects into different levels.

As for not being able to affect commoners, if you want mages that can dominate others with impunity, I recommend that you adopt the Mystic Master rules that forces everyone to take vulnerability to mind affecting magic. That would simulate the D&D approach is that is what you are striving for. Not necessarily an obligatory goal, but I don't think your outright assumption that D&D is right is a correct one. The right balance point is what you assign it to be.

If anyone wants to take a look at some D&D conversions to FH from a less biased perspective, check out:

http://members.tripod.com/~hawk_wind/hero/fanthero.html

And yes, I did have some difficulty hammering some spells into the hero point system. But I recognized that I was working into a sysetm that views the world differently. If you want to play a system that views the world like D&D, then play D&D... duh.

For campaigning, since HERO allows everything, the GM must therefore creat everything.

Yes and no. FH and its companions have plenty of source material to build from. Not as much as D&D. But then, that's part of the strength on hero. When I do need to go beyond what is provided, I am not feeling around in the dark like I am with D&D.

That said, if you are suggesting that the GM must tolerate the players creating everything, and underlying structure to all HERO 4 campaign books where plotting sheets that allowed the GM to define what is and what is not permissible. They worked rather well in FH.

On HERO math... the general rhetoric and propaganda goes like this... "I loked at hero but the math...yech!" followed by snide "Ok sure, YOU are not right for HERO if you have trouble with simple multiplication and division, go back ti kindergarten."

You will note that I have specifically said that the power system will put some players off. That's a fact. This does not make the power system not a great boon. So do me a favor and dispense with the snotty generalizations, okay?

 

[Jezrael]

Marvel Super Heroes

The one time I played that, it was with a really bad GM, so I never picked it up. Alas; now I think it might've been nice.

If you want to get a copy of Marvel Super Heroes (along with the Ultimate Powers book and Realms of Magic) go to Zan's Super Home, you can download it all in PDF format.

http://www.rabunda.com/~super/dir.php?loc=resources/rules/index.php

 

[Galfridus]

Heh, when I posted my comparison of 3E and Hero, I was actually going to write that 3E flames don't hold a candle to Hero System rules arguments. Good thing I didn't.

To address some of the points that people have made:

• Yup, there are powers/concepts that Hero doesn't do well. Many of them involve absolutes: always hitting; the power to do, copy, or create anything; stopping time; etc. No system is perfect.
• You can improvise effects in Hero just as well as any other system. My favorite example is a mage using an "aspect of fire" spell to emulate Dryness, which saved the party from poisonous steam in the air.
• I've seen low and high fantasy in Hero with no problems. It's my system of choice for fantasy. If you are trying to emulate D&D you'll have a lot of issues; but in that case why not just run D&D?
• I've encountered and overcome gamespeak issues in Hero; they're no tougher than what I am finding in 3E. I actually find it easier in Hero to come up with NPCs and monsters that use the rules creatively, to the point where the players can't figure out how the rules are working and have to just roleplay with it.

My GenCon Psi Hero game uses characters who range from 150 to 600 points: some can crush skyscrapers, some are merely talented scientists. The players get a written description of their powers -- my co-GM and I have the powers written up in Hero terms so we know what they do, but the players are forced to work off the effect, not the game mechanic. Not once have we had someone say "Oh, I must have Mind Control so I can use Rule Q to blah blah blah..." It's all in how you run the game (and how your players approach it).

 

[NLP]

On HERO and fantasy... HERo does not IMO reprsent fantasy well. EFFECT based powers as very expensive in HERO compared to damage. While yes you can build a limited poly other that will turn a human into a carp that will work on normal commoners about 70% of the time and much less on hero types, it will cost you about the same as a 18d6firebolt would. It would exceed the normal DC limits for full fledged superhero games (10-15 dc) and be incredibly out of the reach of most fantasy level games where the characters are built on 50-150 pts.

So yes, technically, you can build a poly other, you just cannot afford it in any fantasy game in play. Just like you can build a nuke which will disintigrate a city but cannnot afford it in any game in play.

You are comparing apples to oranges here. In D&D your character might have 1 polymorph spell to use at your discretion. In FH the character can throw the polymorph spell every single attack if they wish. If you allow the character to succeed (allow them enough points to do it with one attack) then you have just blown game balance out the door. Why would a player choose a warrior-type that chops with their mighty sword (and might have to hit something 2-3 times to kill it) when a mage can change it into a frog with one roll of the dice?

The GM is required to keep a certain amount of game balance. The GM accomplishes that most of the time by limiting active points, but that isn’t the only type of limit. If a player wanted to simulate D&D style magic, the GM could easily remove the active point limits and say: “Ok, but you only get to use that attack once unless you rest 8 hours and then re-learn the spell from your book”. The advantage of FH is its ability to simulate ANY style of magic, not just D&D style. If you want to use the D&D style, you can. That’s between you and your GM.

If every character with a polymorph spell were the toughest, eventually everyone would want to play mages with polymorph spells. Game balance is everything, for every game system. What good is it to play a Fighter in D&D if by 10th level the Wizard has far exceeded the power level of the Fighter? Game balance insures that certain players can’t take too much advantage of the system.

You can simulate virtually anything with the Hero System, but when you do that simulation you need to take into account both the simulated system’s strengths and weakness’. If I were to devise a spell system for Hero that worked just like D&D, you would be able to do everything that you are citing examples for. But to devise such a spell system would actually limit the Hero System, not make it better. In FH you can make spells and use them as many times as you wish. Sometimes those spells might take two or more attacks to achieve your desired effect, unlike D&D, but you can use those spells infinite times if you wish, once again, unlike D&D. Also keep in mind that you get Saving Throws in D&D, so it’s possible that your spell will fail or do far less damage. As far as I’m concerned, that’s even more limited than needing to hit someone twice to turn them into a frog.

It’s obvious that you don’t like Hero, and that’s fine. Everyone should play the games that they like. But I do think that all the examples that you have listed, and that I snipped, come from the viewpoint of someone who really has no concept of what the system is about. You might have played the game for years, but your fixed mentality about “how things should work”, which in this case is: “Just like D&D” has skewered your perception.

 

[Petrosian]

"The only real point you seem to have here is that Hero won't exactly model the same powers at the same level as D&D.
Big Deal. "

Actually, NO. I did not say that at all. Tho that makes for an easily assailable rhetoric so i can see why you would choose it.

I am not at all lamenting the notion of the powers not matching DND levels exactly.

I am lamenting how a number of the elements i commonly associate with fantasy and legend like turnign people into frogs, paralyzing them or mind controlling them, or general effect things like for instance grease are in NORMAL hero fantasy level games (character base is somewhere between 50-150 pts.) are too expensive to be effective.

I lament the notion that the basic pattern makes AOE effect spells relatively useless, along the lines of minion bashers. That too does not mormally git with my notion of fantasy.

Last time i checked, the summoning spells were likewise out of range priced to get anything useful. Anyone who thinks the DnD summonings were lowballed does not want to even try it in hero.

It has nothing to do with "are the levels the same as DND" as instead the notion of "so given we are all about points, what will be a good way to spend them" and In HERo if it aint damage it aint the way to go.

Now as for the general issue of the principle behind transform, it sounds really good doesn't it? "if you can kill them you can transform them" except it fails the PLAY test. In play i don't need to kncok someone to neg body to kill them when i fight. It RARELY happens that way. What usually happens is i knock them to negative stun and/or negative body and they then fall down, are no lnger a threat and are killed later.

The point spread fpr transform assumes i must take them to full negative body to gain the effect making it take TWICE the output to take an enemy out in a combat situation.

See the flaw.

If i choose heros favored attack, do damage-duh simple, then i have to knock them to 0. If i want to turn them into a toad, i have to drop them twice as far.

Thats why the effect spell poly fails to be within the reach of the fantasy game. it has to do twice as much work.

Turning your question around, what's the difference between knocking him down and out with negative body/stun (and getting interim chances for con stun) and then walking up and killing him when helpless later VS turning him into a carp.

Answer: The latter costs about twice as much CONSERVATIVELY.

Now the way around this, for very experienced HERO-geeks, might still lie with SBPs, where you buy an incredibly small cumulative autofire aoe etc etc etc transform to get around the limit, if they never fixed cumulative to work comsistently with the mental version of the adder. However this again is just another bane for the newcomer.

And yes, the GM can simply redo HERo and make all these effects do twice what they currently do per point, but isn't that my point?
Any Gm can change any game to serve his needs, if it handles the communications between player and GM well enough.

However, in a comparison, should one discuss what the system does not what a Gm could change it to do?

Just a thought.

Note however that many of the things listed above are indeed perfectly fine for superHERO. It serves that genre well enough for "turn the hero into a toad" and "mind control the hero" to be rare and expensive.

SuperHEROES in plate mail however is not my vision of fantasy.

As for the fantasy hero companions et all... i own all three.

Did I mention i have run over half a dozen champions campaigns and 3 different fantasy hero campaigns each of which lasted 1-2 years? Did i mention that i have more time running HERo than i do DnD? I even had a fuzion game run for over a year.

Fantasy HERo is a great look at whats bad about HERo. They tried to present a magic system. instead they presented a dozen or two dozen colleges of magic which showed how to create the SAME spell with 1-2 dozen different bow ties. While they do lip service to SFX, they reveal in their own execution no real sense of it as significant.

Every school even air, fire water, plant animal has a low cheap spell of their SFX for "force field" (maybe some used the armor power.) in the schools common spells group. Regardless of whether it makes sense for a sheathe of fire around you to stop damage like plate mail and not do any actual fire damage to someone hugging you, that spell is there in the fire school.

Why? Because in HERO damage and defense are IMPORTANT and we cannot let silly things like SFX get in the way of the necessary PLUSSES.

The best one was the animal school one, where right after they describe the "druids" role as protection of the beasts, the basic general purpose force field spell (everyone has one) has as the SFX birds and varmints jumping in front of the incoming blow or arrow or firebolt to sacrifice themselves for the good of the druid, blocking some of the damage.

That one was rich.

i didn't find too much useful in any of the FH books from a system perspective or a campaign perspective. Well maybe the gradual effect limitation.

I agree... fantasy hero and companiosnet al are PERFECT examples of what you should expect from HERO genre books.

I just think that those products MAKE my points more evident.

BTW, will be interesting to see if REGENERATION, which allows a typical fantasy warrior to heal back all damage less than lethal within 10 minutes of any fight still costs less than the typical light spell 20' radius would. (Another superism, superheroes rarely take damage other than stun so regeneration is a very cheap ability, but for a fantasy character, its a significant thing. The joys of GENERIC taking precedence over GENRE.Oh wait, i forgot, the Gm can CHANGE that, so the system is fine.)











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