[OT] Hero System Fifth Ed Review

[Petrosian]

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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.

HERO handles frequency of use with endurance, and the AP of the transform i mentioned would exhaust most fantasy characters very quickly. Also your dnd assertion is flawed, only applying to the prepare classes, a sorcerer will have AT LEAST 3 and perhaps more if he has it at all. There is nothing stopping a mid level sorcerer from tossing a half=dozen or more poly's.

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.

Being able to turn commoners into carps 7-7 of the time does not seem a game breaker to me, yet it is effectively ruled out of most fantasy campaigns due to the cost.

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?

because the fighter wants to be able to affect things dealier than commoners. The warrior is probably mostly immune to the poly commoner to carp spell since he has 15-20 body, requiring a roll of 30-40 on 6d6 to transform him.

Duh?

The GM is required to keep a certain amount of game balance.

Yes but that balance in HERo favors DAMAGE over effect. I can buy simple firepower boom spell that does enough to knock out the enemy for about half the price i can buy a spell adequate to turn him into a carp. Knock out and walk over and stab the unconsciuos guy and have again as many points on other spells OR turn him into carp and have no other points?

Hmmm...

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”.

Yes, the Gm can CHANGE the system to make it work. No argument there.

The advantage of FH is its ability to simulate ANY style of magic, not just D&D style.

polymorph is not DND style. i doubt the various legends and fairy tales about witches turning princes into frogs or things tunring people to stone were written by people who had read DND manuals. DND incorporated a good deal of fantasy and epic legend lore into its system, thats what i call GENERIC.

HERO tells you to make the genre fit the system. Fantasy hero tells you to not worry about characters turning people into things, just blow them to bits, its better. At least, thats what their value system says.

If you want to use the D&D style, you can. That’s between you and your GM.

Cool, thanks, tho we will need a system other than hero to account for many of the legendary things incorporated into HERO.

If every character with a polymorph spell were the toughest, eventually everyone would want to play mages with polymorph spells.

Ok i will finally have to bite.

See your proboem is you seem to go completely from my point that polymorph is priced by HERo out of their usual game levels for fantasy to "polymorph wins over all" which of course is just another way of saying "if hero did it this way it must be broken to do it otherwise."

Game balance is everything, for every game system.

an interesting theory, but let me toss you a conundrum....

However, does game balance come from the system or from the GM? If the responsibility and the power to create or break game balance lies mostly if not completely with the GM, why do we need to do all that math for a point system that does not serve balance?

HERO says "our points work" every time they tell you to do all that math and trade off... if the points dont work, why go to all that design minmax effort? If the points do work, why is all that minmax effort so beneficial?

Is life support :breath water worth 5 pts? HERO says so. If my fantasy campaign takes place in a coast town and will involve a nautical aspect with underwater creatures, is it worth 5 pts? If my fantasy campaign is set on a desert world with little or no water is it worth 5 pts? HERO says yes to both.

Do the points work?

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.

Thanks for the definition. of course we have no notion that the point buy balance works better than the class-n-level.

Matter of fact, a WELL BUILT cunningly crafted wizard at 175 points in HERo will very simply probably KO the same point vanilla bought fighter or heades forbid a vanilla bought wizard.

You can simulate virtually anything with the Hero System,

In THEORY yes in practice NO. in play, a number of non-game breaker effects are priced out of range in HERO.

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.

Not without changing the costs. A typical commoner needs only a 6d6 Eb to take him out, knock him flat, or on bad rolls to stun him. Contrast that to requiring a power more than triple that to turn him into a carp.

Unless you start FIXING the ERRO in the cost system, which requires admitting it exists, this issue will remain in points disparity between DAMAGE and EFFECTS.

But to devise such a spell system would actually limit the Hero System, not make it better.

Uhh you have to minit the system to give it any feel or genre. You have to say things like "the gryphon school of magic requires each spell to take skill roll and extra time" and "the phoenix school requires a -1 variable limitation choosing between extra time, focus, extra endurance and side effects" to create a magic system. Out of the box the magic system is "anything".

Perhaps it can be called superhero style.

In FH you can make spells and use them as many times as you wish.

Again, nice theory, but not usually so in practice. The ENDURANCE costs run you dry quickly. You can buy all or even some of your spells with the no endurace but then you have increasec cost and again run into the "points allowed barrier."These combine to limit the number of spells you can do this with.

Or in DnD you can take a feat to make a spell a SLA and use it all the time, of course, only with a limited number of spells/feats.

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.

So now we are talking something, like a cumulative and zero end transform... we are starting to move toward SBPs.

Now lets play math again. The transform to one shot poly cost three times the price of an Eb to KO the commoner.

Now we have doubles the prices again.

So lets say we want the spell to carpe the commoner after THREE successful uses. I can take three successful attack actions and poly him into a carp INSTEAD of one attack action to knock him out and guess what, we are still paying twice the cost!!!

I fail to see how you have advanced your position? Why would i pay twice as much to poly a commoner three times slower than i can KO him?

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.

OK for those who cannot understand... the commoner to carp spells requires the 6d6 to roll 20+. that means a good amount of the time, say 30% against a lowly commoner, the spell will not achieve the result at all.

A commoners fort save vs a poly other (DC 16 minimum) is 30% cnance of failure if he has at least a +1. If the mage has any decent stats its less.

So see, this saving throw argument only serves to show lack of understaning.

It’s obvious that you don’t like Hero, and that’s fine.

Actually i think HERo does a fine job at supers. I have run more champions games than DND, for longer, and have run three different fantasy hero games which lasted over a year each. HERo is the system i am most experienced with and have the most time invested in and frankly takes up more space on my shelves with CHAMPIONS2-3-4 and soon enough HERO5.

Liking a system is one thing. Knowing a system is another. Recognizing its strengths and weaknesses is KEY.

HERO does good supers. Unfortunately it also does good SUPERS in plate mail and decent supers-in-cyber and a relatively poor job at supers-in-the-old-west. (Yes, i own WESTERN HERO!)

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.

Given my experience, this is laughable? I understand how you can come to the conclusion, since if i am speaking ill of your fave it must be because i dont know it.

I ran my first champions game in about 83. i have run HERo more than any other ssytem with campaigns typically running 1-2 years. i have run fantasy hero campaigns. heck, i have had articles published on the hero games web site in their digital hero section. (They may still be available, just look for the typos. )

So, fogive me but, i do not think my opinions and considerations and understandings of the system come from "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.

Again, turning people into things as a part of fantasy magic did not originate with DND.

The notion of slicking down the floor so that someone who is not surefooted will fall and moving across it will require slow and care (or skiing) did not start with DnD.

The notion of mind control spells did not start with DND.

DND incorporated those things into its fantasy genre rules. HERO says "they are not gonna really be available in ours." based on their eecommended points for campaigns and the costs of the powers/effects.

this is not about "does HERo do DND" but rather how much of fantasy does HERo do IN PLAY as recommended by HERO."

the notion of an incapacitating poison did not start with DND, yet again this is an area where typically HERo points and limits price it out of the fantasy genre.

But, i am criticizing HERo so i must not know it well enoguh.

 

[paqman]

....heck, i have had articles published on the hero games web site in their digital hero section. (They may still be available, just look for the typos. )

Can you tell me under what name they are stored in the Archives?
I'd be interested to read them.

 

[TheBard]

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.

Amen, brother. While FReD will scare the dice out of system-phobes due to its size, these are excellent points.

Most of the complaints come down to the bane of many good RPGs - bad calls by GMs and bad behavior by players. These HERO fanatics are often over zealous, such as attempting to figure out the stats for mosquitoes, or other nonsense in HERO.

Good HERO GMs and players have to know when to close the damn book. But, IMHO, HERO attract folks who love systems that are internally logical, and put a lot of power in the hands of the players. People that like game systems that can interpret a lot of the "physics" of the RPG worlds (not necessarily our own). Hero, well, works.

[flamebait]
You know, the same folks who gave up on _2nd ed._ D&D.
[/flamebait]

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The new rule book is unapologetically that -- RULES. But Steve Long did a great job of putting a lot of good GM coaching in there as well. While the example of using "dragon blood to aid a spell is not explicity deat with, Steve repeatedly states that that kind of roleplaying should be rewarded using the system. A good HERO GM would give a player bonuses of some form for being creative, invoking the myths of the setting to further the roleplaying experience.

(A good HERO GM would also make the player pay for that "boost" if the player started toting around buckets of the stuff. )

There is also a heathy dose of Metagaming commentary in FReD as well, such as the concept that I happen to agree with. Mainly, consistent (good) rules help _the players_ more than the GM. That does not mean that a HERO GM never wings it, changes rules or stops roleplaying. It does mean that a GM really needs to put a lot of effort into knowing the rules so that there is consistency.

(Personally, I think that 3e still has a lot more rules than HERO. Hero has a big rulebook, but the design logic is more consistent. YMMV.)

I've personally seen as many -- no, actually, more autocratic GMs using "rules-lite, diceliceless, free-form" systems than "crunchy" games like Hero, or 3e. Game system is an imperfect predictor of this kind of bad GMing behavior.

Let me give an example of what I mean. I have a friend, Mark, who is an _excellent_ storyteller. His NPC's are impeccable and his roleplaying top-notch. He hates "crunchy" rulesystems and especially hates using maps and miniatures for combat, preferring a more narrative style -- florid wordplay and the such. This is all good. Play a game with Mark at a con and you will marvel at his style.

Play a campaign and well, the shine begins to tarnish. Why? You are a slave to the "wonderful" story and the NPCs. While I can often keep up with Mark and the loquacious NPCs, others in the group can't. And they can't use the system to determine if their characters do something. It does not matter if you have bizillion in "Conversation" or an attack bonus of a hundred, etc. Everything is up to Mark. Mark decides who hits, Mark decides who sees what, etc. Guess who ends up being the real stars of the show? The NPCs.

Instead of being a slave to a system, you are slave to one person's decisions about his world. Taken to extremes, both are bad.

 

[Petrosian]

Should be under Steven Rushing

one was about Aiming, another iirc was on SFX, and the third i just cannot recall, but they were within about a 6 month range. i think they were mostly hero but some had fuzion bits in them too.

Aiming was horrible for typos, i wrote it quickly but i think the other two were better.

i haven't been to their site in a while, ought to take a gander myself.

Can you tell me under what name they are stored in the Archives?
I'd be interested to read them.

 

[Petrosian]

so whats the address of the current herogames site?

I just ran www.herogames.com and got nowhere and a alta-vista placed me in an old cybergames site with references to the new articles of jabuary 2000.

i am sure its out there somewhere, but where?

 

[TheBard]

so whats the address of the current herogames site?

I just ran www.herogames.com and got nowhere and a alta-vista placed me in an old cybergames site with references to the new articles of jabuary 2000.

i am sure its out there somewhere, but where?

Due to a DNS foulup, try http://209.207.171.213/ for the timebeing.

 

[Greatwyrm]

After the discussion here, I finally managed to latch on to a copy of the 4th edition HERO system and Champions in one book. There's a whole lot of stuff here! Thanks again for the info from those who responded earlier.

 

[Galfridus]

After the discussion here, I finally managed to latch on to a copy of the 4th edition HERO system and Champions in one book. There's a whole lot of stuff here! Thanks again for the info from those who responded earlier.

If it helps, that's generally referred to in Hero-speak as the BBB (Big Blue Book), as opposed to the softcover book which just contains the Hero System Rules, which is referred to as the HSR.

Wonder if they'll call the new one "5E".

 

[paqman]

Wonder if they'll call the new one "5E".

It is called FREd.

Fifth
Rulebook (or rule)
Edition

 

[TheBard]

After the discussion here, I finally managed to latch on to a copy of the 4th edition HERO system and Champions in one book. There's a whole lot of stuff here! Thanks again for the info from those who responded earlier.

If you like it, I recommend buying FReD. You will like it more.

This is a great time to start with HERO. The website (see above) has excellent support for new players, although your best bet is still sitting in a game or three.

Good luck.