[OT] Hero System Fifth Ed Review

[Jhamin]

It is called FREd.

Fifth
Rulebook (or rule)
Edition

And before anybody asks, FREd is an in-joke among the Hero Faithful.

The traditional abbreviation for 4th Ed Champions was the BBB, for the "Big Blue Book". It was announced some time ago on the Hero Boards that 5th would have a black cover. We thought we should have a separate abbreviation for 5th and BBB was taken. As the debate continued Steve Long (Owner of Hero and author of 5th ED) chimed in saying that we could call if Fred for all he cared as long as we bought it when it came out.

The fan community immediately began calling it Fred, and the new debate was what we could do to justify that. Deciding it stood for Fifth Rules Edition was an eventual compramise.

 

[NLP]

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

I snipped the whole thing as I don't have time to cover all your points. I'll just cover the things I think are important.

Point #1: Changing someone into a carp:
Your statement is correct, but your premise is wrong. I'll just run with your example about the carp and the energy blast.

You state that a 6d6 attack is required to "take out" a commoner. Actually you'd need a 7d6 attack. On 7d6 The average roll would be 24. 24-2 (character's defense) is 22 damage. This from the 20 Stun knocks the character to -2. He's unconscious.

Then you state that if the attack can take them out, it should be able to turn them into a carp. Well, that's not accurate because your idea of "take him out", from the D&D perspective, is to kill the character. To kill that commoner you'd have to shoot him 4 times with that 7d6 attack. Otherwise, he's just unconscious and will eventually wake up. You haven't removed him from the game. He's just going to find you, wait for you to fall asleep, and then remove selective parts of your anatomy.

Now turning someone into a carp has a different effect. It's really the same thing as killing someone because you are effectively removing them from the game, most likely forever. So when you're doing your polymorph, you effectively killing the character as he was and creating something new.

So, your 7d6 attack (costing 35 pts) must be used 4 times to remove the character from the game. Now, I can buy a 11/2d6 Major Transformation with Cumulative for 37 pts. That attack would allow me to hit my target and slowly turn him into a carp. Assuming that 5 was the average roll for 11/2d6, that means I'd have to hit him 4 times before he became the carp. Does that 4 seem familiar to you?

Now I could also build the power as 1d6 Major Transformation, Continuous, Cumulative. That's the same 37 pts. With this attack I'd only have to hit the character once. 6 phases later the transformation would be complete and the character would be a carp. During this time the player could be tormenting the carp-man.

That's two ways of turning someone into a carp, both for minimal point costs. A 37pt power is average for a beginning level character. Now imagine this character after he's been played and gained some experience. It would not be impossible for him to have an even larger "polymorph" spell, and thus be able to do it in one phase like D&D.

The problem isn't with making a polymorph spell. The problem you are having is trying to do it the same way that it's done in D&D, with one roll. It can be done that way, but once again if you're going to simulate D&D style magic then you need to simulate it's drawbacks, such as resting and learning time. This brings me to Point #2:

Point #2: Spell recovery and Endurance.
In D&D magic, the character gets a limited number of spells. The higher level he is, the more spells he gains. Once these spells are uses, the character needs to rest for 8 hours and then relearn.

In FH magic, the character can use his spells as many times as he wishes, as long as he has Endurance to power them. The difference between the two games is that in FH, after a big battle, the character can just lean up against a wall for 30 seconds, wipe the sweat from his brow and the gore from his clothes and then be ready to start all over again. In D&D magic, the character needs to rest and learn for 8 hours.

You're trying to make Endurance sound like it's a major limiting factor, but it's not. When End is lost it can be recovered quickly. That alone makes for a very different style of magic than D&D.

As I said before, you can easily simulate D&D magic in FH. But to do it accurately you need to do two things:

1: Throw the Active Point limits out the window. This way you can create any spell in D&D at it's correct power-level. Thus you would buy 6-8d6 of Transform at the beginning to make that Polymorph spell work in one attack.

2: Force the character to have a limited number of spells per day, which he must then rest and relearn. Thus the character can have two Polymorph spells, but when used they are gone and must be learned after 8 hours of rest.

Doing those two things makes the systems even. It keeps game balance, which was my point above. Either you can do it many times, but it takes many hits or extra time to succeed, or you can do it only a couple of times, but there's a very good chance that it will succeed on one hit. But for game balance, you can't have both. You can't have a beginning character that can turn anyone or anything into a carp with one die roll, as many times per day as they want. Because if you allowed that, every thing encountered would be turned into a carp. That's not fun gameplay.

FH can do everything that D&D does. Period. The advantage of FH is that you can do it in 12 different ways instead of following one assigned path. In FH you can simulate any character that you've ever read. Any magic system you've ever read. Any genre you've ever read. You can't really do that with D&D without major re-writes and add-on rules.

 

[Michael Tree]

FH can do everything that D&D does. Period.

Can it have a battle between 15 characters that takes less than an hour to run? Nope, not even close.
Can it create a wizard that fits onto less than 4 pages of character-sheet and doesn't require a Masters in Hero-ology to play. Nope.
Can a person learn to play it in a couple hours? Not even close.
Can it create balanced interesting characters without serious intervention from the GM? Nope, not really. The only thing Hero's points balances is the number of points, not the game.

The advantage of FH is that you can do it in 12 different ways instead of following one assigned path. In FH you can simulate any character that you've ever read. Any magic system you've ever read. Any genre you've ever read. You can't really do that with D&D without major re-writes and add-on rules.

You're right about D&D and add-on rules, but dead wrong about hero's 'ultimate flexibility'. Hero, like every RPG, is based on certain assumptions which shape the way the game runs, making it essentially a genre in itself.

 

[NLP]

Can it have a battle between 15 characters that takes less than an hour to run? Nope, not even close.

I do it all the time. I run six hour game sessions and generally have between 3-4 combats per session (1-2 small encounters and 1-2 major encounters).

Can it create a wizard that fits onto less than 4 pages of character-sheet and doesn't require a Masters in Hero-ology to play. Nope.

I'd suggest you check out some FH sites on the web. I've never created a Hero System character that was more than 3 pages long, and that includes my 1,500 Galactic Hero campaign.

Can a person learn to play it in a couple hours? Not even close.

I run a monthly demo game at my local FLGS. Most players can learn how to play in 10 minutes or less. Making a character is another matter, but then most players cannot memorize 200 D&D Feats in a couple of hours either. See my above posts about character building.

Can it create balanced interesting characters without serious intervention from the GM? Nope, not really. The only thing Hero's points balances is the number of points, not the game.

If you can't make an interesting character without GM intervention, either you have a problem or the GM does. Interesting characters have nothing to do with the system. Playing a Green Slime in D&D that can't talk, react or interact with the other characters in the party isn't an interesting character, no matter how interesting the powers might be. That's why GMs intervene.

You're right about D&D and add-on rules, but dead wrong about hero's 'ultimate flexibility'. Hero, like every RPG, is based on certain assumptions which shape the way the game runs, making it essentially a genre in itself.

Every game system is a genre unto itself. But I have yet to see a system that has more flexibility.

As I've said before, play whichever system you like. If you want to try something different, or are looking to emulate something that you have read and can't seem to do in D&D, then give Hero a try. You might be surprised. That's why it's good to have many different game systems.

 

[Dr. Confoundo]

Can it have a battle between 15 characters that takes less than an hour to run? Nope, not even close.

If you are talking about your standard HERO characters (which are about equal to 8th level characters in D&D), then you can't do it in D&D either...

(It would be cake to do that in HERO w/ 25 pt normals: effectively 1st level characters)

Can it create a wizard that fits onto less than 4 pages of character-sheet and doesn't require a Masters in Hero-ology to play. Nope.

If you have pre-written spells for HERO like D&D does, then sure. I can easily make a character using my Fantasy Hero Companions, and never have to refigure a spell price.

Can a person learn to play it in a couple hours? Not even close.

"An evening to learn... A lifetime to master." I've taught a number of people to play... the basic mechanics are actually quite simple. It's all of the added rules complexities that take awhile to figure out. Go ahead and explain Attacks of Opportunity to a newbie... we'll wait here until you've finished.

Can it create balanced interesting characters without serious intervention from the GM? Nope, not really. The only thing Hero's points balances is the number of points, not the game.

Can it? Yes. Should it? Not in my opinion.

It's easy to let players loose with the HERO rules and bring you a character, but whether or not they will fit into your idea of a balanced campaign is totally different, and depends entirely upon your players. (One of my guys wanted to play a Meat-omancer, where all of his spells involved lunch meats.)

Supreme flexibility can be a double edged sword.

Doc

 

[Karl Green]

Hmm played Champs for many, many years... loved it then, not that into these days but I might give it another look.

Biggest thing against it is bring in new characters. They see all the stats and all the numbers and all the math (minor to must Hero players I know, but to newbies) and they give up on it. While I still love Hero, the fact that I would not get many people to even try it is a big negative in my book and you can say that "I have had no trouble teaching it to hundreds of people" all you want but I just have a hard time believing that 99% of the people really paid much attention to what was happening and it was more "OK my turn to roll... do I hit? How many dice do I roll? How much damage do I do... kewl" where the GM does all the figuring...

 

[NLP]

Biggest thing against it is bring in new characters. They see all the stats and all the numbers and all the math (minor to must Hero players I know, but to newbies) and they give up on it.

The only time numbers really come into play is when creating a character or spending experience. That's it. If you do a 12d6 Nova Blast, you don't need to know any "numbers" to roll the damage. The only time you need to know numbers is if you want to increase that Nova Blast to 13d6.

There's two character creations software programs available. One (Heromaker) can be found on ebay from time to time. The second (Hero Creator) can be bought from Hero Games, as well as a few FLGS that might have it. I know mine does.

While I still love Hero, the fact that I would not get many people to even try it is a big negative in my book and you can say that "I have had no trouble teaching it to hundreds of people" all you want but I just have a hard time believing that 99% of the people really paid much attention to what was happening and it was more "OK my turn to roll... do I hit? How many dice do I roll? How much damage do I do... kewl" where the GM does all the figuring...

Combat is very simple. Here's a quick breakdown of the index card I give new players.

Part 1: Hitting and doing damage.
#1: Know your OCV (Offensive Combat Value) and DCV (Defensive Combat Value). This is your DEX divided by three and is printed on your character sheet in the upper right corner.

#2: When hitting someone, decide if your Combat Levels will be on OCV (making it easier to hit someone) or DCV (making it harder for others to hit you).

#3: When you roll to hit you use your OCV (plus any Combat Levels you put into OCV) and add that to 11. Then subtract the total rolled on 3d6. This tells you the DCV that you can hit (example: your OCV is 10 +11 = 21. You rolled 8. 21-8=13. You have hit a 13 DCV or less).

#4: Roll your dice of damge. Add all the pips. This total is Stun damage. Then add Body damage. Each 6 rolled counts as 2. Each 1 rolled counts as 0. Everything else rolled counts as 1.

#5: Tell the GM the total of your roll. "I did 35 Stun damage and 10 Body damage.

Part 2: Taking damage.
#1: You have two types of Defense: Physical (PD) used against physical attacks and Energy (ED) used against energy attacks.

#2: Armor, Force Field and Force Wall can add to PD and/or ED.

#3: When you take damage the amount will be expressed to you as follows: 35 Stun, 10 Body (the GM will tell you whether it's a physical or energy attack).

#4: Subtract either your PD (if it's a physical attack) or ED (if it's an energy attack), first from the Stun total given you. The total over your Defense is the damage you take (example: 35 Stun taken - 25 PD = 10 Stun Damage). Subtract that amount from your Stun Total.

#5: Subtract either your PD or ED from the Body damage total given you. The total over your Defense is the damage you take (example: 10 Body - 25 PD = 0 Damage). If you take damage, subtract that amount from your Stun total.

That's all there is to combat. You can't tell me that you wouldn't be able to learn those few steps after your third or fourth attack? I've yet to find a player that couldn't.

Now granted there are lots of other options, dependent upon which genre you are playing, but for a first session the point is to learn the rules and have fun.

 

[Petrosian]

[/B][/QUOTE]

Point #1: Changing someone into a carp:
Your statement is correct, but your premise is wrong. I'll just run with your example about the carp and the energy blast.

You state that a 6d6 attack is required to "take out" a commoner. Actually you'd need a 7d6 attack. On 7d6 The average roll would be 24. 24-2 (character's defense) is 22 damage. This from the 20 Stun knocks the character to -2. He's unconscious.

Right, tho actually last time i checked 6 1/2 d6 for 33 points was Ok too, but thats niether here nor there.

Then you state that if the attack can take them out, it should be able to turn them into a carp. Well, that's not accurate because your idea of "take him out", from the D&D perspective, is to kill the character.

Actually i believe i stated it was to remove him as a threat. Its the HERO notion that you have to kill him.

i am pointing out that from an attack perspective, turning him into a carp that will eventually suffocate and knocking him out with an attack that he cannot wake up from in most cases before he can be thumped easily is close enough to the same thing.

If you presume your attack HAS TO KILL thats great, but most Fh and even champions fights i ever saw knocking them down was enough.

its particularly true for a commoner whose first recovery would be vs con stun and later he would get a recovery vs the actual stun damage. that should be a whole turn, unless he took damage.

Maybe in your fantasy games you keep hitting unconscious people for fun, but in most fights i have seen, HERo or DND, you move on. (Exception is some supers.)

To kill that commoner you'd have to shoot him 4 times with that 7d6 attack.

Why in thwe world woul i do this in the middle of a fight? knock them down and if after 3 more actions i havent had to come back to him pop him again to keep him stunned.

You are maiing nonsensical assumptions, ignoring the tactical efficiency of taking him down and killing him later, which is common practice in most fights, dnd or hero.

Does your point only work if we assume stupidity?

Otherwise, he's just unconscious and will eventually wake up. You haven't removed him from the game.

He is removed for at least a turn. That gives me several actions to hit others before i might want to hit him another time. The second shot will knock him into 'wont wake up for the combat" and so i can kill him after the fight.

Come on, why suddenly does common sense tactics have to drop off the planet for the "other side?"

He's just going to find you, wait for you to fall asleep, and then remove selective parts of your anatomy.

Assumes i let him go or lose the fight.

Now turning someone into a carp has a different effect. It's really the same thing as killing someone because you are effectively removing them from the game, most likely forever. So when you're doing your polymorph, you effectively killing the character as he was and creating something new.

It takes time to suffocate. In hero, iirc, a long time. IF he has support, he can be untransformed.

So, your 7d6 attack (costing 35 pts) must be used 4 times to remove the character from the game. Now, I can buy a 11/2d6 Major Transformation with Cumulative for 37 pts. That attack would allow me to hit my target and slowly turn him into a carp. Assuming that 5 was the average roll for 11/2d6, that means I'd have to hit him 4 times before he became the carp. Does that 4 seem familiar to you?

So i now need four attacks to drop a commoner with poly.

That seems really efficient.

wonder how many guys will spend MORE points for an attack that costs more, spends more endurance and takes 4 times as long.

As i recall, typical mages had endurance scores around 40. this spell over four phases would cost 16 endurance alone.

or i could have thrown one attackm for three endurance and knocked him out for a turn.

again, do we see the problem here?

Which attack is more efficient? DAMAGE
Which attack takes less time? Damage
which attack takes less endurance? damage
which attack costs less? damage

yeah,m those points seem to be working all right!

Now I could also build the power as 1d6 Major Transformation, Continuous, Cumulative. That's the same 37 pts. With this attack I'd only have to hit the character once. 6 phases later the transformation would be complete and the character would be a carp.

yes, so now to carp the commoner, we spend 24 endurance over 6 phases vs 3 endurance over 1 phase to knock him out for the same time. During those 6 phases he has the opportunity to get out of range or break line of sight etc. this means i still have to pay attention to him.

Again, this does not seem to be worth it by comparison to just blastiung him once for 3 end and maybe blasting him a second time for another 3 to keep him down.

Does it to you? Do you see these attacks used often in lieu of the basic bolt from the blue do damage things?

During this time the player could be tormenting the carp-man.

Yeah but while he is spending 4 more endurance per phase to keep this up, mr blaster is spending 3 per phase blasting someone else.

C'mon, i cannot believe you are reallyu trying to sell this as efficient.

That's two ways of turning someone into a carp, both for minimal point costs. A 37pt power is average for a beginning level character. Now imagine this character after he's been played and gained some experience. It would not be impossible for him to have an even larger "polymorph" spell, and thus be able to do it in one phase like D&D.

How much bloody experience are you talking about?

he would need 6 times the continuous or four times the other.

What size Eb would he then have?

The eb is more efficient. it is the preferred method of handling it by the rules.

i would be overhoyed if the enemy used these silly mutlti round transforms instead of eb's. for 5 points of power defense i can shut them down for good. it would take them 21 points of force field (pay endurance for that too) to stop my EB.

Are you seriously trying to say that poly attacks like this ARE efficient by hero rules? that they are viable alternative in fantasy games to the simpler Eb style attacks? if so, sorry but you dont have a clue.

The problem isn't with making a polymorph spell. The problem you are having is trying to do it the same way that it's done in D&D, with one roll.

No, i am trying to make it a viable attack when compared to the basic "do damage duh" hero prefers. Having it take 25% more endurance per strike AND take 4-6 times as long is ridiculousm its not effective as a combat tool by comparison.

It can be done that way, but once again if you're going to simulate D&D style magic then you need to simulate it's drawbacks, such as resting and learning time. This brings me to

You guys want to keep saying emulate DND, dont you?

Point #2:

In FH magic, the character can use his spells as many times as he wishes, as long as he has Endurance to power them. The difference between the two games is that in FH, after a big battle, the character can just lean up against a wall for 30 seconds, wipe the sweat from his brow and the gore from his clothes and then be ready to start all over again. In D&D magic, the character needs to rest and learn for 8 hours.

That depends on how many spells he uses.

Many spells in DND have long durations and will last through many combats. Mage armor, bull strength etc, greater magic weapon, etc etc etc.

You're trying to make Endurance sound like it's a major limiting factor, but it's not. When End is lost it can be recovered quickly. That alone makes for a very different style of magic than D&D.

END is a tactical limit. it limits the amount you can do in a single combat. Unless you have points to burn you will be spending END for a defense (force field(, an attack and perhaps a movement power as well. In most fantasy games i have seen a wizard will have to conserve his power in a decent combat or he will start running short.

DND provides a strategic limit but you can unload your entre wad for one fight if the circumstance permit.

These are two different limits, each with their own plusses and minuses.

While the penalties for END are different they are still quite real, and as such make for an interesting counterpoint when the "but we can cast over and over and over" comments start flying without a truth counter point.

As I said before, you can easily simulate D&D magic in FH. But to do it accurately you need to do two things:

1: Throw the Active Point limits out the window. This way you can create any spell in D&D at it's correct power-level. Thus you would buy 6-8d6 of Transform at the beginning to make that Polymorph spell work in one attack.

2: Force the character to have a limited number of spells per day, which he must then rest and relearn. Thus the character can have two Polymorph spells, but when used they are gone and must be learned after 8 hours of rest.

but i am not trying to make the system DND.

Doing those two things makes the systems even. It keeps game balance, which was my point above. Either you can do it many times, but it takes many hits or extra time to succeed, or you can do it only a couple of times, but there's a very good chance that it will succeed on one hit. But for game balance, you can't have both. You can't have a beginning character that can turn anyone or anything into a carp with one die roll, as many times per day as they want. Because if you allowed that, every thing encountered would be turned into a carp. That's not fun gameplay.

Thats nice and well and good but since that straw man was created entirely by you i am glad it only took you this long to beat it down.

FH can do everything that D&D does. Period. The advantage of FH is that you can do it in 12 different ways instead of following one assigned path.

yes Fh can do anything dnd can do as long as you toss out the points. But the points are the heart and soul of the HERO system.

if i am gonna allow transformer man unlimited points to get his one shot poly but am gonna limit fireboy to normal levels so they can compete, the points have lost their meaning.

In FH you can simulate any character that you've ever read. Any magic system you've ever read. Any genre you've ever read. You can't really do that with D&D without major re-writes and add-on rules.

In theory yes, but not in practice. there are a number of not at all uncommon things which hero points out of the market compared to damage spells which will serve the tactical need just fine.

You showed it yourself when the best tactical poly took 4-6 times as long, cost more, used 4-6 times the endurance as an equally efficient at taking down the target Eb.

even that ignores the fact that the defense to stop the Eb (21 ED probably from an end using force field)will cost 4x the defense to stop the transforms (5 power defense with no end cost.).

its just that simple.

PS: reading the boards, i have seen a new HERO5ism... now damage shield requires an additional +1 continuous for most attack forms. So now fire shield is also priced out of the realm of most games, since its damage will cost 2.5 times the amount of a normal eb even before we buy the protections.

So much for the demon sheathed in flame that it hurts to hit.

ohh but wait, maybe another SBP damage shield...
DS+cont+0end+NND+AF turns a 2d6 Eb into a 2d6-10d6 Ko machine but still for around 65-70 pts?

 

[Voneth]

As others have said, this is the GM area. However, I'd like to comment on why some GM's specifically don't want to use their "powers" to allow this to work after a few times of doing it.

GM allows it. Next adventure they fight a power armor maniac. The players realize that his armor is metal. They decide to use the same tactic to get that bonus they got for creative thinking.

A few adventures later they have to break through an iron vault door. Wait, let use that power combination again.

Suddenly, this "rewarding" of the players creativity has turned into rewarding non-creativity. Plus the players now have a very useful damage bonus they didn't pay the points for, out powering the other players.

While it's nice that Hero has everything quantified, it has it's draw backs, heck even regular guns have to taken into the character point total. Sort of the reverse of the above situation. Shoule a PC be punished for not having a weapon upgrade that his character could pay money for, but he doesn't have the points.

Through GM experience, I've learned that any trick you let players have, is going to repeated at every opportunity. Hell, I plan for it. "Well, it looked like an iron door. How was I supposed to know it was thermite, I'm just the GM."

But for any game system there are ways to balance it out, make the crew pay points for it later. Devise a new spell. Or heck! if no one is complaining, let it ride.

 

[NLP]

Since I don't have the patience to read the 5 pages you just posted, I'll just say you win.

Play whatever and however you like. Personally, I don't design character only for combat efficiency. I design character that I think are interesting to play. If that means they can take someone out in one shot, so be it. If it means they can take them out in 5 shots, so be it. I prefer interesting and fun characters, not those designed solely to be combat monsters.