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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Petrosian" data-source="post: 146448" data-attributes="member: 1149">[/B]</blockquote>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.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.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?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...Yes, the Gm can CHANGE the system to make it work. No argument there.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.Cool, thanks, tho we will need a system other than hero to account for many of the legendary things incorporated into HERO.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."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?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.In THEORY yes in practice NO. in play,  a number of  non-game breaker effects are priced out of range in HERO.  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. 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.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.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?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.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!)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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />)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."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.[/QUOTE]

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