Silver Age Sentinels (Tri-Stat) -- and Streamlining Hero

[bwgwl]

What's it have to offer over 4th edition HERO?

well, it's in print, for one thing.

truth be told, 5th Edition is 98% compatible with 4th. if you've already got a 4th Ed rulebook and you're comfortable with it, there's not a whole lot of reason to buy the new rulebook unless you really want to.

some of the powers were re-priced, there's some new maneuvers, and lots of example powers showing how to use the system in interesting ways (one thing 4th never really did well).

i'm glad i picked it up, though -- it's revitalized my interest in HERO.

 

[mmadsen]

What's it have to offer over 4th edition HERO?

Not much, as far as I can tell. I think bwgwl put it best: "well, it's in print, for one thing." It looks like Samurai and I agree that keeping everything "98% compatible with 4th" wasn't the way we would've done it.

It would be so easy to keep Hero essentially the same while simplifying it tremendously. Just changing the rounding rules -- how trivial is that? -- would go a long, long way.

At least the new version has lots of examples. It's a bit too late for me though; I already grok the system.

 

[bwgwl]

i'd like to think i grok HERO also -- at least i should, considering i started with Champions I back in the mid to late 80s...

nevertheless, HERO is so flexible and customizable that there's seemingly an infinite number of ways to build anything. so i might have my own ideas on how to build a specific power, but i still enjoy reading others' versions of the same kind of thing, just to see how they would do it. i keep learning new things every time i see someone else's HERO character.

i do think the HERO System has some problems, but it's flexibility and customizability outweigh those concerns for me. however, i probably won't get the chance to run it any time soon because my current group is exclusively d20. i'm the only one with any HERO experience and it's not an easy system for newbies to get into...

i was discussing a possible supers campaign utilizing HERO with one of my co-gamers, and i suggested the best way to do it would be for the players to simply describe their characters, and i'd build them all.

 

[mmadsen]

i do think the HERO System has some problems, but it's flexibility and customizability outweigh those concerns for me.

Ideally though, we'd have a system just as flexible and customizable without the unnecessary complexity.

i was discussing a possible supers campaign utilizing HERO with one of my co-gamers, and i suggested the best way to do it would be for the players to simply describe their characters, and i'd build them all.

That's what I've always done. Even with other players who knew the game, I often ended up building all the characters.

 

[Samurai]

Ideally though, we'd have a system just as flexible and customizable without the unnecessary complexity.

We do have such a system... it is called SAS....

 

[bwgwl]

Ideally though, we'd have a system just as flexible and customizable without the unnecessary complexity.

i'm not entirely sure that's possible... "With great flexibility and customizability comes great complexity," to paraphrase Spiderman's uncle. however, it isn't really HERO's complexity that is a problem for me. i have other concerns that i won't get into here, seeing how this isn't a HERO System thread.

That's what I've always done. Even with other players who knew the game, I often ended up building all the characters.

how did that work out? i can imagine that some players may have a problem with playing a DM-built character -- some people like to be 100% in control of their character, even during generation. did you have much friction from your players over this? especially in a point-based system like HERO, how would you handle a player asking for something that just couldn't be modeled with the available points? or someone who didn't agree with your "vision" of their character?

i'd be really afraid of letting them make their own characters, though. their 350-point newbie heroes against my 350-point 20-years-experience-with-min/maxing-HERO villains would be a bloodbath.

 

[mmadsen]

Another example of a simple streamlining measure -- one that sounds oh-so-complicated but isn't -- would be to handle advantages and limitations as base-2 logarithms. What does that mean? A +1 advantage would double price (same as now), and a -1 limitation would halve price (same as now) -- but you could add and subtract your advantages and disadvantages the way every newbie thinks you should be able to.

If everyone's already looking up power prices on a chart or whipping out a calculator, is it a problem that +1/4 now means 1.2 instead of 1.25, and +1/2 means 1.4 instead of 1.5?

It's a small price to pay for being able to take an existing power, add an advantage or disadvantage, and not have to "unroll" all the previous math. A book of powers could list each complicated power with dozens of advantages and limits as having just one final price. Making the whole thing NND would double that price. Making it all an OAF would halve that price.

 

[mmadsen]

how did that work out?

It always worked out fine. I'd give them a character sheet with non-gamespeak terms ("Atomic Blast"), followed by the acronym gibberish, and everyone knew I'd optimize their characters far more than they ever could.

i'd be really afraid of letting them make their own characters, though. their 350-point newbie heroes against my 350-point 20-years-experience-with-min/maxing-HERO villains would be a bloodbath.

Exactly. The newbies know they have to trust you, and the not-quite-veterans know they should trust you. The true veterans can make up their own characters -- but by then they've been using the character you helped design for the past six months.

 

[bwgwl]

Another example of a simple streamlining measure --

that's actually a good suggestion. HERO supporters are fond of saying all the complicated math is only during character creation, so it shouldn't scare people away. but every time you use experience points to increase a power, you've got to do the whole math exercise all over again...

 

[mmadsen]

We do have such a system... it is called SAS....

That was the hope, Samurai, but I don't feel like we're there yet. Maybe I'll just have to e-mail Hero Games a completed Sixth Edition manuscript...