Superhero systems?

[clvrmonkey]

yup, on advancement, how are the rules?

I second this question. BTW, great job on breaking that down. I don't know that it made the system all that more clear to me, but you don't definitely stepped up to the plate there. The flexibility that keeps getting mentioned has now been proven.

 

[NLP]

yup, on advancement, how are the rules?

More precisely, does advancement increase the strength of a character (like in D&D), or mostly its knoweldge (like in Jovian Chronicles), or skill vs stats & combat ability increase?

Are those rules easy to use (D&D), or do they require to recalculate a number of stats (GURPS)?

And last but not least, in your experience, is the character advancement meaningful to players (for exemple the game evolve), or "symbolic" ( such as: the character personality change)?

Advancement is handled by the GM giving out Experience Points. From that point on, the player decides how he wants to spend those points. The player still needs to ok it with the GM, but the player ultimately decides if the character will get more powerful (more attack power), more skilled (increase current skills or add new ones), more combat skilled (buy combat levels or martial arts packages), or possibly to alter the character's personality by buying down Disadvantages (an example of this is a character who hates Orcs and wants to kill them on site, but over the course of the game he learns to disdain them, but does not feel the need to kill every one that he sees. This is accomplished by buying down the Psycholicigal Limitation: Hates Orcs to a lower level).

There is number crunching involved in spending experience, but the extent of it depends on what you are spending the experience on. If you increase the Character's Strength, for example, you will also gain some additional STUN which you will have to add to the character's sheet. If you are just buying an additional combat level, you would just add the level to the column and increase the character's total points spent by whatever amount of levels you bought. If "recalculations" to the character are required they are generally fairly simple and can be done in less than 30 seconds.

There is a HERO System Genre-By-Genre document here: http://www.herogames.com/freestuff/freedocs.htm . If you download that PDF it will give you some basic character examples for many different genres of game play.

 

[Blacksad]

Thanks!

 

[Synicism]

The HERO system's advancement system isn't really all that different from the character creation system, which is the beauty of it. You get experience points, which you spend on stuff. It's not all that unlike character creation. You do occasionally need to recalculate things, but that happens in almost all RPG's, including D&D. Have you ever had a high level character and then had one of your stats change? Updating can be a nightmare.

Anyway, based on what I've been reading on this thread, HERO will be, if you can handle the learning curve, still the best supers system out there, even after Mutants and Masterminds comes out.

I don't know why Green Ronin chose to go with levels when they had already come so close to eliminating all that was bad about the d20 system. Unlike a level system, where your character sits through long periods of stagnation punctuated by instantaneous increases in ability, knowledge, or power, HERO is a point system where you, as a player, can control your character's growth. For example, if your character made lots of use of a particular skill, you might increase it at the end of the session to represent the incremental increase in knowledge that comes through constant use. Or you might choose to store up to spend on an expensive item like increasing a power.

No need to wait to "level up." With Hero, characters can learn at a realistic rate.

 

[Blacksad]

No need to wait to "level up." With Hero, characters can learn at a realistic rate.

realistic?

More seriously, has any of the Hero fan bought this product?
http://www.herosphere.com/noflash/index.html

Computer based character generator and combat simulator.

Considering that I have a laptop, it could be able to cancel any defect that the game has.

 

[NLP]

More seriously, has any of the Hero fan bought this product?

Computer based character generator and combat simulator.

Considering that I have a laptop, it could be able to cancel any defect that the game has.

I have it. It is not a combat simulator in the terms of what most people would think a combat simulator is. Herosphere is the beginnings of a computer game using the HERO System. The game allows you to move your characters around the battlefield and attack when it is your turn to attack, and it does keep track of turns and such, but it is not something you could easily use in the game. To use it at a table game, the players would all have to move their characters on the game boards, and then you would have to move all the characters in the software. The players would then all have to make their attack rolls, and then you would have to make all the attack rolls in the software, etc, etc.

HeroSphere is a computer game in its beginning stages. It is fun to play with when you are alone at home to kill some time, but it would be a major pain to try and use it at a game table. When it has reached an advance stage to allow networking and online play, then it will really be something. HeroSphere will add a whole new dimension to HERO System PBEM games.

If you are looking for just a combat simulator, I suggest you do a search for HERO Combat Simulator. The produce is more akin to what most people think a combat simulator should do.

 

[Blacksad]

From your description, it doesn't look like a real pain (I was thinking that it could be useful with the more math heavy power).

This is from someone who used CD Core Rules 2 & Expansion at the gaming table (it didn't simulated combat, but you had full character stats for all characters, so secret saving thrown, with the virtual dice were easy to do).

Also isn't there a good character generator inside?

 

[NLP]

From your description, it doesn't look like a real pain (I was thinking that it could be useful with the more math heavy power).

This is from someone who used CD Core Rules 2 & Expansion at the gaming table (it didn't simulated combat, but you had full character stats for all character, so secret saving thrown, with the virtual dice were easy to do).

Also isn't there a good character generator inside?

The character generator is very basic. It only covers a few power options at this point. There is a character generator coming out called Hero Designer that looks really good. I help with some of the preliminary definition entering for powers on that.

I think if you buy HeroSphere expecting a combat simulator you will be disappointed. It is a fun game to play (though it is very basic), but it does not handling things you might want it to handle. I believe HeroSphere needs to be thought of as a basic version of Never Winter Nights more than anything else.

If you are looking for software to roll damage and skill rolls for the villains you are controlling as the GM, there are a couple of programs available for download. Might want to check the Hero Games website and look in the downloads section. Those things would be much more useful to you, and would help to speed up your combats while saving you the trouble of rolling.

 

[RangerWickett]

I can't speak for Green Ronin, but I know that Natural 20 Press's Four-Color to Fantasy, which is out right now, uses the level system because it is meant to be used with existing systems. I admire GR for how they fiddled with hit points; it's very nifty. However, using what I've heard of M&M, I'd have to say that it misses out on being system-compatible.

Sure, a superhero game is nice, but if you're already writing the rules for superpowers, why not open them up so you can use them for things other than just the one game?

This is what FCTF does. We have all the rules you'll need to play a superhero game, though we assume that you have some other D20 core book to base the rules on (e.g., you want a modern superhero game, so you take d20 modern and add the super powers; or you want a super-spy game, so you take Spycraft and add super powers). Since we use the level-based system, these rules are compatible with most other d20 systems, letting you balance encounters, assign experience, and make sure that the game is challenging without being deadly.

However, since the rules are totally compatible with the core D20 system, you can use them for things other than 'super powers,' in the comic book sense. If you're playing D&D, you can use the superpower rules in FCTF to give magical powers to villains, or to create balanced Level Adjustments for powerful races. If you're in Spycraft, your spy might gain some sort of super-gadget that gives him a permanent enhancement, and our rules will let you know how powerful the ability is. In d20 Cthulhu, maybe your character gains some sort of freaky otherworldly power from his exposure to the Old Ones. You can use the super-power rules to handle those.

So while M&M seems to be fully fleshed out as its own superheroic genre game, Four-Color to Fantasy is flexible enough to handle that and then some. I could get into a long discussion about how levels provide a clearer goal for players, thus encouraging them to keep interested in their characters. Incremental advancement might be more realistic, but it's not as fun to play. I'm also willing to go into depth about how with FCTF you can handle advancement of practically anything the character wants, from skills to combat ability to super powers.

If you're interested, I can talk more about it. I love to show off how flexible and nifty it is.

p.s. One caveat, though. It's our philosophy that in a roleplaying game, how you play your character is a matter of personality, and that emotional drawbacks don't balance physical powers. Thus, you won't see things like "Hates Orcs" in FCTF. If you want to hate orcs, then your character hates orcs. Your super powers and skills determine how powerful you are; your personality is there for the sake of roleplaying.

p.p.s. Another caveat. If a character has the powers of a god, then don't try to stat him. Other non-god characters probably can't him in a toe-to-toe fight, so his specific power level is unimportant. For the same reason that I can rule that a supernova will destroy the planet (even though there's no exact listing of the damage a supernova deals), you can rule arbitrarily what a god-level entity can do. If the PCs are also god-level, then I'll be the first to admit that our rules in FCTF cannot cover them.

 

[Blacksad]

Ok, thanks again NLP.

Also do you have a link toward pre-release info on Hero Designer?