The HERO System
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Chupacabra
First Post
The joys of CREATING a HERO system character are wonderful.
The pains of RUNNING a HERO system game are often excruciating.
The system handles the supers genre par excellence. I have yet to find a better system to run a good continuing supers game. But the cost, oh the cost! Cost of time that is...to create decent villains, monsters, henchmen, lairs, vehicles, etc. It just takes tons of time to do it well. Of course you could run out and get supplement books that give you stat blocks for all these NPCs, but then you are no longer running a "one book" game, are you? Not an easy system to run if you like to "wing it" at times.
I only tried to GM a Fantasy Hero game once, so my experience with that sub-set of the HERO rules are quite limited. After a few sessions, everyone got kinda disenchanted with the experience. Character creation was fun and everyone really liked being able to create cool backstories and tweak out their characters w/o being pigeonholed into fixed character classes....But after awhile the fantasy game mechanics were just not working for us. We felt that Warhammer FRPG or AD&D covered the much the same ground in a better way.
Fantasy HERO was, to me, like using a fork to eat soup with: maybe you're gonna finish the bowl but you are going to make a mess doing it. Simply the wrong tool for the job.
All in all however, you should at least borrow a copy of the HERO rules to persuse and see how you like them. And if you are at all interested in running a Supers campaign, it's a pretty darn good system, albeit one that requires a dedicated GM.
The pains of RUNNING a HERO system game are often excruciating.
The system handles the supers genre par excellence. I have yet to find a better system to run a good continuing supers game. But the cost, oh the cost! Cost of time that is...to create decent villains, monsters, henchmen, lairs, vehicles, etc. It just takes tons of time to do it well. Of course you could run out and get supplement books that give you stat blocks for all these NPCs, but then you are no longer running a "one book" game, are you? Not an easy system to run if you like to "wing it" at times.
I only tried to GM a Fantasy Hero game once, so my experience with that sub-set of the HERO rules are quite limited. After a few sessions, everyone got kinda disenchanted with the experience. Character creation was fun and everyone really liked being able to create cool backstories and tweak out their characters w/o being pigeonholed into fixed character classes....But after awhile the fantasy game mechanics were just not working for us. We felt that Warhammer FRPG or AD&D covered the much the same ground in a better way.
Fantasy HERO was, to me, like using a fork to eat soup with: maybe you're gonna finish the bowl but you are going to make a mess doing it. Simply the wrong tool for the job.
All in all however, you should at least borrow a copy of the HERO rules to persuse and see how you like them. And if you are at all interested in running a Supers campaign, it's a pretty darn good system, albeit one that requires a dedicated GM.
Mercule
Adventurer
I like HERO a fair bit. It's right behind d20 in my book. I've also got a friend who's a bit obsessive about it.
HERO is very much a one-book system. There are suppliments out there for it, and they look like they might be helpful, but I've never picked up anything besides the core book (of course, I've usually been on the player side of the equation in HERO).
The 4th edition book honestly reads like a dictionary. I never made it all the way through it in eight or so years of playing it -- very much referrence only. The fifth edition hardbound is much better, although still not as interesting as the D&D PH. I picked it up when I had to take a week-long business trip. Just reading it in my hotel room, I'd made it most of the way through the book by the end of the week -- without falling asleep.
HERO does have a pretty sharp learning curve, compared to D&D. Still, it's managible. We played it exclusively for a couple of years in college. The first year we played supers (Champions) and had a lot of fun, but realized afterward that we'd really messed up in a couple of areas. The second year, we did Fantasy Hero and did things much better. I'd say that within the first couple of months of the Champions game, most of the daily mechanics (combat, damage, etc.) were second nature and pretty transparent. Four months through the FH game (if not before) almost all of the mechanics were transparent to everyone, even the neophyte gamers. Some of the really contorted math required the hand of a "pro-gamer", but not that often.
If you want to run a HERO game, I've got a few suggestions.
1) Do a short-term, beer-and-pretzels (i.e. don't take it too seriously) campaign first. This'll help everyone, especially the GM, learn the rules. Supers works well for this because you can add a fair amount of cheese before the genre breaks. After that, move onto somethin a bit more serious.
2) Start off with simple builds. With HERO, you can really tweak your powers. Avoid that tempation until you are more comfortable with the system. This is another reason to start off with Champions. In comics, it isn't uncommon for characters' powers to evolve over time. The suspension of disbelief is much lower there than when a wizard starts casting spells completely differently than he used to.
3) Pick up Fantasy Hero (assuming you want fantasy). Yeah, it's an extra book, but it's really more like a campaign design tool. You won't usually have to take it to the game with you, and if you do, it'll be more like a Monster Manual than anything else.
I haven't seen the 5th edition version, but I assume it's similar to the 4th edition FH (actually, I've heard it's much better). The 4E FH book had some packages that could be used like classes and races, so you've got the first few chapters of the PH right there. There was also a premade magic system or two and a boatload of spells -- I didn't much care for the specifics of the magic, but it was no worse than the D&D Vancian system. There were also listings of several classic fantasy monsters like dragons, orcs, etc. I believe the book also contained a couple of fantasy-specific rules that weren't critical, but simplified things. You can start with the FH book as a base-line and customize to taste without ever needing to buy anything else (or, probably, any great desire to do so).
HERO is very much a one-book system. There are suppliments out there for it, and they look like they might be helpful, but I've never picked up anything besides the core book (of course, I've usually been on the player side of the equation in HERO).
The 4th edition book honestly reads like a dictionary. I never made it all the way through it in eight or so years of playing it -- very much referrence only. The fifth edition hardbound is much better, although still not as interesting as the D&D PH. I picked it up when I had to take a week-long business trip. Just reading it in my hotel room, I'd made it most of the way through the book by the end of the week -- without falling asleep.
HERO does have a pretty sharp learning curve, compared to D&D. Still, it's managible. We played it exclusively for a couple of years in college. The first year we played supers (Champions) and had a lot of fun, but realized afterward that we'd really messed up in a couple of areas. The second year, we did Fantasy Hero and did things much better. I'd say that within the first couple of months of the Champions game, most of the daily mechanics (combat, damage, etc.) were second nature and pretty transparent. Four months through the FH game (if not before) almost all of the mechanics were transparent to everyone, even the neophyte gamers. Some of the really contorted math required the hand of a "pro-gamer", but not that often.
If you want to run a HERO game, I've got a few suggestions.
1) Do a short-term, beer-and-pretzels (i.e. don't take it too seriously) campaign first. This'll help everyone, especially the GM, learn the rules. Supers works well for this because you can add a fair amount of cheese before the genre breaks. After that, move onto somethin a bit more serious.
2) Start off with simple builds. With HERO, you can really tweak your powers. Avoid that tempation until you are more comfortable with the system. This is another reason to start off with Champions. In comics, it isn't uncommon for characters' powers to evolve over time. The suspension of disbelief is much lower there than when a wizard starts casting spells completely differently than he used to.
3) Pick up Fantasy Hero (assuming you want fantasy). Yeah, it's an extra book, but it's really more like a campaign design tool. You won't usually have to take it to the game with you, and if you do, it'll be more like a Monster Manual than anything else.
I haven't seen the 5th edition version, but I assume it's similar to the 4th edition FH (actually, I've heard it's much better). The 4E FH book had some packages that could be used like classes and races, so you've got the first few chapters of the PH right there. There was also a premade magic system or two and a boatload of spells -- I didn't much care for the specifics of the magic, but it was no worse than the D&D Vancian system. There were also listings of several classic fantasy monsters like dragons, orcs, etc. I believe the book also contained a couple of fantasy-specific rules that weren't critical, but simplified things. You can start with the FH book as a base-line and customize to taste without ever needing to buy anything else (or, probably, any great desire to do so).
G'day
I first took up the Hero System in its incarnation as Justice, Inc. in about 1985. I have also played and/or GMed it in its incarnations as Champions (a superhero RPG), Danger International[ (spy/thriller), Fantasy Hero, and in its generic form in SF, pulp adventure, action/thriller, and non-traditional fantasy genres. Indeed, I played in a mystery/thriller SF adventure under generic Hero System just last weekend. The summary of my considerable experience would be that Hero System is good for superhero combat campaigns and passable for other campaigns provided (in the latter case) that the GM does a lot of work cutting the system down to suit.
I think the first problem is that the Hero System gives players way too many character points for taking on disadvantages. The theory is that the points only compensate for the disadvantages, so that in theory a character with disadvantages ought to be no more or less capable overall than one who is built on base points. Experience shows that this is utter bunk: characters who do not take the maximum points allowed are not capable enough to take their places alongside characters who have gone the whole hog. This leads to the phenomenon of trolling for disadvantages, with players either forcing in irrelevant weaknesses that are not called for by the character concept, or else being driven towards bizarre character concepts. Fair enough in superheroes, bad in other games.
Another problem is that the game makes absolutely no allowance for encouraging players to take on disadvantages that improve the game (providing the GM with robust grommets for plot hooks, constraining the characters to act heroically, etc.). I find that it is bad enough that players decide that their characters are sullen jerks and insist on playing in charcter without rules support. When the rules encourage them to do it you can face a nightmare. So my advice to any GM is to use his or her powers of veto with great liberality, and to feel free, even compelled, to adjust disad points by guess, without feeling bound either by the rules or the examples. Having a code of honour is not as crippling as blindness, but blind characers are a pain in the arse to GM, and ought to be discouraged. Characters ought to be forbidden to play autistic charcters, not bribed to do so. A character nearly crippled by OCD is interesting while that is what the campaign is about (see the TV show 'Monk'), but will be a major pain for all the other players (including the GM) if they had something else in mind.
While we are in that rut, the points listed for various disads seem to me to bear little correlation to how crippling a disad actually is, but you have to change them all anyway.
On another point, the scale of character representation in Hero System is not really suitable for characters in the human range. For example, there are twenty values in the human range for, say, intelligence. But only five are distinct: 1, 3, 8, 13, 18. For abstruse reasons, INT 17 is as far as teh game is concerned just an expensive kind of INT 13. And the blessed values vary from attribute to attribute: in DEX they are 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20. This is a morass, guaranteed to make sure that inexperienced players will be disapointed with their character designs.
Martial arts in Hero System are grossly overpowered for 'heroic' (ie. less-than-superheroic) campaigns. Don't allow their use, or tone them down, or apply low damage caps, unless you want the pulpy feel of heroes successfully engaging in fisticuffs against soldiers armed with firearms.
The skill system in Hero System is designed to give huge rewards to generalising, with the result that wise players do not buy their skills up above base, but buy levels with categories of skills and buy those up in time to 'overall levels'. This is mmerely a manifestation of the fact that the design is fraught with clever, inobvious ways to get a lot more bang for your buck than by taking the straightforward approach. This means that the system gives a lot more power to experienced players than to novices, and that the learning curve is shallow. (Popular error aside, a steep learning curve means that people learn quickly, a shallow learning curve means that people learn slowly.)
In this rut, beware of the fact that Hero System encourages players to arse about with clever tricks in which something is represented by something else with a misleading special effect. (Eg., the rules [used to] suggest that if you wanted a character who could run very fast you buy not lots of Running but Flight subject to the limitation 'only in contact with the ground'.) This sounds very powerful and flexible, but in my experience it only causes problems because it means that things don't work that ought to or work that ought not to. And therefore leads reliably to tears before bedtime. For instance, a tanglefoot bag bought as 'Suppress [Running]' would not work on 'Flight [only in contact with the ground]', even though by world logic it ought to. Similarly, if you design a character who has a field that turns everything around him 'Desolid [area effect, usuable against others, uncontrollably continuous, no range]', you will find that you need to add in a lot of 'Missile Deflection' with the special effect that the missiles turn desolid without the charcter seeming to do anything about this. By game rules this character is susceptible to heavy missiles thrown from outside his or her area of effect, but don't count on the players to work that out, because in world terms it doesn't make sense.
Before Hero System was genericised, when it appeared with 'heroic' rules in different products from its superhero rules the heroic versions used to have an excellent set of rules for characters concealing weapons around their perssons. For some reason, these were not taken up into the generic game, which is a great pity. Nowadays a Desert Eagle is just as concealable as a Beretta .25 with a skeleton grip, and a pistol in a belt clip is just as discreet as on in a small-of-back or anle holster.
The Hero System system of superhero powers, limitations, and power advantages (and, to a lesser extent, martial arts manoeuvres) is very flexible and powerful. In fact, it is easily flexible and powerful enough to tear a hole in your campaign world. To apply restrictions on what powers players can buy, impose caps on their power levels, and lay down compulsory limitations and disadvantages requires some work and care, and worse, considerable familiarity with the system. It is best as a start to lay down a limited menu of things that magicians &c. can do.
Finally, like a depressing majority of RPGs, Hero System has no specific rules for anything that happens outside of combat. And quite a lot of powers that are well balanced in combat are devastatingly effective at non-combat tasks.
So: it isn't the game I play by choice. But you can make it work if you want to.
Regards,
Agback
I first took up the Hero System in its incarnation as Justice, Inc. in about 1985. I have also played and/or GMed it in its incarnations as Champions (a superhero RPG), Danger International[ (spy/thriller), Fantasy Hero, and in its generic form in SF, pulp adventure, action/thriller, and non-traditional fantasy genres. Indeed, I played in a mystery/thriller SF adventure under generic Hero System just last weekend. The summary of my considerable experience would be that Hero System is good for superhero combat campaigns and passable for other campaigns provided (in the latter case) that the GM does a lot of work cutting the system down to suit.
I think the first problem is that the Hero System gives players way too many character points for taking on disadvantages. The theory is that the points only compensate for the disadvantages, so that in theory a character with disadvantages ought to be no more or less capable overall than one who is built on base points. Experience shows that this is utter bunk: characters who do not take the maximum points allowed are not capable enough to take their places alongside characters who have gone the whole hog. This leads to the phenomenon of trolling for disadvantages, with players either forcing in irrelevant weaknesses that are not called for by the character concept, or else being driven towards bizarre character concepts. Fair enough in superheroes, bad in other games.
Another problem is that the game makes absolutely no allowance for encouraging players to take on disadvantages that improve the game (providing the GM with robust grommets for plot hooks, constraining the characters to act heroically, etc.). I find that it is bad enough that players decide that their characters are sullen jerks and insist on playing in charcter without rules support. When the rules encourage them to do it you can face a nightmare. So my advice to any GM is to use his or her powers of veto with great liberality, and to feel free, even compelled, to adjust disad points by guess, without feeling bound either by the rules or the examples. Having a code of honour is not as crippling as blindness, but blind characers are a pain in the arse to GM, and ought to be discouraged. Characters ought to be forbidden to play autistic charcters, not bribed to do so. A character nearly crippled by OCD is interesting while that is what the campaign is about (see the TV show 'Monk'), but will be a major pain for all the other players (including the GM) if they had something else in mind.
While we are in that rut, the points listed for various disads seem to me to bear little correlation to how crippling a disad actually is, but you have to change them all anyway.
On another point, the scale of character representation in Hero System is not really suitable for characters in the human range. For example, there are twenty values in the human range for, say, intelligence. But only five are distinct: 1, 3, 8, 13, 18. For abstruse reasons, INT 17 is as far as teh game is concerned just an expensive kind of INT 13. And the blessed values vary from attribute to attribute: in DEX they are 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20. This is a morass, guaranteed to make sure that inexperienced players will be disapointed with their character designs.
Martial arts in Hero System are grossly overpowered for 'heroic' (ie. less-than-superheroic) campaigns. Don't allow their use, or tone them down, or apply low damage caps, unless you want the pulpy feel of heroes successfully engaging in fisticuffs against soldiers armed with firearms.
The skill system in Hero System is designed to give huge rewards to generalising, with the result that wise players do not buy their skills up above base, but buy levels with categories of skills and buy those up in time to 'overall levels'. This is mmerely a manifestation of the fact that the design is fraught with clever, inobvious ways to get a lot more bang for your buck than by taking the straightforward approach. This means that the system gives a lot more power to experienced players than to novices, and that the learning curve is shallow. (Popular error aside, a steep learning curve means that people learn quickly, a shallow learning curve means that people learn slowly.)
In this rut, beware of the fact that Hero System encourages players to arse about with clever tricks in which something is represented by something else with a misleading special effect. (Eg., the rules [used to] suggest that if you wanted a character who could run very fast you buy not lots of Running but Flight subject to the limitation 'only in contact with the ground'.) This sounds very powerful and flexible, but in my experience it only causes problems because it means that things don't work that ought to or work that ought not to. And therefore leads reliably to tears before bedtime. For instance, a tanglefoot bag bought as 'Suppress [Running]' would not work on 'Flight [only in contact with the ground]', even though by world logic it ought to. Similarly, if you design a character who has a field that turns everything around him 'Desolid [area effect, usuable against others, uncontrollably continuous, no range]', you will find that you need to add in a lot of 'Missile Deflection' with the special effect that the missiles turn desolid without the charcter seeming to do anything about this. By game rules this character is susceptible to heavy missiles thrown from outside his or her area of effect, but don't count on the players to work that out, because in world terms it doesn't make sense.
Before Hero System was genericised, when it appeared with 'heroic' rules in different products from its superhero rules the heroic versions used to have an excellent set of rules for characters concealing weapons around their perssons. For some reason, these were not taken up into the generic game, which is a great pity. Nowadays a Desert Eagle is just as concealable as a Beretta .25 with a skeleton grip, and a pistol in a belt clip is just as discreet as on in a small-of-back or anle holster.
The Hero System system of superhero powers, limitations, and power advantages (and, to a lesser extent, martial arts manoeuvres) is very flexible and powerful. In fact, it is easily flexible and powerful enough to tear a hole in your campaign world. To apply restrictions on what powers players can buy, impose caps on their power levels, and lay down compulsory limitations and disadvantages requires some work and care, and worse, considerable familiarity with the system. It is best as a start to lay down a limited menu of things that magicians &c. can do.
Finally, like a depressing majority of RPGs, Hero System has no specific rules for anything that happens outside of combat. And quite a lot of powers that are well balanced in combat are devastatingly effective at non-combat tasks.
So: it isn't the game I play by choice. But you can make it work if you want to.
Regards,
Agback
Darkness
Hand and Eye of Piratecat [Moderator]
GURPS hasn't aged well. Right now, the system is quite unbalanced (e.g., Attribute Costs) and overcomplicated (e.g., the skill list).Thimble the Squit said:
However, they'll be fixing a lot of GURPS' problems in the upcoming 4th edition, due this August.
Sir Whiskers
First Post
First, check out the Hero Games website. There's a ton of free material to give you an idea of what the system is about. Here's a link to an intro pdf:
http://www.herogames.com/FreeStuff/freedocs.htm
---------------
Next, a little history. Hero system began as Champions, a superhero rpg. It was revolutionary in many ways, and did a great job creating the comic book genre. The rules, however, were in need of serious balancing. Other supplements came out, including for the wild west and espionage.
Champions II followed and was an improvement, but the system (IMO) didn't really come into its own until 3rd Edition. This edition cleaned up and consolidated a lot of the rules. Instead of separate rulebooks for different genres, everything was included in the main book. The worst complaint I can make is that the binding was lousy, so the book fell apart fairly quickly.
Fourth Edition (IIRC, called Fuzion) appears to have been a bit of a waste. I glanced at the rules, but never used the system. As another poster said, they weren't terribly well written. Ironic, since the idea was to make the system simpler...
Fifth Edition is the latest. The rulebook is fairly well organized and, best of all, has tons of examples of powers, rules, and campaign ideas. The system also has a lot of support - if you're going to use the system for superhero gaming, definitely pick up Champions, and consider Millennium City (a city book) and Conquerors, Killers, and Crooks (a villain book). There's also quite a bit of free material on Hero Games website. If you want a character creation program, Hero Designer 2 is available - I'm still not completely sold on this product, but for now I'm forcing my group (including me, the GM) to use it, to give it a fair test.
----------------------
Last, for my take. I agree that Hero System isn't for everyone. If you're the type who loves designing new mechs in Battletech, or always wanted to design your own ships in Star Fleet Battles, or enjoys spending hours designing characters in your favorite rpg, you'll probably like this game. It's perfect for the person who likes to tinker under hood, so to speak.
The system is incredibly flexible, and has the potential to create virtually any character concept you can imagine. No multiclassing to have your character fit your concept - just design him/her the way you want. Drawback: the system can be broken in so many ways. I recently had one player suggest (as a joke) creating a character with 60 points in Presence. The way the system works, he would basically walk into a room, make a presence attack, and every enemy would fall down in awe. My response: Uh...No. Bottom line: the GM has to exert considerable control over character creation. Having mature players who don't go overboard helps.
Combat is very cinematic, but favors those who approach it tactically. A player used to a more free-flow, storytelling environment will likely be lost. I prefer tactical combat, so I favor this system. Now while combat is tactical, flavor isn't lost. Nothing is more fun than knocking the super-villainess through a wall (or two) while fighting on the 30th floor of a skyscraper - the thud when she hit the ground below was sooooo satisfying.
And as others have said, it's much easier to customize a campaign with the system, than with (for example) a more rigid system such as 3E. If you want a low-magic D&D campaign, you'll need a lot of house rules. In Hero, you just lower the point totals and design a low-powered magic system. In effect, you don't change the basic rules of the game so much as choose which options to use/allow. Of course, that flexibility comes at the cost of forcing the GM to design an awful lot from scratch. Remember what I said above about spending hours designing stuff? Count on it.
Finally, IMO the system is better for superhero campaigns than fantasy. I've GM'd and played in both, and I like the system - a lot. In fact, I gamed with a group in the 80's and early 90's that didn't play D&D at all, because we spent all our time with Champions and Fantasy Hero. But there's much less work for the GM in a superhero campaign, and the "feel" of the system seems to fit that genre better.
http://www.herogames.com/FreeStuff/freedocs.htm
---------------
Next, a little history. Hero system began as Champions, a superhero rpg. It was revolutionary in many ways, and did a great job creating the comic book genre. The rules, however, were in need of serious balancing. Other supplements came out, including for the wild west and espionage.
Champions II followed and was an improvement, but the system (IMO) didn't really come into its own until 3rd Edition. This edition cleaned up and consolidated a lot of the rules. Instead of separate rulebooks for different genres, everything was included in the main book. The worst complaint I can make is that the binding was lousy, so the book fell apart fairly quickly.
Fourth Edition (IIRC, called Fuzion) appears to have been a bit of a waste. I glanced at the rules, but never used the system. As another poster said, they weren't terribly well written. Ironic, since the idea was to make the system simpler...
Fifth Edition is the latest. The rulebook is fairly well organized and, best of all, has tons of examples of powers, rules, and campaign ideas. The system also has a lot of support - if you're going to use the system for superhero gaming, definitely pick up Champions, and consider Millennium City (a city book) and Conquerors, Killers, and Crooks (a villain book). There's also quite a bit of free material on Hero Games website. If you want a character creation program, Hero Designer 2 is available - I'm still not completely sold on this product, but for now I'm forcing my group (including me, the GM) to use it, to give it a fair test.
----------------------
Last, for my take. I agree that Hero System isn't for everyone. If you're the type who loves designing new mechs in Battletech, or always wanted to design your own ships in Star Fleet Battles, or enjoys spending hours designing characters in your favorite rpg, you'll probably like this game. It's perfect for the person who likes to tinker under hood, so to speak.
The system is incredibly flexible, and has the potential to create virtually any character concept you can imagine. No multiclassing to have your character fit your concept - just design him/her the way you want. Drawback: the system can be broken in so many ways. I recently had one player suggest (as a joke) creating a character with 60 points in Presence. The way the system works, he would basically walk into a room, make a presence attack, and every enemy would fall down in awe. My response: Uh...No. Bottom line: the GM has to exert considerable control over character creation. Having mature players who don't go overboard helps.
Combat is very cinematic, but favors those who approach it tactically. A player used to a more free-flow, storytelling environment will likely be lost. I prefer tactical combat, so I favor this system. Now while combat is tactical, flavor isn't lost. Nothing is more fun than knocking the super-villainess through a wall (or two) while fighting on the 30th floor of a skyscraper - the thud when she hit the ground below was sooooo satisfying.
And as others have said, it's much easier to customize a campaign with the system, than with (for example) a more rigid system such as 3E. If you want a low-magic D&D campaign, you'll need a lot of house rules. In Hero, you just lower the point totals and design a low-powered magic system. In effect, you don't change the basic rules of the game so much as choose which options to use/allow. Of course, that flexibility comes at the cost of forcing the GM to design an awful lot from scratch. Remember what I said above about spending hours designing stuff? Count on it.
Finally, IMO the system is better for superhero campaigns than fantasy. I've GM'd and played in both, and I like the system - a lot. In fact, I gamed with a group in the 80's and early 90's that didn't play D&D at all, because we spent all our time with Champions and Fantasy Hero. But there's much less work for the GM in a superhero campaign, and the "feel" of the system seems to fit that genre better.
Sir Whiskers said:
Actually Champions II was a supplement, distinct from the second edition of the Champions game. It grafted on a lot of stuff that did not work well with Champions until the complete rewrite of the third edition, at which time it was folded into the main rules.
Fuzion was a separate rule system that came after the 4th edition of the Hero/Champions rules. The company that owned the system (I forget who it was by that point) had officially abandoned the Hero system and was trying to sell everybody on Fuzion, which was not quite compatible with Hero.
With only a few exceptions, the fifth edition is mechanically identical to the fourth--it's better written, though.
Except for speedsters who operate just like the Flash does... (That's an old problem with the game that has never been adequately addressed. All attempts fall flat in one area or another, most of them having to do with Hero system's phased movement rules.)
Sound like "Impressive Man". He walked around naked all the time and was very--"impressive". He also had an "entangle" attack that I will not describe.
Chupacabra said:
Yes, I have to agree. I've yet to see Fantasy Hero magic system that was ever worth a darn. The big problem is that the point-cost of powers in HERO only reflect their value in the superhero genre. Some things are too cheap, like sensory powers (Invisibility, Darkness, Enhanced Senses) and movement powers (Flight, Teleportation). OTOH, offensive powers that do direct damage are pretty expensive for what they do; a wizard's magic missile costs END, requires Concentration at 1/2 DCV as well as a successful magic skill check, and inflicts damage on the caster if the skill check fails, yet it only does the same damage as an arrow and costs 7 character points? What a gyp!
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