Quote from: Aglondir;1143718In our 6E heroic games, the natural results are speeds ranging from 3 to 5. Four seems to be the default for most PCs, except for the "fast" characters who buy up speed to 5. Three is for the mooks and brute NPCs.

Is this a 5E problem that 6E solves?

Maybe.  The advice prior to 4E was that normals were SPD 2.  Then when FH came out, they encouraged  limits of 2 to 4.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1143741Maybe.  The advice prior to 4E was that normals were SPD 2.  Then when FH came out, they encouraged  limits of 2 to 4.

SPD inflation was always one of the biggest problems with Hero System character creation. Players inflate that stat far beyond what it should be for matching the scale of their character. It's bad enough that it throws off the system balance.

Years ago, I did a major re-evaluation of one of my favorite PCs. And I actually shaved off a couple of points of SPD when I realized exactly what it did to the scale.

Now, I am far more conservative with my SPD scores. Taking the "less is more" approach to character building with that stat.

Prior to 5th Edition, the maxima for even the best trained, highest reflex human, was 4.

Even in the supplements of the 4th edition era, the average overspending on SPD averaged out at about 2 too much on every character. Which makes a huge difference in how the characters actually play. And that only counts the writers who were being conservative with their SPDs. People like Sean Fannon and Steve Long popped the cork on SPD and inflated it off the scale in their sourcebooks. Making those books incompatible with the rest of the game line.

We go back to Classic Enemies. Which was scaled reasonably correctly across the board. It provided the baseline of what 250 point characters should be facing and standing up against. It was pretty much balanced. As it should have been.

But the later Enemies books didn't operate from the same baseline. And that just confused the hell out of the people who were actually buying those sourcebooks.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1143747Prior to 5th Edition, the maxima for even the best trained, highest reflex human, was 4.

Even in the supplements of the 4th edition era, the average overspending on SPD averaged out at about 2 too much on every character. Which makes a huge difference in how the characters actually play. And that only counts the writers who were being conservative with their SPDs. People like Sean Fannon and Steve Long popped the cork on SPD and inflated it off the scale in their sourcebooks. Making those books incompatible with the rest of the game line.

We go back to Classic Enemies. Which was scaled reasonably correctly across the board. It provided the baseline of what 250 point characters should be facing and standing up against. It was pretty much balanced. As it should have been.

But the later Enemies books didn't operate from the same baseline. And that just confused the hell out of the people who were actually buying those sourcebooks.

   Looking at the Champions in the BBB, they're almost all SPD 5 except for Obsidian (4) and Seeker (6)--and Seeker arguably needed the extra phase to be able to abort to Dodge.

SPD 2 makes sense from a simulation sense.  A range of SPD 2 to SPD 4 is lousy in the heroic gaming sense.  It plays poorly.   Though I always found a way to make Endurance work for me, which puts a lid on SPD scores that are too high in a more natural way.  SPD becomes more about opportunity than necessarily an action every phase.

The other option is to not use the Speed Chart at all. Instead, replace it with a modified "initiative" system.  For example, one we used in Fantasy Hero was that the GM rolled a d12.  If the roll was your SPD or less, you got to act.  If you didn't get to act, instead you got a temporary +1 to your SPD, cumulative, that resets once you act.  On a roll of 1, everyone acts, and then do end of round.  It's a way to get around stupid Speed Chart tricks where the higher SPD character knows they can almost get away with murder on specific phases.

These days I can't find anyone willing to tackle the learning curve for the HERO system. In order to overcome that, there need to be pretty drastic changes. Neither HERO 5th nor HERO 6th had significant simplification, and I felt they were pretty pointless (despite having an author's credit in 5th edition). If I want to play the HERO System, I'd use 4th edition as-is.

If I were pitching for a new system, it would be a vastly simplified system that couldn't really be called the same game - or at most called HERO Lite. Aglondir's list was a start.

Quote from: Aglondir;1143614Wow. That's tricky since I haven't played 1E since 83 and don't remember much about it. And editions 3 through 5 sort of blend together in my mind. I like 6E, so these have already been implemented:

Ditch Comeliness
Ditch Elemental Controls
Decouple the figured atts
Add Hero Points (6th has HAPs)

As for dramatic changes?

Roll-over instead of roll-under
Get rid of the Killing Attack scale (use Normal damage scale only)
Ditch END
Make Combat Skill Levels into weapons skills that cost the same as regular skills
Ditch naked skill levels (if 1E had them?)
Switch the att scale so there are no breakpoints with att/5

This is why I play Hero, but I do not GM it.

For drastic simplications:

* I would eliminate SPD as an attribute as well as the SPD chart. In all of my later HERO System games, all characters just had SPD 4, and I never felt like anything was missing. I'd allow a power parallel to Duplication that lets special super-speed characters get double actions.

* As Aglondir notes, Endurance was a huge amount of bookkeeping for little change in the overall progress. I'd replace it with a much simpler Exhausted condition after N rounds of combat.

* I also think the special counting of BODY on standard attack dice was busywork that so rarely mattered but constantly took up time.

* Also combine PD and ED into a single DEF value. (Characters can take special armor "only vs physical" if they really want.)

* Consider switching over to a wound track system instead of variable STUN and BODY. The stats just make scaling worse in the system, and don't make sense given the logarithmic scale.

Quote from: jhkim;1143770...

* As Aglondir notes, Endurance was a huge amount of bookkeeping for little change in the overall progress. I'd replace it with a much simpler Exhausted condition after N rounds of combat.

* Also combine PD and ED into a single DEF value. (Characters can take special armor "only vs physical" if they really want.)

* Consider switching over to a wound track system instead of variable STUN and BODY. The stats just make scaling worse in the system, and don't make sense given the logarithmic scale.

For an extreme house ruled version (barely even Hero anymore) I did all of the above, and simplified the spell listings--not as much as Aglondir's example, but the mechanical notes in the listings were slight.

As an add on set of house rules, it worked very well for the players, but was a lot of work for me.  Mainly because it was an add on.  Built into the core rules, it would work just fine.  

In a ground up rewrite, I would add to that list a significant simplification of the powers.  Maybe not as radical as the "Damage, Defense, Enhance, Move, Sense, Special" (or similar list) that was supposedly once seriously considered, but certainly remove plenty of edge cases.

The funny thing is, if done with a little care, such as system could allow 80% to 90% of the existing rules as more complicated options, in such a way that there wouldn't be much difference in the overall outcomes compared to something like 4E.  Sure, the point totals and active costs would be slightly different, but in play it wouldn't be a dime's worth of difference.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1143755The other option is to not use the Speed Chart at all. Instead, replace it with a modified "initiative" system.  For example, one we used in Fantasy Hero was that the GM rolled a d12.  If the roll was your SPD or less, you got to act.  If you didn't get to act, instead you got a temporary +1 to your SPD, cumulative, that resets once you act.  On a roll of 1, everyone acts, and then do end of round.  It's a way to get around stupid Speed Chart tricks where the higher SPD character knows they can almost get away with murder on specific phases.

I've had success with other games with variable activations using a card deck. Each character and NPC puts as many cards as they have activations, and you shuffle the deck and draw to see who's turn it is. Everyone still gets the same activations but no one can predict when anyone will go relative to anyone else.

Also, I seem to have lost my 4th edition book but found my 5th edition one. Were there any major changes between Hero 4th and 5th?

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1143795I've had success with other games with variable activations using a card deck. Each character and NPC puts as many cards as they have activations, and you shuffle the deck and draw to see who's turn it is. Everyone still gets the same activations but no one can predict when anyone will go relative to anyone else.

Also, I seem to have lost my 4th edition book but found my 5th edition one. Were there any major changes between Hero 4th and 5th?

Systematically, not many.  There were a hefty number of minor, almost trivial changes, along with replacing a lot of flavor and advice with dry options.  For any one change, there really isn't anything wrong with it, per se.  You could argue the before or after either way for most of them, and it would be picking at nits.  It wasn't worth buying a whole new set of books and reworking all your campaign material for what little benefit, if any, one gets from the changes.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1143804Systematically, not many.  There were a hefty number of minor, almost trivial changes, along with replacing a lot of flavor and advice with dry options.

   I see this complaint and I wonder if people are comparing apples to oranges--comparing the 4E Champions Big Blue Book to the 5E Hero System Rulesbook. A comparison of the two HSR books would be more accurate, and I don't recall much flavor and advice going missing from 4E's version to 5E's. Now, 5E definitely ramped up the detail and crunch options. It also provided a bunch of worked examples in sidebars, though, which was probably one of the things that helped with the resurgence--you got immediate, practical examples of how to use this stuff.

For many Champions fans, the BBB was already going too far with the complexity. That's why 3rd edition is looked at in the light that it is. It was before things started getting crazy complicated.

Quote from: jhkim;1143770These days I can't find anyone willing to tackle the learning curve for the HERO system. In order to overcome that, there need to be pretty drastic changes. Neither HERO 5th nor HERO 6th had significant simplification, and I felt they were pretty pointless (despite having an author's credit in 5th edition).

Congrats! Did any of your changes make it into 6E?

Quote from: jhkim;1143770If I were pitching for a new system, it would be a vastly simplified system that couldn't really be called the same game - or at most called HERO Lite. Aglondir's list was a start.

True. But Hero fans aren't going to accept those radical changes, due to the specter of Fuzion. I think Fuzion was on the right track with some it's changes.

Quote from: jhkim;1143770* I would eliminate SPD as an attribute as well as the SPD chart. In all of my later HERO System games, all characters just had SPD 4, and I never felt like anything was missing. I'd allow a power parallel to Duplication that lets special super-speed characters get double actions.

The Speed Chart was designed to be Sim, but oddly ends up being Nar. It's supposed to be characters with higher speeds are doing more (which makes sense) but it ends up that players with higher speeds get more spotlight time. I like your new power idea-- if Quicksilver wants to have 3x as many actions as everyone else, he can buy a (very expensive) power. Gurps is on the right track here with Enhanced Time Sense.

Quote from: jhkim;1143770* I also think the special counting of BODY on standard attack dice was busywork that so rarely mattered but constantly took up time.

Yes. It never matters. I actually take the "Stun Only" modifier on my attacks just so I don't have to count Body.

Purely for personal amusement I'd taken some ideas originally posted on TBP way way back in the day (the original poster had the handle mmadsen, though I have no idea who or where this poster may be) and run with them to rework HERO into something called the Challenger System, which was designed to try to reproduce the feel of a HERO game while streamlining and simplifying.

Among the radical reworks were:

- Character redesign: Stripped down to 4 Primary Attributes, DEX, STR, INT and PRS, each ranging from 1 to 6 (start at 2, +15 CPs per +1), and a bunch of Derived Attributes: Speed (DEX + INT / 2), Move (DEX + STR / 2), Recovery (STR + PRS / 2), Will (INT + PRS / 2), Endurance ((STR + PRS) x 5), Advantage (SPD + 6), Physical Tolerance (REC + 3), and Mental Tolerance (WILL + 3).  Comeliness became an Edge.

- Training abilities bought at basically four "levels" of broadness: Aptitudes, Skills, Specialties and Familiarities (e.g. the Scientist Aptitude, Computer Programming Skill, Computer Game Design Specialty, FPS Familiarity). Aptitudes were 10 CPs per +1, Skills 2 CPs/+1, Specialties 1 CP/+1, Familiarities a flat 1 CP.  Proficiencies were Skills usable in combat, with Manoeuvres as Specialties or Familiarities.

- Two basic dice mechanics:
1) the Action Roll (or Precision Roll), which took the basic structure of AV (Action Value) + 3d6 vs. DV (Difficulty Value) + 10; your AV equals a Primary Attribute + your Skill Level (generally 1-12) vs. a DV ranging from 0 to 10 or higher.  Equal or beat DV + 10 to succeed at Minor level; every full 2 points improves success by 1 level, from Standard to Major to Critical.
2) the Force Roll; roll a number of d6s equal to the applicable Force score (e.g. STR is Force for unarmed hand-to-hand combat).  Total of roll is Impact, or short-term results; the standard "1 = 0, 2-5 = 1, 6 = 2" distribution determines number of Effect points, i.e. long-term enduring results. In combat, the Impact is stunning, Effect is Wound Points.

- The Advantage (ADV) Attribute is the basis for a character's pool of Combat Action Points, or CAPs; if you had ADV 9, the Warrior Aptitude at 2, and the Proficiency "Fencing" at 4, you have 15 CAPs. These are allocated in each Round to set Initiative, OCV, and DCV.  Initiative equals SPD plus bid CAPs, up to a maximum of 12; actions are counted down from Segment 12 to Segment 1, with attacks or other actions usually costing Initiative 2-6 (superspeed Powers may reduce this cost) and active defenses costing 1.  An attack is OCV + 3d6 vs. DCV + 10.

- Power redesign based around buying all Powers in levels, at a base cost of 5, 10 or 15 CPs per level depending on the Power.  Enhancements and Restrictions are all then applied as basic pluses or minuses; if the final total is positive, you add 20% of base cost per +1, and if negative you reduce Power cost by 20% per -1 -- e.g. a Power with base cost of 10 CPs, with a total of +7 Enhancements and -11 Restrictions, has a final modifier total of -4, or 80% off -- 2 CPs per level.

I wound up grabbing a lot of these idea for my own in-progress generic homebrew, but thought they might have some interest value here.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1144138... but thought they might have some interest value here.

These are cool ideas! Thanks for sharing.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1144138Purely for personal amusement I'd taken some ideas originally posted on TBP way way back in the day (the original poster had the handle mmadsen, though I have no idea who or where this poster may be) and run with them to rework HERO into something called the Challenger System, which was designed to try to reproduce the feel of a HERO game while streamlining and simplifying.

Among the radical reworks were:

- Character redesign: Stripped down to 4 Primary Attributes, DEX, STR, INT and PRS, each ranging from 1 to 6 (start at 2, +15 CPs per +1), and a bunch of Derived Attributes: Speed (DEX + INT / 2), Move (DEX + STR / 2), Recovery (STR + PRS / 2), Will (INT + PRS / 2), Endurance ((STR + PRS) x 5), Advantage (SPD + 6), Physical Tolerance (REC + 3), and Mental Tolerance (WILL + 3).  Comeliness became an Edge.

- Training abilities bought at basically four "levels" of broadness: Aptitudes, Skills, Specialties and Familiarities (e.g. the Scientist Aptitude, Computer Programming Skill, Computer Game Design Specialty, FPS Familiarity). Aptitudes were 10 CPs per +1, Skills 2 CPs/+1, Specialties 1 CP/+1, Familiarities a flat 1 CP.  Proficiencies were Skills usable in combat, with Manoeuvres as Specialties or Familiarities.

- Two basic dice mechanics:
1) the Action Roll (or Precision Roll), which took the basic structure of AV (Action Value) + 3d6 vs. DV (Difficulty Value) + 10; your AV equals a Primary Attribute + your Skill Level (generally 1-12) vs. a DV ranging from 0 to 10 or higher.  Equal or beat DV + 10 to succeed at Minor level; every full 2 points improves success by 1 level, from Standard to Major to Critical.
2) the Force Roll; roll a number of d6s equal to the applicable Force score (e.g. STR is Force for unarmed hand-to-hand combat).  Total of roll is Impact, or short-term results; the standard "1 = 0, 2-5 = 1, 6 = 2" distribution determines number of Effect points, i.e. long-term enduring results. In combat, the Impact is stunning, Effect is Wound Points.

- The Advantage (ADV) Attribute is the basis for a character's pool of Combat Action Points, or CAPs; if you had ADV 9, the Warrior Aptitude at 2, and the Proficiency "Fencing" at 4, you have 15 CAPs. These are allocated in each Round to set Initiative, OCV, and DCV.  Initiative equals SPD plus bid CAPs, up to a maximum of 12; actions are counted down from Segment 12 to Segment 1, with attacks or other actions usually costing Initiative 2-6 (superspeed Powers may reduce this cost) and active defenses costing 1.  An attack is OCV + 3d6 vs. DCV + 10.

- Power redesign based around buying all Powers in levels, at a base cost of 5, 10 or 15 CPs per level depending on the Power.  Enhancements and Restrictions are all then applied as basic pluses or minuses; if the final total is positive, you add 20% of base cost per +1, and if negative you reduce Power cost by 20% per -1 -- e.g. a Power with base cost of 10 CPs, with a total of +7 Enhancements and -11 Restrictions, has a final modifier total of -4, or 80% off -- 2 CPs per level.

I wound up grabbing a lot of these idea for my own in-progress generic homebrew, but thought they might have some interest value here.

Well, you, Trechirion and the others have come with some very cool ideas.

Think I'll try to use some of them on my straight 3d6 system (never use more than 3d6). To achieve which I'm toying with a "power" multiplier to apply to the roll so you can replicate from a club to a death star with only 3d6.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1144138Purely for personal amusement I'd taken some ideas originally posted on TBP way way back in the day (the original poster had the handle mmadsen...

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