And the main reason I *want* to and *try to* use HERO for more grounded campaign settings is how damage works, and how the system is designed around the GM creating and enforcing their own dramatic sense.

So if you want low magic, fine.  High Fantasy with Magic everywhere?  Also fine.  Diablo III-esqu "Live or Die by the Healing Potion?"  Fine.  HARN level debilitating injuries?  Also fine.

I love Pathfinder and D20 because I like figuring out the "optimal builds."  But I hate the mentality that lots of hit points gives - fighters charge certain death, certain that the cleric will pump them back to full.

In HERO, when done right, the players know that a poorly thought out move can easily end up killing you, even once you are "high level" because damage, armor, and "hit points" all work so differently and can be tweaked further by how you balance offense vs. defense or how you rule on healing magic, etc.

Lots more prep work for the GM, but so much more control over the "reality" of your campaign setting.

Quote from: Bill;702582I think when a man that can actually lift 600 kg punches someone, they drop like a stone.

While this is to a fair degree realistic, it means that when any human fights a big bear - let alone a dragon - they instantly drop.

That is probably realistic, but it is not usually what is desired.

Quote from: jhkim;702594No, you have your statistics wrong.  1/2 d6 average 2.0, while 1d6-1 averages 2.5.
(1+1+2+2+3+3)/6 = 2.0
(0+1+2+3+4+5)/6 = 2.5

3 1/2d6:  (3x 3.5) (average for 1d6) = 10.5 + 2 = 12.5
4d6 -1:  (3x 3.5) + (2.5) = 13

I stand corrected.  Though still think it is an argument, if only due to the lower lowest possible roll on 4d6-1.

QuoteNow, I'm sure you feel like you want more granularity. Some people prefer Rolemaster with its 1-100 stats and 1d100 resolution to D20. That's a matter of taste rather than an objective problem with D20, though.

Personally, I like that Hero makes attributes relatively cheap, while emphasizing skills and offering a profusion of skills and talents. It means more variety - so I can have a melee fighter who doesn't have his strength maxed out but is still effective, compared to many systems where that would be unworkable.

As an illustration of objective results, let's compare D20 with Hero. Suppose an average-strength magic-user faces off against a top-strength fighter in a contest of strength. In D20, the magic user rolls 1d20+0 while the fighter rolls 1d20+4 (for his 18 Strength bonus).  In Hero, the magic user rolls 3d6 under 11- while the fighter rolls 3d6 under 13- (for his 20 STR).  In both cases, the magic user has about a 30% chance to beat the fighter. You might prefer a different chance, but no one says "D20 is objectively broken because of stat granularity".


If you think spellcasters are doing too well, then presumably you should put more restrictions on them.

Never said anything was inherently broken.  And I didn't even feel they were "doing too well" so much as that the restrictions I put on them still did not quite balance out their versatility.  But again, that could be more my own fault that anything inherent to the system.

And that does speak both good and bad about the system; HERO gives you a lot of control, with the caveat that there are a lot of gotchya's when doing so until you really learn the system in and out.

Quote from: jhkim;702600While this is to a fair degree realistic, it means that when any human fights a big bear - let alone a dragon - they instantly drop.

That is probably realistic, but it is not usually what is desired.

Well, I assume people want realism if the charcaters are regular humans.

Quote from: Bill;702618Well, I assume people want realism if the charcaters are regular humans.

We're talking a little past each other, then. I was thinking of "regular humans" as potentially including spell-casters or Jedi as well as larger-than-life characters like Indiana Jones or James Bond. So, not necessarily realistic.

I'd agree that Hero is not very realistic. The standard optional rules let you vary between comics books on the one hand, and typical adventure genres like Indiana Jones, Conan, etc. It doesn't give you anything for more realistic than that out of the box - you'd definitely need to go into house rules for that.

Quote from: jhkim;702600While this is to a fair degree realistic, it means that when any human fights a big bear - let alone a dragon - they instantly drop.

That is probably realistic, but it is not usually what is desired.

On the point of realism and humanity it's entirely possible that our human ability to throw a punch is unique.  There was a study on it a month or so back.

Quote from: mcbobbo;702647On the point of realism and humanity it's entirely possible that our human ability to throw a punch is unique.  There was a study on it a month or so back.

Tell that to someone punched by a Silverback

On "realism" and HERO:  HERO actually has plenty of core rules that offer more "realism" but that is debatable.  Hit Locations, Wounding and Disabling Rules, etc.

It is certainly more "realistic" out of the box than D20 is, if using those optional rules.

And where D20 has "Hit Point" problems vis a vis characters taking a lot of punishment before going down, HERO has "Defense" problems vis a vis characters being hard to damage at all and thus similarly seeming to take more punishment than they should.

I would argue that HERO has the greatest potential range of dramatic sense of any system I know of.  You can do HARN with HERO (use Hit Locations, Bleeding, Wounding, and Disabling rules - any BODY taken is a bad day or potentially career-ending.)  Or you can use none of the optional rules and have a more super-hero / comic-book level where generally nobody dies, they just get beat up, unless the bad guy unleashes the nuke.  Or you can do cartoon level stuff where no attacks do BODY at all, and you only take STUN damage.

I used Hit Locations and the Wounding rules, but only used the other optional damage rules for NPC's - the players were never subject to bleeding or disabling wounds, but cannon-fodder NPC's generally were out of the fight from the first real hit they took.

Quote from: jhkim;702600While this is to a fair degree realistic, it means that when any human fights a big bear - let alone a dragon - they instantly drop.

That is probably realistic, but it is not usually what is desired.

HERO is deliberately modeled on a "cinematic" setting, for precisely that reason.

JG

Quote from: jhkim;702630We're talking a little past each other, then. I was thinking of "regular humans" as potentially including spell-casters or Jedi as well as larger-than-life characters like Indiana Jones or James Bond. So, not necessarily realistic.

I'd agree that Hero is not very realistic. The standard optional rules let you vary between comics books on the one hand, and typical adventure genres like Indiana Jones, Conan, etc. It doesn't give you anything for more realistic than that out of the box - you'd definitely need to go into house rules for that.

I think if you use the hit locations, and people don't have inflated stats, its darn realistic.

But I see what you mean for Jedi and Wizards.

Quote from: Bill;702790I think if you use the hit locations, and people don't have inflated stats, its darn realistic.

But I see what you mean for Jedi and Wizards.

I think it is realistic compared to most other RPG systems, but that's not a high bar for realism. It still has a lot of cinematic assumptions, like how knockouts work (built into STUN).

Quote from: jhkim;702827I think it is realistic compared to most other RPG systems, but that's not a high bar for realism. It still has a lot of cinematic assumptions, like how knockouts work (built into STUN).

They also have "CON Stun" where if you take an amount of STUN damage greater than your CON score, you are stunned for a round.

Actual KO doesn't occur until 0 STUN or below, and you aren't even unconscious until below -10 STUN IIRC.

So you get both the punch drunk effect - still standing but dazed - and then knocked down but not truly unconscious, and then full on unconscious on down to "in a coma" based on how far negative your STUN goes.

No system can truly be "realistic" and every system has its own dramatic reality it is trying to convey.  And even that has changed over the years for many systems - D&D used to be very gritty, like look-in-the-well "Death, No Save" gritty.  Now everyone gets healing surges and character death is nearly unheard of.

I frankly think that Hero is one of the more realistic systems AND one of the more playable, insofar as you don't need to give a high-level warrior "more hit points than four warhorses", you don't need to kill him to knock him out, and the hit location system, while optional and a greater level of complexity, is not quite so complex as systems I'd seen before it, especially Rolemaster.

JG

Quote from: Kraven Kor;702846They also have "CON Stun" where if you take an amount of STUN damage greater than your CON score, you are stunned for a round.

There is no such thing as "CON Stun".

It's called being Stunned.

Quote from: Kraven Kor;702846No system can truly be "realistic" and every system has its own dramatic reality it is trying to convey.  And even that has changed over the years for many systems - D&D used to be very gritty, like look-in-the-well "Death, No Save" gritty.  Now everyone gets healing surges and character death is nearly unheard of.

I don't think D&D was ever intended to be realistic. Note that realistic isn't the same as deadly. A number of RPGs are unrealistically too deadly - much like the suspense genre, where victims drop from a single knock to the head, and instantly die from a single stab in the back.

With realistic options on, Hero is indeed reasonably realistic - but it also makes a number of conscious choices to depart from reality. For example, Hero's STUN mechanic reflects a reality where someone can fall unconscious without taking any lasting damage. That's appropriate for many genres, but doesn't match real-world medicine.

Quote from: nightwind1;703081There is no such thing as "CON Stun".

It's called being Stunned.

"CON Stun" is actually code for "Been playing Hero too long."