Quote from: The_Shadow;701366Good points. Hero doesn't come off well in forums, because it plays differently than how it reads.

Hmmm...I think the same argument could be made for any game, if the people of a particular forum aren't familiar with said game.  For example, try to explain the Old Rolemaster RPG to people who only play WW Games...

Just my opinion, of course.


~ M

I may have to buy that program.  $25 isn't horrible for software, I guess.

I also do intend to play it the system, at least once, but my birthday got in the way.  The wife sprung for almost all the XWing Miniatures she could find...  but that's another thread.

Quote from: jhkim;700659I love the underlying Hero System design - but I agree that it is complex, and many bits were fine or even innovative when it came out in 1981, but are holdovers now.

When I was running PS238 for kids, I added 10 to DCV, and the DCV you hit was OCV+3d6 (mathematically the same).

That's how I thought of doing it.

Quote from: mcbobbo;701400I may have to buy that program.  $25 isn't horrible for software, I guess.

I also do intend to play it the system, at least once, but my birthday got in the way.  The wife sprung for almost all the XWing Miniatures she could find...  but that's another thread.

Ooohhhh X-Wings. Shiny, Shiny!!!

Quote

Quote from: jhkim View PostI love the underlying Hero System design - but I agree that it is complex, and many bits were fine or even innovative when it came out in 1981, but are holdovers now.

When I was running PS238 for kids, I added 10 to DCV, and the DCV you hit was OCV+3d6 (mathematically the same).

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;701413That's how I thought of doing it.

In the end, it is what works best for you and your group.

Which is what it is all about?


~ M

Quote from: Nadrakas;701422In the end, it is what works best for you and your group.

I hate that saying.  It's a lame answer.

Quote from: mcbobbo;700642Why subtract what you rolled, and I guess this means rolling low is better?  Maybe?  But I think damage is a "roll high" situation, so maybe not.

The "subtract what you rolled" business is new to me. Six of one, half a dozen of another, but I don't think that's the best way to explain it. The old way is to say that the number range you need is 11+(OCV-DCV) or less.

Have you ever used Chaosium's Basic Role Playing system? If you have, it's just the Resistance Formula applied to a roll of 3d6 rather than to a d% working essentially as d20.
 

QuoteAnd why eleven?  3d6 should average to 10, or 9.5 or something, without exploding dice.  With exploding we should be above 12.

Although OCV and DCV can be different, the CV-CV factor tends to be reflexive. It's shifting odds ratios, and starting with 62.5% instead of 50% on the 3d6 curve makes that a bit less suddenly extreme. Also, Hero System generally gives offense a bit of an edge over defense, since it's basically only attacks that succeed that significantly change the situation.

Quote from: Nadrakas;701360IMO point-buy systems don't foster them any more than CharOp ones...Bad GMs/DMs do.

I'll agree with the proviso that this GM was awesome in every other respect: great game, good pacing, engaging story. And he did this over multiple systems. This is just one time we butted heads.

QuoteI hope you're still playing Hero, or if you're not that you might give it a try again.

Oh, very much so. I like Champions, and that same GM had an awesome HERO Fantasy game (though I avoided magic in that game, for much the same reason as above; PC's had to buy spells, BBEG's had VPP).

I like HERO, but I'm not a HEROphile; it is not "the one game, to break them all!", which I've run into more than once. Though Darren and Steve were cool guys to hang out with at each DunDraCon (and Darren's "All-Star" games were always the talk of the Con).

Quote from: Nadrakas;701422In the end, it is what works best for you and your group.

Which is what it is all about?


~ M

"Sigh"...not meaning to "offend."

However, while you may find it "lame," it still holds true.  Too many people tell others how to run their games (When unasked that is...plenty ask, and advise is given -- but it is just advise).  Coments like, "You can't do hack & slash" - "No Romance" - "You have to....".  For all the "lameness," I still hold to the "It's My Groups Game & We Play It Our Way," along with "Everyone Should Have Fun at the Table (or Chair)."

Again, if you find it "Lame"...no offense meant.

Peace.


~ M

Quote from: daniel_ream;700710If you aren't planning on raising INT and EGO, there is no good reason not to buy them both down to 8.

I'm pretty sure there are attacks in which something (such as a toss of dice) is compared with your actual EGO, rather than EGO/5, and also that INT can be drained. Maybe my memory is defective, or maybe these things have been deleted from the latest edition...

Quoteyou can use those five points to buy Mental Defense and be significantly more resistant than if you'd left the stats at 10 and 10.

... but yes, that's something to consider.

QuoteCOM costs half a point per point of COM, but has no mechanical function in the system.  At all.  Anywhere.  If you don't care about how you look, you can buy it down to 0 and get a free five points.

But other people may care about how you look, and that the influence is not "systematically" defined makes it only a not easily calculable risk.

d

Quote from: robiswrong;700732So the question I have is if the point system doesn't provide reasonable levels of balance (nevermind "perfect balance"), then what value does it add?

If a random-roll system doesn't provide reasonable levels of balance (nevermind "perfect balance"), then what value does it add? Answer: The interest of unpredictability is the value in that case, and the interest of trade offs is the value in the point buy case. In some rules sets (e.g., Dragonquest), those are combined by having randomized amounts of points.

QuoteIsn't that the whole premise of a point-buy system, that two characters with the same point cost will (assuming people aren't deliberately sabotaging their characters) be within some margin of effectiveness of each other?

Champions merely proposes that two effects will be within such a scope if the premises upon which the valuation was based hold true, and pretty well delivers on that. Characters get way out of balance in sum when the valuation of effects is not in line with power in the game at hand.

This is a consequence of a "command economy" that (because it's wholly imaginary) has an unlimited supply of goods not subject to a free market's influence on prices.

QuoteIOW, if you just threw out the whole point buy thing and came up with a bunch of powers, and the GM just approved or disapproved of the characters, would that be worse than the current system?

That's just how I've run Marvel Super Heroes, but the MSH framework is much simpler. With Champions, the points values provide helpful guideposts in the landscape.

Quote from: Anglachel;701183I was also considering buying into Hero lately.
After some talking about it on a german forum, i am not so sure anymore. And this thread gave me some more to think about.

What i do not like, at all, is the weird starting values for skills via division of attribute values. This is much more elegant and reasonable in GURPS (where the attribute is the roll-under value for a skill you have taken at +0).

If you have to divide your attribute by 5 this means you have a lot of range that is exactly the same competence (for example the results from 1.6 to 2.4 yield the exact same skill competence -> roll 11 or under). Why on earth do you not collapse the scale in this instance? It's kind of weird if the guy with dex 8 is as good as i am with dex 12.

Anyway, i freely admit i am a noob in GURPS as much as in Hero. So i don't know if GURPS has the upper hand or not (maybe that'd be an interesting topic for an own thread).

The reason Hero 'stat modifiers' work that way is because the game is designed for superheroes, not regular humans.

A superhero will have stats from lets say, 5 to 50.

So Hero is not, in my opinion, an ideal system to represent regular humans.

I like Hero for superheroes, epic fantasy heroes, Jedi, aliens, etc...


Gurps is designed for regular humans, and is not so great (in my opinion) for superheroes.

Quote from: jhkim;701223Both Hero and GURPS use the idea that the normal human scale for attributes has a similar range - roughly 3 to 18 in GURPS, and 0 to 20 in Hero.

However, GURPS makes attributes incredibly important. Characters will often spend over half their points in their attributes, because having a high attribute is absolutely vital.

Hero makes the points spent in skills to be more important. An expert character will spend most of their points on the skills of their expertise, and less than 10% on raw intelligence.

I prefer the Hero approach because it differentiates characters more. In GURPS, a bookish sage with high IQ can trivially become an expert outdoorsman and tracker with just a few XP. In Hero, the outdoorsman and the sage are differentiated more.

Quote from: Bill;701732The reason Hero 'stat modifiers' work that way is because the game is designed for superheroes, not regular humans.

A superhero will have stats from lets say, 5 to 50.

So Hero is not, in my opinion, an ideal system to represent regular humans.

I like Hero for superheroes, epic fantasy heroes, Jedi, aliens, etc...

Gurps is designed for regular humans, and is not so great (in my opinion) for superheroes.

I actually prefer Hero to GURPS for regular humans, because I prefer the skill emphasis in Hero over the attribute emphasis in GURPS.  In my experience, all of the Hero mechanics work fine at a normal human scale.

Quote from: Bill;701161The problem with charop is the players, not the system.

Charoping is a choice.

Charoping is generally going outside of implicit constraints on character ability.

So, again, why not just make those implicit constraints *explicit*, and work from there?  GM says 'here's the basic constraints on powers'.  Player submits character - GM suggests edits, both up and down, and player goes "cool".

Quote from: Bill;701161The difference between hero and 3x dnd for me, is that hero lets you create the character you want, and once the character exists, the game system is just better mechanically during play.

Utterly agreed.  I'm more of a GURPS player, but I'd make the exact same statement about GURPS/3.x.  Which is the primary reason I don't play 3.x - there's nothing it really does that I care about that another system doesn't do *better* from my POV.

Quote from: Novastar;701354But IMHO, Point-Buy's foster more favoritism and CharOp than traditional RPG's.

Given that point buy systems go way, way back, I think they're 'traditional' by any rational measure.

But I do think you're right about them fostering lots of charop, and I say that as a long-term GURPS GM.

That being said, I consider 3.x to be basically a point-buy system, just with very, very coarse-grained 'points' that they call 'levels'.

Quote from: Phillip;701481If a random-roll system doesn't provide reasonable levels of balance (nevermind "perfect balance"), then what value does it add? Answer: The interest of unpredictability is the value in that case, and the interest of trade offs is the value in the point buy case. In some rules sets (e.g., Dragonquest), those are combined by having randomized amounts of points.

I'm not sure where the 'random = balanced' thing came into play, since I never even suggested it as an alternative.  I think that some people are reading far more into my kind of thought exercise than I intended - namely that I'm either arguing against Champions as a whole, against more granular character definitions, or in favor of random rolling/etc.

But yeah, random rolling was *never* about balance.  It was about 'here's your hand, how do you play it?'  Which also works better if you have different hands to play over time.

Quote from: Phillip;701481Champions merely proposes that two effects will be within such a scope if the premises upon which the valuation was based hold true, and pretty well delivers on that. Characters get way out of balance in sum when the valuation of effects is not in line with power in the game at hand.

So, again, instead of giving out a point budget, why not just make those valuations explicit instead?

Quote from: Phillip;701481That's just how I've run Marvel Super Heroes, but the MSH framework is much simpler. With Champions, the points values provide helpful guideposts in the landscape.

And I'm seeing this as the common answer I'm getting, but I'm still kind of wondering what it would look like if those guideposts were just given explicitly rather than relying on an overall point budget.

Quote from: jhkim;701756I actually prefer Hero to GURPS for regular humans, because I prefer the skill emphasis in Hero over the attribute emphasis in GURPS.  In my experience, all of the Hero mechanics work fine at a normal human scale.

I don't care for the gurps skill system, so no real argument here. I was not saying Hero can't model regular humans, just that the stats, not the skills, are not very granular for a normal human due to its superhero roots.