HERO Creator

neither of us own it unfortunately. I can see about it. I really don't remember how different it was. Simpler, but I don't remember the details.  

He thinks it might be adaptable enough to do so in "campaign adjustments" but he needs to get along a little further

I am the creator in question. I figured I'd finally make an account and explain exactly what this program is. First off, it is going to be two programs, technically.



The first is going to be the "Hero Creator", which takes all the necessary inputs to make a character and keeps track of the points spent on each, and the points remaining. The point of it is to allow players to build characters without having to have a GM looking over their shoulder. This means it has to know pricing, as well as the GM's preferences. What this is *not* is a way to bypass the need to  have a copy of the book. It will not explain what powers do, or anything of the sort. I also make no claims that you can safely hand a rookie player a book and this program and expect anything other than a mess. What it does do is keep the math straight, mostly. Additionally, it will flag certain powers and whatnot for review, and hold onto the reason it was flagged. Possible reasons are if the powers themselves had balancing warnings in the book (like Transform or EDM), if the combination of advantages and limitations is questionable on that power or relative to each other (no range TK or Range Limited by Strength + Line of Sight), or if it conflicts with the preferences set out in the campaign file (more on that later). It will use drop downs to select when you are looking for, generally only listing legal or semi-legal options. For example, the player would never see the option to add Continuous onto an already constant power. I am somewhat lenient on what can be added, as I understand sometimes weird builds are what you want. If you can't find the advantage or limitation you are looking for, you can use "limited power" as a generic, and I added "Misc" into the advantages list. Just write in the name and cost, and you are good to go. Finally, this program will have two print to pdf options: print standard and print verbose. Print standard is designed to make things easy to understand mid-session, while print verbose is designed to make it obvious how the power was built. For example: here is the same power printed in both formats:

• Retrocognition: Normal Sight, Time Modifiers
• Clairsentience: Sight, Retrocognition, Retrocognition only, One Sense Only: Normal Sight, Time Modifiers

The second program is the "Campaign Creator". This program will make script files that can be input into the Hero Creator. The GM will be able to use this to customize their player's use of Hero Creator. First some quick terminology: I use Attribute as a blanket term that describes Powers, Characteristics, Perks, Disadvantages, etc. Basically anything that modifies the character directly. (so anything that isn't an advantage or limitation). The program is being designed to allow you to do the following things with the script file:

• Change Base Points
• Change Active Point Cap for Attributes
  • You can define them as either hard or soft. Hard caps will prevent the player from making the power until they dial it back, soft caps will not, but may be designed with penalties, such as costing double past a certain cost, or just flagging the power for review.
  • You can list specific Attributes and change their cap. You can do this by attribute type (like power or disadvantage), power type (like attack or adjustment), or just target a specific attribute (like strength or energy blast)
  • You can list multiple attributes as being "paired". This means that they will add themselves up before deciding if they hit the cap. This would mean you could, for example, disallow your players from having more than 70 points between energy blast and OCV. You can also "tilt the scales", which will multiply the value of a power as far as the pairing is concerned, which means you could redefine that prior pairing as "Dice of energy blast and OCV cannot exceed 14, together". Different instances of energy blast will be counted separately. You may also use generic flags to get something of the effect: "No more than 40 points in defense powers total" (strength is attack and PD/ED are defense in my calculations).

• Change Disadvantage Cap
• Modify Every-man Skills
  • You can select between the lists mentioned in the 5e base book: Viking Fantasy, Modern, and Sci-fi. You may also select "none", if you prefer.
  • Once you select your base list, you can add or remove particular skills.

• Auto-add something to every character (it will not charge for them)
  • I mainly added this to add Normal Characteristics Maxima to players. If you want to charge them for the attribute in question, just modify the base points and/or disadvantage cap instead.

• Require a certain limitation or advantage on every instance of a specific power
  • Once again, these can be defined generically to get something to the effect of: "Require incantations on all adjustment powers"

• Ban a certain Attribute
  • Banned Attributes will still be visible in the lists, but can be set to disallow players from adding them, or can flag themselves for review

• Add a minimum cost to a particular power
• Modify the cost of a certain attribute (multiplicatively or additively)
• Modify the endurance cost of a certain attribute (multiplicatively or additively)
  • When multiplying, listing anything other than "0" will make a formerly zero cost power into a power that costs (Active Points / 10) * <What you wrote>

• Modify the range of a certain attribute (multiplicatively only)
• Create a new attribute or modifier (advantage or limitation)
• Rename an attribute
• Modify flags on powers
  • Flags include power type, duration, target, and whether it costs endurance.
  • While most flags are not visible anywhere to the user, they do modify certain behavior. You could use this to say, define Shrinking as an adjustment power. If you did, any advantage or limitations usually restricted to adjustment powers would become available for Shrinking.
    
  • This is helpful for suppressing warnings on powers that might be automatically flagged for review. For example, in some campaigns FTL is par for the course, and not worth worrying over.

• Define the number of Delayed Effect powers that can be set at once. (by formula or set number)
• Define Limited Range's Cap (as a fraction, or in inches on the game board)
• Allow for partial doubling using the 5 doubling rule. For example: partial doubling would tell you that 3 times as many summons costs +8.
• Allow for half point costs on powers. For example, one level of damage resistance costing half a point rather than 1, or 3 levels costing 1.5 instead of 2.

Sorry for taking so long on this response; I've been working on final projects and studying for exams here at VT. It is currently finals week, so I don't know how active I'll be able to be in the immediate future, but I'll still try to answer questions as you send them.

The current design for this program is a downloadable. You would make a campaign file, send that to your players, and then they'd send you their character file. The weakness of this system is that they would need to send you a fresh copy every time they spend experience points. Making a database driven website for this would be convenient, as it would mean that as long as you had been sent the appropriate permissions, both you and your player could edit the same sheet together. However, there are a couple reasons that this was not the approach I decided to go with. Firstly, database driven websites require a server to run, which either means a subscription service, or an always-on computer that runs it. The latter tends to violate terms of use. Second, I'm not proficient with web development, so I'd have to learn how to embed code before I could do this. I could bypass the former issue by running it as a client-side program, which would mean that all the data would be stored on the user's computer, and the page could still dynamically change with use. However, if I did that, you'd still have to send the file to your players and vise versa. I feel that removes the only major benefit of an in browser system for what I'm trying to do, so I still intend to stick with the downloadable. If you have some other reason you'd like to see it in browser, feel free to let me know, and I'll reconsider my position. It would mean that you wouldn't have to worry about downloading updates for it, though I'm not sure how many of those I'll be putting out.

I'm not programming this with explicit information for building 3rd edition characters. I'll try to make it flexible enough so that an industrious GM can make a campaign file that works for 3rd edition systems, but not having the source books means that I cannot be sure that I've covered everything. If it doesn't turn out to be flexible enough to do so on release date, feel free to post here with desired updates, and I'll expand the functionality appropriately. I encourage any user that completes a functional campaign file for conversion between editions to post it here.

There should be no legal issue with accepting money for this, as game mechanics cannot be copyrighted. I do not infringe on their creative property, which includes their system names, created characters, and such. Of course, I still intend for this program to be free to anyone who wants it, and I have no intention of creating a donation pool prior to release. Perhaps when I've released the beta, I'll do so; I would want people to know exactly what their money was going to if they did send me donations. If I receive enough, I'll put the money towards things that will help the project, such as a hosting for a site, or source books to create explicitly included conversions between systems, depending on what my donors are most interested in.