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Post by CRTaylor on Apr 9, 2014 4:17:59 GMT
I have found that where I used to be more willing to just judge the effects based on my guts I've become more reliant on finding the exact rule and crunching numbers lately, which slows the game down and makes the rules seem intensely complex to new players. I've started to back off of that, but at the same time, one of the things that attracted me to Hero in the first place was that effects and items were codified and had relative point totals, not "eh, whatever, its level 8" guesstimates.
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gojira
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Post by gojira on Apr 9, 2014 4:49:25 GMT
Just curious: what sort of things did you find useful to be codified when you found Hero? And also what version was that?
I'm not talking about getting rid of everything or even most things related to builds. I think it's fine if there's a specific spell called "Light" that has a defined effect. But I want players especially to be able to come up with ideas based on concept or roleplay and not have to worry about rules, just common sense or whatever.
Tasha's point above about body and def for items being all that was really needed is a good example. That's fine with me and handy during play if don't have to make up how tough something is. But you don't need a full build to be listed for each item to derive its body and def. Just list the body and def in a table. So I definitely see some room for simplification too.
Another example: in Tuala Morn there's a spell called "Druid's Sleep." It's built as Mind Control, I think with a minimum target of +20. However neither the build nor the spell description says what the spell actually does. Is it mind control, or something else like "sleep only"? Builds aren't the be-all of rule clarification if the designer omits important details. It's better just to have an editor who can look for omissions.
* * *
OK, slightly new topic: What do folks think about pre-bulds, especially ones that just take basic rule elements and rename them?
For example, what if PD and ED were renamed Toughness as a pre-build. Same cost and everything, just a better name that might be less intimidating to new players who might not care for the acronym soup of Hero.
Any good ideas for basic game elements that could be renamed for clarity?
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kravenkor
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Post by kravenkor on Apr 9, 2014 15:15:36 GMT
* * * OK, slightly new topic: What do folks think about pre-bulds, especially ones that just take basic rule elements and rename them? For example, what if PD and ED were renamed Toughness as a pre-build. Same cost and everything, just a better name that might be less intimidating to new players who might not care for the acronym soup of Hero. Any good ideas for basic game elements that could be renamed for clarity? I think that would be a wonderful idea for any given genre book, and honestly miss when "Force Field" and "Armor" and "Resistant PD/ED" were actual powers and not just different builds for Resistant Defenses. I think a Fantasy HERO Book that had "Light" and "Darkness" and "Grim Illusion" and whatnot as pre-built powers that players could choose at varying power levels, rather than build everything from the toolkit, would work brilliantly and I want to do some of that for Lostorum.
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Post by CRTaylor on Apr 9, 2014 15:30:34 GMT
I started playing Hero with the gray book (1st edition, I suppose) back in the early 1980s. Before Champions II came out.
The first Fantasy Hero book had such a neat feel, with the powers given special names only for fantasy (so instead of force field you had like Ward). In a way I think that helped players build their spells and concepts easier. I'm not sure it works very well for a universal game though.
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Post by Tasha on Apr 9, 2014 15:53:47 GMT
I started playing Hero with the gray book (1st edition, I suppose) back in the early 1980s. Before Champions II came out. The first Fantasy Hero book had such a neat feel, with the powers given special names only for fantasy (so instead of force field you had like Ward). In a way I think that helped players build their spells and concepts easier. I'm not sure it works very well for a universal game though. Grey book = Second edition
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gojira
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Post by gojira on Apr 9, 2014 21:12:22 GMT
I think that would be a wonderful idea for any given genre book, and honestly miss when "Force Field" and "Armor" and "Resistant PD/ED" were actual powers and not just different builds for Resistant Defenses. I think a Fantasy HERO Book that had "Light" and "Darkness" and "Grim Illusion" and whatnot as pre-built powers that players could choose at varying power levels, rather than build everything from the toolkit, would work brilliantly and I want to do some of that for Lostorum. Yes, stuff like this is good. Changing FF to "Ward" is nice too. I was imagining a Fantasy product where many of the base stats were combined just to reduce the number of them. Like for example Toughness cost 3 cp per leve, and gave 2 PD and 1 ED per level. Additionally you could buy at most four levels of Toughness, and only the last level if you were a half-orc or a dwarf (or something like that). So there's a whole lot of ideas and rules rolled into one. The limits for the campaign are built-in, because you can only buy four levels tops. There's no special rule or admonishment that people usually aren't tough against energy damage. ED is automatically calculated for you and less than PD. There's just less thing to worry about, period, but especially for a new person just starting. So the actual campaign block looked like this: STR DEX CON INT EGO PRE Toughness (PD + ED) Conditioning (REC + END) Hits (BODY + STUN) Athletics (Running, Leaping, Swimming) and then Armor (rPD + rED) was an item, and Speed and Skill levels (CV, ECV) was actually part of a separate Combat Skill block. Some of these renamed stats were non-linear. Like the first level of Athletics cost 4 points and gave +2 Running, +1 Leaping and +1 Swimming, but additional levels of Athletics cost 3 points and gave no Leaping until you got to level 4, which gave an additional +1. This just to keep things sane for a mid power level fantasy game. Also, Conditioning at some levels had an Independent Advantage, 0 End on +5 Levels of STR, which also made it non-linear. Just some simple stuff to make it easier and more intuitive to new players.
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kravenkor
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Post by kravenkor on Apr 11, 2014 16:21:32 GMT
I would avoid re-engineering stats, myself, as I do very much try to vary PD and ED in my FH campaigns (for instance, Spirit creatures would have insane PD or even desolid vs. PD, but very low ED. A Fire Salamander would have +rED vs. Fire. Leather Armor has ED that more or less matches PD, while metal armors have lower ED than PD and armors made from "magically resistant" stuff have ED that matches or beats PD.
Just my take on that, Gojira, though I like your ideas I just would want to ensure they matched up to core HERO rules rather than altering base stats for a genre. Simplification is good; outright changes are not, in my opinion.
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Post by CRTaylor on Apr 12, 2014 14:44:02 GMT
Oh, another thing to consider: Flash defense for non targeting senses should cost less. Buying flash defense vs all your senses gets ridiculously expensive, when almost none of them are of much use whatsoever - but a character concept might make it proper.
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gojira
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Post by gojira on Apr 12, 2014 18:52:48 GMT
I just would want to ensure they matched up to core HERO rules rather than altering base stats for a genre. Simplification is good; outright changes are not, in my opinion. Right. I'm not actually looking to alter the base stats either. When I wrote that Toughness was PD+ED I meant it literally. Toughness is just a pre-build that allocates your PD and ED for you. The main idea was to simplify character creation for new players. (Or even simplify character creation for experienced players too. Sometimes I don't want to deal with the full system either.) New players and folks who like light-weight games can use the simplified system to get started. Later, the full system can be there if they want it. Having fully stated-up NPC or monsters is fine. Those are fixed stats, and players don't have to figure them, just use them as-is. (But I like a lot of the stuff we've seen from teh bunneh over the years, where the presentation of a character sheet (or a monster's stats) is simplified.)
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Post by Tasha on Apr 13, 2014 4:27:56 GMT
But PD +ED makes no sense and doesn't work with the rest of the system. (PD +ED)/2 at least gives something that works properly with the damage system. It also is what the system otherwise calls Defense. Sometimes in genres it doesn't make sense to have a separate PD and ED. So you can combine them to make a more generalized defense. It should be costed to be the same cost as PD +ED.
At this point with unhooking Primaries from the Secondary Stats. IMHO it may be better to ditch some Primarys and Substitute their former Secondaries in their Place. ie OCV and DCV could be worked to fill in for DEX. OMCV and DMCV for EGO (though Telepathy, Mind Control etc would need to be reworked to work with these stats). We could also admit that the current Primary Stat Granularity is useless and use the current stat /5. Ie instead of Strength 20 it would be Strength 4 (which is 4d6 Damage and +4 on Strength rolls). Thing like this would make it easier for new players to grasp the system and leave the play systems alone. Also skill and stat rolls like this would be easier for d20 players to grasp as they come to our system.
True simplification without losing parts of the toolbox is always a good thing.
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gojira
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Post by gojira on Apr 16, 2014 3:55:24 GMT
Well that's probably my fault for explaining it that way. I didn't mean to sum PD and ED together. (So I guess not literally PD+ED.) Just that for low power genres (low-powered fantasy, modern, etc.) it made sense to me to restrict options for new players.
Actually what I like better is pregenerated characters, with two or three simple options to allow a small bit of customization. The the characters should be as simple as possible too so people can just copy some basic stats onto a character sheet and then start playing.
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Post by CRTaylor on Apr 18, 2014 14:32:56 GMT
Something else I'd do would be to make non-combat skills like Transport Familiarity, Survival, and Gambling cost less. I like the concept of breaking these down into regions and parts, but it gets ridiculously expensive just to be able to drive anything you see, which is not exactly a powerful ability.
So, I'd keep the system in place right now, but for each category you buy, instead of buying them with points, you buy doublers. For each 1 point spent for a category, you get x2 categories.
EXAMPLE: Bob buys Gambling. He wants to be Maverick so he can gamble on anything effectively, so he wants as many categories as possible. He spends 4 points on categories, which gives him 16 different types of gambling he can be skilled in (x2, x4, x8, x16).
This might actually be worth doing with combat abilities like Weapon Familiarity as well, since just being able to use a lot of weapons without a penalty is pretty common in genre material (martial artists, for example), but it costs a fortune to buy all those groups. This only gets worse the more modern you become.
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gojira
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Post by gojira on Apr 18, 2014 18:10:16 GMT
Something else I'd do would be to make non-combat skills like Transport Familiarity, Survival, and Gambling cost less. I'd go the exact opposite route. Skill costs are trivial now compared to the amount of starting points dished out. It's too easy and too tempting for new players to buy every thing they see, and that's what leads to paralysis when making a character. I don't like limited skills either. The result is a redundant and long list of trivial abilities that just make a character sheet hard to read and discourages new players from attempting to try. Some Hero System authors seem enamored of the style of making lots of limited skills, but I don't care for the results when I read them in print. I'd like to see fewer skills do more. Like Electronics should be able to fix small devices, or repair X amounts of points a -1 per 5 points, or defeat electronic survailence and security systems at -3. Etc. The trick is to make one skill do more, at a penalty. Thus players are encouraged to buy fewer skills with more points in them. Skills caps are ok, but should be relatively high, like around 20-. I'd also: remove Transport Familiarity and Weapon Familiarity. They're just another way to list a trivial 1 cp items on a character sheet. Why? Show me a popular RPG with that kind of detail. Most RPG characters you buy the weapon you want and you can use it. I think most weapons should have a Real Cost, you buy it and the weapon is Icon to you and you can use it. Other weapons are at -3. Easy. Transport Familiarity same way, if you have the Driving skill you can drive it. Don't list redundant stuff. I'd also remove everyman skills. You can attempt any skill except Science Skills at 8-. Don't need to have a list, it's "all of them," including any background skill (Area Knowledge, Cultural Knowledge). You can buy an Area Knowledge skill if it's important to your character concept.
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Post by CRTaylor on Apr 19, 2014 5:37:32 GMT
I'm fine with all the types, because in some games it really matters. For example, in the most recent session of Golden Age Champions, a vet of the Great War knew that German potato masher grenades needed to have the safety removed before they were useful, but nobody there knew how to run a tank properly. That little stuff really matters. Its the background details that make characters interesting to me, not their big boomer powers.
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Post by indianajoe on Apr 19, 2014 23:26:33 GMT
There are certainly some skills that could be consolidated. Acrobatics/Breakfall, Criminology/Forensic Medicine, and Lockpicking/Security Systems, for starters. High Society and Streetwise could be folded into Cultural Knowledge. Gambling, Forgery, and Weaponsmith can be made into background skills (PS: Gunsmith, for example). Animal Handler, Navigation, and Survival are now one skill each (as in Champions Complete), but require at least a Familiarity with the subject of the skill (KS: Canines for a dog trainer) or the roll is made at a penalty. Combat Driving, Combat Piloting, and Riding can probably be handled the same way, but I don't know what to call the umbrella skill.
From an editorial standpoint, skills that require rolls might be separated from those that do not.
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