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Post by CRTaylor on May 19, 2014 14:31:12 GMT
Have to restructure everything to base five to make that work, and figure out the "DC equivalent" for powers like movement etc.
Definitely, reading over this again, I think that the "breaking things" and environmental sections of the GM guide should include notes in how to interact with the world using adjustment powers. Instead of needing to build everything by points in order to prep them for drains and such, the rules should just say how to treat the world for adjustment powers, with various options.
For example, the rules could suggest that maybe some stuff just can't be affected by adjustment powers: you cannot dispel a rope's utility to tie people up or be used to climb; you must destroy it to stop it from working. For other things, the rules could point out what it takes to deal with that effect. That oil fire does 3d6 killing, so a dispel of x points will eliminate it. The rules could even give an option for automatic success; if you have xd6 of dispel, you always can put out this fire.
That way the world is simpler to interact with and nobody has to have a tome of things in the world to look up when Bob the Mage casts his Dispel.
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Post by Tasha on Jun 6, 2014 7:17:46 GMT
6e IMHO feels under playtested. The new point values for everything was argued out or just decided and then published. I think there we agree strongly here. A much stronger play test period likely would have improved things immensely. I'm also not totally sold on the new cost of characteristics either, although I haven't tried it extensively. I like that figured characteristics are easier now (not figured), but the system also seems to lose something. Base characteristics each cost 1 point, and that's pretty vanilla. (Except for DEX, which is 2 points, but that isn't much of an exception.) And PD, ED, Body, Running, Leaping, Swimming, Flight, and Rec are all 1 cp per point too. It isn't terrible, but it feels overly granular, and a bit boring too. Although I can't say what I'd do about it though. Another annoyance, I just picked up Savage Worlds, and it uses a game scale of 2m = 6". Wasn't that supposed to be holding Hero back? And yet Savage Worlds seems to be just fine, and Hero lost a point in common with a popular game system. Feels like one step forward and one step back, at best. Admittedly I might be just grousing here with no real point. IMHO with the way stats are purchased now it is time to really take a look at all of the primary stats with an eye to what we really need and what can be folded into another stat. As I had said before primary stats would be bought as their bonus to skill rolls. So instead of a 13 Dex you would have a 3 dex where the 3 worked like OCV or DCV for Dex skills. I have been mulling over a third "Damage" stat Call it Mental fortitude or something. Egoists would have to exhaust the MF stat to Mental Control etc. after exhausted then every 10 below you gain a "level" of stuff you could do. Perhaps making it less a damage stat and more of a target number that a mental power has to overcome. (that would be the ticket). My idea has been to go though the system and choose a system that everything would work under. No Mental Powers that way, Damage powers a slightly different way etc. Simplify in a way that makes thing simplier.
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Post by tikiman on Jun 6, 2014 14:21:33 GMT
As someone who has no interest in and has never used miniatures for RPGs, I found the constant reference to inches extremely irksome as we always had to convert to mph or other measurements when playing. Especially annoying in early editions where the "real world" definition of inches was buried in text on one page with no index to reference it and they assumed all players came from a wargame/miniatures background and would know one inch = 2 meters or whatever.
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Post by CRTaylor on Jun 6, 2014 15:59:24 GMT
The only problem I had with dropping the 2m = 1" system was the loss of the hex, which was a pretty classic feature of Hero (see its logo). But it works the same and is a little easier for people to visualize. Plus, you don't need to explain you mean "game inch" rather than "inch inch."
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Post by Tasha on Jun 7, 2014 0:57:43 GMT
The first dagger in the back of the Hex was actually in Fuzion where you bought all movement in Meters.
I think that Hero got lazy about Talking about scale after first edition. Figured that everyone knew what the scale was and didn't make it obvious enough in Text.
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Post by tikiman on Jun 7, 2014 14:17:44 GMT
Good riddance to hexes and inches, I say. Again, as I never use miniatures and don't come from war games, I found it interminably annoying to constantly have to convert to real-world measurements.
Another peeve I was happy to see go away was buying Growth or Shrinking just to make something larger or smaller than average and "power always on." Because we all know a mouse has size-changing powers it can't turn off.
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Post by tikiman on Jun 7, 2014 14:19:51 GMT
I think there we agree strongly here. A much stronger play test period likely would have improved things immensely. I'm also not totally sold on the new cost of characteristics either, although I haven't tried it extensively. I like that figured characteristics are easier now (not figured), but the system also seems to lose something. Base characteristics each cost 1 point, and that's pretty vanilla. (Except for DEX, which is 2 points, but that isn't much of an exception.) And PD, ED, Body, Running, Leaping, Swimming, Flight, and Rec are all 1 cp per point too. It isn't terrible, but it feels overly granular, and a bit boring too. Although I can't say what I'd do about it though. Another annoyance, I just picked up Savage Worlds, and it uses a game scale of 2m = 6". Wasn't that supposed to be holding Hero back? And yet Savage Worlds seems to be just fine, and Hero lost a point in common with a popular game system. Feels like one step forward and one step back, at best. Admittedly I might be just grousing here with no real point. IMHO with the way stats are purchased now it is time to really take a look at all of the primary stats with an eye to what we really need and what can be folded into another stat. As I had said before primary stats would be bought as their bonus to skill rolls. So instead of a 13 Dex you would have a 3 dex where the 3 worked like OCV or DCV for Dex skills. I have been mulling over a third "Damage" stat Call it Mental fortitude or something. Egoists would have to exhaust the MF stat to Mental Control etc. after exhausted then every 10 below you gain a "level" of stuff you could do. Perhaps making it less a damage stat and more of a target number that a mental power has to overcome. (that would be the ticket). My idea has been to go though the system and choose a system that everything would work under. No Mental Powers that way, Damage powers a slightly different way etc. Simplify in a way that makes thing simplier. It sounds like you're designing the 3rd edition of Mutants & Masterminds.
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gojira
Double Digit Master
in a rubber monster suit.
Posts: 85
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Post by gojira on Jun 9, 2014 0:20:28 GMT
IMHO with the way stats are purchased now it is time to really take a look at all of the primary stats with an eye to what we really need and what can be folded into another stat. As I had said before primary stats would be bought as their bonus to skill rolls. So instead of a 13 Dex you would have a 3 dex where the 3 worked like OCV or DCV for Dex skills. I think if I were going to overhaul Hero to this extent, the first thing I'd do is to commit to retaining the current system for some products, like superheroes/Champions. The 6e overhaul cause more than a small kerfluffle. I think even larger changes would not be universally welcomed. I would however use the overhauled system in other "all the rules in one book" products. I think a streamlined version would be the more useful there. And since it's a "new" product I think it would be tolerated more by current fans. The only real issue I see with your suggestion is that there isn't a good way to reduce dex if you start at dex = 0. So instead of dex 3 I think I'd keep dex 13. But if you really want to simply you can just buy dice directly, kind of like the way Savage Worlds has you buy your dice without dealing with an intervening stat. So you could buy 3d6 of Dex or 4d6 of Dex or you could sell some back and only go with 1d6 Dex. Not bad, but again I see a possible issue. Doing things this way requires more Advantages than buying discreet powers. And some folks (especially new) see a long list of Advantages and Limitations on a character sheet for each power and they kind of mentally tune out right there. So I think I might go the other way. Everything's a prebuild. Players just pick what they want and how much of it they want, and they're ready to go. Yes this decreases flexibility but it also increases ease of use and comprehension for new players. After folks feel more comfortable with the base system, then they can move up to something with more options. I think I'm increasingly less sold on the idea of a generic universal system. It hasn't worked for GURPS, and it hasn't worked for Hero either. So I don't see the point of repeating the old mistakes and trying to make a universal system where you add lots of widgets to a few number of base powers. At minimum, we should find some new mistakes. So I think it depends on genre and how advanced the audience is (or presumed to be). But for starting out I think I'd "SRD it" and prebuild everything, including a large selection of starting player characters to choose from, and just let the player add complexity slowly as he or she desires.
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Post by Tasha on Jun 9, 2014 5:35:30 GMT
I have advocated for having a robust toolkit, but having genre books like Fantasy Hero be full of prebuilt everything. The book would have no power construction rules inside of it. Spells, Weapons, Armor etc would all be in the book Spell systems would be prebuilt. The Power construction rules would be on a separate PDF that would be part of the PDF bundle for the product. So each book would be really complete, but have nothing that wasn't directly applicable for the genre game.
I wand the robust toolkit, to make sure that everything is built the same so you can be sure that the powers available from book to book would be the same.
As for the stats the Primaries would all start at 2 just like they do now (ie a 10 in a primary stat = 2). You can still reduce 'dex' to 1 or 2. I don't think I want to go with dice of stats. It's yet another system that doesn't really need to be there.
What I have learned, you can't make everyone happy. You can ask for opinions from the community, but sometimes you just have to make a change that will be for the better. The guys playing 4e right now aren't going to be swayed to suddenly play 6e. Catering to them just makes your rules system suck more.
Re Generic system. Hero was anything but a generic system for more than half it's history. It was 4e that brought the Hero System as generic system to our community. I kind of hated how Fantasy Hero's powers worked differently than Champions powers. With things missing for no good reason, and replacements not included. Which is something that Steve Peterson was really bad about doing. ie creating new systems that were missing pieces for no good reason and not having complete rules. It was the Problem with FH1, Robot Warriors, and Fuzion.
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Post by Sketchpad on Jun 10, 2014 2:40:39 GMT
IMHO with the way stats are purchased now it is time to really take a look at all of the primary stats with an eye to what we really need and what can be folded into another stat. As I had said before primary stats would be bought as their bonus to skill rolls. So instead of a 13 Dex you would have a 3 dex where the 3 worked like OCV or DCV for Dex skills. I have been mulling over a third "Damage" stat Call it Mental fortitude or something. Egoists would have to exhaust the MF stat to Mental Control etc. after exhausted then every 10 below you gain a "level" of stuff you could do. Perhaps making it less a damage stat and more of a target number that a mental power has to overcome. (that would be the ticket). My idea has been to go though the system and choose a system that everything would work under. No Mental Powers that way, Damage powers a slightly different way etc. Simplify in a way that makes thing simplier. It sounds like you're designing the 3rd edition of Mutants & Masterminds. Is that really a bad thing? Hero could learn a bit from M&M, especially since M&M has learned so much from Hero. While I love Hero (particularly Champions), I think there are a handful of rules that could be placed into Hero that would improve the game. For example, using Equipment to give "common" gear in a 1 pt:5 ep ratio. Also, having something like Takedown, which mows through minions/mooks much like many actual comic book heroes do. I know that when I get around to running Champions again (because it will happen), I plan on adapting some of M&M's rules into my games.
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Post by CRTaylor on Jun 10, 2014 4:37:37 GMT
I think it would be a mistake to simplify the areas that are not where people have a difficult time with the game. There is no one who is baffled by the complexity of having energy blast and killing attack. That's not where people balk. The number of characteristics does not cause anyone consternation. Changing things that do not present a problem or barrier to entry would be a very poor direction to go. They tried that with Fuzion and that was not exactly a glowing success, to put it mildly.
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Post by Tasha on Jun 10, 2014 8:14:24 GMT
Fuzion failed because it was missing the whole power tool kit. It also really showed the weaknesses of Figured Characteristics in ways that 4e and earlier had been hiding for years. On top of that they didn't do a good job of showing how the systems were really similar or even alike. It also hit at a time when people were expecting a 4.5 Champions. So this new Champions campaign world took people off guard. Also the power plugin wasn't complete so many easy to build characters in 4e were difficult to build in base Fuzion. When Bay City hit and introduced the rest of the power plugin, it then looked like a money grab. A way to make people buy the book, as the only way to get the rest of the powers. All in all it was a bad decision and tainted what was a pretty decent game.
Sorry, new players are confused by Killing attacks. We have like 3 damage systems. We have the Mental Power/Pre attack where the attacker must exceed a stat by 0, 10, 20 30 pts with various things happening when you do that. We have Normal Attacks with their weird way of counting Body Damage. We have killing Damage that uses 1/3 fewer dice plus a multiplier die for figuring out Stun (or hit location chart). Some powers work like KA's and some powers work like Normal attacks. It would be nice to have ONE mechanic that handled all three kinds of damage. Stun damage already has the below 0 damage table which reminds me of the Presence and Mental attack charts.
Which makes me wonder if we should have Telepathy, Presence attacks, Mental Illusions, Mind Control have a stat that they build up damage against. once exhausted then effects happen for every 10 pts done after the stat reaches 0. Perhaps Ego then becomes the equivalent of mental Recovery.
The biggest problem with mental attacks is that they don't scale down very well. It means that anything less than 8d6 under the current system is worthless. Which makes mental mages VERY expensive to purchase. That spotlights a problem with the system. It shows that physical damage scales down and up pretty well. Mental powers aren't the same they scale up pretty well, but not down below superheroic levels.
I would hope that someone making the huge changes will work hard with the community to make them actually make sense.
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bluesguy
Double Digit Master
Just joined
Posts: 39
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Post by bluesguy on Jun 10, 2014 14:07:49 GMT
I have advocated for having a robust toolkit, but having genre books like Fantasy Hero be full of prebuilt everything. The book would have no power construction rules inside of it. Spells, Weapons, Armor etc would all be in the book Spell systems would be prebuilt. The Power construction rules would be on a separate PDF that would be part of the PDF bundle for the product. So each book would be really complete, but have nothing that wasn't directly applicable for the genre game. I wand the robust toolkit, to make sure that everything is built the same so you can be sure that the powers available from book to book would be the same. I think this is exactly what should be done. Each genre would have a book which has the specific rules, pre-built information and a generic background. The tool kitting book would have everything needed to create an entirely custom 'genre' by an enterprising GM.
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Post by CRTaylor on Jun 10, 2014 18:51:15 GMT
From the comments and discussion on the Hero Email list, Fuzion failed because they gutted Hero and replaced it with another system that nobody liked; they took away all the elements that people appreciated about hero and replaced them with other elements. This isn't just my opinion, its expressly what people said exactly when they said "this is why I don't like Fuzion." It alienated the base of Hero players without creating a new customer base. And that's what radical changes to basic elements of the rules that new players don't have a problem with would do.
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Post by tikiman on Jun 10, 2014 22:53:45 GMT
It sounds like you're designing the 3rd edition of Mutants & Masterminds. Is that really a bad thing? Hero could learn a bit from M&M, especially since M&M has learned so much from Hero. While I love Hero (particularly Champions), I think there are a handful of rules that could be placed into Hero that would improve the game. For example, using Equipment to give "common" gear in a 1 pt:5 ep ratio. Also, having something like Takedown, which mows through minions/mooks much like many actual comic book heroes do. I know that when I get around to running Champions again (because it will happen), I plan on adapting some of M&M's rules into my games. Never said it was bad if you go back and look at what I wrote. Personally I don't like the recent trend of "mooks" rules in games, but there are many things Hero could learn from M&M (and vice-versa). Getting rid of " -1/2 +1/4 -1/4 +2/3 but only on Wednesdays" power builds would go a long way towards making Hero more appealing especially to newcomers. M&M's way is in my opinion much easier to stomach.
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