HERO System 6 Edition Review Part II

I likely should have mentioned this in yesterday's review but it was a bit long to include there. So I'll go back and add an link.


HERO System was always a very detailed and map focused game system. The game spoke in terms of 'inches' and 'hexes'. The entire rule set was written around the use of the hex map with powers defined to match. The environment and breaking things rules made the entire map something to interact with.

Like any game one could alter it and play it without the map, but at that point you're paying points not for defined abilities (movement, area of effects, range limits, reduced by range, indirect, etc) but for abstracted 'somethings' that one could only hope the GM took into account. If one really wanted to do this, they should switch 1" of running costs 2 points for things like "Perk- Fast Runner I" for x points. But whatever, that mindset seldom is worried about consistency.

I've never encountered anyone in real life that was in the least tempted to do that, much like I've never seen a D&D group in real life do it either. But it's all the rage online and Long himself claimed that's how he played (thus perhaps explaining why he seems so tunnel-visioned with minor updates to character creation rules and nothing else- for him that's the entire game it seems).

In contrast with WotC who in their new edition embraced it, HERO Sixth did away with the map, inches and hexes providing the most minor of 'if you're using these" hints in their place.

Well sort of did away with. Really he just converted everything to meters. Which just makes the book clumsy to use. If you want to use the old HERO scale of 1 hex = 2 meters you're having to make constant conversions as you play. It's unnecessary, and really addresses nothing.

If I was actually going to switch to 6th, I'd likely deal with this at the character sheet level- making all the conversions there as I use a Excel spreadsheet of my own. But it makes HERO Designer clumsy along with any of the published books, so those the value of those resources are reduced.

Oddly enough, this combined with the unnecessary expense of replacing my 5th edition books caused me to pass on any purchases from HERO Games in the future. They were already borderline with mostly dull supplements, and this kicked the can over the edge.

The owners of HERO Games have recently brought controlling interest in the Indie Press Revolution, so perhaps they'll overextend themselves and one day end up selling HERO System to someone who actually understands and plays it as more than a character generator.

Well, one can hope can't they?

HERO System 6 Edition Review

Managed over the last couple of weeks to look over copies of the two core 6th edition books.

Things aren't as bad as they could have been I suppose. Most of the rules are intact (it takes all of one page to list the changes, and most of these really aren't except in name). When you do find a change, they are more of the type you'd except in a 5.5 edition instead of a 6.0 with one exception.

That one significant change is the removal of figured based secondary characteristics (replaced with a flat base) together with characteristic repricing. This was a long sought goal of Mr. Long, but frankly it's neither exciting nor interesting. We end up with more point inflation and without doubt it will alter things (slightly negatively) for those who build to defined point budgets. For gamers like myself who build to concept, it's just points and points don't matter.

The planned change to Kill Attacks? You know, the 1d3 for stun multiple instead of of 1d6-1? It's really just a suggestion- the books says you can do it either way. And Hit Locations (what I've always used anyway) still use the old numbers in any case.

Otherwise it's small differences. There are a couple of good ones. Power Pool purchase has been streamlined with a nice simple method that hearkens back to older editions of the game. The Area of Affect advantage has been reduced slightly in cost. And so on.

But by far most of the changes are just the replacing of names. So Energy Blast is now just Blast. Force Wall has become Barrier. And so on.

Long is a well known master of the school of cut and paste publishing- to this he now has added the power of Find & Replace. The world is stunned and God help us if he ever finds the more advanced options in Word.

The goal here seemed to be making the rules more general, i.e. to not bias the reader as to the various purposes individual mechanics could be applied to. But it bleeds the soul out of the game and makes a ruleset that was already dry even more barren. I recall reading the original Champions rulebook and being flooded with ideas of where to take it. Force Fields! Armor! Those labels spoke to someone attempting to model a world. Resistant Protection? Chirping crickets. If 6th was the first edition of the game I had encountered, it would have likely been the last.

Visually the books are horrid. Someone thought orange on blue was a good color combo for the cover. I don't think I have ever encountered something as ugly. The whole book is in color (keeping up with the latest fad) and it hurts.

From the blue headers to the artwork (much of it taken from Champions Online) I just don't like the look of the book. Color is often good, but in this case it gives a comic book feel to everything. Fine for a comic book based game, but not the best choice for a system that is suppose to cover various other genres. There black and white (or less stark coloring) would have been nice.

Also Champions Online for whatever reason has once again changed the look of the Champions setting and background. As but one example, why Defender looks like a dude in tights and a open face helmet instead of an Iron Man ripoff is beyond me- but the change is frankly stupid.

Looking at their releases in the line, it looks to be a reply of 5th edition. So yet once again, I think HERO System will lack their Greyhawk or  Forgotten Realms, i.e. no setting that really takes flight with the rules and becomes a name in the mind of their players. That would have been something worth a 6th edition.


In the end, this is a workable set of rules just like HERO has always been. But very little has been gained with this release except cash flow to Long's pocket. If you have 5th edition, save your money and house rule in a couple of the changes (like Power Pools). If on the other hand you don't have a copy in good repair, well this is better than nothing.

Part II of this review

Suppressive Fire and HERO System- Solutions

Previously we reviewed how HERO System handled Suppressive Fire in the core rules and foundd it somewhat wanting.So we turn to house rules in order to achieve our goal.

Here I see two possible (and simple) options.

1. Define 'movement' into a hex declared for the Suppressive Fire maneuver to be the taking of any action not just actual movement (i.e. making an attack). This at least subjects the person to the choice of accepting an attack in exchange for doing much of anything. Along with this we'd have to overturn the restriction on requiring auto-fire for Suppressive Fire..
2. Rather than modifying the Suppressive Fire rule, modify the Presence attack rules by providing more bonus dice to the attack, likely linked to the number of rounds fired. This would have to count as an action instead of the normal zero phase Presence Attack perhaps also requiring the attacker to hit the target hex (DCV 3) or target's cover (typically DCV 0). Additionally the negative modifier for repeating an presence attack would have to reduced or removed for Suppressive Fire. Spreading or Firing into multiple hexes would allow the attacker to cover more than one target.

Both of these have their advantages and disadvantages.

The first eats up a ton of ammo (making it unlikely it would commonly be used), and to make it work we would have to scale the OCV modifier with the ammo expended (i.e. say a single shot takes -3, two takes -2, 3-5 takes -1, 7-10 takes -0, etc). On the plus side it allows freedom of player choice and allows Suppressive Fire to  be dangerous.

The second actually represents the genre use of Suppressive Fire better and is much lighter on ammo (as you only need to fire on your phase and not each segment between them). The roll for the Presence attack replaces any damage roll, or standard effect can be used to avoid any die roll at all. The downside is that Suppressive Fire is never really dangerous in itself.


I'll be presenting these two options to my players and we'll see what people think.

Suppressive Fire and HERO System

Yesterday's post on Suppressive Fire drew some good comments. I didn't respond because much of my response is continue in this article.

Within the HERO core rules (5th edition) there are three methods of handling suppressive fire. Let's example each and see if they achieve what we desire (and if they do, what is the downside of using them).

Method 1: "My character aborts to a Dodge"

Like many systems, HERO has rules for dodges and blocks, basically you exchange your attack action for an decreased chance of being hit or for an attempt to actively roll to 'block' an attack. Dive for Cover is another such action often used to leap out of way of an attack.

Given that one is exchanging offensive action (and at least some movement) for these options (with their defensive benefits), one can say that they represent the player declaring his character 'suppressed'.

There are a few problems with depending upon this approach however.

First players typically only opt for these when the threat is serious (i.e. excellent chance of being hit and seriously damaged by the hit). Suppressive fire often doesn't have a serious change of hitting- it's more of psychological affect that damages someone as a side effect. Second, it doesn't reflect the genre and real world convention of firing in the general direction of a foe in order to 'keep their heads down' as opposed to trying to hit them directly.

So this rule by itself doesn't really do what we want although it certainly covers part of the concept.


Method 2: The Suppressive Fire Maneuver.

Hero System includes a combat maneuver called Suppressive Fire, so we have to consider it. When reading it however we find that it doesn't really do what we want.

The actual effect is sort of an area denial action. You hose down an area spending lots of ammo and anyone entering it is automatically attacked (at slightly less than normal hit chances).

That's sort of cool. But very limited. For example against a single target it's no different than holding an action and then firing at him (at a reduced chance unlike holding an action). It doesn't make him take cover or do anything other than let you shoot at him (once per your  phase). It really only becomes interesting when you're trying to deny an area to multiple people.

The requirement for auto-fire is also a bit of a drawback. Movies have characters with revolvers providing covering fire and this doesn't help any in modeling that.

So once again, we have a bit of what we want, but not all of it.



Method 3: Presence Attack

HERO has a attack method call Presence Attacks. These are basically an attempt to so impress someone that they lose actions and/or just give up (or give you information, open the door, etc.). Bonus dices are gained from violent action, so this sounds almost exactly like what we are looking for.

The base rule is that you roll a number of dice based upon your PRE and modify that number as the result of various conditions. So from memory, a PRE of 15 (a good solid value for 'street level' campaigns) gives 3 dice, -1 dice for in combat already, +2 for very violent action (shoot a firearm at someone isn't the most violent thing possible, but it's violent), +1 for display a 'power' (i.e. the firearm).

So 5d6, on average 17.5 points. Which isn't enough to make the typical man in the street lose even a half-phase action. It does let the attacker go first but that has very little practical impact. Worse, each additional attack Presence Attack of the same type suffers a -1 dice modifier and will quickly not even case that much effect.

Sigh.

A good roll (say all 4s or better) does work- it will make the target lose a half phase and in my campaigns that's their 1/2 phase combat action by default. But that's an above average roll, and would work only at the beginning of the battle.

Plus there are some odd effects here, Presence Attacks don't have to be related to the target, but can impress everyone. So by shooting in Joe's direction and rolling good- I can suppress Pete who was sneaking up behind me...

So Presence Attacks don't do exactly what we want either. So out of the box, HERO can't do want we want.


Next, we turn to house rules....

Suppressive Fire

This is something of a old subject, not just for HERO but for RPGs in general. It came up this weekend during our game session as something desired by a character at one point, but we moved on without really examining it. So I thought it would be worth a couple of blog posts.

Suppressive Fire is important in real world and genre firefights, i.e. shooting to keep someone's head down rather than directly kill them (even if such fire may manage to do just that).

Few games take it into account, and for good reasons. It may be something of a game breaker providing a huge advantage to whichever side has greater numbers. For example, if the game mechanic simply applies a modifier for someone declaring Suppressive Fire (up to preventing their 'target' from returning fire), it's easy to see how the more numerous side can suppress 'one for one' and then take complete tactical advantage with their remaining people.

It's not that easy in the real world, Suppressive Fire doesn't just have to be used- it must be effectively used and different targets of such fire may react differently. Numbers don't tell the whole story, individual troop quality and morale is often far more important.

Also from a game design PoV,  it's generally counter-productive to remove player action from the game. All these factors must be weighed before selecting a mechanic.

Next post I'll cover the different ways Suppressive Fire can be represent in HERO System.

Farewell to RPG Blog II

It seems Zachary is hanging up his blog. A pity as it was one of my must stop places online, and there aren't many of those. But rpgs are a hobby, and in a hobby a person must go where they must go or the whole thing will suffer.

So best wishes to Zach for whatever he does next although he really doesn't need them. After all, one defines one's own success in this hobby.