Is pic related good? Are the memes true?

Pretty much, I've ripped tables too to help speed up combat
gonna peek into that to see if I'm missing anything.
I'd recomend the Ultimate framework series, each book really delves into a type of super-hero and gives great example powers... as well as really amusing ones.

No. The only way in which that is true is that character building can take a lot of time, since you're just given a toolbox to build a character from. But that's less the math itself as figuring out how you want to emulate the effect you're going for and juggling points to make sure you get all the things you need. The Phases mechanic makes for very tactical combat, though endurance management does lead to a certain amount of bookkeeping.

It's great

None of those are true

I love hero system. But honestly I would suggest buying 4th edition. The stuff is great and it is cheap. I started with first edition when it first came out. Later on I jumped to 4th edition. When I got back in to gaming years later I bought the 6th edition books.

I consider that a mistake, I wish I had just bought the old 4 ed stuff. 6th edition is fine, but it is split (initially) over two very large books.

Later on it became manageable with Complete Champions and Complete Fantasy, which is what you should get if you go with 6th edition. If you go super hero I would suggest one of the villain books for character examples and the Complete Powers book for more examples yet.

Not OP, but I picked up pic related at a thrift store for $2. Seems really cool, but I'll never get to run or play it. It's 4th edition, right? Was there ever a Star Champion for 4th?

Man Dr. Destroyer was goofy in earlier editions. Funnily enough in the Book of the destroyer, that version is an earlier one, I think 80s...?

First, nice find. Second it seems that Star Hero was published for 3e, 5e, and 6e.

no real difference between 4e/5e I think. I would fully anticipate being able to use Star hero from 5e with no issues.

Shame, the system seems like it'd be great for a 70's/80's Not-StarWars style scifi game.

6e shouldn't present much problems either. The 5e and 6e versions are in their respective troves.

Hero, like most RPGs, does not change drastically between editions like D&D has since 3e. Star Hero is in both of the troves posted . I suggest you good both of them a look. And if you're going for Star Wars I also suggest Fantasy Hero for both editions.

Ta, I'll check it out.

If I ever run Champions, I know I want to aim for lower powered stuff, and maybe riff off of some of DC's Elseworlds stuff. So many good plots there.

I'd recommend using the 'Heroic' level. as opposed to a 400 point character, it can range from 170-300. Dark champions is a good stuff, theres also material for running Teen campaigns.

>
> it being boring to run and to play
Subjective.

> it being poorly designed
Hero is quite elegant in spite of its intimidating core rules size. There is a fundamental set of principles that everything is built around. This is in contrast to a game like 3.PF where you'll get all manner of classes, monsters, spells, etc which might break the game if they go unnoticed.

> it being a relic of old bad game design, etc.
Old, sure. Hero is still an 80s RPG at heart. A time with no internet, no cell phones, and lots of time on one's hands to tinker away at building powers and characters. Bad though? I should say not. It might not be one's cup of tea but I'd challenge anyone to identify any fundamental flaws within the system that are more than taste.

As far as I could tell some of the technical aspects of some powers changed, the derived characteristics changed. But honestly looking through 6e books that I bought I didn't really see anything that didn't mesh with my 4e memory.

Take a look at Dark Champions.

> Lower Powered
Here's an area that I think gets misinterpreted all too often. Hero primarily asserts that total Character Points correlates with overall character power level. It does not. Active Points and Skill Levels do. The more Active Points you allow the higher powered the game gets no matter the Character Point totals. The more Skill Levels, the broader the Skill Levels, and the higher that Skill rolls are allowed to be the more competent your PCs will be no matter the cost. Put another way a set of PCs with 300 CP and a 90 AP limit are bound to be more powerful than a set of PCs with 600 CP and a 45 AP limit.

So just keep that in mind.

Yep. I started with 5e then switched to 6e and by and large 6e is 5e with years of accumulated errata and rules classifications baked in as well as mostly adjusted Power costs but not functions. The way RPG editions should be.

Friendly reminder that Champions Online, while not necessarily a good MMO, is a fantastic superhero costume designer and is also free.

How does it compare to Mutants and Masterminds for superhero games?

Ironically I have most of the books for 6e, but just ordered a bunch of the 4e stuff.

Is it as good as City of Heroes?

I'm preparing to run an M&M game for the first time as a matter of fact. At a glance though Hero is more universal, more tactical, crunchier, and a greater toolkit than M&M. The tradeoff is that M&M is more modern in design. It's lighter, faster, broader and its metacurrency is more inspired and baked into the game. Hero is like a slice of Chicago deep dish pizza compared to a New York slice of M&M.

Would Hero work for an Exalted/Godbound sort of mythic gonzo fantasy campaign? My group likes that sort of thing, but we really didn't like Exalted's ruleset and GB seems to just amplify everything we thought was wrong with exalted as a deliberate design choice.

How you anons prefer your super-hero settings?

Superheroes everywhere and big community ala Champions/MHA
Supers are rare, but they've grouped into large groups such as the JLA, XMen, ect.
Superhumans are very rare, probably less than 100 in the world.

yup, its called Fantasy HERO, except you just run it like a super-hero game where people have powers and shit

I've come to like the last one, because it's the least seen. The first one has become too in vogue after MHA, and the second one is just your standard superhero setting.

Well its what I'm going to be running, it may turn into the second setting after time passes and more villians/heroes pop up.

What are some superhero universes that could work as inspiration for my own?
Hard mode: no DC or Marvel
Nightmare mode: no MHA or OPM

build your own from the start, have your PCs be 'the first'

How crunchy is HERO compared to Gurps? I've got a pretty decent handle on that game but I'd like to give Hero a shot

The Invinciverse. Nice deconstruction of several tropes plus some cool, violent fight scenes.

Strange Britain from Kerberos Club?

Read Astro City. Best cape book on stands and proof that you can have a superhero universe campaign even with regular folks, not just heroes and villains.

There are times that I wish that SPD was not a core Characteristic. It's literally a stat that determines how much you get to play during combat.

I've played and/or GMed dozens of systems, and HERO is the worst one I've come across. It's got the most rules glut and complexity of any game this side of GURPS. It is slow as FUCK to actually play, maybe the most slow moving game I've ever seen, but especially if you allow high speeds where you have guys taking multiple turns in a round. The dice mechanic has the insane dice bloat of WoD with the slow calculation of FFG Star Wars.

There's really nothing positive I can say about it except, I guess, that it can "do anything"

Just like GURPs. And FATE. And Savage Worlds. And Basic. And ORE. And MiniSix, D6, Risus, Strike!, and Big Eyes Small Mouth. And each of those is better in at least some respect. I don't even like most of them, but would rather play those than HERO.

...

>Division and adding by divisors

I'm drunk and American; I can barely add whole numbers together.

In short: character creation is the most dificult part of the game. Once that's done, dice rolls are extremely simple and everything rolls along at a great pace

HERO is a great alternative to gurps when you're looking for a higher power level. Dont get too bogged in realism, keep your players in check on cheesy bullshit, and remember that youre having fun. This is what HERO is made for. I enjoy it because it has a ton of versitility without needing different rules and mechanics for every possible thing you could conceivably do. Mechanically, it is very simple. The character creation is exceptionally robust and if ypu cant manage to stat any power, judo move, weapon, gadget, or spell with it then you are doing something fundamentally wrong

Hero does aproach gaming a bit backwards from how most rpg's do. Often in games, you have a vague idea of your character and flesh them out by choosing options from the game. In hero, you absolutely MUST know your character before you attempt to build them. Ypu must know what they can do, what they cant do, what they are good at, and what they are bad at. Fluff your character first and build the crunch to match.

Do many fail to realize that when trying HERO and miss the point of the system, thinking of it as a traditional game rather than a tool box to bring your characters to life.

Wild Cards. It's literally based on a superhero RPG GRRM ran.

microlite2o is better

>The dice mechanic has the insane dice bloat of WoD with the slow calculation of FFG Star Wars.
Hardly, unless you have a lot of modification advantages flying around. We learned the trick to the Body read very quickly: number of dice rolled, modified by the difference between sizes and ones

4th Ed was the best rendition of the full rules, while 6th is a serious attempt at streamlining.

The actual 5th edition, aka Champions New Millennium, is the clear ancestor of the power systems in M&M.
The game *called* 5th Edition is anathema to the philosophy of the earlier editions, with all of its special cases, unique advantages or disadvantages tucked into sidebars instead of in the right chapter, and a pervasive writing style that wants you to know you are inferior to the author in every respect.
Play 4th or 6th.

>keep your players in check on cheesy bullshit
and for fuck's sake, never allow a power to combine Autofire and Explosion.

GRRM was using Chaosium's Superworld, an oddball game that makes Champions look sane and balanced.

>sizes
SIXES, that is.

Drunk Champions is never a good idea.

>There is a fundamental set of principles that everything is built around.
And Hero/Champions is a fairly early example of that design approach. Recall that it appeared as AD&D1 was at its peak despite having a different rule with different die types for every fucking thing. Hero is tersely elegant by comparison.

>combine autofire and explosion
You raaaaang?

Show the class where the more complex math is then.

In my experience drunk gaming is never a good idea.

> Combining Autofire with Explosion
This is why placing limits on Active Points or Damage Classes are a Hero GM's friend.

Speed does not slow down combat. Actions are actions no matter who takes them. What matters is that combat ends with knockout, death, retreat, or surrender. If you always play to the death or to knockout then high defenses and high damage capacity will make combat take longer to resolve - this is true for any RPG system. The things that slow down Hero are that your attack rolls are not precalculated like D&D, 3d6 has to be counted versus rolling 1d20, and by that same virtue rolling small handfuls of dice which convey two types of information takes more time than rolling a couple of dice and simply adding them up.

> Drunk
Lay off the sauce. We're here to game. You're not adorable when you're drunk you're disruptive and a load.

> American
So am I. Don't make characters in the middle of the game. You have a phone. Use a calculator program. Book provides a modifier chart to eliminate math as it is.

Valiant
Worm

You can also go through the settings for Champions and Mutants & Masterminds amd take what you like.

>Are the memes true?

Combat in Champions is slow. Actually, it isn't exactly 'slow' as it takes a long time.

The combat moves along nicely, in my opinion, and a long battle feels right. The thing that gets you is when you sit down and realize that you just spent a half hour or more fighting a battle that 'in game' took all of less than twenty seconds.

From that perspective Champions combat is slow. But from a pure play point of view I've never felt the game was slow in actual play.

I would suggest that Champions is not a game for large groups. Smaller groups, four or so, is the way to go.

Exactly. Not slow; takes a long time. I blame the SPD Chart with its second by second timing. I think a SPD Chart in which every Turn and Segment can slide along the Time Chart could be interesting though.

>Legion of Nothing
>Legion of Superheroes
>Invincible (Read Guardians of the Globe)
>Worm

Do you prefer to have your campaigns set in real cities or made up cities?

Fictional, allows me more freedom, but at the same time can give you more pains in the necks trying to make sure everything works. Ours is Ocean City, on an island just off the coast of California.

About the same, though HERO is more focused o doing everything with jut the core rules so in the long run I'd say it's simpler.

The general consensus is that from 4th to 5th to 6th edition, the changes made the game tighter, more comprehensive, sightly simplified, and just generally more robust at the cost, essentially, of readability. Don't mistake me saying that as a diminishment of the advantages of the earlier editions, I'm highlighting an actual cost:reward scenario here that you should take seriously.

It's up to you to decide which edition to go with, and the readability is a hefty price to pay for completeness and comprehensively. The 4th edition rule book flows better, has a lot more humor, and is much less repetitive feeling. The thing which makes 6th ED feel repetitive is it's consistent application of language to describe everything, and the fact that a lot less is left open to interpretation. It's a lot more detailed, and you run into less situations where the GM has to make calls about stuff, and you could say it's a little bit more balanced, but it is definitely harder to read. So much so that you might end up giving up, and you don't want to do that.

This. Hero System is about using the core books to build whatever you want. GURPS is basically about having a lot of books of content that all works very modularly with the core system, which is why it can technically do anything. I guess you could think of Hero System like a Leatherman, and Gurps as a company that sells a wide variety of specialized tools. The only problem with that analogy is that it suggests that Hero System is the quick easy solution you can always keep on you but is way less effective than GURPS in the long run, which isn't necessarily true. They're both perfectly capable.

The coexistence of Hero and GURPS is like Gravitational Theory and Quantum Physics. If only a new system combined the two to form an ultimate universal system.

the source books tend to describe powers, but they can dip into GURPS territory with their research and just general knowledge.
>The Ultimate universal System
Narrative Hipster fags would be BTFO of the universe by a force of sheer autism

They've got similar core mechanics, just slightly different scaling. GURPS works better for low powered less combat heavy games, HERO excels with mid-high power (at low points values HERO characters get a bit samey). HERO combat flows better, though again has a bit more bookkeeping due to endurance tracking

I prefer DC over active limits, some things (like poisons) can get to fairly high advantage multipliers without becoming particularly effective. Active limits overly favour vanilla attack with more raw dice. Oh and keep an eye on summoning, that shit can get crazy.

Multiform too, watch out for it, otherwise you can go all 'This isn't even my Final Form!'.

Your villains could do that however...

I tend to do the same thing and focus more on out number of dice being tossed in an attack. However, I would suggest keeping an eye on things as if someone starts putting a bunch of advantages on something you can get in trouble real fast.

Something like 10 DC (ten dice of attack) with advantages or 12 DC (twelve dice of attack) with no DC would be the sort of thing I might say.

>Multiform too, watch out for it, otherwise you can go all 'This isn't even my Final Form!'.
Say, would this system work well for a Toku campaign?

Yeah, look up the martial arts book.

Also its because you can technically multiform into a more powerful character. Say 400 points into a 650 point character.

Nice! What's the name of the martial arts book?

literally 'Hero System Martial Arts', I think theres a mega DL link. It gives useful tips on defining and building martial arts, as well as fictional, Wuxia style, mythical Ninjas and Anime stuff

Here: . Look up "Hero System Martial Arts" in 6e but also give "Ultimate Martial Artist" a look in 5e. I don't think I have Ninja Hero for 5e though. Also I've always thought Multiform would be a neat way to build a martial artist changing styles and stances.

Nah, you can multi-power it, just have it as giving various buffs like OCV/DCV depending on utilized style.

Heres an example:
3 Stances: Multipower, 3-point reserve
1f 1) Cat Stance: Lightning Reflexes: +2 DEX to act first with all Actions; Costs Endurance (-½)
1f 2) Crab Stance: +1 OCV with Punch and
similar maneuvers (some Killing Strikes, Nerve
Strikes, and so forth); Costs Endurance (-½)
1f 3) Crane Stance: +1 OCV with Block; Costs
Endurance (-½), Requires A DEX Roll (-½)
1f 4) Horse Stance: Knockback Resistance -2m;
Costs Endurance (-½)
1f 5) Phoenix Stance: +1 OCV with Block and
Legsweep; Costs Endurance (-½)
1f 6) Snake Stance: +1 OCV with Block and
Dodge; Costs Endurance (-½), Requires A DEX
Roll (-½)
1f 7) Tiger Stance: +1 OCV with a Crush or Killing Strike maneuver (depending upon the style); Costs Endurance (-½)

What I'm saying is that the fighter's Characteristics, Skills, Powers, even Complications change between styles. Imagine if switching between Cat and Bear styles meant adjusting STR, DEX, CON, CSLs, Martial Maneuvers, Powers, etc. They function differently between one style and the next.

It could work.

Autofire+Explosion and Multiform got nothing on Uncontrolled, Continuous.

For the uninitiated, Uncontrolled, Continuous tag some bastard with an attack, and then dump Endurance (the fuel tank for your powers). Then you can fuck off and let it run all over somebody while you do something else.

Sticky can be a bitch and a half, too. Anyone who touches a target gets hit by the same power.

Autofire, Explosion, Uncontrolled, Continuous, Sticky is either the best or worst combo ever.

Unless you Megascale. Then fuck you.

I'm intending to use mega scale only for a villain to level a city block. It'd probably do meh damage otherwise.

I do like using it for weather controllers, but yeah, if it does damage it will fuck up and entire city/region/continent.

Villains can be fucking crazy scary with it. You can go total mustache twirling evil countdown device for next to no points. 1d6 ego blast penetrating, explosion, megascale can ruin everybody's day.

Its more of a show of force designed to force the heroes to surrender... but despite its power, he's still beatable.

It'd be a tough fight hopefully.

a perfect plot

'What is an Ant to a Man?
What is a Man to a God?'
That's the kind of tone I'm going for.
Now I just need to ensure that he can take two brick characters pounding on him at the minimum.

Force Wall. If the Body of an attack doesn't get through, no Stun damage is done.

Throw a big Energy Blast with Double Knockback and Trigger (Force Wall broken) and its instant regret and caution for anyone beating on him.

Noice, good idea, will implement, was also thinking of a second stage to his fight that'd require the Heroes to gain access to a Colossus to do battle once more to destroy him once and for all, whilst it does run rampant, the other heroes of the setting would be fighting the giant construct laying waste, while the heroes do battle inside. Might even have a climax where it's charging an attack to wipe the earth clean of life... which is easily possible with extra time.

>A Universal Theory but for RPGs.