Hero/Action Point Systems in 3.x: Suggestions and Discussion

[Lich-Loved]

So it appears that necessity is driving me to give up on a homebrew campaign and move instead to a Pathfinder AP, specifically Paizo's Second Darkness. My experience with these APs (beyond all the things you are already thinking) is that the encounters are either too easy for a reasonably optimized group or they are extremely deadly. I ran Paizo's Age of Worms AP from 1-17th level over a two-year time period and the only thing saving the characters at various points was a complicated Action Point/Hero Point/ Plot Fiat point system I created. It did the job of keeping the game from ending prematurely and empowered the players to take risks while taking the sting out of some of the poorly written combat or puzzle encounters, but it was unwieldy and I really was not happy with it.

What I would like to get is the Den's thoughts on any or all of the following:

• What point/token systems have you used in the past? If you haven't used one because they are stupid, tell me why or propose another solution - I don't care if it is homebrew or something pulled from another system.
• Has anyone used the Pathfinder Hero Point system? It has an ass-smell to it but I admittedly haven't considered what it is trying to do in detail, 'cause, you know, it's Paizo and I am assuming it is not going to work well.

And since asking for a rule mod without goals is pointless, here is what I am hoping to achieve:

• Give players a chance to avoid the bad luck that will befall them from time to time via re-rolls, Plot Control, auto-saves or the like. Basically I want to empower the players to act with the foreknowledge they have a chance at succeeding even if the odds seem too steep so they do not feel they have to resort to wankery.
• The goal is to complete most of the modules, despite the module's flaws, without the MC needing to rewrite/customize every encounter to the party's skill level or fix various disconnects with reality. I can pretty much change things on the fly, but if I had the time to rewrite the thing, I wouldn't be running it.
• Prevent every encounter from devolving into a puzzle solving challenge on the part of the players (ala Frank's take on RHoD). Give the players a feeling that they can succeed in the face of tough odds with judicious use of re-rolls/whatever as opposed to having to develop wildly implausible tactics for every fight.
• Party is 5 PC's, all straight Pathfinder types, no Tomes. 4 spellcasters (Oracle, Wizard, Magus, Cleric) and a barbarian. The players are all friends and at least one or two of the players are optimizers (cleric, barbarian) that provide advice on optimization to the other players.
• I do not play with XP points (the players level when it seems like they should) and maintain at least the recommended WBL progression with ready access to all magic items/spell buys/item crafting. I help characters optimize for the challenges ahead and prevent them from taking trap options as best I can (aside: I do not always succeed - ref the barbarian), so they are all reasonably competent. By gentleman's agreement, we stay away from the really broken aspects of 3.x.

I am open to all ideas, including MTP solutions if it has to come to that, but I would prefer to give the characters a sense of self determination and heroic empowerment.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Has anyone used the Pathfinder Hero Point system? It has an ass-smell to it but I admittedly haven't considered what it is trying to do in detail, 'cause, you know, it's Paizo and I am assuming it is not going to work well.

Unless you believe that casters don't dominate the game hardcore enough, do NOT use the Hero Points system of Pathfinder or any of the related expansion options. It is the most blatant and unfair power-up Paizo has introduced. More than the unerrata'd Ring of Continuation. More than the Void domain. It's even more unfair than the witch-variant that lets you use your constitution bonus for spellcasting.

As far as your design goals go, if you want players to take control of the plot then Hero Points and Action Points don't really cut it. It's not like Shadowrun's Edge in which the burning of one can completely turn around a mission. The bonuses provided by the Eberron/Pathfinder implementation of Action/Hero points are too small except when used as a spellcaster power-up and D&D characters roll too frequently and with too many different dice to make an individual Action/Hero point to feel like it should turn the game around.

There's no quick-and-easy way to do a fix to d20 to support your expanded design goals, but I strongly recommend reading the aforementioned Edge writeup for SR4E. Even so, you'll need to go farther than that for D&D. Rerolls and auto-saves don't really cut it in that game.

[Red_Rob]

We used the following rules in our last campaign:

- The death threshold is -10 per level. Any character that fails to stabilise for 3 rounds in row, dies.
- Any effect that would straight up kill a PC without dealing damage instead reduces them to -1HP and leaves them bleeding.

These rules were intended to make it so that PC's didn't just die from a bad roll, they tended to get knocked to minuses and then the rest of the party had to scramble to save them. We took out Raise Dead as a result of this change, as it wasn't really needed.

- Every character has Hero points. Initially every character gets one permanent Hero point, with another available for bringing a painted miniature of your character / drawing a full colour portrait / some other thing that makes the game more awesome.
- At the end of each session every player votes for another player to get a temporary Hero point based on something they did during the session.
- Whenever a character levels up any temporary Hero points they have are lost, and any permanent points spent refresh. Essentially, the character returns to their base number of Hero points.
- A Hero point can be spent in the following ways:
* Reroll one dice roll you just made. You reroll all the dice rolled, so 3D6 damage attack rerolls the 3D6.
* Completely negate one physical attack made against you as if the attacker had rolled a 1. You can see the results of the attack before deciding to negate it.
* Rememorise a spent spell or spell slot as a Swift action.

We found this allowed characters to be a little more reckless without making it feel safe, and the refreshing point pool meant hoarding points was counterproductive.

[Username17]

Edge works in shadowrun pretty well. I used those rules for After Sundown and it works pretty well there too. Conversion to D&D is pretty hard. There are a number of reasons that is so:

• Saves and Attacks - The roll that literally says that you're fucked may be on either side of the table. If a Medusa glares at you, you roll a die to determine whether you live, and if a Cloud Giant swings a pick at your head it is the giant who rolls to determine whether you die.
• Death Spiral - Characters use up resources over the course of combats, with hit points and special abilities being used up as a normal thing. Even allies dropping is not especially rare. And so it is that it is often not at all obvious that the party is even in trouble until they are already super fucked and well shy of a lucky roll or two here or there to avoid a TPK.
• Swarms and Multiattack - Enemies in D&D often come in numbers or get many attacks. The true reality of the amount of damage that goes off when a Fire Elemental Giant Squid goes on a full attack is pretty intense (especially if it gets smart and uses all those tentacle attacks to trip in order to get touch attacks that do fire damage). When a character's number comes up, it quite frequently is also going to come up several more times before they get to act again.
• No Retreat! No Surrender! - Dungeons & Dragons has notortiously terrible chase and surrender rules. There is basically no way to escape from a superior foe and no reason to expect a superior foe to do anything other than murder you if you surrender to it.

Off the top of my head, I would look into something more along the lines of a heal or limited wish effect than raw dice or action manipulation. Rerolling a die (or demanding that someone else rerolls a die) probably isn't going to cut it. Forcing a 1 or a 20 might be useful in some circumstances, and letting players go from "fucked" to "fully healed" would help in a bunch of other circumstances.

-Username17

[the_taken]

We have a re-roll system in place in the first edition game I'm in. There's been an epic case where an attack rolled a nat-1 and rerolled to nat-20. But for the most part, unless we're re-rolling something that we wouldn't have failed anyway, we don't bother. Attacks miss half the time, saves fail two thirds the time or worse. The only thing that's has a reasonable chance to succeed are ability checks with a good score. (Do you like 14s?) And most of the characters have at best one re-roll...

Yeah, most of us don't use our re-rolls. Except the assassin, when she rolls a nat-1 while shooting arrows to avoid breaking her bow.

[Stubbazubba]

Something like a Second Wind mechanic seems like a worthy benefit for a Hero Point to buy, getting back to 1/2 or even full HP, and partial or full restoration of powers. That would help address the issues Frank brought up, but it might be a little OP, depending on how many Hero Points each char is supposed to get.

[hogarth]

First of all, Second Darkness is noted for being not very difficult. It's certainly no Age of Worms.

Setting that aside, I've played in games using a number of different hero point systems (homebrew, Eberron, Pathfinder, etc.).

The Eberron hero point system is pretty much just a straight power up for everyone, since you get so many of them each level, each good for a +1d6 bonus to a die roll AFTER the dice have been rolled. That's not counting all the hero point feats and class features that are available as well.

The Pathfinder hero point system is a bit different, since they're handed out much less frequently (not counting the "GM's discretion" points). In practice, we ignored the fact that they could be used for altering die rolls, recovering spells, etc. and we hoarded them all to be used for the "Cheat Death" use. That seemed to work out okay.

The homebrew system is the one that I'm the least fond of. You can spend the points to alter a die roll, but only before you roll (which is mostly a waste). Again, we hoarded them all for the best use: avoiding critical hits, in the case of that particular homebrew system.

I've thought about a simple hero point system myself. Each player would get one (1) each level on a use-it-or-lose-it basis. And each point would be good for one use of Cheating Death. So essentially, you would get one "extra life" each level, if you needed it.

[hyzmarca]

Edge works in shadowrun pretty well. I used those rules for After Sundown and it works pretty well there too. Conversion to D&D is pretty hard. There are a number of reasons that is so:

• Saves and Attacks - The roll that literally says that you're fucked may be on either side of the table. If a Medusa glares at you, you roll a die to determine whether you live, and if a Cloud Giant swings a pick at your head it is the giant who rolls to determine whether you die.
• Death Spiral - Characters use up resources over the course of combats, with hit points and special abilities being used up as a normal thing. Even allies dropping is not especially rare. And so it is that it is often not at all obvious that the party is even in trouble until they are already super fucked and well shy of a lucky roll or two here or there to avoid a TPK.
• Swarms and Multiattack - Enemies in D&D often come in numbers or get many attacks. The true reality of the amount of damage that goes off when a Fire Elemental Giant Squid goes on a full attack is pretty intense (especially if it gets smart and uses all those tentacle attacks to trip in order to get touch attacks that do fire damage). When a character's number comes up, it quite frequently is also going to come up several more times before they get to act again.
• No Retreat! No Surrender! - Dungeons & Dragons has notortiously terrible chase and surrender rules. There is basically no way to escape from a superior foe and no reason to expect a superior foe to do anything other than murder you if you surrender to it.

Off the top of my head, I would look into something more along the lines of a heal or limited wish effect than raw dice or action manipulation. Rerolling a die (or demanding that someone else rerolls a die) probably isn't going to cut it. Forcing a 1 or a 20 might be useful in some circumstances, and letting players go from "fucked" to "fully healed" would help in a bunch of other circumstances.

-Username17

How about a taking him with me mechanic? If an attack drops you to 0 or negative HP or kills you then you get to spend a hero point to take your attacker with you. You then make an attack roll with a +20 bonus even if it isn't your turn. If successful you both instantly die. This would, intrinsically, also encourage surrender, since its mechanically safer to accept surrender than it is to risk a final spiteful blow.

And that might be a good name for the mechanic. Spiteful Blow.

[Whatever]

"Hero Points" seems really disassociative to me. Can we call them "Soul Points"? You can get 1 at first level, plus one for backstory (or whatever else you want to encourage). You don't get more, unless something exceptional happens in-game.

Also, that 1e thing where you had a 30% chance for Valkyries to show up seems way more awesome than messing with die rolls.

Something like, spend a Soul point for any of the following:

1) any level appropriate spell effect
2) avoid death somehow
3) petition for divine intervention (keep the point if they don't answer, lose it if they do)

[Lich-Loved]

Based on the above, I dusted off my SR4 core book and re-read the Edge rules. While superficially the Edge rules seem to offer the same as other point systems (re-rolls, modifiers in the form of larger dice pool or even Cheat Death in its most powerful form),I do see how the the differences between SR4 and 3.5 make these benefits less useful.

With this in mind, I propose the following. I will keep the Edge term because I like it.

• 1 point of Edge given to each character, use or lose, per level.
• (n-1) points of Edge in a party pool to be used per AP "book" (about 3-4 levels), where n is the number of players at the table. These can be drawn upon by anyone in need, but since there is one fewer than the number of players, they will have to use them judiciously instead of simply claiming 2 points per character.
• With a relatively few number of points in hand, the effects of Edge will be more powerful.

From an effects standpoint, I am thinking:

• Be the recipient of or apply to another a heal spell at any time. This can be used offensively if desired.
• Make any die roll a 1 or 20 affecting any roll at any time. This is to allow a character to avoid falling into a pit of lava or the like, where the previous use will not be of much help.
• Plot Control - Adjust some other outcome by mutual agreement of all present so that the story is better. Think of this as a limited wish with a DM leash attached to prevent the very kind of wankery I am trying to avoid by using the system.

Any thoughts on the amount of points as I have outlined them? Any other ideas, modifications or concerns?

How about a taking him with me mechanic?

Oh no. No and no. I want to empower the players in the face of adversity not give them a reason to jam a glass rod in my anus. A consolation prize of "you killed a NPC you were supposed to anyway" will not be accepted by my group, nor should it.

[John Magnum]

"Hero Points" seems really disassociative to me. Can we call them "Soul Points"? You can get 1 at first level, plus one for backstory (or whatever else you want to encourage). You don't get more, unless something exceptional happens in-game.

I don't understand how that makes the notion any more associative.

[Whatever]

I don't understand how that makes the notion any more associative.

"Hero points" explicitly acknowledge the characters as protagonists in a story, without connecting to their actions in any way. When you spend a hero point to adjust a die roll, what's happening in-game? Nothing.

Soul Points isn't a great name (I'm certainly open to better), but at least it suggests some inner source of power from the character, not from the player. Since it's inner strength or whatever, I suggested using soul points to power spells, stay alive, or call for divine aid.

I dunno, maybe it's just me. But that feels more like a character power, and less like a player power.

[tussock]

Why not just say the character's can't die unless the player allows it. Death Flag from the E6 options worked that way. You get an action point this combat only if you raise your Death Flag and allow your character to be killed in it. Otherwise, everyone works out some way of having you survive whatever stupid shit you did that stole your HP away.

Limitation is players have to not casually go lava walking at low level and such, to save people getting overly creative with the resulting curses. IOW, be cool. Don't spend points to avoid death, earn points by facing the dice when it's all story-appropriate.

[hyzmarca]

How about a taking him with me mechanic?

Oh no. No and no. I want to empower the players in the face of adversity not give them a reason to jam a glass rod in my anus. A consolation prize of "you killed a NPC you were supposed to anyway" will not be accepted by my group, nor should it.

I was thinking more of killing the NPC that was way out of your league, but making a sacrifice to do it.

[hogarth]

"Hero points" explicitly acknowledge the characters as protagonists in a story, without connecting to their actions in any way. When you spend a hero point to adjust a die roll, what's happening in-game?

The same thing that happens when an attack misses a character due to his having a luck bonus to AC -- he got lucky.

[Lich-Loved]

Why not just say the character's can't die unless the player allows it.

I have done this in the past with a different group and it actually works out pretty well. It is certainly a simplification; there's no need for managing yet another resource at the table.

The issue with this approach is that it gets into some of the things that have been debated to death on this board: what does it mean to be "challenged", can a game with no "final consequence" be ultimately enjoyable and all that. It may just come down to the group and feeling of the campaign. I know that for my group (a mature bunch), they want to feel empowered and know that their decisions have a direct impact on their characters, their friend's characters and the world. An agreement as you suggested, for this group, would deny them this pleasure because consciously or not, they would come to rely upon it in ways that would cheat them of the empowerment they seek.

As a case in point, in my Age of Worms campaign, which we faithfully played from 1-17 weekly for 2 years, the characters made two terrible mistakes: they failed to prevent a ritual from coming to fruition that resulted in the nearly complete destruction of a major campaign metropolis and then, because of the arrogance of one of the wizards in the party, misjudged the capabilities of a foe that ended up killing the group and ending the game just before the penultimate fight. This failure brought about the Age of Worms and consumed the campaign world where we had played for years prior. We have never retconned this event. Game over. Final destination. New characters needed for a new world.

Despite these apparent losses, the group had a hell of a lot of fun and wanted more of the same. I just hope they don't fail again - world are not cheap to come by.

[name_here]

You know, I've always wanted to see the Depths of Peril videogame system for resurrections implemented in tabletop.

Basically, Covenants (more or less adventuring parties) have a Lifestone that has its own pool of hitpoints that slowly regenerates over time and gets depleted to revive people or when attackers beat the ever-living shit out of it. In the game, there was a minimum level to which resurrections could drop it and it only fell further when attacked, but that would probably not be suitable for some types of scenario. Of course, there's the issue that players would be tempted to hunker down in their house/cave/doomfortress and wait for it to regenerate, which that game solved by having things go progressively more to hell over time, e.g. one powerful unique monster forms a group of four powerful unique monsters and then sends in mooks to slaughter the questgivers and vendors.

[tussock]

Having re-read your goals (thanks for setting a good example there) the way I normally handle the PCs heading off to certain doom is to forebode the crap out of it, real un-subtle like.

From there, players generally have plenty of space to gather allies, build up a stack of buffs, or try bypassing the problem. Even fuck that noise and go do something else. If you want a purely game-mechanical style of that, aren't aren't too sure which encounters will prove a problem ahead of time, you could just hand out a ring of 3 wishes to the party, rigged to only reverse time by a day.

It's a pretty big hammer, but if you don't want to fudge (commendable), and can't always foreshadow their impending doom successfully, it's a guaranteed way to avoid the things which are the real problem without playtesting dodgy mechanics.

Unless they sell it for another +1 to hit. Heh.

[hogarth]

[*] Make any die roll a 1 or 20 affecting any roll at any time. This is to allow a character to avoid falling into a pit of lava or the like, where the previous use will not be of much help.

I think this is a poor idea. From my experience, I suspect it will result in hoarding the hero point until the party is just about to go up a level, at which point they will spend them all trivializing a boss fight (which isn't very interesting, IMO). At least, that's my experience with Eberron hero points, even though hoarding Eberron hero points makes little sense considering how many of them you get.