Ganbare Gincun wrote:What are the nature of these issues, and what is the best way to mitigate them in a campaign?
It boils down to 2 big umbrella categories
Fundamental Issue Number 1. Complexity.
Lemme start with a short and strained metaphor:
Complexity of chargen:
a superheroic character in HERO will be somewhere in power level equivalent to a teen-leveled 3.x D&D character. No imagine you have never seen 3e D&D before and are told "make a 13th level character, the following dozen splatbooks are allowed, blah blah blah". That's a pretty close metaphor for what a player new to HERO faces the first time they try to build a character. Except it's not perfect, as at no point in 3.x D&D are your required to divide fractions by other fractions to determine how many levels of a PrC you need, while you totally are required to do that in HERO to determine the cost of any powers with both advantages and limitations.
Complexity of combat:
Rather than give a strained metaphor, lemme just walk you through the basics of combat in superheroic HERO as I understand them (note I'm not fully up on the 6e changes so parts may be slightly different now)
Part one: initiative / turn order in HERO:
In Hero, combat Turns are divided into 12 Segments. During each Segment you add each character's SPEED value to an ongoing count, and on any Segment when that puts a given character's count over 12, you subtract 12 and they get a Phase in which they can take actions. Within a given Segment, Phases are resolved in Dex order - aside from characters using Mental powers, (who resolve those powers in order as though their Ego was their Dex: unless they are both using a Mental power and taking a physical action like Mind Blasting while running) in which case their actions are split between the 2 values) or characters using maneuvers which have the Abort property (like Dodge) or a character has a held action from a previous Segment, subject to the rule that you cannot hold any action any longer than end of the Segment before your next Phase (of course you can re-hold the same action when your Dex/Ego comes around in your following Phase and the optional rules for Covering somebody --- which are totally different than the options for "Cover Me!" situations, which should use the Suppression Fire optional rules)
Part Two: To Hit Rolls and Target Numbers in HERO:
So, once you've figgered out that it's your turn, or decided to use your held action and you try to megablast a fool, you roll some dice to see if you hit or not. You roll 3d6 against a target number of ( 11+ your OCV - their DCV ). Both OCV and DCV will be modified by current allocations of skill levels and likely by whichever combat maneuver the attacker are target made most recently - for the attacker this is easy because if they are using Brace or Set or Martial Strike or something, they are using it right now. It's worse for the defender, because you may have to remember that they used Defensive Strike or Dodge or something on their last action phase. The attack will also also be modified by range penalties, which start at 4 hexes on the table. And if you want realizm, you'll want to use the built-in OCV and range modifiers for real world weapons the mooks are using. So after you roll to hit...no wait, before you roll to hit, the target may get to try to Block or Missile Deflect the incoming attack - which they can Abort to do even if they don't have an action held - although in that case it costs them a full phase, whereas if they'd held an action it would only cost them a half phase. Anyways, for Block and Missile deflect you turn the roll around and the Defender makes a to-hit roll with a target number determined by their Block or Missile Deflect OCV against a DCV equal to the OCV of the incoming attack. And anyone who is designed to make reasonable use of Block or Missile Deflection is very likely to have a better OCV with it than their usual DCV. If the Block or Deflection is successful, the attack is negated. If the Block is not successful then you proceed to actually roll to hit for the attack..no wait, if the target didn't block, they can instead Abort to a Dodge, which increases their DCV by +3 against the incoming attack, or +5 if they bought Martial Dodge, or possibly more if they have Combat Skill Levels they can apply to Dodge or Martial Dodge. But once they've either used an Abort or declined to then you finally roll your OCV to hit their DCV UNLESS it's Mental Power or an Area of Effect power. Mental Powers use Mental Combat Value, which will be different numbers than OCV/DCV for most characters. Area of Effect attacks roll to hit against the DCV of a target hex on the battlemap (usually 3), not the DCV of a target enemy -- unless the AoE attack was bought with either the Selective or Nonselective modifiers, in which case you first roll to hit the area and then also have to roll to hit each target within that area. In either case, AoE attacks that miss their target hex are subject to grenade scatter rules. Area of Effect attacks cannot generally be Blocked or Dodged, but your game may be using the optional Dive for Cover maneuver which allows characters to Abort to leaping away from CGI fireballs. Additionally, some particular types of AoE attacks might be eligible to be Missile Deflected depending on MC call and magic tea party.
Part Three: Fiddliness of damage tracking in HERO.
Okay, so once you're taken a turn and resolved rolling to hit a fool in HERO you get to do damage. Most attacks deal STUN damage and also BODY damage and also some amount of Knockback. There are all packaged together in one die roll. for Normal Attacks the Stun is the total of the numbers shown on the faces of the d6s of damage you rolled and the Body is the number of D6s you rolled +1 for each 6 shown on a die face and -1 for each 1 shown on a die face. Then you take the BODY damage and subtract another roll of 2d6 from it and that is the number of hexes on the battlemat that the target is knocked back. For Killing Attacks, the Body is the total of the numbers shown on the d6s you rolled and the stun is that multiplied by another die roll (1d6-1 in editions before 6th, 16d/2 in 6th), and the knockback is a number of hexes equal to the Body of the roll minus a roll of 3d6. So then you compare the Stun and Body of the attack to the relevant defense (PD, ED, rPD, rED) of the victim, making the necessary subtractions for that defense and reduce their current totals for Stun and Body by the appropriate amount. Compare the amount of Stun that gets through to their Con to see if the are Stunned for a Phase or not. And then resolve the Knockback, moving figures on the battlemat. If the victim was knocked back into a solid object, they take another Normal Attack with a number of d6s equal to the number of hexs they were knocked back (but only up to a maximum of a number of d6s equal to the DEF+Body of that object, since getting slammed into a brick wall has a higher upper maximum of damage than getting thrown through a window). Compare any damage done by being Knocked Back into such obstacles to their Con to see if they are Stunned. then check their remaining Stun total to see if they are still conscious or how unconscious they are. If a character is unconscious, all non-persistant powers turn off and their personal END is set to zero. If they are only a little unconscious, they will Recover, gaining back and amount of both STUN and END equal to their REC on their very next Phase.. If they are kind of unconscious, they will have to wait until the end of the TURN to Recover, and if they are more unconscious, then they are probably out of the fight. Note that Recovery only restores Stun and END, it does not restore Body lost nor Charges spent, nor will it (usually) restore END spent out of an Endurance Reserve.
Got that?
You have a turn order that requires memorizing a 144 entry chart and rewards carefully hoarding actions, you have a to-hit roll that has more steps to figure than THAC0 did, and which also has a bunch of exceptions which change to math and the process in the middle of an attack being made. You have two different formulae for figgering the damage of attacks which all generate two different types of damage which are then applied against one (or more) or four different defense types and said attacks also often generate secondary attacks. You have two different types of temporary incapacitation from the most basic damage type, and multiple values resource values which go both up and down during the course or a combat.
And that's just the basic skeleton, it doesn't get into any of the exotic attacks vs exotic defenses or some especially ugly edge cases. Now you can make a number of ad-hoc simplifications to the game, but the thing is that it's all balanced against other parts. Killing Attacks have a different formula than Normal Attacks because they cost significantly more points to buy and the defenses against them are slightly more expensive. You track Endurance, because END-requiring powers are cheaper than similar powers which don't require END (see Force Field vs Armor). The whole game is a fractal of 80s design by overcomplication, but the basic math is all very largely balanced to all the basic options (roughly) even.
Of course no complex system is immune to breaking, and once you get past the basic options and start actually dividing those fractions by each other to get the really funky stuff, it's kind of trivial to break the HERO system...which brings me to the second truly fundamental problem of HERO:
2. Having the whole group on the same page about the acceptable limit to stretch the rules for in chargen and advancement optimization.
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and crap, that's all the time I got, to be continued..