House rules
Here are the houserules I use pretty much generically across the
games I've run. I'm pleased to say they've been tested by both
"artistic" roleplayers and rules-munching gaming monsters and have
washed clean after every encounter. They have also been adopted
by quite a lot of other groups. Try them - you might like them!
These house rules cover:
Combat
OCV vs DCV
I use the "inverted" Hero system to hit roll. In standard Hero
rules, you need to roll 11 or less to hit an opponent with the same
CV. Under the system I use, you need to roll 10 or more. The math is
easier, and it also makes it easier to calculate the variant rules
used for blocking (see below).
The easy way to think of it is "Your OCV + dice hits an opponent's
DCV+10".
Just add your OCV to your dice roll, take 10 off your total and
that's what DCV you hit. If your OCV is 6 and you roll 11, you hit a
DCV of 7 (6 + 11 = 17, which is DCV 7 + 10). If you rolled 5, you hit
DCV 1. Once you get used to it, it's far faster and easier than the
old system.
SPD and actions
I use a modified SPD system for combat. The old SPD chart has
always been one of the things that made HERO system combat so slow.
Moreover, I disliked two things about it. First, it made combat
unrealistically structured. If you knew what SPD your opponent was,
you always knew when he could act if you fought. The fight could even
be largely planned out weeks in advance! The second point flows from
this - players familiar with the rules could take advantage of this
built-in knowledge. There are certain phases when aborted actions
always allow you time to recover, or when low-DCV maneuvers are safe
against an opponent since you "know" when his next action is going to
happen. For me at least, this took away a lot of the chaotic nature
of combat, and more importantly, it diminished tension.
The new system doesn't totally prevent this, but it makes it less
of a sure thing. Basically, although everyone has SPD as normal, what
phase it is is determined by random dice roll. If your SPD is equal
to or greater than the number rolled, you get an action - still in
DEX order (unless modified by something such as Fastdraw). On a die
roll of 1 everyone gets to move, and then everyone gets a recovery
(basically the post segment-12 recovery). You should always use a
dice with a higher number than the fastest person in the combat, to
allow a few "open" phases when people can use held actions to act
when no-one else is doing anything. As with combat using the old SPD
chart, if you hold your action into a phase when your target acts,
you roll DEX vs DEX to see who goes first.
These modifications have greatly sped up combat in the game, plus
adding a little randomness. It does not seem to greatly affect the
relative importance of SPD (people still bought as much SPD as they
could afford). You still get on average the same number of actions
between recoveries and a SPD 4 character (for example) still gets on
average two actions for every action a SPD 2 character has.
Blocking attacks
Blocking has been slightly changed. To successfully block an
attack, the defender's roll is now modified by the amount the
attacker made his roll by. In other words, your OCV + dice roll must
equal or beat your attacker's OCV + dice roll to succeed in a block.
This change was made for three reasons. First, it "feels" right - a
really good shot is harder to block, and you can use levels to aid
your attack against a blocking opponent. Secondly, in heroic games,
it is reasonably easy for players to get OCVs that outclass
run-of-the mill NPCs. This modification makes it a bit less certain
that they'll be able to block all the shots against them - a really
good hit can still sneak through. Thirdly, it reduces the problem
where characters with reduced DCV (such as someone who has fallen)
can still block attacks against them as easily as if they were on
their feet - which was plain silly. Now DCV penalties will also
decrease the chances of a block, since it will make the disadvantaged
character easier to hit.
Mounted Combat
Mounted combat is a major part of many games in historical or
fantasy genres, and one that is not ideally covered in the basic
rules. My house rules for mounted combat are as follows:
- Horses are independant characters - they are capable of making
attacks, movement and so on, without input from the rider. Of
course they can only take actions on phases in which they get to
act, meaning that a fast rider will have some "free" phases in
which he can't move (but can still do other things). He *can* make
a riding roll to try to give his horse a new instruction. However,
to *get* the horse to do what you want requires a riding roll, and
to get it to *stop* doing something requires another riding roll.
Essentially, every time you want to make the horse do something in
a stressful situation, that's a Riding roll. Any riding roll is a
half-phase action, so you can goad your trusty steed into action
and still swing your sword. In other words, to charge the enemy is
a single riding roll. To goad your steed to trample somone is a
riding roll. To get your steed moving in a more or less straight
line is a Riding roll, and so on. Once any of these actions is
started, it will continue until either the horse gets an idea to
do something itself, or the rider successfully makes a Riding roll
to get it to do something else. If you should be unlucky enough to
end up in combat on a horse which is not combat trained, it will
most likely decide to leave every time it gets a phase, so you had
better have an action handy to rein it in. Some rolls - goading a
horse into a furious melee, jumping a high fence, etc will cause a
-1 to -3 penalty. Persons without Riding skill can make DEX rolls
to stay on the horse, but will have to roll at -3 to make it do
what they want or more if they want to do something complex.
- Staying on a horse - especially a rapidly moving horse - makes
a person a less mobile target than if they were on their own two
feet. Riders use either half their DCV or the horse's DCV of 4,
whichever is greater. This might seem a bit harsh, but
historically, a rider surrounded by hostile foot was very
vulnerable to being unhorsed. Keep moving! Mounted combat is not
intended to be static. A rider who wants to, can make an
acrobatics roll - if successful they can get their full DCV that
phase, as they roll about in the saddle, drop to one side and so
on. If they fail, they fall off. Like most skill actions, this is
a half-phase action, so unless you are in combat already, will
often preclude an attack.
- Horse riders get a free high shot (2d6+1) for location against
opponents on foot, unless using a long weapon, while attackers on
foot will get a low shot (2d6+7) on mounted opponents - again
unless using a long weapon. Riders retain their regular OCV.
- A mounted charge can be either a move-by (normally with a
weapon) or a move through (attempt to trample with the
horse/dragon/war-elephant/whatever). In either case you use the
horse's STR (this simulates the effect of mass) and move to
calculate damage. If the move-through or move-by is with a weapon,
then the partial damage meted out to the attacker affects the
weapon. It's pretty easy to shiver a lance like this! If it is
with the horse, then of course it takes the damage and if it is
stopped suddenly, the rider has to make a riding roll or go flying
off.
- When attempting to cow opponents from horseback, use the
horse's PRE instead of your own if it is higher. A mounted warrior
could be a fearsome sight.
Martial Arts
Martial arts can be purchased either using the standard points
system or the multipower system I have
designed. Basically, if you want a few maneuvers, the original system
is cheaper, while the multipower system works out cheaper if you want
to build a master martial artist with lots of maneuvers. In either
case, martial arts normally must be chosen from a specific school and
contain all the required maneuvers and skills.
Armour and Weapons
We will be using "real armour" rules so armour is encumbering,
fatiguing and reduces some skill rolls. However, I do allow players
to buy 5 point combat skill levels in DCV "Only to offset DCV
penalties for fighting in armour" which is a -1 disadvantage.
There is a fairly complete list of Japanese
armour available in the Sengoku
pages and a list
of armours derived from medieval types at the Gothick
Empires pages. The rules on armour encubrance are here.
There is also an extended list of Oriental
weapons, which has had changes made to STR mins to make them more
"realistic" - although STR min is no longer based entirely off active
points, and a similarly altered list of European/
Middle Eastern-derived weapons.
Character Creation and Other Rules
STR and HA
The cost of STR and HA has been changed. STR now costs 2 character
points per point of STR, and HA costs 5 points, to bring the costs
into line with attacks in the rest of the HERO system. STR can be
bought with the -1/2 limitation of "no figured CHA" or the -1
limitation "Only to add to (specific attack)".
PER rolls
In general, where a PER roll is called for, the GM will make it,
since nothing alerts players to the fact that something is up like
being asked to make a PER roll. However, the rule is generally that
each GROUP - not each character - makes a roll. The reason is simple
- if too many rolls are made, not only does it slow things down, but
it greatly increases the chance of a success, which is often
unfair.
As an example, Furtif the thief hides behind a statue in the
Temple of Doom, confident in his 15- Stealth roll. He makes the roll
by 4, so is well hidden as the priests of Doom file into the chamber.
There are 100 of them.... The GM starts rolling. Priest number 63
rolls a 3 on his PER roll and spots the hidden Furtif!
Put like that, it is obviously ludicrous. But how often does the
GM ask his players to make a PER roll - and everyone rolls? Usually
one of them will score a good roll, which renders the exercise prety
pointless. So! One roll. If the GM - or a designated player rolls 13,
Neem the Deft might see something with his 14- PER roll that Thrud
the Obtuse (with a 10- roll) completely overlooks, but it is still
one roll.
Skills
New System of Skill
Pricing
Skills have been subject to any amount of blather (that's debate
to you guys on the HERO mailing list). Other people can decide what
they like, but to clear up any misconceptions, here are the
definitions I use in my games:
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Base roll
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Definition
|
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8 or less
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The journeyman level for any skill. This allows you to
perform basic tasks without any need for a roll, and you can
attempt difficult tasks with a skill roll.
|
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11 or less
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The level expected of a professional in the field. As
above, you can assume that you can handle any routine task
in the area of your skill without needing a roll - difficult
applications (for instance, surgery in a room while people
are shooting through the windows) will require a roll
|
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14 or less
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You are a master in the skill. Anything better than this
is regarded as pretty damn amazing.
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In addition, a skill is generally assumed to be pretty
broad. PS: Doctor assumes that you have all the basic skills
required. There is no need to buy KS: anatomy,
KS:physiology, KS: surgery etc, unless you want to be really
hotshot. Extra skills such as this *can* act as
complimentary skills however, so they can still be very
useful - and they have the added benefit of making your
peers regard you as unusually knowledgeable in your chosen
field.
Before you go gonzo over the definitions , I'd suggest
you read the rationale behind them below.
|
Defining relative skill levels
Gamers have argued back and forth on this topic for ages. My
approach is based on the recognition that people tend to (grossly)
overestimate their own skills and abilities.
Let's look at the math, and a simple test. Most people in my
experience tend to put their "AK:own city" in the 11- to 14- range.
In movies and films, (the heroic or superheroic genres we are
simulating here) characters are forever, saying things like "Lets cut
through this alley, there's a shortcut here". Players always want to
know about shortcuts, or exactly far it is to some place they need to
get to in a hurry. These are obvious uses of AK: Own City.
Now try the test (and no cheating and using a map or phone book!)
We'll start with a couple of easy ones. What's the absolute quickest
route to city hall from your house? What are the phone codes for
different neighbourhoods? How many fire stations are there in your
city? What are their addresses? OK, here's some harder ones. How many
restaurants are there in a 5 kilometre radius of your current
location? What's the street address of the five wealthiest citzens in
town?
How many did you get? If you got any at all, congratulations! I've
never met anyone who can answer those, but they are all questions
that players wanted to know answers to based on their AK: City skill
in games that I have run or played in.
And how long did it take you? Remember, using a standard recall
skill like that is normally a half phase action - so you have 3
seconds per question, if you are a normal. Based on this, an 8- roll
looks positively generous.
You can apply the same logic to professional skills. In my own
case, I'm (supposedly) an expert in medical biotechnology. People
(literally) from all over the world ask me to speak on my topics of
expertise, call or email with technical questions, and I've been
invited to serve on a number of international review and advisory
bodies that decide whether to fund research in my area. I get
unsolicited job offers from countries all over the world, too. So, in
basic terms, I qualify as at least "highly skilled".
Let's try and put numbers on that. Normally when someone contacts
me with a technical question, about a third of the time I can say -
"That's easy, you need to do blah blah blah.". About a third of the
time, I have to say "Hmm. I don't know off the top of my head - send
me an email with the details and I'll get back to you." The rest of
the time, we talk about it and I offer some suggestions - or I just
say "I don't know." Usually in the latter case, I can either suggest
someone who might know or point out that *no-one* knows.
So - an answer off the top of my head 1/3 of the time? That
translates to between an 8- and a 9- roll, and I'm supposed to be one
of the leading experts in the field. You begining to get my drift?
Now, I can answer most of these questions with a couple of hours
research and access to my computer and a library. So again, to use
HERO system rules, taking an extra hour gives me +5, while excellent
tools (ie: computer and well-stocked library) and excellent
conditions (ie: being at a leading biomedical institute) each give on
average, say, +2. Thus even if I only have a base 8- roll, I have a
17- (99.5% chance) of answering a normal question in an hour. Even if
the question is *really, really* difficult (-5 for "sheer folly) I
still have a 12- (75% chance) of answering it with about an hour's
work. If I could do this in real life, I'd have retired on the
profits a long, long time ago. You can try the same with any
professional - try getting an answer over the phone to even a
relatively simple question from, say, a lawyer, or an architect in a
couple of minutes. You'll find the same rules apply.
The price of knowledge (or at least the cost of skills)
OK. That's the thinking behind relative skill levels. The other
thing that has polarised HERO gamers' thinking is exactly what is
covered by a particular skill. In particular, how do professional
skills and knowledge skills differ from "just plain" skills?
Again I have a ready-to-use test. A professional skill covers
everything ancilliary to a job. So, PS: Office manager will give you
basic managerial skills - but also means you know how to use - at
least in theory - a photocopier, a computer etc. That's because you
can't *do* the job without those skills. However, ancilliary skills
are always at the most basic level. Even though it assumes basic
familiarity with a computer (sending email, etc) you can't use PS:
Office manager as a complementary skill for computing or use it to
get a roll to try reprogramming a computer.
Knowledge skills mean you know about something, but haven't
necessarily actually done it. In many cases this is easy to
ajudicate. KS: Small arms is obviously different from FAM: Small
arms. But in other cases, in which much of the practice is theory
based anyway, this category of skill gets kind of blurry around the
edges. In practical (ie: gaming) terms, how is "KS: Computers"
different from the basic skill "Computing" - except for the fact that
it's cheaper? For that matter, what about someone who chooses "PS:
Computer Hacker"? What does that give them, compared to the two
previous skills?
Any easy way to deal with this problem is to drop the arbitrary
price differences. A skill is a skill is a skill.
Thus, any skill costs 1 point for an 8- roll, 2 points for an 11-
roll and 3 points for an attribute-based roll.
All skills cost 2 points to increase the roll further. This can
mean that sometimes a person using an attribute-based roll may get a
roll of *less* than 11- from an attribute-based roll. In such a case
they keep the 11-. It will be harder (ie cost more) for them to
increase it above 11-, but this just reflects the difficulty
improving in a field that you are not suited for. In addition, I have
dropped the rule that levels cannot be applied to 8- skills. Unless
you have *a whole truckload* of skills, it's not at all cost
efficient to buy 8- skills and pump them up with levels. And
personally I've never had problems as a GM with a player buying too
many skills for their character. This rules change does not seem to
have affected play or character construction too much, although it
has closed up a few rules-monster-exploitable loopholes. Moreover, it
is still pretty much compatible with the old rules - you still have 1
point , 8- skills (the FAM: category) , 2 point 11- skills (the old
PS: and KS: categories) and 3 point ,CHA-based skills. The only
difference is you can now get 2 point, 11- skills in things like
paramedic or climbing - and you no longer have arguments about
whether the character who has PS: doctor can try a paramedic roll to
save an injured person. As far as the game goes, if the skills are
more or less functionally equivalent and cost the same, they should
operate the same.
Skills help round out characters and encourage good roleplaying -
as far as I'm concerned, the more skills, the better. Indeed to
encourage it, I have also changed the house rules on skill enhancers
(see below).
Package Deals and Skill Enhancers
I don't use "package deals". While the intention was good, they
tend to be unbalanced, and violate the basic HERO system rules in any
number of ways. However the "skill enhancers" normally available
(Well-connected, Scholar, Linguist, etc) will be supplemented by
professional skill enhancers. These include (but are not limited to)
Warrior, Gambler, Merchant, Priest, Thief, Assassin, Courtier,
Sailor, etc. What this means is that any skills that are appropriate
to the character's chosen profession can be purchased for -1 off the
cost. Note that "appropriate" is defined as something that all or
most members of the group could reasonably be expected to know
something about - not merely a skill that they *might possibly* be
able to acquire. Skills still cost a minimum of 1 point, but for this
you get an 11- roll rather than an 8- and two points gets you an
attribute-based roll. What constitutes an appropriate skill is (of
course) up to the GM, but is usually pretty obvious. Professional
skill enhancers cost 3 points each, and depending on the culture in
which your character was raised, not all (or any) of them might be
available. For a Professional skill enhancer to exist, there has to
be a well-defined profession actually in existence too.
A last word on skills
This is not really a change or a house rule, but one reason that
many players *don't* splurge on skills, is that they feel they don't
need them. This is because most GM's are soft when it comes to
skills. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen (for
example) players needing to climb some obstacle. The GM says "Make a
climbing roll". The player replies, "I don't have Climbing skill."
So, the GM says "OK, make a DEX roll instead." This is bad, bad,
bad! First, it shafts the players who *did* buy the climbing
skill. Second, it removes any incentive for the player without the
skill to ever buy it. As a rule of thumb, attempting a task for which
you have no reasonably applicable skill should (at least) dump you
back to the 8- level if it is an everyman skill - or if it is not an
everyman skill, the GM should just say "OK, you can't do it." Let his
buddies figure out how to deal with the situation. Even with regard
to climbing things, for instance (nominally an everyman skill), I've
seen plenty of rockfaces that I couldn't climb - but which a
competent climber could.
Falling Damage
Short falls are normally just an inconvenience to Hero system
characters. The standard rule is 1d6 per game inch, or 2 metres (up
to a fall of 20 metres). That means a fall of 4 metres (from a
second-floor window, for example) is unlikely to inflict more than a
slight bruise on a normal person (ie: it does no body). Even a fall
from 20 metres (the sixth floor of a building, for example) will
almost never be fatal to a normal person, and is unlikely to affect a
tough, heroic-level character at all. While this is not a problem for
superheroes, it is pushing the bounds of "cinematic realism" a bit
far, and has undesirable side effects on heroic level games - such as
characters leaping out of 8th floor windows, confident in the
knowledge that it will do them little real harm.
To make the system a bit more realistic, without punishing the
characters unduly or making things more complicated, I use the
falling rules exactly as written, with one proviso - for every d6 of
damage generated by the fall, falling characters or objects subtract
1 PD. That means that long falls are much more likely to be fatal,
and shorter falls are more likely to inflict some Body damage
(simulating twists, sprains or boken bones)
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