HOUSE RULES

The modifications to the core rules presented here are minor, but in my opinion make combat both simpler and more exciting. I am indebted to my friend Mark Doherty, who originally developed them for use in his Sengoku feudal Japanese campaign

Hitting Your Opponent

We will 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 we will use, you need to roll 10 or more. 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.

Combat Phases

We will be using 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 became certain phases when aborted actions always allowed you time to recover, or when low-DCV manoeuvres were safe against an opponent since you "knew" when his next action was 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 is current is determined by a random dice roll

(one die for the entire combat - not a die roll for each combatant).

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 Fast-draw).

On a die roll of 1 everyone gets to move, and then everyone gets a recovery (basically the post segment-12 recovery).

Since no one in the campaign yet has a SPD greater than 4, I'm currently using a d6. This still allows 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 - you still get on average the same number of actions between recoveries and a a SPD 4 character still gets on average, two actions for every action a SPD character has.

New Limitation: Assistant

Some spells may require that the wizard make use of an assistant of some sort in the casting. The value of this limitation depends on the nature of the assistant: