Naked Hero Kids

No weapons, no armor, no training, no dice!

Okay, so not actually PLAYING naked, but what are the stats of a completely unequipped and untrained Hero?  I spent some time comparing various Heroes and it appears they would be zero dice in their Melee, Ranged, and Magic Dice Pools, one die in the Armor Dice Pool, and three Health Boxes.  The Melee/Ranged/Magic Attack, Special Action, and the Inventory and Items sections would be empty, and the Bonus Abilities section would almost always be empty. (There are a few abilities representing inherent abilities that would stay, but most are part of their hero type.)

Now, no one would want to play this Hero, he's basically a blank slate, but by stripping away the weapons, armor, and training of a Hero, we can see some interesting "under the hood" workings of the Hero Kids™ system. One such discovery was a loose set of preassigned or default unnamed weapon and armor types as well:

• Simple Weapon: Single handed weapons or spells which are the source of the Hero’s basic attack. These grant two die to the appropriate Die Pool (Melee, Ranged, or Magic), permit a basic attack dealing one damage, and are the prerequisite for the Special Action.  Example: The short sword used by the male Warrior.
• Simple Advanced Weapon: Large two handed weapon employed by Brutes (or equivalents) which are the source of the Hero’s basic attack. These grant three dice to the appropriate Die Pool and permit a basic attack dealing one damage, and are the prerequisite for the Special Action.  Example: The two handed maul used by the male Brute.  As depicted, the female Warrior’s two handed, double-headed axe should grant three dice instead of two, or give her a one handed axe - Maybe her clothing is simple advanced armor?
• Simple Armor: Partial armor or shield worn by a Hero. They grant one additional die to the Armor Dice Pool, and can act an alternate prerequisite for the Special Action.  Example: The medium wooden shield used by the male Warrior.
• Simple Advanced Armor: Full armor or large shield worn by a Hero. They grant two additional die to the Armor Dice Pool, but reduce the Melee, Ranged, and Magic die pools by one die, and can act an alternate prerequisite for the Special Action.  Example: The “pots and pans” piecemeal armor worn by the male Knight.

Incorporating this method with the standard Hero creation guidelines can suggest ideas for new Heroes.  There is an opportunity for an Archer who uses a longbow of the simple advanced weapon type, conferring three Ranged dice.  Or an armored bowman with one ranged die and three armor dice. Alternately, if you have an idea for a Hero, you're unsure of how to allocate the dice, but you do know what kinds of weapons and armor they have, then this system can guide you.

Again, as I have said previously regarding other systems I’ve introduced for Hero Kids™, this one isn’t perfect.  No reverse-engineered, post-production, bolt-on system will 100% fit the pre-existing rules.  As noted above, the female Warrior and her two handed axe are short one melee die, similarly the female Healer has a large staff and she has no melee die. (Although in this case you could easily assume a Healer has no weapons training.)  Lastly, this system doesn’t make any allowances for wielding two weapons or weaponless attacks, however neither does the core rules, (see the male Rogue with two daggers), so I’m not going to bother addressing it.

Have We Been Looking at Hero Kids Dice Pools All Wrong?

Are Dice Pools equivalent to Attributes or are they more akin to Skill bonuses?  Is a Warrior with a Melee Die Pool of 3 dice stronger than one with 2 dice, or are they more accurate?  Their attacks both deal only one point of damage, yet the Warrior with 3 Melee dice will have more successful attacks than the other Warrior over time.  If so, then how can we more accurately portray a physically stronger character?

Having 3 Ranged dice makes you hit more often, not harder.

Simply making their attacks deal two damage each would be an obvious and simplistic method, but it isn’t ideal.  The damage/health granularity in Hero Kids™  is rather coarse, thus each damage point meted out or received is a large amount.  If we measure strength by how much damage one can effect, then the Hero who always does 2 damage with each strike due to their strength alone isn’t just a bit stronger than average, they are twice as strong.  This is the difference between being able to lift a person and being able to lift a refrigerator!  Such an approach doesn’t address any other aspect of being stronger than how much damage you do with your specific weapon.  Thus, the “strong” Hero who always deals 2 damage would NOT be able to lift any more than the “weaker” Hero as Skills reference the Heroes die pools.

We need to give stronger Heroes a bonus which mimics (even approximately) the effects of being stronger in the real world, without granting a bonus which is too large or too specific.  One could give stronger Heroes a ”Strong” Ability granting a bonus die for any strength related skill test.  This addresses the issue of stronger Heroes being able to lift heavier things, but still leaves attack unaddressed.

The only complete method of addressing a stronger Hero dealing more damage would be to increase the damage/health granularity. If we adopt a finer granularity, say double for the purpose of discussing this, then your average Hero has six health boxes, a normal Attack does two damage, and pre-existing Abilities or Items/Equipment which previously granted a +1 damage will now grant a +2. Die Pool modifiers remain unchanged as we aren’t altering that.  Technically this would work, allowing a Hero with the “Strong” Ability to also gain a +1 damage to their Melee Attacks without it being an overwhelming bonus.  However, the amount of effort to update all your game material could be daunting…

Here is the Brute Hero from the core rules, shown in its original and revised forms.  Adding the extra Health boxes, the Strong Bonus Ability, and modifying the damage amounts in the Hammer Smash Melee Attack and the Retaliation Bonus Ability isn’t a massive change.  Even if you’re not skilled with graphic design, a sticker over the appropriate spots could get the job done.  Still, this degree of change would need to be effected to every Hero, every Monster, every Item, and every Equipment.

Not all changes would be mathematically uniform either.  In some cases, to better serve the intent of the original ability, a different phrasing or an adjusted numerical change would serve better.

Plus, as the Brute example shows, one could make a case for altering other details to better serve the original intent, as I did when reducing the accuracy of the Brute’s Melee attack via a smaller Melee Die Pool when I increased the damage.

Given the total amount of change this solution requires, it is more accurate to call this Hero Kids™ 2nd Edition or some such thing.  While an interesting mental exercise in game design, unless it were combined with other desired system changes, creating a 2nd edition of this game may not be needed.  Hero Kids™ already passes the primary test for any game - children enjoy playing it in its current form.  Still, such things are fun to consider.

Corvids. Available for Hero Kids

I'm riding an Eagle like a Boss!

Sometimes an idea steps in front of you and demands attention.  A few weeks ago I was reading my Google+ stream and Justin Halliday posted an Imgur link about really ballsy corvids (the bird family for crows and ravens) doing things like pecking at dogs, and riding eagles to the ground while screaming at at them from their perch between their shoulder blades!

Let's put that into perspective a little, it's roughly equivalent to you or I running up to a 25 foot tall giant, jumping onto his back, and boxing his ears until he falls down!  That impressed me a little to say the least, and I couldn't shake the image of a group of Corvid based humanoids taking on a bunch of Lizardkin, or Minotaurs, or whatever they felt like because apparently they don't ever consider the odds to be against them in a fight!

Today I released on DriveThruRPG.com "Corvids: A Racial Supplement".  It's five different types of Corvids, eight items and equipment with a Corvid slant, a Raven pet, and four scenario ideas to use as a jumping off point for introducing Corvids to your Hero Kids game.  I tried to design the Corvids so they could be used as either Monsters or Heroes.  Let me know how I did.

Corvids: A Racial Supplement

I made sure one of the Corvids was included in the product preview. The Corvid Piercer is a spearman who will jab at his opponents and then spin the spear around and strike them with the butt end of the spear for good measure.  Like all Corvids, he doesn't get intimidated, instead he gets even more aggressive if he's outnumbered.

Like most people who've just tossed their creative efforts out into the wild, I'd love to get feedback on what you think of this little item. Even if you don't want to part with your $2.99 and only use the preview Corvid Piercer I'd like to hear from you (although if you do that you're missing out on the other equally distinctive Corvids, plus some pretty neat gear too).  If there's enough demand, I'll make more types of Corvids and even an adventure or two about them instead of just quick scenarios.

Frogling Warrior

Now that the Corvids have stopped incessantly cawing at my mind, I can get back to working on my OTHER project, "Return to Frogling Marsh" a full adventure involving the Froglings from the official Hero Kids adventure Wizard's Tower.  It's meant to take place after the Heroes have completed Wizard's Tower, but doesn't actually rely on anything from that adventure so it can be run as a standalone too.  I've made a bunch more types of Froglings, some monsters, treasure, and a cool Frogling stilt village in the deeper parts of the marsh, the maps are tiling so you can rearrange them to make different villages.

I hesitate to make timing predictions as something always happens to delay me, but I hope to have this ready for release in about a month.  I'll be posting preview material over the next few weeks as I work at teaching myself to post more frequently on this blog! :-)

Smart Wizards, Dumb everyone else?

I like the simple approach to defining a character in Hero Kids.  It’s mostly elegant, however there is one aspect which doesn’t quite work smoothly for me, and that is the interaction between the Attribute die pools and Skills.  Due to how the idea of a character is presented in the core rules, I suspect the designer first approached character design from the perspective of what is the minimum needed for fantasy combat and branched out from there.  Skills behave as though they were added after the die pools had already been codified as skill use is somewhat hampered by the established combat-centric purposes of each die pool.

The spot in the system where attributes and skills are the most dysfunctional is in the dual nature of the Magic/Intelligence die pool.  Due to those two purposes, one specific and one generalized, being linked into the one die pool, the ONLY way one can create an intelligent character who is exceptional at any Intelligence based skill is if they are also a magic user of some kind.  This creates the possibly unintended side effect that any setting built using this system as its foundation will result in all smart people also being magically endowed and anyone who doesn’t also practice magic is kind of simple minded as they have a hard upper limit of one die for any base intelligence ability test, max of two dice if they have a relevent specific skill.  There are no brilliant military strategists, unless they are also capable of hurling spells on the battlefield.  Leaders of society and industry will almost always be magic users too.  There is an alternative though, and it requires only two simple changes.

Braaiiinnss...

One, rename the “Magic Die Pool” to “Intelligence Die Pool” (one could even change the Magic Icon to a Brain on a Hero Card), it’s usually referred to as Intelligence for skill use already as it is.  This shifts the die pool away from a specific usage and makes it applicable to any character.

Two, give all magic users this new Bonus Ability:

Magical: You can perform magic, using your Intelligence Die Pool to power a Magic Attack, magical Special Action, or magical Bonus Ability.

These two changes may seem like a game of semantics at first, but when you consider what else changes when you do this it is actually a big deal.

Take the two Hunter Heroes from page 26 of the core rules: they have two Ranged/Dex dice and one Defence die, yet they also are depicted wearing plain clothes without armor and each have a skill which could benefit from more Intelligence (Knowledge for the girl and Tracking for the boy). What if instead, they had one die each in Dex, Int, and Def; or two dice in Dex, and one die in Int?  Then when they made an Int (Knowledge) or Int (Tracking) Ability Test they would be able to use more than the minimum number of die.

This change also allows the creation of Intelligence focused Heroes who do not bend their mind to magic by default.  As a rough example, one could create a Scholar Hero who has three dice in Int, plus a Special Action and a Bonus Ability to grant either a very minor combat ability (Distract: can use Int Die Pool to make a Ranged Attack which deals no damage, but prevents an opponent from attacking on their next turn), or grants them non-combat bonuses (Linguist: Knows two additional languages to be determined at Hero creation, and on an Int Ability Test roll of 6 can decipher an unfamiliar language, written or spoken).  Sure, such a Hero isn’t powerful in a fight like a Warrior or Brute, but the existence of non-magical, Intelligent characters encourages gameplay which isn’t so heavily focused on combat

Is this a clue before me?

Imagine Hero types such as the Apprentice, Archaeologist, Detective, Explorer, Investigator, and so on being used in more Exploration style adventures (More like Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and less like Conan the Barbarian or Harry Potter) where players are deciphering clues or puzzles, and unlocking tombs to gain treasure, solve the mystery,  or rescue the Macguffin instead of simply killing their way to the goal.  Such Hero types could be one Str and two Int, one each in Dex and Int, or one each in Str, Int, and Def, plus a set of applicable Attacks, Actions, and Abilities.

How about an Intelligence focused Hero who has abilities centered on negotiation or manipulation (a Bard or a Leader type of Hero) giving a party the option of parlay instead of always drawing weapons first.  Instead of killing the Goblins who kidnapped the Princess (or Prince), the party discovers why they kidnapped in the first place, what they really want more than a hostage, and exchanging for that.  A less murderous solution, but the adventure is resolved and the person rescued, so everyone should be just as happy with the result.