[Hero System 6e Heroic] New Character Sheet for Heroic campaigns

My new Hero System character sheet for Roll20 is now live. “Hero System 6e Heroic” is available alongside Darren’s “Hero System 6e” in Roll20’s game options. This is an entirely new character sheet that uses no code from the earlier sheet.&nbsp; HS6e Heroic has a different design philosophy motivated by the needs of heroic settings such as Fantasy Hero and Star Hero. Over the last year or so I worked on a Star Hero campaign, but felt stymied because the existing character sheet was inappropriate for the setting. Eventually I decided I would either have to drop the idea or learn html and javascript and develop my own sheet. I hope the result makes running and playing Hero games easier, especially for new players. Features include: 1) A bookkeeping system, which hopefully provides a full accounting of points spent on characteristics, skills, powers, talents, perks, and complications. Includes support for skill enhancers, group levels, and overall levels and calculates skill rolls. 2) Self-contained. No custom APIs needed. Usable with a basic free Roll20 account. Those with a pro-level account may still find the Hero Roller script useful for more flexible macros.&nbsp; 3) Heavy focus on skills. Support for 30 general skills, 7 combat skills, 6 martial skills, and 9 languages. 4) Support for 10 powers and/or frameworks. 5) Designed for purchased equipment, armor, and weapons. Adds weight and calculates END, DCV, and dexterity penalties. 6) Support for normal and killing damage weapons. Rolls and calculates BODY and STUN of each attack type. (Only recently possible without custom APIs.) 7) Uses basic armor activation instead of hit locations since this is simpler and probably more appropriate for heroic settings. (Now also includes optional hit locations.) Some caveats: 1) Unfortunately, you will not be able to easily switch between the two 6e Roll20 character sheets. The code bases and lists of attributes are really very different. Although it should be possible to write some kind of translation script, I don’t have plans to do this. 2) The new API for displaying your avatar on-sheet is implemented, but only supported on the Dev Server at this time. I expect it to be approved for general use soon. I’ve tested the sheet in the officially supported browsers (Chrome and Firefox) as well as Safari (Mac and iPad) and MS Edge (Windows). There are some cosmetic differences between browsers, but nothing major. Roll20 on iPad Safari is harder to use, but it does work. I welcome your comments and bug reports. I’m thinking about ways to improve handling of basic and martial maneuvers, possible optional support for hit locations (done), and general ways to improve usability. Cheers, Villain In Glasses GitHub Readme with screenshots: <a href="https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets/blob/master/HeroSystem6eHeroic/README.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets/blob/master/HeroSystem6eHeroic/README.md</a>

This looks very nice and sounds very ambitious, I look forward to testing it out when I get a chance. Your point 7 is weird, since hit locations are usually the default in heroic level campaigns and rarely used in superhero games.

Looks at the three feet worth of Hero 5e shelf space and sighs... Looks pretty sweet, though.

GiGs said: This looks very nice and sounds very ambitious, I look forward to testing it out when I get a chance. Your point 7 is weird, since hit locations are usually the default in heroic level campaigns and rarely used in superhero games. Thanks! I guess my experience was the opposite in our gaming groups. Maybe it was a local thing? My experience was that it was fun to head-shot the bad guys, but not so much fun when it happened to your own character. :-o I'm trying to think of a way to make hit locations an option without taking up a lot of space or interfering with the dice rolling and message code. Roll20's sandbox puts a lot of limits on how things can work.

keithcurtis said: Looks at the three feet worth of Hero 5e shelf space and sighs... Looks pretty sweet, though. I hear you. Every new edition of a game brings difficulty and pain. So many game books in storage...

Villain in Glasses said: GiGs said: This looks very nice and sounds very ambitious, I look forward to testing it out when I get a chance. Your point 7 is weird, since hit locations are usually the default in heroic level campaigns and rarely used in superhero games. Thanks! I guess my experience was the opposite in our gaming groups. Maybe it was a local thing? My experience was that it was fun to head-shot the bad guys, but not so much fun when it happened to your own character. :-o I'm trying to think of a way to make hit locations an option without taking up a lot of space or interfering with the dice rolling and message code. Roll20's sandbox puts a lot of limits on how things can work. I hope you can! I think it was a local thing for your groups. Most of the heroic-level published stuff throughout HERO history assumes hit locations (that said, I'm less familiar with 6e, most of my play was 1e through 4e). Whereas the text of superhero rules and supplements generally treat it as an option that isn't recommended for superhero level play (for the reason you and your players aren't keen on them - having your pc taken out by a head shot or vitals hit isn't really appropriate for supers level games, nor is it really genre-appropriate to have characters optimised for head shots to take out villains that way).

We played heroic level in 5e, but always used armor with activation, rather than hit locations. It just sped up play. I had a chart or formula that decreased your DCV based on resistant defense and Activation roll. What kind of armor you were wearing was just a special effect.

Ok, an option for a hit location system is likely to be the most requested feature. It looks pretty doable. I did some testing and got it working for normal damage weapons. I'll need to re-write the killing attack routine in terms of the new roll parsing API. (Roll parsing makes normal damage possible). There may be some issues to figure out like how to deal with an area effect weapon.

I've got some tips for scraping information via the startRoll() function if it helps? For example, you can grab player input via a Query, or attributes from a selected token, then use that in your roll. Also, you can pass information from one roll to the next one via nested action buttons. For example, a player rolls their damage, and there's a button on the bottom of the template that says "apply damage to selected token". The GM can click that button and it will do what it says on the tin - pass the damage value on to the next function and subtract it from the selected token's character sheet. If any of that sounds useful, let me know and I'll post some code.

Please post that code, Oosh. I havent got around to doing much with startRoll yet, and that sounds very interesting.

That sounds interesting, Oosh. Token actions is an area I haven't worked on yet.

I have hit locations working in testing for both normal and killing damage attacks. I got stuck for a bit on the hit location message. I thought I would set a hidden variable and call it after finishRoll(), but the timing meant the roll template used the hidden variable set during an earlier call. I decided to combine the computed result with the location message as a string. I only have space for about two dozen characters per chat line, so it's tight. It works though. You can still hover over the result to see the dice too. An Area of Effect option for each weapon will turn off the hit location system on a case by case basis (as determined by the GM). I need to transfer the changes from my test code into the complete sheet. It should be merged into the master early next week if all goes well.

If you're doing hit locations, you need to allow attackers to pick a specific location, or to use the various alternate hit location rolls (like d6+3, 2d6+1, etc). Not to mention handling skill levels devoted to reducing hit location penalties. Honestly when I suggested handling hit locations, I didn't ex[ect you to handle it this way - I just thought you'd put a hit location table on the character sheet, and let people calculate it manually. If the sheet roll can handle it smoothly with these complications, excellent, but don't worry about automating everything. I haven't looked at the sheet yet, but are you handling Explosion attacks, where damage drops off by one die per hex? For those it seems like it would be best to just show the individual dice, and let people calculate the appropriate damage.

A system for targeting specific locations shouldn't be difficult. The hard part always seems to be getting the BODY+STUN damage output working. There is a natural place for hit location-related tables and choices. I can add another page to the maneuvers mini-sheet. One would select the desired level of targeting with a radio button. Yes, I think explosion effects are one of those things that need to be less automated. Explosion effects could be done as a power, for which the sheet simply rolls effect dice and you can select the correct dice. A macro would make sense too. Or in-line roll.

Does 6e still use high shot and low shot for modifying the hit location? You might need to account for that.

keithcurtis said: Does 6e still use high shot and low shot for modifying the hit location? You might need to account for that. Yep, they still have that. Fortunately those change the hit location dice roll, which is not bad. I'm using a lot of switch statements. The targeting penalty is also halved if the target is surprised, stunned, etc. I have a bit more to finish and I need to clean up the presentation of the hit location tables. I ran into a weird issue where the roll modifier call&nbsp;?{Modifier|0} wouldn't use the default and broke the calculation unless it was at the start of the formula. That caused a bit of head scratching. The things that can bleed time...

*Following this thread avidly...looking for opportunities to steal snippets of code and ideas for my Hero System campaign*

Whew, done. I've uploaded hit location support updates to the sheet and an updated readme to the GitHub repository. As long as there aren't any problems the master should be updated in a few days. The hit location tables appears as a selectable pane together with the maneuvers tables. If you don't use hit locations, the pane doesn't need to take up space on the character sheet. There is a checkmark to halve the OCV penalty for stunned targets and a field to apply Penalty Skill Levels for reducing the OCV penalty as well. The option to turn on or off hit locations appears on the options page of the character sheet. It can be turned on or off as needed. Checking a weapon as an AoE weapon also disables hit locations for that weapon.

That looks excellent.

GiGs said: That looks excellent. Thanks! :)