HERO CRAFT HUB (Super Hero Base for Dungeon Craft)

[manikus]

HERO CRAFT HUB (Super Hero Base for Dungeon Craft)

Welcome to the Hero Craft Hub! This is the thread for the quasi-official Super Hero Base for Dungeon Craft.
What is a Base? A Base is the stuff you need to make a design without looking anywhere for additional materials. The Dungeon Craft download is a Base (1e/FRUA Advanced Dungeons & Dragons). Bases include the databases needed and enough art and sounds to make a simple design.

This is the place to discuss everything for Hero Craft and as such I am going to updated the next following posts for various key aspects and when each is finished it will contain links to the respective downloads. This post will contain a link to the Base download when it is ready.

databases attached to this post updated June 13, 2016

Sections I want to look at include:
Races
Classes
Items
Monsters/NPCs
Special Abilities/Spells/Abilities
Default Art (frames, cursors, etc)
Icons
Small Pics/Big Pics
Sprites

I envision the final Base to contain the first six items and a subset of the last three (core art) with add-on  packs that will include monster/NPC data with accompanying art for icons, small/big pics and sprites (something like "Marvel Heroes", "Dark Horse Villains", etc)

Everyone is welcome to comment, critique and contribute! I will do as much as I need to do to make sure that Hero Craft Base is released.

Where to find Hero Craft Base:
--not available yet-- (2017 01 23)

Races edited 2017-01-23
I am no long working off of SHUA as my base (but it is still my inspiration).
Hero Craft are as follows:
PC races:
Alien, Human, Meta
NPC races:
Amazon, Android, Angel, Asgardian, Atlantean, Cyborg, Dark-Elf, Demon, God,
Gorilla, Inhuman, Kherubim, Kree, Kryptonian, Lemurian, Martian, Monster, Mutant,
Rannian, Robot, Sentinel, Shi'aran, Skrull, Spider Alien, Thanagarian, Viltrumite

Racial ability scores arenow being handled differently - I am using 8 scores instead of 6, as I am basing my work on Mutants & Masterminds 3e. I am also using a point pool system, so PCs will start out with all 11s.

Classes edited 2017-03-01
Hero Craft classes are as follows:
PC classes:
Adventurer, Guardian, Investigator, Mystic
NPC classes:
Agent, Assassin, Burglar, Champion, Criminal Mastermind, Criminal, Journalist,
Lackey, Mercenary, Ninja, Police Detective, Police, Private Eye, Scientist, Soldier,
Special Forces, Spy, Super Villain, Technician, Thief, Thug, Vigilante, Villain

Multi-class options have been removed.

Items edited 2017-06-01
Items are finished, unless there are some more NPCs submitted that require new items. As of now there are 648 items, 95% of which are super powers.

Monsters/NPCs edited 2017-06-01
I am doing unique individuals as NPCs and generics (eg goons) as monsters. There are about 40 generic types - animals, civilians, government employees, monsters, etc. I currently have a list of 102 NPCs, half Marvel, half DC. The NPCs are complete unless new ones are submitted

Special Abilities/Spells/Abilities edited 2017-003-01
I estimate that I have figured out about 98% of the SAs that I will need and have scripted about 5% of them.
Magical spells will work like other powers, which gives the advantage of magic users not needing to rely on a limited list of memorized spells.

Default Art (frames, cursors, etc)
640x480 default art - http://manikus.reonis.com/HeroCraft/misc.html
At this time only frames for the default 640x480 resolution exist.
I want to strongly push using a square viewport and will create frames for it as desired.

Icons
There are a small number of icons by myself, Uatu and Nol Drek, as well as ones I've created from around the web.
Some of the icons are here - http://manikus.reonis.com/HeroCraft/icons.html
http://ua.reonis.com/index.php?topic=1338.0
http://ua.reonis.com/index.php?topic=1158.0

Small Pics/Big Pics
A number of small pics for the default 640x480 resolutioin are already made.
There are so many source images available, I have no plans for converting SHUA art.
Small pics for 640x480:
Heroes - http://manikus.reonis.com/HeroCraft/hportraits.html
Villains - http://manikus.reonis.com/HeroCraft/vportraits.html

Sprites
None at this time, but there are so many source images available I have no plans for converting SHUA art.

[manikus]

Here are some ideas I have had about the "Control" classes (Elemental Control, Energy Control, etc).
Various Control Types:
Energy - Electrical, Light, Magnetic, Radiation, Solar
Elemental Control - Fire, Ice, Water, Wind
Lifeform - Others, Self
Mental - Mind Control, Psychic, Telekinetic, Telepathic
Other - Dimensional, Gravitational, Plasma

We could handle this one of two ways - add one class for each of the types, or after character creation, the existing classes would be able to specialize eg. and Elemental Control class character would pick Fire, Ice, Water or Wind.

[Nol Drek]

What are your ideas about Power selection?

In SHUA, you are given a certain number of Power Points set by the designer, and then you choose which Powers to purchase from the shops the designer makes available. An alternative approach would be to give out a fixed set of Powers that fit the Hero's chosen theme. For example, a character who selects Ice Control as their "Power Set" automatically gets the following Powers: Ice Slide, Wall of Ice, Ice Armor, Freezing Aura, Frozen Blast, and Chill.

Something I hope you don't copy from SHUA is making the Powers "cursed". Character creation is made more difficult if a player cannot drop Powers that they tried but found they did not like for whatever reason. I think characters should be able to pick up, drop, and trade Powers.

I'm also not fond of the XP system which is a carry over from D&D. You start out as a young lad or lass fresh off your parents' farm, but through a series of monster-slaying adventures you gradually become more powerful over time. Super Heroes seem to have an "origin story" that explains how they got their Powers. Once the Powers have been obtained, the adventure begins with little prospect of becoming even more powerful through practice. There are 20th level Heroes and there are 40th level Heroes, but one can't become the other just by punching enough bad guys.

[manikus]

What are your ideas about Power selection?

In SHUA, you are given a certain number of Power Points set by the designer, and then you choose which Powers to purchase from the shops the designer makes available. An alternative approach would be to give out a fixed set of Powers that fit the Hero's chosen theme. For example, a character who selects Ice Control as their "Power Set" automatically gets the following Powers: Ice Slide, Wall of Ice, Ice Armor, Freezing Aura, Frozen Blast, and Chill.

I'm of mixed minds about this..,
1) You use the classes in SHUA at cahracter creation, and in the shop the player picks a subset of applicable powers (for the Control kind of characters), for example a cahracter that is Elemental Control could choose a Fire defense and would at that moment define Fire as their thing (we would add an SA to the character for tracking) and while they were a Fire type, they couldn't use Cold. It would be up to the designer to provide a way to change this initial choice
or
2) We have many classes available at creation timee, and as you suggested they would get a base package determined by the designer. At various points in the game the designer could let them have more Powers.
This is the way I would go for my design.

Something I hope you don't copy from SHUA is making the Powers "cursed". Character creation is made more difficult if a player cannot drop Powers that they tried but found they did not like for whatever reason. I think characters should be able to pick up, drop, and trade Powers.

To be honest, dropping or trading Powers had not crossed my mind. I am not sure that I would allow trading as a designer, but that's just me, I would make it so they could be if the designer wanted.
This is one of those things I was waiting to hear about. We don't need to do any Powers as items, cursed or otherwise.
However, doing it this way makes the dropping and trading more difficult. We would need an Event to be triggered and scripts run to enable this. I'm being vague because I dont know yet what this would entail. Or we could do them all as items, just not Cursed. Why were they cursed in SHUA?

I'm also not fond of the XP system which is a carry over from D&D. You start out as a young lad or lass fresh off your parents' farm, but through a series of monster-slaying adventures you gradually become more powerful over time. Super Heroes seem to have an "origin story" that explains how they got their Powers. Once the Powers have been obtained, the adventure begins with little prospect of becoming even more powerful through practice. There are 20th level Heroes and there are 40th level Heroes, but one can't become the other just by punching enough bad guys.

I don't know that we would want to get rid of XP for the Hero Craft Base. I think a lot of designers and players who liek that their characters get more Hit Points as the adventures go along.

However, I can think of several relatively easy ways to remove XP from a design, the most obvious to set all monster and NPC XP-gained-through-kill to 0. You could still offer power-ups via events/scripts.

[Nol Drek]

We don't need to do any Powers as items, cursed or otherwise.

I'm curious how you can get a Power to cast Ice Storm or Fireball without a spell-caster item. Are you thinking they will be Magic spells that don't have the memorization/cast-and-forget mechanism?

I think some Powers make sense to be Items. A melee attack Power or a Power that grants a bonus to Defense, for example.

Why were they cursed in SHUA?

They were cursed to prevent the Hulk from giving his Super Strength 4 to Spider-Man. At the time, I was thinking that all Powers need to be permanently "attached" to the characters...

Experience using SHUA has shown me how frustrating it can be as a player when you equip "Elastic Body" and then realize that your character would be better off if they had purchased "Organic Steel Body" instead. There is no way in default SHUA to get rid of a Power once it has been equipped. I've had to re-create many characters because I accidentally equipped a Power and then had no way to get rid of it.

[manikus]

We don't need to do any Powers as items, cursed or otherwise.

I'm curious how you can get a Power to cast Ice Storm or Fireball without a spell-caster item. Are you thinking they will be Magic spells that don't have the memorization/cast-and-forget mechanism?

I think some Powers make sense to be Items. A melee attack Power or a Power that grants a bonus to Defense, for example.

Yes we can actually do all spells from special abilities - no memorization needed. But, I am not opposed to items. I was just trying to say we can do whatever the extremes are and everything in between. I think that "always on" powers should be special abilities, but this will make dropping them a bit harder than if they were a type of item, and trading even harder still. But not impossible. (An event that looks at PC's scripts and removes one or more and give the PC the cost of the Power, then linked to a rgular store that sells all the powers.)

Why were they cursed in SHUA?

They were cursed to prevent the Hulk from giving his Super Strength 4 to Spider-Man. At the time, I was thinking that all Powers need to be permanently "attached" to the characters...

Experience using SHUA has shown me how frustrating it can be as a player when you equip "Elastic Body" and then realize that your character would be better off if they had purchased "Organic Steel Body" instead. There is no way in default SHUA to get rid of a Power once it has been equipped. I've had to re-create many characters because I accidentally equipped a Power and then had no way to get rid of it.

I thought it was something like that, but couldn't quite remember. My solution is to not make any item cursed, and if a designer really wants the PC to not excahnge a power for another or just stop using it, she can go into the items database and check the "cursed" box.

This has me thinking about costs of items versus costs of powers. I am going to propose that we use money and points, respectively. DC will allow us to have multiple monetary systems that there is no exchange between. Or there could be a ridiculous exchange, like a power point being worth 10,000 bucks (or whatever).

[Milos Gulan]

Ok I have read trough this. I think it is very good idea but it might be a lot of work, but for people who know how to do it unlike me it might be possible and I would like to learn from all that.

I have to say I haven't played much Super Hero RPGs but my idea is to make and add my own version of Super Hero RPG to my own RPG , and probably modify DC to my own needs. Now we will see if I will be ever able to do that but I am hoping it will be possible one day. Till then I will try to do what I can with this DC we have.

I don't know much about super powers and other things in the sense of RPG rules, but this might be a challenge for me to learn more about it. I like most that older TSR RPG and well Ad&d so I guess I would like to see what can be done .

Ready to try it and help as much as I can.

[Nol Drek]

Yes we can actually do all spells from special abilities - no memorization needed.

Do you have a way to add buttons to the GUI during combat which will allow the player to Use their Powers?

My own experimentation along these lines was less than satisfactory. I couldn't get spell effects to have associated graphics unless they were cast in the usual way or through a "spellcaster" item.

DC will allow us to have multiple monetary systems that there is no exchange between.

I didn't realize that DC supports multiple monetary systems.

[manikus]

Yes we can actually do all spells from special abilities - no memorization needed.

Do you have a way to add buttons to the GUI during combat which will allow the player to Use their Powers?

My own experimentation along these lines was less than satisfactory. I couldn't get spell effects to have associated graphics unless they were cast in the usual way or through a "spellcaster" item.

The Paladin's Lay On Hands and Cure Disease are scripted, as is Sweep for the Fighter, Paladin and Ranger.
I have not tried to add more than 3 things to a baseclass/class and I'm not sure that we can at this point because there are three Hooks that allow this, and I am under the impression (though cannot find anything stating this) that each SA can only have one instance of a Hook.

DC will allow us to have multiple monetary systems that there is no exchange between.

I didn't realize that DC supports multiple monetary systems.

Again not something that I have tried, but in theory we can have up to 10 sytems (as long as there is only one monetary unit per system).
If ST is reading this, perhaps he can shed some more light as I believe he was working on something with multiple monetary systems.

[manikus]

Races:

Right now, I have the following PC races (same as SHUA):
alien, altered-human, hi-tech, human, mutant, robot

And I have added the following NPC/monster races:
android, angel, asgardian, atlantean, cyborg, demon, kree, kryptonian, martian, monster, old one, shi'aran

What's the difference? The latter are just stubs, in that they have the minimum amount of info that the engine wants and are primarily for the purposes of showing a specific race in the game for an NPC or monster, and to act as a base for a designer that wants to develop one of them for use as a PC race in their own work.

[manikus]

Multi-class options:

I completely get why SHUA had the multi-class options it did [#1]. And for the time being I have used these options along with some using the "Elemental Control" class [#2].
I created a list of all possible 2 class options [#3] to see what it would look like. I also made a list of all 2 class options without a doubling up of any class with the word "control" in it [#4]. And finally a created a list of all 3 class options without "control" classes.
I am leaning towards using #3 or #4 with #5.

Thoughts?

At some point, I made a note to myself that we could rename all the multi-classes to different names, eg a Fighting Skill/Mystic could be called a Wizard. Um yeah. I'm thinking this might not be the greatest idea, but am just putting it out there in case someone has a brilliant idea on this (and lots of relevant names that we can use).

Code: [Select]

[#1] SHUA optioins:
Psychic/Fighting Skills
Psychic/Fighting Skills/Mystic
Psychic/Lifeform Control
Psychic/Mystic
Psychic/Detective
Fighting Skills/Mystic
Fighting Skills/Detective
Fighting Skills/Mystic/Detective
Mystic/Detective

[#2] DC default combos SHUA-ized:
Psychic/Fighting Skills
Psychic/Fighting Skills/Mystic
Psychic/Lifeform Control
Psychic/Mystic
Psychic/Detective
Fighting Skills/Mystic
Fighting Skills/Detective
Fighting Skills/Mystic/Detective
Mystic/Detective
Fighting Skills/Elemental Control
Elemental Control/Mystic
Fighting Skills/Mystic/Elemental Control

[#3] All possible 2-class combos:
Detective/Elemental Control
Detective/Energy Control
Detective/Fighting Skills
Detective/Lifeform Control
Detective/Mystic
Detective/Psychic
Elemental Control/Energy Control
Elemental Control/Fighting Skills
Elemental Control/Lifeform Control
Elemental Control/Mystic
Elemental Control/Psychic
Energy Control/Fighting Skills
Energy Control/Lifeform Control
Energy Control/Mystic
Energy Control/Psychic
Fighting Skills/Lifeform Control
Fighting Skills/Mystic
Fighting Skills/Psychic
Lifeform Control/Mystic
Lifeform Control/Psychic
Mystic/Psychic

[#4] 2-class combos w/ no duo control:
Detective/Elemental Control
Detective/Energy Control
Detective/Fighting Skills
Detective/Lifeform Control
Detective/Mystic
Detective/Psychic
Elemental Control/Fighting Skills
Elemental Control/Mystic
Elemental Control/Psychic
Energy Control/Fighting Skills
Energy Control/Mystic
Energy Control/Psychic
Fighting Skills/Lifeform Control
Fighting Skills/Mystic
Fighting Skills/Psychic
Lifeform Control/Mystic
Lifeform Control/Psychic
Mystic/Psychic

[#5] 3-class combos w/ no controls:
Detective/Fighting Skills/Mystic
Detective/Fighting Skills/Psychic
Detective/Mystic/Psychic
Fighting Skills/Mystic/Psychic


[Nol Drek]

The Paladin's Lay On Hands and Cure Disease are scripted, as is Sweep for the Fighter, Paladin and Ranger.

I've used canLayOrWhatever to give special combat actions to characters. But if I change "Whatever"  to "Energy Bolt" and make the combat action cause ranged damage, then there are no graphics associated with the combat action. The target just loses HP without any visuals to tell the player what just happened.

Are you able to make an image fly across the screen, respresenting a bolt in flight, and then display an image of an explosion when the bolt hits it target? I can only do that if I make a spellcaster item.

[Nol Drek]

Hero Craft has the same classes as SHUA, with the additon of one and are as follows:
Detective, Elemental Control, Energy Control, Fighting Skills, Lifeform Control, Mystic, Psychic

Multi-class options are as follows:
Psychic/Fighting Skills, Psychic/Fighting Skills/Mystic, Psychic/Lifeform Control, Psychic/Mystic, Psychic/Detective, Fighting Skills/Mystic, Fighting Skills/Detective, Fighting, Skills/Mystic/Detective, Mystic/Detective, Fighting Skills/Elemental Control, Elemental, Control/Mystic, Fighting Skills/Mystic/Elemental Control

The above set of classes works OK, but some of the names are less than exciting.

"Fighting Skills" in particular could be renamed to any of the following to give it more Super Flavor:

Bruiser
Brawler
Brick
Scrapper
Tanker

Personally, I would separate the "Fighting Skills" class into two classes:

"Scrappers" and "Bruisers".

Scrapper Power Sets would include: Claws, Single Blade, Dual Blade, Martial Arts, and Gigantic Weapons. Scrappers would focus on melee damage and would have the highest damage in hand-to-hand combat of any class.

Bruiser Power Sets would include: Behemoth, Exoskeleton, Ice Armor, Invulnerability, and Rock Form. Bruisers would deal less damage in hand-to-hand combat then Scrappers do, but more melee damage than any class other than Scrapper. The main advantage of being a Bruiser would be resistance or immunity to various forms of damage and they would have the highest hit points, making them likely to be the last person left standing on the battlefield.

[manikus]

The Paladin's Lay On Hands and Cure Disease are scripted, as is Sweep for the Fighter, Paladin and Ranger.

I've used canLayOrWhatever to give special combat actions to characters. But if I change "Whatever"  to "Energy Bolt" and make the combat action cause ranged damage, then there are no graphics associated with the combat action. The target just loses HP without any visuals to tell the player what just happened.

Are you able to make an image fly across the screen, respresenting a bolt in flight, and then display an image of an explosion when the bolt hits it target? I can only do that if I make a spellcaster item.

I am. I call it "casting a spell".
Lets look at the LayOrWhatever script (the CanLayOrWhatever sets up for LayOrWhatever, CanCureOrWhatever sets up for CureOrWhatever, etc.)

Code: [Select]

[LayOrWhatever] = $VAR curTime;
-curTime = $GET_PARTY_TIME();
-$SET_CHARACTER_SA($Myself(),"paladinLayTime",curTime);
-$SET_HOOK_PARAM(1,"paladinLayOnHands");
-$RETURN "CastSpell";

You set the spell that you want to cast as the parameter, and then have the script return "CastSpell".

You can probably see now the route I was going to take for using a mana pool instead of standard spell progression and memorizing.

[manikus]

Hero Craft has the same classes as SHUA, with the additon of one and are as follows:
Detective, Elemental Control, Energy Control, Fighting Skills, Lifeform Control, Mystic, Psychic

Multi-class options are as follows:
Psychic/Fighting Skills, Psychic/Fighting Skills/Mystic, Psychic/Lifeform Control, Psychic/Mystic, Psychic/Detective, Fighting Skills/Mystic, Fighting Skills/Detective, Fighting, Skills/Mystic/Detective, Mystic/Detective, Fighting Skills/Elemental Control, Elemental, Control/Mystic, Fighting Skills/Mystic/Elemental Control

The above set of classes works OK, but some of the names are less than exciting.

"Fighting Skills" in particular could be renamed to any of the following to give it more Super Flavor:

Bruiser
Brawler
Brick
Scrapper
Tanker

Personally, I would separate the "Fighting Skills" class into two classes:

"Scrappers" and "Bruisers".

Scrapper Power Sets would include: Claws, Single Blade, Dual Blade, Martial Arts, and Gigantic Weapons. Scrappers would focus on melee damage and would have the highest damage in hand-to-hand combat of any class.

Bruiser Power Sets would include: Behemoth, Exoskeleton, Ice Armor, Invulnerability, and Rock Form. Bruisers would deal less damage in hand-to-hand combat then Scrappers do, but more melee damage than any class other than Scrapper. The main advantage of being a Bruiser would be resistance or immunity to various forms of damage and they would have the highest hit points, making them likely to be the last person left standing on the battlefield.

One thread is probably going to get very confusing, very fast, but ya.

Excellent point and suggestions. The only problem I have, is that I don't want to be the guy deciding on what the final line is for Hero Craft. I want an dhope to be part of the process of choosing, but want to work by concensus. Okay, that is out of the way.

I can break fighting skills into 2 different classes. We could do even more. I think we should decide before I get too much further, as the items database gets confusing when you are trying to add-in forgotten baseclasses for useing an item.

It's kind of easy since there are only two of us interested in creating the base.

How about 3 fighter types? Scrapper, brawler and marital artist would be the three I would propose. Scrapper would be as you describe, except that martial artist would be a non-weapon specialist scraper. Or is that too specialized?

This weekend, I add the assassin baseclass in to the mix (same a Is 1e, but no level cap at 15) so that I could add the Assassin and Ninja (assassin/fighting skills multi-class) classes. I also added Cop, Federal Agent and Spy. All five are intended to be NPC classes. (By NPC class, I mean, not available for player at time of character creation).

I have also started work on the items database. I have completed all of the "available to all" items and added a few extras for cops and feds - revolver, police riot shield, police riot helmet, kevlar vest. I have also tried doing something different with the Super Strength. I expanded it from 4 to 7 and instead of being weapons, they actually raise the wearers STR to 19 through 25, respectively. I created a new slot for them to go in - CORE so that the PC can use Super Strength and a weapon.