Favorite "Zero-to-Hero" System

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In the D&Dverse, I am very, very fond of BECMI/RC and ACKS — HD more or less caps at 9 and there’s a lot of emphasis on domain-level play.

Close to D&D but with no emphasis on domains, I like how DCC, 13th Age and Shadow of the Demon Lord crunch the 1-20 spread into a more manageable 1-10.

I dig WFRP for the picaresque nature of the career system that forces PCs to change their métier at every step of the advancement system — I’m sure you enjoyed being a Pit Fighter but now it’s time to try something else.

Savage Worlds does a pretty good job of it too with advances and tiers.

I like zero-to-hero so much that I might even insert a (very, very limited) advancement scheme for Traveller (Cepheus, technically).
 
AsenRG said:
Exalted!
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Amusingly enough, Exalted does that quite well, albeit in its own way:tongue:.
You start out as a heroic mortal (or you should). You could progress from there...but it's relatively minor, unless you tap into unexplored areas.
Then you get a sharp bump when you Exalt (you'd never think that might happen to a group of PCs).
Then you realize you're at the bottom of the Exalted pyramid. There are people out there who've been doing that for centuries.
Then you start learning on your feet to overcome those people, some of which are gunning for you.
Then you find even more people like this. Some become allies, mentors, friends, lovers, or more than one of the above. Some become rivals, enemies, enemies of your mentor, and the worst of all: disgruntled exes:shade:!
And some combine qualities from both groups, Sol Invictus help you:grin:!

And then, of course, you ascend the thrones of Earth, and the thrones of Heavens and Hells are impacted by your decisions as well. But at the end, you have to deal, at a minimum, with the Devil, the Absolute Destruction, the forces of the Weird and the Unkindly Fate...on top of the biggest empire in the world. Which might or might not be a puppet of one of the above.

Care to have a go:devil:?
 
Vargold said:
I prefer B/X to BECMI/RC. I have still never seen level 9 in a campaign, so I don't know why anyone really needs levels beyond 14.
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I think I would ditch the XP numbers and just level players up at certain times. Speed up the leveling so they can get in that level 20 range and be demigods.
 
AsenRG said:
Care to elaborate?
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Well, you get your cultural and hobby ranks and first level ranks in any version of Rolemaster, so your wizard might actually be able to use a bow or a sword but they'll never be great at it. But in RMSS, with training packages and talents a fighter can pretty easily be at +100 offensive bonus or better while the mage is still struggling to cast first level spells. In the longer term, the fighter has already plateaued and won't advance very much by tenth level.
 
I'm still thinking about it. And currently, I think if I wanted a zero-to-hero game, I'd go for either Exalted, Warhammer, Mythras or Savage Worlds. Depends on what kind of setting and what meaning of "hero" I want.

Exalted is above. Nothing to add there.

Warhammer...well, you definitely start at zero. At higher level, though, you are a big damn hero with several careers behind your back and you chop through the rank and file like Ulric's Fury is riding on your shoulder.
Probably a bad idea if you think a hero should be able to solo a Greater Deamon.

Mythras: start as a soft city-dweller. End up as a hero with mystic abilities, trained in esoteric techniques. The rest depends on the setting...but you can really vary it simply by choosing the kind of magic systems that are available in the setting, how long the casting takes, and whether any bonuses apply to combat.

Savage World: Start at a novice level. Restrict players to a D8 in Fighting, at most. They'll learn caution, and quickly.
Then gradually start introducing new "optional rules" from the more pulpy core books, when they go up a "rank". More skill means the rules affect you differently, and that's that!
At the tall end of this, you can tangle with anything the setting has to offer. Of course, the tall end just might include superpowers, under this setup:devil:!
Or it might not. Depends on what kind of "hero" you want, again.

David Johansen said:
Well, you get your cultural and hobby ranks and first level ranks in any version of Rolemaster, so your wizard might actually be able to use a bow or a sword but they'll never be great at it. But in RMSS, with training packages and talents a fighter can pretty easily be at +100 offensive bonus or better while the mage is still struggling to cast first level spells. In the longer term, the fighter has already plateaued and won't advance very much by tenth level.
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Thanks. So in your experience, do you get LFQW in Rolemaster:smile:?
 
RuneQuest 2 was definitely intended to be old school Zero-to-Hero without using Levels.

You began play as pretty inept, and the aim was to progress and become more powerful until you were a Hero of the likes of Beowulf, Cu Chulainn, Perseus, Achilles, perhaps even Heracles. So that embodies the concept of Zero-to-Hero, even if it wasn't a level-based archetype system.

But it actually failed in that respect, despite the initial intention. I guess RQ2 actually morphed into a different kind of game where being the Hero was an often elusive goal. RQ3 was similar, although you started out reasonably more proficient than you did in RQ2.

In RQ2 you started off as an awkward youth, and given how deadly the combat system was, your character could easily be maimed or die as an awkward youth.

I think begining characters were meant to feel vulnerable, going out into the wide world of violence and magic, leaving the secure confines of their home for adventure or conflict. The world setting was were pretty unforgiving, and there was a reason why majority of people stayed in their villages or citadel confines. Not only that, unlike most rpgs, the game mechanics didn't single you out as being notable or special, you played the everyday person, so it was very unpredictable how long a begining character would last.

You could choose to have some additional skill training during character generation, but unless you rolled a Noble on the Social Class table then it was likely you were beginning play in financial debt to various Guilds or Associations (which made for a good story hook).

The way to advance was to get your skills up to a certain ability range to gain entrance to the more heroic streams within various socieo-religious factions, so that you could in turn gain more social authority and magical power, with the aim to becoming champions within these factions, called Runemasters.

The only problem was that it was extremely challenging to get up to that heroic level of play, as your character could get easily disabled or killed along the way. Even if you had a heroic character, they still could die by a simple knife blade from a basic threat.

In the example in the book, we follow a character through from peasant stickpicker to local champion, only to see him die in a skirmish with Trollkin - the equivalent of low level Goblins in D&D.

RQ2 was doing ‘Gritty and Random’ long before Game Of Thrones, heh heh

It was great fun, but whilst RQ2 certainly was Zero-to-Hero as a concept, in practice it was often unlikely that you would ever get to Hero gameplay

(Current edition of RQG starts you off as experienced characters, so in some ways it is a very different approach)

RuneQuest’s world setting of Glorantha has lots of powerful heroes and demigods running around as part of the setting feature, but the reality was in RQ2 this was all just background canvas to your characters who were often just rambling their way through the world as general dirtcrawlers, feeling a bit like mundane characters trying to survive a Pasolini period film (with less explicit content) or possibly a Sergio Leone flick if they were lucky.

I think in some ways RQ2 paved the way for Warhammer, especially the first edition of WFRP, which felt like it focused on characters spending a lot of time in the dirtcrawler phase.

I quite liked it, but it was a long way off from the allusions to becoming akin to a mythic Hero like the RQ blurb promoted; it was rare if you managed to get your characters up to the likes of Beowulf or Achilles-level play.

In many ways our lived experiences of playing RQ2 felt quite suited to settings like Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar. Chaosium did produce Thieves World, and the box that detailed the city of Sanctuary was a great fit for the RQ2 mechanics. In many ways I wished they had pursued the Thieves World line much further than just one product.

So yeah, RQ2 was originally conceived as Zero-to-Hero, but the game morphed into a different direction where becoming the Hero was more of a search for the Philophers Stone rather than anything too tangible.

All I know is we never got far out of the mud with our characters, and we loved it! :thumbsup:
 
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AsenRG said:
I'm still thinking about it. And currently, I think if I wanted a zero-to-hero game, I'd go for either Exalted, Warhammer, Mythras or Savage Worlds. Depends on what kind of setting and what meaning of "hero" I want.

Exalted is above. Nothing to add there.

Warhammer...well, you definitely start at zero. At higher level, though, you are a big damn hero with several careers behind your back and you chop through the rank and file like Ulric's Fury is riding on your shoulder.
Probably a bad idea if you think a hero should be able to solo a Greater Deamon.

Mythras: start as a soft city-dweller. End up as a hero with mystic abilities, trained in esoteric techniques. The rest depends on the setting...but you can really vary it simply by choosing the kind of magic systems that are available in the setting, how long the casting takes, and whether any bonuses apply to combat.

Savage World: Start at a novice level. Restrict players to a D8 in Fighting, at most. They'll learn caution, and quickly.
Then gradually start introducing new "optional rules" from the more pulpy core books, when they go up a "rank". More skill means the rules affect you differently, and that's that!
At the tall end of this, you can tangle with anything the setting has to offer. Of course, the tall end just might include superpowers, under this setup:devil:!
Or it might not. Depends on what kind of "hero" you want, again.


Thanks. So in your experience, do you get LFQW in Rolemaster:smile:?
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No, really the full caster classes are always weaker in combat. That's not to say that a flying mage casting firebolt isn't a dangerous foe but it's nowhere on the level of anything that happens in D&D. Magic in Rolemaster is generally weaker but more ubiquitous. Fireball has a 10' radius and has the Fireball Attack Table and Lightning Bolts are certainly devastating but they're also 8th and 10th level spells. One of the nice things about Rolemaster is that it's designed with long term play balance in mind. RMSS gives fighters a bit of an edge at first level but it's largely vanished by third level and certainly not a big deal by fifth. Semi-users are a bit weak until maybe fifth to seventh level but that's what you get for being able to do many things.
 
AsenRG said:
But do you do these with the same character?
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As a GM - I have a strong sense about how powerful I want my campaigns to get to. *USUALLY* I start around "enhanced" to "low-powered" - but I make sure all my players have concepts that can scale to higher-tiers of play.

For example one of my players in my group is an enhanced gadget-guy, think Blackpanther with a dash of Midnighter, while one of the other player's is the literal lieutenant of Lucifer, trapped in a mortal body, and capable of manifesting himself in various stages, including his True Form which is Thor-level in power. And my other three players are all of similar levels but expressed differently. But when he's in mortal form - he's very much a "normal" guy with a few enhanced attributes... but his enemies are literally legion. Angels and Demons oh my.

They all have very different strengths and weaknesses and deal with a lot of different things despite very different power levels but their respective effects definitely scale up to doing things on the same tier.
 
Mankcam said:
RuneQuest 2 was definitely old school Zero-to-Hero without using Levels.
You started off as an awkward youth, and given how deadly the combat system was, your character could easily be maimed or die as an awkward youth.

You could choose to have some additional skill training during character generation, but unless you rolled a Noble on the Social Class table then it was likely you were beginning play in financial debt to various Guilds or Associations (which made for a good story hook).

The way to advance was to get your skills up to a certain ability range to gain entrance to the more heroic streams within various socieo-religious factions, so that you could in turn gain more social authority and magical power, with the aim to becoming champions within these factions, called Runemasters.

The only problem was that it was extremely challenging to get up to that heroic level of play, as your character could get easily disabled or killed along the way. Even if you had a heroic character, they still could die by a simple knife blade from a basic threat.

....

So yeah, RQ2 was originally conceived as Zero-to-Hero, but we never got far out of the mud with our characters :thumbsup:
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Yea, I'd agree that getting to hero level in RQ is quite a slog, but boy do you sure start off as a zero if you don't use the previous experience system in the back...

Games that I've actually run zero to hero in are AD&D 1e and Cold Iron. At the time I loved each one so I'm not sure which one I would pick as best. One of these day I hope to run each of those again, though I also want to try OD&D and BX in long running campaigns to see how they actually play out.
 
Endless Flight said:
I don’t like “zero to hero” supers games. I like “hero stays hero”. I always felt advancement in supers games wasn’t the point and unnecessary.
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I agree, with a few exceptions.

And MSH is totally not a "zero to hero" as the Karma system means that you rarely make any advances unless a) your GM is *very* generous with Karma, b) you never use it for things like manipulating die rolls and/or c) you start off really weak, so it costs almost nothing to improve your character.
 
tenbones said:
As a GM - I have a strong sense about how powerful I want my campaigns to get to. *USUALLY* I start around "enhanced" to "low-powered" - but I make sure all my players have concepts that can scale to higher-tiers of play.

For example one of my players in my group is an enhanced gadget-guy, think Blackpanther with a dash of Midnighter, while one of the other player's is the literal lieutenant of Lucifer, trapped in a mortal body, and capable of manifesting himself in various stages, including his True Form which is Thor-level in power. And my other three players are all of similar levels but expressed differently. But when he's in mortal form - he's very much a "normal" guy with a few enhanced attributes... but his enemies are literally legion. Angels and Demons oh my.

They all have very different strengths and weaknesses and deal with a lot of different things despite very different power levels but their respective effects definitely scale up to doing things on the same tier.
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I mean, that speaks to the nice adaptability of FASERIP in gameplay, but "zero to hero" is generally "starts as a nobody and advances into a badass hero"...MSH doesn't really do that so much, as written.

I could make the exact same argument for ICONS, but the point of ICONS isn't really "starts as a nobody and advances into a badass hero" (though it would succeed at that better than MSH would, for better or for worse, because you're generally playing with much smaller numbers in play,making advancements go much faster).
 
Of the ones I played...probably Rolemaster. It has a nice progression curve, and if you can play long enough to reach 15-20th level you have a very impressive character. After a while, I burned out on the zero-to-hero approach, though. Way too many games got started but never lasted long enough to get to "hero". So we ended up playing an awful lot of zeroes. I figure I'd done the zero part enough by that time, so afterward I preferred games that let you start off above average with the ability to excel...or to start off with a character that excels and just play that.
 
Not my preferred style of play, and I was leaning towards none, but I agree with the Rolemaster supporters. RM did a nice job providing a real hero even if a minor league one, who could then develop into a much more powerful hero.

I've never thought of RQ as zero to hero, but I guess it could be.
 
Mankcam said:
RuneQuest 2 was definitely old school Zero-to-Hero without using Levels.
You started off as an awkward youth, and given how deadly the combat system was, your character could easily be maimed or die as an awkward youth.
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So, I would split out these two things. RQ can do a zero and it can do a hero, but gaming from one to the other seems tricky at best. Like you say, the game is a bit too dangerous, certainly at lower levels. D&D in its earlier guises (and It has come back around to this way of working somewhat) mitigated this with the exponential XP tables, where it was easy to mostly catch up to the rest of the group if your PC died. I don’t think RQ has any mechanism like that?
Tom B said:
After a while, I burned out on the zero-to-hero approach, though. Way too many games got started but never lasted long enough to get to "hero"
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I would definitely echo this experience. We have played a lot of level 1 to 3 PCs in D&D over the years... And it can become a tiresome to slog through to ‘the good stuff’ where you have more options and a bit more overall resilience. These days we rarely start at 1st level unless we are playing a campaign module that is built for it or we are trying out a new game and so want the ‘on ramp’ experience.

To the original question? Nothing does zero-to-hero in my experience like D&D or it’s near-relatives. RM does come close as a very different system; I can see myself playing RM again in the future. I haven’t played many of the White Wolf systems to know about them or Exalted at a practical level, nor have I had the chance to play Earthdawn which is probably a strong contender.

Savage Worlds has an element of zero-to-hero through the tier system which constrains access to the more amazing abilities until you have a bit of experience as a character. That is much flatter than in D&D, however, though perhaps a bit more similar to 5e with its bounded accuracy.

GURPS is like RQ in that you can play zeros and heroes but the game isn’t really set up for playing from one to the other. Perhaps the significant difference is a lack of levels? With D&D and even RM your abilities are gated by level and so is your ability to ‘max out’ a single skill easily. In GURPS there is nothing RAW to stop you just investing all your skill in one thing to the exclusion of all others (other than the GM applying IC or OOC limits on progress) and RQ seems to reward skill-through-use (at least in some editions) which means you are likely to do stuff you are good at and get better at it, whilst avoiding stuff you are bad at whenever possible?
 
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Tommy Brownell said:
I mean, that speaks to the nice adaptability of FASERIP in gameplay, but "zero to hero" is generally "starts as a nobody and advances into a badass hero"...MSH doesn't really do that so much, as written.

I could make the exact same argument for ICONS, but the point of ICONS isn't really "starts as a nobody and advances into a badass hero" (though it would succeed at that better than MSH would, for better or for worse, because you're generally playing with much smaller numbers in play,making advancements go much faster).
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Maybe Feeble to Expert might be more apt? Low stats don't take a ton of Karma to improve. Once you get past Expert, maybe Remarkable things seem to slow down significantly though. Of course, all this may be anecdotal to my gaming groups.
 
D&D, OD&D BX or BECMI/RC. To get the Hero bit BX needs some rule for Fighters to get multi-attack at high level though; the AD&D rule (ATT 3/2 at 7th, ATT 2 at 13th) would be ok. AD&D a close second. After UA the 'zero' bit tends to fade away.

5e D&D you feel like a Zero at 1st level, but it only lasts 2 sessions. by 3rd you feel heroic (though you aren't really, not until 5th).
 
After thinking about this, I'm going to go with Mage: The Ascension. Adding dots in the various Spheres had huge impacts. Even with characters that pushed their Arete as high as the GM would allow to get a Sphere at 4 or 5 would see major changes by adding supporting Spheres at 2. In fairness M20 limits this to a maximum Arete of 3.

Case in point:
The Notorious Vampiric Lawn Chair Rote is Life 5 Matter 5, the end. Now, there are all sorts of complications involved, or to put it in Jurassic Terms, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

To get to this level of power, assuming you started with an Arete 3, Life 3, and Matter 3 and one of these as your affinity, would take 161 Experience, which is something like 30 to 50 sessions of play depending on the generosity of the GM.
 
TristramEvans said:
....what?
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What, what? Mages control reality. Vampires is in reality. Vampires can be turned into lawn chairs, other options include, but not limited to
soap bubbles, trees, household pets, and bags of flaming poo. (Taken from M20 page 610.) To be clear though, they spend about three times the word count explaining the ways this can go badly for the mage if they try it.
 
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