[Warning!] Blood of Heroes: Special Edition [Warning!]

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This is my favorite system ever and I refused to buy the book; and from my comments in other threads, I don’t usually judge art harshly. I stand by my face-melting GIF.
 
SlenderSuccubus would be a little weird, but I'd bang 'em all. Have to watch out for the one who gets highbeams when she starts beating the shit out of Coalition Soldiers. There's worse ways to go, though.
 
There is something gloriously 'uncanny valley' off-putting about all the art. It either flagrantly goes against mood or body proportions. It's almost like a savant finding the "inexcusable failure from competency." :grin:

This is truly magical. MOAR! :shade:
 
what the fuck is happening

giphy.gif
 
SlenderSuccubus would be a little weird, but I'd bang 'em all. Have to watch out for the one who gets highbeams when she starts beating the shit out of Coalition Soldiers. There's worse ways to go, though.

18uiny995pi7ojpg.jpg


RIFTS: Macho Women With Guns

Or was we called it at my game table, RIFTS.
 
I took a look through Blood of Heroes: Special Edition and thought I'd contribute some large heads and long legs to proceedings.
Now we're reaching the point where the publisher needs to try harder. No background, no action, just posing there as if to say "Yes fanboy, you could be me..." Don't like it.
 
Now we're reaching the point where the publisher needs to try harder. No background, no action, just posing there as if to say "Yes fanboy, you could be me..." Don't like it.
Rather like many modern superhero comic book covers with all the posing for the reader.
 
Somehow I missed this thread.

Dumb question: is this really the art in the game? It is so bad it is kind of reverse awesome.
 
Somehow I missed this thread.

Dumb question: is this really the art in the game? It is so bad it is kind of reverse awesome.


Somehow sharing it online actually lessens the effect, actually flipping through the book, inundated with these images page after page is a SAN-loss activity
 
Playing City of Heroes again over the past few weeks makes me tempted to try to convert the CoH setting to Blood of Heroes. Granted, the City of Heroes setting actually started out as Jack Emmert's Champions campaign before it became a MMO video game, but DC Heroes/BoH is much more my jam.

Maybe I can put CoH screenshots over the BoH art...
 
The pic of the villainess with the tattered cape and the weird eyes isn't too bad.

The demoness/succubus, though... the expression 'legs up to here' really shouldn't be interpreted quite so literally.
 
Also, the third pic in that post - female in generic costume - isn't awful, but the use of color instead of bad b&w shading on the upper part of the costume might have helped to cover some of its flaws.
 
Most of these drawings bring back fuzzy flashbacks of comic art I swear I had seen in Wizard magazine back in the 90s.

I’m thinking that the guy just copied other art because there’s almost a “collage” look: as if some parts the guy full-on copied once And then redrew from memory.

In other words, I feel nauseous.
 
A lot of the original images are broken links for me. Anyone else having issues seeing them?
 
A lot of the original images are broken links for me. Anyone else having issues seeing them?

Some are, sadly. The Pub only accepts images below one MB in size, so I used an external image host to store the larger images. Unfortunately, the image host seems to have gone kaput.
 
My first post here (hello!) but I've been knocking about various forums for decades. I was drawn by the chat about the art on Blood of Heroes which is enough to put people off the game. The game itself as mentioned is fine and plays the same as 3rd edition. The wall of text may put people off but anyone who bought DCH 2e will have been somewhat let down by the drab look of the 3e game, which had some eye drooping text walls to contend with.

That said the game is absolutely ripe for an update/sort of clone. I've been running a play by post for over a decade and we dropped the tables years ago (and switched to D12s more recently) and it plays absolutely fine whilst being fully compatible with the stat blocks so that shows it can be done whilst being sufficiently different to scupper any over zealous lawyers. Things like Factor Costs for certain powers need changing (Attack powers for instance are far too cheap, and should come with only an Effect Value only) but that's a discussion for another thread I guess.

Anyway, this came in the post today. The 1st edition of the game without some of the eye bleeding art shown above. I bought it for completeness (I've got everything from 1e-3e and BOH 2e, plus this now.) and some of the art is reasonable, even. The characters though are cringe inducing and have stats pulled out of someones backside. Anyway, enjoy this fine cover showing someone with a clearly anatomically impossible neck unless they are having a really bad day at the hands of smoky eyed Skeletor.

boh-cover.jpg
 
My first post here (hello!) but I've been knocking about various forums for decades. I was drawn by the chat about the art on Blood of Heroes which is enough to put people off the game. The game itself as mentioned is fine and plays the same as 3rd edition. The wall of text may put people off but anyone who bought DCH 2e will have been somewhat let down by the drab look of the 3e game, which had some eye drooping text walls to contend with.

That said the game is absolutely ripe for an update/sort of clone. I've been running a play by post for over a decade and we dropped the tables years ago (and switched to D12s more recently) and it plays absolutely fine whilst being fully compatible with the stat blocks so that shows it can be done whilst being sufficiently different to scupper any over zealous lawyers. Things like Factor Costs for certain powers need changing (Attack powers for instance are far too cheap, and should come with only an Effect Value only) but that's a discussion for another thread I guess.

Hey, Welcome to the Pub!

I just wrapped up GMing some of this over the last few months, after having been in a totally joyful game of it about a year back. I have to say I'm pretty interested in your method of eliminating the tables/using d12s. As a player I was fine with the tables, but... it was 3 or 4 players. As GM I had upwards of 8 players (none with prior DCH experience), and the table's look-up time impact was more noticeable. I love the Hero Point bidding thing, but combined with unfamiliar players checking the charts to see where column break-points were, etc., it could be a thing.
 
I'll try to keep the explanation as simple as possible because I tried with a play example and it came out far crunchier than I intended :sad:

To accomplish actions:

Acting Value + 2D12

vs

Opposing Value + 2D12

If the Acting Value Total (AVT) is equal to or greater than the Opposing Value Total (OVT) look at the only table you'll ever need (I tried to keep it completely table free but had to write it down to prevent having to crunch maths every time). Anyway:

Vanguard-Tables-updated-Oct-2019.jpg


The red column is the one to look at. Find the difference between Acting Value Total (AVT) and Opposing Value Total (OVT) and look across to the adjacent column (the red 'Bonus to Effect Value' column). That shows a bonus to your effect value.

Effect Value (modified in the previous step) - Resistance Value = RAPs.

To score any RAPs you need to exceed the Resistance Value by one point or more otherwise it's a fail.

Combat Example.

Superguy Has Dex 7 Str 6 Body 6
Badguy Has Dex 6 Str 7 Body 7

Let's say Superguy wins initiative and socks Badguy in the mouth. (He deserves it).

If Superguy rolls 2D12 and gets... 13 (6+7) add that to Dex 7 for 20 Acting Value Total.
Badguy rolls 2D12 and gets... 8 (5 and 3) to add to Dex 6 for 14 opposing Value Total.

Acting Value Total 20 - Opposing Value Total 14 = 6 Difference.

Look on the red column. That's +3 Effect Value.

Superguy Effect value is Str 6 + 3 (9 total) - Badguy Resistance Value 7 = 2 RAPs.

Superguy smacks badguy in the mouth and gets knockback of +3 (but Badguy weighs in the 3 ap range and doesn't budge). Still, he takes 2 damage from body unless he soaks it up with last ditch defence (Blue Columns).

Skills and Hero Points work differently now, in that they add additional D12s to roll. So long as the first two dice don't come up with a fail result (double 1s) pick two dice to use from the pile and discard the rest. Someone like Batman rolls piles of dice every time. He's a grand master at everything. Superman on the other hand has higher Dex but is untrained at fighting and never really needed to train, so he rolls just 2D12 unless the player buys extra dice with Hero Points. If the two fought Batman would clean his clock. Apart from the higher stats of Superman of course...

Anyway, I *hope* that makes sense. I changed from D10s because it thins out the number of doubles after rolling piles of dice and it works just fine. I adjust fail rolls by +1 (so a roll of 2-3 fails instead of double 1, for instance).

Probably crunchy as hell to anyone who has no idea what Acting/Opposing/ Effect/Resistance Values are ...
 
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Welcome to the Pub J Jenx.

DC Heroes won’t get a clone because it’s owned by DC comics and they just recently published a Watchmen sourcebook with1st and 2nd edition DCH material. If anybody tries to clone it, it would be ripe for Warner Bros. attorneys to go at them.

I find the charts of 80s games as part of their charm and appeal
 
I'd agree with you about the clone but if you strip out the lore and rewrite everything in your own words with tweaked/changed rules to distance it, they won't have much of a leg to stand on for going after you. More so if you put it out for free, as they'd be after a cut of nothing. I'm sure you'd be familiar with Blacky the Blackballs amazing efforts with Dark Dungeons, Faserip, Masks and other games (Gurbintroll games on Drivethru). Amazing dedication, I barely make it through the first chapter with my efforts.

I think the trick is to make it compatible with, don't mention what it is exactly that it's compatible with and add your own special sauce.

And not add art that makes you embarrassed to open the darn thing. As per the thread...
 
Welcome to the Pub J Jenx.

I find the charts of 80s games as part of their charm and appeal

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the chart front as I'm of that era. Newer games make my eyes glaze over but look amazing for the most part, while some early 80s stuff looked crap quite often and played great.

The reason I ditched the chart was because I needed something I could post on the fly while GMing (PbP is the only way I play these days) and lugging stuff about whilst sat on a freight train in a siding for hours on end wasn't an option (though I did try it). Also Combat kills the flow in play by post. If you are waiting for the you go, I go, initiative posts over and over and applying tables/column shifts etc and looking up various things it kind of grinds to a halt.

Also Hero Points were a big headache. The players would amass mountains of them over the years and combats were "I add Hp to max out my AV and EV. How long is the bad guy KO'd for?" or along those lines. I wanted Dice to have a bigger say. With HP you can buy Dice for Acting or Opposing and it reflects the comic books with an outmatched Combatant sometimes winning despite the fact that they shouldn't have a chance. Spiderman vs Firelord for example. Spidey shouldn't even be able to hurt Firelord but with a super high roll and Firelord rolling low... A rematch would end with a Spider shaped cinder I'm sure but that one time Spidey beat a Galactus Herald. Yay for the little guy!

Anyway, those were the rationales, I've applied them, and they work :smile: But not for everyone, as purists love the rules as written and that's fine too.
 
Anyway, I *hope* that makes sense. I changed from D10s because it thins out the number of doubles after rolling piles of dice and it works just fine. I adjust fail rolls by +1 (so a roll of 2-3 fails instead of double 1, for instance).

Probably crunchy as hell to anyone who has no idea what Acting/Opposing/ Effect/Resistance Values are ...

Aye, it makes sense. I also see the math in it and why you still want your own chart. It's interesting stuff. It looks like it speeds things up a little (at least 1 less chart, Hero Point expenditure is more in "chunks for dice" rather that 1-up bidding games, etc.), and I'm intrigued enough to wonder how it feels at the table. I think it's a game that calls for a good cloning (or heavily inspired derivative) myself and have brainstormed on ways to speed up the resolution step, but my ideas ended up essentially trading "look up on a table" time for "do math on the dice" time, getting me nowhere :-)
 
I don't ever remember that in any gaming writeups! I stand corrected, Superman clearly has one or two extra tricks up his blue sleeves. Assuming the current writer remembers what the writer six guys previous wrote :tongue:

Curt Swan art? The Superman I grew up with (until John Byrnes more simple style replaced him in my affections for drawing Superman).
 
Most of these drawings bring back fuzzy flashbacks of comic art I swear I had seen in Wizard magazine back in the 90s.

I get the same feeling. Not that they're from Wizard, but that the art is the same kind of thing I used to see in independent comics of the very late 80s and early 90s.

In the early 90s I was a regular attendee of the comic shop, and it was the age of Diamond Previews. After you got past Marvel, DC, Valiant, and merch, Previews was absolutely packed with listings for b&w comics with art like Blood of Heroes had.

Plus, my partner had a thing for the cheap comic racks back then. One store had a back room with a rack and bin with 4 comics for 25 cents, while another just had a bin where each comic was ten cents or something. He'd trawl through those all the time. He discovered so much strange comic stuff, and an amazing amount of it looked just like Blood of Heroes.

The art in Blood of Heroes isn't to my taste, but I'm sure I've seen worse or at least stuff I've liked less.

---

As someone who is just getting into DC Heroes via 1e, I'm a bit impressed how the chart doesn't bother me at all. The read-this-first book explains it well, and took what initially seemed a clustermess and instead made me feel it was a really slick and intuitive way of doing things. I'll have to see how I feel after a bit of play. I mean, after years of MSH play I sometimes want to do away with the color chart. But time will tell.
 
Blood of Heroes still has better art than Icons tbh
 
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