[RPG]: Supers Week - DC Heroes, Third Edition, reviewed by Lev Lafayette (3/4)

[RPGnet Reviews]

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12960.phtml

Lev Lafayette's Summary:

A solid game with some excellent system ideas and fair support for the DC comic universe. The dense text is a little hard on the eyes, but is well organised.

Go to the full review (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12960.phtml) for more information.

[Ron]

Good review of what I consider to be the best superhero game ever made. Just a note, though: despite you discomfort with the high range value of the 2d10 open ended resolution system, you should realize it is necessary if you want to represent the incredible variability of power level found in comics.

[yorrick]

Nice review. I DID play DC Heroes for several years in high school and college, spanning the 2nd and 3rd editions, and it proved to be a robust and enjoyable system. I fall in the camp of feeling that the system does not distinguish very well between characters at lower AP levels, as loses granularity FAST at the bottom of the scale.

I've also never really understood what some of the non-physical attributes represent-specifically, how they are distinct from each other. How you could have a high Will score and a low Mind, or exactly how Influence and Aura are supposed to be different escapes me. But if you ignore the similarities and look at these attributes as they fit into the Action-Effect-Resistance framework of the system, they function beautifully.

And DC Heroes is the best system I've ever used for high-end, world-class types of characters like the modern Justice League because the AP values system scales so well at the high end.

As far as the look of the 3rd edition, it is astonishing to me how far layout, graphic design, and artwork have come in the RPG world since this book came out. It must have been a question of economics, because I cannot see otherwise how you could have a franchise like DC, with a huge amount of art pieces associated with household name characters, and produce a book as bland and text-heavy as this one. It's like Hero 5th edition with what looks like smaller type in places.

If you can get past the coma inducing layout, which really works against the mood of getting ready to simulate "comic book action!" then you'll find very solid rules, clearly written and well organized. And the game within is great.

[Strange Visitor]

DCH was a very sound game, probably one of the three best basic supers game designs ever done. It did have a few issues though:

1. Hero Points: This was two-fold; first off, its almost always a mistake to conflate together metagame resource points designed to move the plot and points used for character progression; in the long run it always favors those who _don't_ want to move the plot, since they end up with better characters. Secondly, the ones in DCH tended to have so much impact all too many fights ended up as an exercise in seeing who would run out the Hero Point hose first.

2. The Three characteristic stacks: This was one of those clever ideas that didn't end up producing as benign a result as one could like. It had a very nasty habit of overwhelmingly selecting for characters who could attack on at least two of the three tracks, and to the contrary, heavily counterselected against characters weak in any of the areas. The first was actually acerbated by the fact that the damage against one of the three of Mind, Body and Spirit had no contribution from those against the others, so it was very attractive to be able to join in on whichever category your teammates worked in.

3. At typical power ranges, many if not most of the combat manuevers were either pointless or actively counterproductive, making it all too easy to just get into slugging away.

There were also some issues with the costs or operation of some individual powers, but that tends to be a problem in almost all superhero game designs, and as with all, is one of the areas most easily addressed with houseruling.

[DBray]

Been a great system for me so far, just started using it recently. Anyone have any useful house rules for it?




DBray