Hero Dice
From D20advanced
Characters in d20 Advanced have a dice pool of hero dice which players can spend to improve the characters' abilities in various ways. You can spend a hero dice to push an ability or FX beyond its normal capabilities, bounce back from being hurt, and achieve various other effects. In addition, you can use your hero dice pool to re-roll any check.
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Uses of Hero Dice
Reroll
At any time, you may reroll any check with your Hero Dice Pool. Roll the entire pool of dice at once and select the highest result. Use that result in place of your original check. After rerolling in this way, you lose one Hero Die from your Hero Dice pool.
Reroll and Defenses
You may also use the reroll ability as a reaction to having an opponent overcome one of your defenses. You may roll your Hero Dice Pool and select the highest result to add to your Defense total.
Gain Feat
By spending one Hero Die, you may gain the benefits of any one feat you don't have (including FX feats, which could allow you to use an entirely new Alternate FX). You may use this option to gain any feat except for Fortune feats (which require Hero Dice to function already).
Rapid Counter
You may spend a Hero Die to attempt to counter an FX, as if you had readied an action to do so.
Recover
As a free action, you may spend a Hero Die to gain a free recovery attempt against a condition. You may make an immediate recovery check as a free action. If you succeed, you lose the condition as normal. If you fail, reduce the severity of the condition by one step on the condition track. If you are injured, spending a Hero Point allows you an immediate recovery check for two actions. The condition turns out to be not as bad as it first seemed, and you are able to act more normally.
Surge
You gain an additional action on your turn. You may use this action to attack, move, make a skill check, use an FX, or any other activity which takes one action.
Survive
If a character would be killed, or is at risk of dying from bleeding out, you may spend a Hero Die to stabilize. You aren't able to rejoin the fight immediately, but your character is no longer at risk to die from that condition. Note that subsequent attacks could still kill a fallen character, requiring another expenditure of Hero Dice.
Creative Control
A player may, at times, want to provide his own input into a scene. He may ask for a hint for how to progress, or he might "edit in" something to a scene.
A player asking for a hint is akin to having a burst of inspiration, a "eureka!" moment, if you will. The player pays a Hero Die and receives a hint or a clue as to how to proceed. The GM should try not to make the help too great so as to completely negate a challenge (and fun), but should also keep in mind that a player is giving up a significant resource for this hint, so it should be likewise significant.
Similarly, a player who wishes to "edit something in" may spend a Hero Die to do so. Someone might be fighting bandits raiding the town near a fireplace, and lacking a weapon, yank a red-hot poker out of the fire. The GM might not have mentioned it before, but by spending a Hero Die, the option is on-hand for the character.
This use of Hero Dice is intended to allow players input into the direction the game is taking and a degree of creative control. A GM should feel free to veto a use of Hero Dice in this way, but should only do so if such an "edit" would significantly disrupt the game (such as finding a rocket launcher under the table in a schoolhouse, or an alien death ray in a fantasy setting). If it's a reasonable request which doesn't give the player undue advantage or disrupt the verisimilitude of the game overall, then it's probably okay to allow.
Earning Hero Dice
All characters start each game session with a single Hero Die. Characters can earn Hero Dice for any number of things during a game. For the most part, players should be rewarded Hero Dice when unforeseen complications arise to make things considerably more difficult for them.
Setbacks
Setbacks are when things just aren’t going the character’s way. When a character suffers a significant failure, the player gets a hero die. Generally, a “significant failure” is a failed skill check or suffering with the worst possible result of an attack: a Climb check where the hero falls, a Damage Roll where the character is knocked out, an effect which successfully mind-controls the character, and so forth. The GM decides if a particular failure is significant or not. Generally, routine failures, like missing an attack roll or suffering some lesser effect from an attack, is not significant enough to count as a setback and earn a hero die.
A newly acquired hero die cannot be used to eliminate the setback that granted it. So you can’t suffer a significant failure and then spend the hero die you get to avoid failing, and you can’t get knocked out by a tough Damage Roll and spend the hero die immediately to try and wake up. You can spend hero dice you already have, but if you overcome a setback by spending a hero die you don’t gain a hero die for that setback, since it isn’t really a setback!
Setbacks and Genre
Awarding hero dice for setbacks isn't appropriate (nor should it be the same) for all genres of play. While it works well for four-color adventures where heroes are expected to bounce back after facing hardships to save the day, grimmer adventures might not reward characters suffering hardship with hero dice, since that's the whole point of grim and gritty adventures! Or the GM may only grant hero dice when a setback is particularly terrible (like losing a limb).
Complications
Complications are essentially setbacks players choose for their characters in advance. If a particular complication causes a significant setback for a character, it’s worth a hero die award. Possible complications, and their uses in adventures, include:
- Accident: You cause or suffer some sort of accident. Perhaps during a battle, you cause significant collateral damage or injure innocent bystanders. The GM decides the effects of an accident, but they should be troublesome. Accidents can lead to further complications; perhaps the character develops a guilt-complex, obsession, or phobia involving the accident (see Madness).
- Addiction: You need something, whether for physical or psychological reasons. You’ll go out of your way to satisfy your addiction, and being unable to satisfy it may lead to a temporary weakness drawback. When your addiction causes you a setback, that’s a complication.
- Enemy: You have an enemy, or enemies, trying to do you harm. The GM can have your enemy show up to cause you trouble, and adventures involving your enemy tend to be more complicated for you; even personal grudge-matches, if the enmity goes both ways. When having an enemy causes a particular problem for you (such as your enemy abducting a loved on), you get a hero die.
- Fame: You’re a public figure, known almost everywhere you go, hounded by the media, swamped by fans and well-wishers, and similar problems.
- Hatred: You have an irrational hatred of something, leading you to actively oppose the object of your dislike in some way, no matter the consequences.
- Honor: You have a strong personal code of honor. Generally this means you won’t take unfair advantage of opponents or use trickery, but you can define the exact terms of your code with the GM. Honor is only a complication when it puts you in a bind or on the horns of a moral dilemma.
- Obsession: You’re obsessed with a particular subject and pursue it to the exclusion of all else, which can create some complications.
- Phobia: You’re irrationally afraid of something. When confronted with it you have to fight to control your fear, causing you to hesitate or act irrationally (and earning a hero die).
- Prejudice: You are part of a minority group subject to the prejudices of others. Some Gamemasters and gaming groups may prefer not to deal with issues of prejudice in their games, in which case the GM is free to ban this complication.
- Reputation: You have a bad reputation, affecting what others think of you (whether you deserve it or not). Having someone adopt a bad attitude toward you because of your reputation is a complication.
- Responsibility: You have various demands on your time and attention. Responsibilities include family obligations, professional duties, and similar things. Failing to live up to your responsibilities can mean loss of relationships, employment, and other problems.
- Rivalry: You feel a strong sense of competition with a person or group and have to do your best to outdo your rival at every opportunity.
- Secret: You have something potentially damaging or embarrassing you’re hiding from the world. Occasionally, something (or someone) may threaten to reveal your secret.
- Temper: Certain things just set you off. When you lose your temper you lash out at whatever provoked you.
You get a hero die for each encounter where a complication comes into play. The GM decides when a particular complication comes up, although you can offer suggestions on suitable opportunities.
You should choose one or two regular complications for your character, and feel free to suggest others to the Gamemaster during play. The GM decides what complications are appropriate and can overrule any particular complication, depending on the needs of the story. Keep in mind the adventure needs to have room for all the characters’ complications, so individual ones can only come up so often.
Complications can (and generally should) change over the course of a campaign: old enemies die or are put away for life, rivalries and psychological issues are resolved, new romances and relationships begin, and so forth. Work with the GM to come up with new complications for your character as old ones are resolved. The Gamemaster may set limits on how many ongoing complications your hero can have in play at any given time.
Nature
Often, a character's Nature can cause setbacks for the character. A hopeful character might be faced with crushing despair, causing him to crumble, or an overzealous character must come to grips with other people's differences. When a character acts according to his nature (and especially when such an action causes the character a setback), then the character should be given a hero die award.
Memorable Moments
There are just some times when a character says something so perfect or does something so unbelievably awesome that the whole table starts cheering. When players come together to create moments that really excite everyone, or just do such a great job at making the game fun for everyone, they should be rewarded with hero dice for their hard work. The point of the game is to have fun, after all, so you should reward players who make the game more fun!
Fiat
Lastly, players earn hero dice when the Gamemaster “bends” the rules of the game in favor of the bad guys. The GM essentially gets to use a hero die on behalf of the villain(s), but the heroes get hero dice themselves when this happens. Some uses for GM Fiat include:
- Giving a non-player character the benefit of a hero die.
- Allowing a villain to escape an encounter automatically. Circumstances conspire to allow the villain to get away scot-free: debris blocks pursuit, the villain goes missing in an explosion or falls to a mysterious “death,” and so forth.
- Have a character automatically suffer the worst possible effect from a particular hazard, like a villain’s trap, to help further the game.
- Have the characters automatically surprised by an opponent at the start of an encounter.
- Cause some additional problem for the characters. Essentially, bringing a complication into play can be seen a use of GM Fiat.
A good rule of thumb with Gamemaster Fiat is any time the GM effectively grants a non-player character the benefits of a hero die or the equivalent, the affected character or characters get a hero die in exchange. This is important, since only the characters have and earn hero dice. NPCs make use of GM Fiat as the Gamemaster sees fit.
The Gamemaster should make an effort to use both GM Fiat and the authority to award hero dice fairly, to make the adventure more fun and exciting. See Part III: Running the Game for more information on awarding hero dice and using Gamemaster Fiat.
 Option: Removing Hero Dice
You may decide that the cinematic edge that Hero Points give characters is inappropriate for your game. If you choose to remove Hero Dice from your game, you should understand that combat will tend to become more random and risky to the PCs, as a lucky damage roll from their opponents could leave them unconscious on the first attack very easily. You may consider increasing the base Toughness resistance from 5 to 10 to help alleviate the difficulty of being unable to spend a hero die to temporarily increase a character's Toughness resistance. |
