If I wanted to make the PCs more heroic in a system that's

>>49709470
>Should I just go with hero points of some sort?

That's a good idea. But what's the system?

>>49709470
It just massively depends on the system. Sometimes it might be as simple as adding something on, like hero points, other times it might be a bit more involved.

>>49709564

Praedor. It's a Finnish system, so it's probably not going to help a lot. It's a neat system that's both fast and fairly "realistic", in that it produces beliveable results and doesn't bog down. It's a punchy sword & sorcery system.

In play, however, it can also be pretty grim n' gritty, and player characters can die easily due to a bit of bad luck. It's a system I enjoy using, but I wouldn't mind injecting some swashbuckley heroics into it. Making the characters superhumanly strong would more or less defeat the point of using the system in the first place, so I feel a mechanic that allows them do defy danger or carry out heroic stunts instead of being all-around superhumans would work a lot better.

>>49709618

Yeah Fate Points, Grit Points, Hero Points or whatever you can name them should be okay.

Look at things like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2ed, Mutants and Masterminds 3E, 7th Sea and say Legend of the Five Rings for how it can be done.

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>>49709618
>finnish rpg

What's it like?

As for you question, give them some slight advantage would be my advice.

For instance, they find a wounded warrior with a magic sword, he gives them the sword for bandaging him up.

>>49709692
Well, the basic mechanic is that you have a skill or an attribute in the range of (technically) 3-20. In practice, it's going to be around 7-15 at the beginning, 10 being an average person in the craft, 15 being an expert or nearly a master.

Depending on the difficulty of the task, you rull a certain amount of d6s. Usually, it's 2d6 to 4d6, and the most basic roll (the "use this if you can't figure out which it should be" roll) is 3d6. If you score under your stat or skill, you succeed, with more margin being better (divided into thresholds of basic, 5 below and 10 below).

In practice, it's a very nice dynamic system, where you have two factors for success. Usually there are no numerical bonuses or penalties, just more or less dice, which is easy to remember in a hurry.

Combat system is basically attack vs parry, with degrees of success determining who succeeds and how much (predictably enough) with hit locations and armor that reduces damage. You have hit points, but if you take enough damage in one hit (exactly how much is determined by your stats, mainly constitution), you're going to suffer a critical hit, which is usually really bad for you. Bleeding, penalties and incapability to act.

Basically, even a regular strike with a broadsword against an unarmored, average person is going to cause a critical if you land it. If you're wearing armor, though, you're more protected from instantly getting maimed, and more likely to be whittled down through attrition instead. That being said, a solid blow from a damaging weapon (especially since damage dice explode) can fuck you up badly.

Basically, it's a system where you're really not going to want to face many opponents, and where getting hit is going to suck badly. It's possible to be a hero and all, but usually reality kicks in pretty badly and it ends about as well as you'd expect.

>>49709845

Oh, I should also mention that in combat, you have an action for each hand, and (in theory) an endless number of reactions (parries and the like). However, for each action or reaction, the next one for that hand in that round is going to have a penalty die.

So, for example, if I'm wielding a sword and attack (a 3d6 roll, unless I'm wounded or otherwise penalized), and after that have to parry, the parry is going to be a 4d6 roll. If I had a shield, I could use that to parry with 3d6, since I'm using a different hand. Which means that even a very good warrior will get overwhelmed quickly if he's up against multiple opponents. Armor becomes indispensable when you can't possibly guard against every blow.

You can also dodge, which doesn't use your hands and basically works in the same way, but you need space and dodging while armored is really tough.

(Incidentally, it also means that RAW two-handed weapons are terrible, since they use both of your hands and thus ruin your defense. No amount of extra damage is going to help you when you're dead.)

Lower the difficulty of everything, make cutting down hordes of minions a single roll. And if they fail, they still cut them down, but these scrubs got a lucky hit in, or the battle was too intense for their weapon and it broke in the process, or they are delayed long enough for the bad guy to escape. Basically anything but they lose. But out the full combat system only for important, named characters, they're the only ones badass enough to kill/seriously hurt the PCs.

"Say yes" to cool shit, call for no roll, or just a super easy one. Have NPCS have heard of the PCs, have most of them be in awe of the PCs deeds. Have them come to the PCS for aid on their reputation alone.

A heroic game is about the tone the GM lays down, not about dice reroll points.

It's simple.

Lie to your players.

That dragon that they should curve stomp stat wise. Describe it as a D&D 20th level obliterate of entire towns. Describe every attack it does as if it should tear players apart and rips a-part the scenery every miss and the the player only took survivable wounds because it barley clipped them. Every hit barely wounds the beast and the final one is the one that actually does damage but only dies due to the wounds it took before.

Just lie your ass off and make them think they're actually winning the lotto in the gamiest gambling you're telling them they're playing. They won't know the difference unless you tell them and telling them will ruin the game. Adding mechanics or more dice rolls to make it seem "more heroic" is disingenuous as you aren't giving them the experience you're just naively thinking the dice will give it to them. Lie like every good script writter and movie directer cause the ending was already set in stone but they have to make you swallow the lie that it wasn't and there was a chance something bad could happen and the movie would end there or do some weird jump to party b to finish up the tale. It's all about the audience willfully swallowing the lie that you're presenting and your players are the audience and no game mechanic is going to give you exactly what you want only remove in your mind the responsibility of it failing or succeeding.

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>>49709470
>make the PCs more heroic
Heroism isn't determined by power-level. The players decide how heroic they want to be. You can be a hero in any game system, it's a question of how your character acts when the chips are down and no-one's watching, not about posturing for a crowd when you know you'll win.

If your players are acting like punks who throw their morals out the window at the first sign of anything that's a real threat to them, then no amount of power-wanking is going to change that. All it will do is change the threshold at which the players piss themselves and cry for mommy, or else make them believe that they are unstoppable so they react to everything the same way.

>>49711864
To be the Devil's Advocate, while heroism isn't determined by power level, it IS related, specifically to agency.

In the 40krpgs for example, there are HUGE fail/miss chances, so that in combat or out of combat, it is rare for PCs to succeed at their actions.

On the other hand the PCs have many extra lives, so a PC has to be killed typically on 3 separate sessions before dying for real.

Low agency, high survival.

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>>49709930
>so 2d6 is easy and 4d6 is going to be a greater challenge

Is that right?

Id just lower the dice count for the pcs by 1d6 with never going under 2d6 rolls. Make this not count for common npc good guys as well as bad guys. That way your combat is a little more effective because of grit, better training, natural skill.

>>49709470 (OP)
Why do one never see ogre/giant skellingtons in published material/adventures? :(

>>49709470
Try the Deus ex Machina

At the beginning of the game, characters get a Deus ex Machina token. It can be used in the same fashion Deus ex Machinas are used in storytelling: to instantly write the character out of the horrible trouble into which he has gotten himself. Even if a character were to die, he may immediately use his Deus ex Machina to negate that problem. The GM should always try to make up interesting reasons that the characters were saved. It is a plot device after all.

A character's Deus ex Machina is refreshed at the end of major plot arcs. This way, characters can face horrible things, but they'll probably be alive for the plot.

I made this up to go with a simple and lethal homebrew system I made for horror games in order to make it accessible to other levels of adventure.

>>49711864

That being said, it's going to be a shitton harder to be a dashing hero doing cool, swashbuckley stuff when the system you're using slaps that kind of shit down as fast as possible.

I mean, a heroic last stand against impossible odds is cool and all, but an endless string of those doesn't make for a very good campaign.

>>49713194
People don't have to be invincible or die instantly to do things that are heroic or commendable. It's quite possible to be heroic and sensible at the same time. Have the right reasons in your heart, do the best you can, help people in real and noticeable ways, but don't randomly throw your life away when it's not worth it. Think about what you'd actually accomplish and whether that's worth dying for.