Ever put up wallpaper? Basically, you take these big strips of rolled up paper, put paste on them, and stick them to the wall. No matter how good you are at it, though, with all the variables involved, you can't help but trap some air bubbles underneath the paper. So, you take a tool to smooth out all the bubbles so the paper looks like you want it to.

A roleplaying campaign can be like that. No matter how good you are, with all the variables, people involved, and wacky die rolls, you occasionally get some "bubbles." Bubbles in this sense are characters dying in silly situations rather than exciting or dramatic ones, characters (PCs and NPCs) not performing as well as they should because of die rolls, and so on.

That's what hero points are for in Arcana Unearthed. To smooth out the bubbles.

How fast characters earn hero points is entirely up to the discretion of the DM (which, if the DM wants, can be never). Hero points are awarded for doing something heroic (hence the name), as the DM sees it. The more heroic things a character does, the more hero points he or she gets, and thus the more heroic things the character's able to do. Thus overall heroic flavor feeds itself, although using a hero point can never earn you a new hero point.

So what can a character do with a hero point? Well, there are obvious, sort of mundane things one can do: increase an attack roll, a saving throw, AC for a round, a skill check, and so on. But it's also a bit more open-ended than that. A character can act out of turn. He or she can change the parameters of a spell, or do something that the rules don't allow -- or would suggest would be very, very hard. There are guidelines, but a lot is left up to the DM's discretion, which is why it's also up to the DM to decide how many hero points to hand out.

Hero points change the tenor of the game. If you use them a lot, death will be less frequent in your game, and the characters will (occasionally) be slightly better suited to take on challenges beyond their reach. Since most players save them to use them defensively, though, it doesn't really make characters more fearsome -- just more survivable. On average, a character gets about a hero point a level, unless the character's got the Born Hero feat (which is a talent, and thus can be taken only at 1st level).

Hero points are a great example of what I mean by putting more power back in the hands of the DM. It's an opportunity for DMs to subtly fine-tune how heroic and/or cinematic their game will be, and how often the characters are likely to face death.

 

DESIGN DIARY PAST ENTRIES

* Truenames -- April 18, 2003
"Truenames are common in many fantasy settings. I think I first became aware of the concept in Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy..."

* Go, Go, Go! -- April 10, 2003
"Short entry this time. I hate spells with 1 minute/level durations...."

* Ceremony -- April 3, 2003
"I think I've already mentioned that one of the goals I set for myself with Arcana Unearthed was to make things a little less generic...."

* Things That Rules Take Away -- March 21, 2003
"There are aspects of fantasy roleplaying that rules, inadvertently, can actually take away...."

* Still Talking Classes -- March 13, 2003
"I've saved some of the best classes for last. Let's talk about the runethane, the mage blade, and the witch...."

* More Classes -- February 27, 2003
"This time, I want to tell you about some of the other classes: akashics, magisters, and greenbonds...."

* Build a Better Fighter -- February 23, 2003
"The title this week is facetious. It really should be 'build a different fighter'...."

* The Magic Balancing Act -- February 13, 2003
"In Arcana Unearthed I'm introducing a new method of magic item pricing. First, I streamlined the item creation feats..."

* More Magic -- January 23, 2003
"This week, I thought I'd talk more about the new magic system in Arcana Unearthed."

* Magic -- January 17, 2003
"As a designer, magic in Arcana Unearthed posed a huge challenge. I knew that I wanted to ditch the Vancian system...."

* Design Decisions, Part Two -- December 24, 2002
"Here's a bit more discussion of some of the general issues I faced as I began designing Arcana Unearthed...."

* Design Decisions, Part One -- December 19, 2002
"Before jumping into another big area of Arcana Unearthed's design, like classes or the magic system, I thought I'd discuss some of the general issues I faced as a designer starting the book...."

* Arcana Unearthed Races -- December 5, 2002
"I started with the races. While I knew that the game needed humans as a basis, I wanted all the other races to be new. I didn't want to just create dwarf and elf analogs with different names...."