My OGG's House Rules for HERO 5th Edition

Yes, I know HERO System is now on 6th Edition.

But my old gaming group (OGG) is still on 5th Edition, with a few tweaks as listed below, for reasons listed below as well.

Why am I reviewing them? I'm building some NPCs for them, and sending them some of my old PCs rebuilt. For the heck of it. What the heck, I'm diving into it already for Weird Adventures.

House Rule 1

No Megascale.

I assume that this is because it's too cheap, and my buddies are classic rules, uh, lawyers.

House Rule 2

+1 stun multiplier is 1/2 advantage not 1/4.

"The new 5th edition rules make +1/4 advantage for +1 stun but most of us agree that its a ridiculous thing to do. Imagine 30 points 1d6 RKA +4 STUN. It makes for a very unbalancing campaign. It really needs to stay at +1/2 advantage."

"Imagine the following 105 Active Point power:

1d6 ReKA NND Autofire AE (1 Hex), 0 End, +10 STUN multiple

That will average, if you have an 11 OCV and get 44 STUN per hit, with 5 hits (average roll hits the hex 5 times) doing 220 STUN or 110 STUN if you have 1/2 Reduction.

Same cost as a 7d6 Killing Attack, which averages 24.5 BODY and 74 STUN against which defenses are applied.

If you look at the same Active Points (105) with the same Advantages, except no extra STUN multiple, you get almost a 1 1/2d6 or 2d6-1 Killing Attack (this would actually cost 112 points), averaging 16 STUN per hit for 80 STUN total or 40 vs 1/2 Reduction.

Even less reasonable, in a low powered game (60-70 Active Points max), you could buy the first power at 1d6-1 and hit 70 Active Points averaging 32 STUN per hit or 160 STUN total for the 5 hits - destructive in the extreme in a low powered game."

House Rule 3

Old school multipower rules: the Active Points of a power can never exceed the Active Points of a reserve, and you can have as many Real Points active as you have points in your reserve.

For example, for a 60 point reserve you could have two 60 point slots each with a one limitation on at the same time.