Hero Points

[Thomas Austin]

Several campaign journals have made references to "Hero Points". This is a new concept for me, although it kinda sounds like "Good Stuff" points from the Amber diceless RPG.

Can someone explain the rules here? Are these found in a pub somewhere or are they house rules?

TIA,

Tom

[Lilith]

Well, in Eberron, you get Action Points, which give you an additional number of dice to add to a roll. Hero Points vary, sometimes being a tally of "rerolls" or automatic successes you can use to tip the odds in your favor.

[Fatespinner]

A friend of mine invented a house rule system he called 'Karma Points.' Each player starts with 1 point (represented by dice, tokens, whatever we had available). When you do something that the DM considers 'heroic,' often with significant risk, you get another Karma Point. A Karma Point may be used to automatically succeed on any failed d20 roll (meaning you only use the point after you know success or failure). You can also spend Karma to assist the other players (if they are out of Karma themselves, for example).

However, Karma has a kickback: When you spend a Karma Point, it goes into a little bowl next to the DM. The DM can then use those Karma Points at his leisure to do the same thing for NPCs. The only caveat is that the DM's Karma Pool is emptied at the start of each game while the players retain theirs over time. So, if you spend a Karma Point, the DM has to use his point THAT SESSION or he loses it. It was kind of a neat system.

[Marcos]

Thomas,

Here is a link to where you can read over what Action Points can do:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm

I use them in my Shackled City campaign and they work great. My players love them. :-)

Good Gaming,
Mark

[farewell2kings]

I use both Action Points and Hero Points.

Action Points are used as per the conventional rules regarding their use, except that I only award them for timely arrival at the gaming table, 1 point per gaming session.

Hero Points are special awards given when a PC does something "above and beyond" extraordinary, something exceptionally self-less or courageous that threatened the PC with permanent extinction. I've only given out hero points to three PC's in my current 2.5 year campaign.

They can be used to keep yourself alive in the most dire situation. The use of a hero point undoes something really, really bad, for example and the results are flexible and situation appropriate, and decided by me, as the DM.

[Sean, Minister of KtSP]

I use a loose variation of Eberron's Action Points. In addition to giving points back to players for doing cool things, I also give each player one point a session if they can make me laugh. In game or out of game, I don't care. Funny is funny.

I may have to start using the reclamation system Fatespinner mentioned. That sounds perfectly fair.