Players abusing hero points to the detriment of the game

[Ravingdork]

My Foundry players recently discovered that I use an automated timer to remind me to give out a hero point each hour.

Soon after, everything in our games slowed down so that our two hour sessions have more than doubled to five hours!

At first I thought maybe it was just from waning interest or distractions from life events during play. However, one of the players reached out to me, concerned, saying that multiple others are deliberately dragging their feet so that they can get more hero points out of me for the same number of encounters, thereby increasing their odds of success on important rolls. They don't see it as cheating since the rules allow for this, but at least one player regrets losing our quick encounters.

Has anyone else encountered this player phenomenon?

[TheWayofPie]

That is insane. I have never encountered something like that before, but then again most of my PF2e gaming has been me being in the same 1-2 groups.

[Unicore]

As a GM, the time constraints I have are pretty set in stone. If I can play for 2 hours, then the session ends after 2 hours. If we only get through 1 encounter in that time, we only get through 1 encounter.

But if I was worried about your issue, and was able to often go longer than anticipated, I would switch from giving HPs every hour, to deciding at the beginning of the session how many ai was going to give out and then stick to that whether the session goes long or not.

[Red Griffyn]

I've never heard of this. People spending an excessively longtime to take their turn is a big pet peeve of mine. I haven't GM'd on foundry in a while, but when I last did I used the combat tracker that put a reticle on the person who's turn it was, and it played a sound or put another reticle on the person on deck (in case it was people getting distracted and not on purpose).

But turning the entire game into a slog because of their anxiety over failing a roll needs to be addressed because it sucks the fun out of everything.

There are multiple ways to try and address this that are varying degrees of carrot/stick:

- Talk to them and confirm (not just from one source) that this is happening. Identify that its impacting the enjoyment of others (including yourself?) and say you'd like to avoid that behaviour (even if it isn't cheating in their minds). Failures are often the most fun parts of TTRPGs so honestly it feels like they're robbing the table of memorable fail moments.

- If hero points are going to become a negative perhaps you should just remove them.

- Start rewarding hero points to people who take quick turns and explicitly state that. Incentivize the behaviours you want.

- Put real life turn time limits (say 2 mins per turn?) and if you fail to give me a concrete thing you want to do then you auto delay and move down the initiative order and maybe lose your turn if you can't figure out something by the end of the round.

- Start handing out HPs like they're candy so trying to manifest more by making the game less fun is devalued. I mean in PFS you get a bunch for GM stars to hand out, I gave them out for people bringing snacks to share, carpooling someone to a game, etc. so it need not be all in game incentives.

- Start villain points so the enemies every 30 minutes so they there is a biased negative impact to needlessly delaying (you don't have to use them BTW lol)

- Give more consumables that might provide the same benefits as hero points so they aren't fishing for them.

- Say you're going to move to milestone hero point assignment (whether you do it or not is up to you, but maybe break up the pattern of why and when you hand out HPs so they don't try to gamify the mechanic on you).

- Change to handing out hero points for 'acts' not for time. Especially focus on rewarding out of combat hero point usage so they don't feel like they have to save them for some death roll or something and can spend them on potentially frivolous NPC rolls.

[Ravingdork]

Unicore wrote:

As a GM, the time constraints I have are pretty set in stone. If I can play for 2 hours, then the session ends after 2 hours.

That still helps them get more hero points, since you start each session with 1. More short sessions only helps them.

Maybe I can use that very thing to sell them on keeping things moving quickly.

I'll likely implement some of Red Griffyn's ideas as well. Thanks all!

[WatersLethe]

Put hero points in with regular loot and rewards. If they're not acquiring rewards they're not advancing the game.

[Mathmuse]

I give only one hero point per session. Thus, lengthening the session would not increase the number of hero points.

This is because of my own personal flaw. I totally understand Ravingdork using an automated timer to remind him of hero point awards. Back in PF1 I would forget to give hero points for awesome behavior. Usually when a PC did something amazing, I immediately had to figure out how the opponents or NPCs reacted to it. I had no thought for hero points.

My wife invented a correction. At the end of each game session while I added up the Experience Points, we would have a review of the awesome activities of the PCs and I would reward the Most Valuable Player Character with a hero point. If that character was already at the maximum of 3 hero points, then the hero point would go to the 2nd MVPC, etc. In the PF1 system hero points are retained across sessions, but a player can have at most three.

This MVPC system worked so well, partly because it was also praised the players, that when we switched to PF2, we kept the PF1 hero point system and the MVPC award. I replaced the +4 and +8 bonuses with rerolls, because PF2 shuns big bonuses. Buying an extra action with a hero point felt simpler with PF2's action system. We did not adapt MVPC to the PF2 system, because that system removes all hero points at the end of session. An end-of-session award would have been immediately erased or required different rules from the other hero points.

Maybe Raving Dork should try the PF1 MVPC system for a few sessions, starting everyone with three hero points but giving out only one per session. Even if it flops, the break might give the players time to rethink their bad habit of delaying for rewards.

WatersLethe wrote:

Put hero points in with regular loot and rewards. If they're not acquiring rewards they're not advancing the game.

Actually, this gives a way to adapt the MVPC system to PF2 hero-point rules. Find plot points in the missions where Ravingdork could stop the game and review recent actions for an MVPC award. The search for loot after a hard battle is a typical slowdown good for this purpose. Since they will mostly occur midgame, the erasure of hero points won't be immediate. For the MVPC review at the end of the game, give out loot instead of a hero point, or a "You start the next session with 2 hero points" award.

[Charlie Brooks]

I usually give out hero points with story XP awards or after severe or higher encounters. Works well to tie the rewards into the actual adventure rather than putting them on a timer.

[Perpdepog]

My group and I are really bad at remembering to hand out Hero Points. We do sometimes, but will often forget. One of our GMs now hands out three Hero Points at the beginning of the session, and that's how many you have.
I have adopted the rule that if a PC rolls a nat 1 on a d20 they are granted a Hero Point, though they can't use that point to immediately reroll their 1. I've found it takes some of the sting out of crit failing, and gives the party a bit more incentive to do lots of stuff, because doing stuff means rolling, and rolling means points they can then use for cooler turns later.

[Lightning Raven]

Just switch things up.

The game suggests, but does not mandate the handing out of hero points. Putting a big reminder to give out Hero Points for fun stuff, even if they're not big, is also another good way.

Using their feats well, having a particularly good turn and so on.

The issue here is making handing out hero points "rote". Our party does something similar, which is when we have our break and come back with an extra hero point, but it's never timed.

[Kaspyr2077]

"Previously, I used this timer to remind me to give you all a Hero Point. I've changed this policy. I now use the timer to prompt me to evaluate if you've earned a Hero Point, no Hero Points, or a negative Hero Point. This can put you in debt. To get Hero Point privileges, stop faffing about and wasting everyone's time."

[thenobledrake]

No, I've never had this happen. But then that's because I think in terms of expecting that players are going to do the thing that gives them what they view as the best reward (as expressed by the phrase "some people will optimize the fun out of a game") so I immediately changed the way I would determine when to hand out hero points upon reading the suggestion of giving out 1 per hour of play because it felt obvious to me that sticking to a timer would incentivize players to do things like stall to make encounters closer to the hour mark and if things are going rough push past the hour mark with a bathroom break or some other means, then go "oh hey, isn't it about time for a hero point?" to then be able to use to turn things around.

At first I just went with handing out hero points (to the entire party at the same time, but that's a different part of the me not agreeing with the suggestion in the book) after every other "that counts as doing something" scene. Then later when my group switched to using the hero point cards because the re-rolls kept being not better than the original roll, we also updated the hand-out timing to be something I could no longer space out and forget to do and leave the players feeling weird about asking for one (3 at the start of the session, and that's all you get).

[PossibleCabbage]

Yeah, this seems like a good argument not to give out hero points on a timer since that creates a perverse incentive to play slower.

I would consider just handing out a stack of hero points at the start of the session, and if you need to supplement that just hand them out when people actually do something heroic.

[YuriP]

Hero points system IMO is one of the most GM fiat and I don't use the traditional hero point system simply because I don't like the idea of reward "by performing heroic deeds—something selfless, daring, or beyond normal expectations". This goes against many character concepts (if I want to do a coward or selfish character I will be penalized by never taking any extra hero points?) and rewards players that plays most recklessly.

So I use hero points are purely as session reward penalty system only. All my players can get up 3 hero points per session but I penalize then removing 1 or 2 hero points to players that are lazy or that are disrupting the progress of the session in any way for other side I give some extra hero points (but no more than maximum) if some player makes something the helps the session in someway or works for fair play or simply that buy us the pizza (:P).

Anyway my suggestion is to you use hero points system in a way that you thinks that will work well for gameplay or simply doesn't use it (but no hero points can make the game way more risky so take care).

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Ravingdork wrote:

My Foundry players recently discovered that I use an automated timer to remind me to give out a hero point each hour.

Soon after, everything in our games slowed down so that our two hour sessions have more than doubled to five hours!

At first I thought maybe it was just from waning interest or distractions from life events during play. However, one of the players reached out to me, concerned, saying that multiple others are deliberately dragging their feet so that they can get more hero points out of me for the same number of encounters, thereby increasing their odds of success on important rolls. They don't see it as cheating since the rules allow for this, but at least one player regrets losing our quick encounters.

Has anyone else encountered this player phenomenon?

I don't encounter this phenomenon because our groups usually do Hero Points for the entire session (that is, you get a flat amount of Hero Points at the start of the session to use as you want/need). Heck, we've even let the GM have a "Hero Point" as well, just to add spice to the game (and before you patronize, yes, all the players voted for it).

While this makes the game more difficult by comparison due to having less Hero Points (and the GM also having access to the same tool), it also means that players will have to make more tactically sound choices, and that they will need to save their Hero Points for big rolls, or for if the dice really turn on them and cause them to go splat before they can do anything.

There's nothing absurdly wrong with having incremental Hero Points, of course, but with it being time-based, it creates these kinds of issues which can be at odds with other players at the table, where you have some who need to delay the encounter to get Hero Points for their turn(s), versus others who actually want to progress the story.

That being said, there are some things you can incorporate to discourage this behavior:

1. Put a 'turn timer' on every player's turn, ranging anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes to spend actions, depending on what pacing you want. (We jokingly refer to this as the '6 seconds' rule, which we cite if players are being indecisive for too long.) If they don't take any actions, they delay for the next initiative order, and if they only spend a partial turn, their turn ends immediately, moving on to the next line of the initiative board. This forces players to plan their turn order accordingly, and to both keep track of the initiative board, as well as not purposefully bog down the game with appearing indecisive. It's fine to 'pause' the timer to pan out the results of actions being taken, such as if a spellcaster casts a Fireball and you have to roll all the saves and calculate all the damage taken, or if a player has a significant question, but the point is that you don't have players sitting there asking pointless questions or BSing around just to pad the timer out for a Hero Point to use on their turn (or for later in the same encounter).

2. Award Hero Points for completing/starting encounters, or completing story plot points, not for time played. This keeps players on their toes with their Hero Points (as it should), and it also rewards stocking up on Hero Points if they use smart tactical plays that don't require Hero Points to shore up, and it can make harder encounters more forgiving as a result. I'd also consider implementing the rule to have the Hero Points transfer between sessions, since honestly, it's mostly a continuation between the same game.

3. Change the increments at which you award out hero points between sessions. While this is the least amount of change and might accomplish the same as the previous options, this might be helpful for sessions where there aren't many encounters, or for sessions where there are longer encounters, so if you're aware of what the players will be facing, it's not very difficult to adjust accordingly if you know it will be a slower (or even a faster-paced) session.

[ElementalofCuteness]

I would advise against turn timers through. All it does is give people anxiety. Which can lead to the game not feeling fun because people will stop trying tactics or trying new classes. One of the bigger issues I had when one of my DMs suggesting it was. "If I only get 2 minutes then I'm playing only Barbarian or Fighter because I understand the quick concept of swing big weapon repeatedly." I was too scared to EVER touch a caster in case I "lost" turns and the DM dropped it because he found the fact I'd only play Strike based characters boring since some of my finest are Casters which take multiple mnutes since i can't keep every spell I know memorized.

However just force end the session after 2 hours and tell them that they will only have 1 hero point. See how that goes. Just don't bother using the mechanic if it is being abused outside start of a session.

[Deriven Firelion]

I had this exact same thing occur when I starting handing out hero points at the rate of one an hour. People started chatting and roleplaying more and one of the guys kept a timer. They stacked up their hero points to three for harder encounters, then blew them all on end of night combats if they knew it was the last one of the night.

So I stopped handing out hero points at once an hour. Hero points were making the game too easy. So I cut it back to once a session with maybe an extra one for something truly amazing.

[TheFinish]

I myself play with every player having 3 Hero Points which refresh each session, but then again I've also changed them substantially to make them better (stealing liberally from Dark Heresy's use of Fate Points).

If you still want to award them during a session I'll echo the suggestions here to switch from giving them out on a set timetable to giving them out for player progress and achievement, since it will incentivise them to keep the ball rolling rather than stall for a Hero Point.

[HappyHuman]

TheFinish wrote:

If you still want to award them during a session I'll echo the suggestions here to switch from giving them out on a set timetable to giving them out for player progress and achievement, since it will incentivise them to keep the ball rolling rather than stall for a Hero Point.

I don't like to argue against progress and achievement, but there's also something to be said for the practice of rewarding in-character dramatics. There are games where if the kleptomaniac can't resist, steals something and creates a huge complication, they get love for creating a story twist. In PF2 they just get hate for derailing the progress train and I'm not sure that's better.

[Thebigham]

I would just talk to the players. This is an ooc conversation.

[magnuskn]

I plan to give out two hero points for everyone at the start of the session, so that the players are incentivized to at least use one before hoarding their last one in case of imminent character death, and then give out more on a basis of "did that character do something cool", not on a strict timer.

[Deriven Firelion]

magnuskn wrote:

I plan to give out two hero points for everyone at the start of the session, so that the players are incentivized to at least use one before hoarding their last one in case of imminent character death, and then give out more on a basis of "did that character do something cool", not on a strict timer.

It's so easy to give out too many if going on a timer and so hard to remember to give them out for something cool when you're grinding encounters. Giving out two at the start is probably a good idea so the player can decide what to do with them during the course of the session and the DM doesn't have to worry about being too stingy or too generous.

[TOZ]

Stop playing with terrible people.

[Megistone]

I dislike any game rule that reaches into the real world, you just gave me another good reason to. I just give hero points when the PCs deserve them.

[Finoan]

Seconding the sentiment that this is a problem with particular players rather than something that needs to be fixed in ways other than by talking to the problem players.

However, another option is to set the timer to the in-game scale. I only play in Play-by-Post - which doesn't have 'sessions' or 'hours of play' that you can use to determine when to give out Hero Points. The best adaptation that we have come up with is to give out scheduled Hero Points* at the start of each day during daily preparations.

* Scheduled Hero Points being the ones recommended to give out on a set schedule. As opposed to the reward Hero Points given out for exceptional gameplay.

[OrochiFuror]

I don't feel hero points are worth that much effort, the number of times the roll is similar or worse is too much and feels terrible.

My last group gave everyone a point after each encounter.

[Ryangwy]

+1 to all the suggestions to give out Hero points based on no of encounters (or maybe XP value?) as a solution to this specific problem.

[The Gleeful Grognard]

I mean, is the issue that heropoints are ruining your game, or you re unhappy at the pacing the players have set?

If it is the latter, bring that up directly unrelated to the heropoints, if they bring up heropoints and gaming the system you can always just suggest you can remove heropoints.

I am not sure how much of a benefit one point every hour to one player, is worth players dragging a game out over.

This is all assuming this is real and not just an elaborate "this would make for a cool what if", because, RD is a very proficient what if'er. (And yes I know the words speculative hypothetical form analysis, I just I like what if'er better)

[OceanshieldwolPF 2.5]

TOZ wrote:

Stop playing with terrible people.

Was going to say you have bad player radar, but TOZ beat me to it. It bears mentioning that gaming the system…of the…game isn’t… gaming….it’s gamist. Imagine people “roleplaying more” being a bad thing because the only reason they are doing it is for…hero points. Words fail me.

Personally I prefer to see what the third force in the game - the die/dice (the first two being the GM and the players) is going to do, because it’s the one thing that doesn’t have…investment. It just is. Trying to reign that in is…terrible. For everyone involved. Unless of course you are trying to “win” an RPG. In which case I don’t have the words to begin to explain…anything.

[ElementalofCuteness]

Here-points is an ability to make the game harder because of the auto-stabilizing cheat death the can do, allowing the monsters to unironically hit harder because they do that. The game design is to have them I believe but rerolls are funny, because everyone likes them despite the ability to cheat death is arguably better.

[Ludovicus]

Ravingdork wrote:

My Foundry players recently discovered that I use an automated timer to remind me to give out a hero point each hour.

Soon after, everything in our games slowed down so that our two hour sessions have more than doubled to five hours!

At first I thought maybe it was just from waning interest or distractions from life events during play. However, one of the players reached out to me, concerned, saying that multiple others are deliberately dragging their feet so that they can get more hero points out of me for the same number of encounters, thereby increasing their odds of success on important rolls. They don't see it as cheating since the rules allow for this, but at least one player regrets losing our quick encounters.

Has anyone else encountered this player phenomenon?

Definitely time for an OOC conversation: why do your players feel the need to eke out this small advantage, even at the cost of so much time and fun for everyone? It's possible your encounters are just too hard; it also might be the system's fault, since PF2 is both full of trap options, and very punitive toward players who don't play the way you're "supposed" to. Either way, the solution may well be just to give out more hero points, or otherwise tweak the math in the players' favor.

TOZ wrote:

Stop playing with terrible people.

This sort of blanket moralism is so 2018. In the parlance of those censorious times, "do better."

[Grumpy TOZ]

No.

[Deriven Firelion]

Ludovicus wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

My Foundry players recently discovered that I use an automated timer to remind me to give out a hero point each hour.

Soon after, everything in our games slowed down so that our two hour sessions have more than doubled to five hours!

At first I thought maybe it was just from waning interest or distractions from life events during play. However, one of the players reached out to me, concerned, saying that multiple others are deliberately dragging their feet so that they can get more hero points out of me for the same number of encounters, thereby increasing their odds of success on important rolls. They don't see it as cheating since the rules allow for this, but at least one player regrets losing our quick encounters.

Has anyone else encountered this player phenomenon?

Definitely time for an OOC conversation: why do your players feel the need to eke out this small advantage, even at the cost of so much time and fun for everyone? It's possible your encounters are just too hard; it also might be the system's fault, since PF2 is both full of trap options, and very punitive toward players who don't play the way you're "supposed" to. Either way, the solution may well be just to give out more hero points, or otherwise tweak the math in the players' favor.

TOZ wrote:

Stop playing with terrible people.

This sort of blanket moralism is so 2018. In the parlance of those censorious times, "do better."

For me it is more these are people I've been playing with for 30 plus years and I don't intend to discard them because they had some fun scoring a few more hero points. "Terrible people" is a bit of an overstatement for some minor dragging out of time to gain an extra hero point here or there.

[Bluemagetim]

I kinda look at this situation with some skepticism.

Mainly because I don't know your groups dynamic.
I remember back in the day I played with a DM that gave us a limited time to take our turn. If we couldn't decide in a reasonable time our character just stood there for the round.
Im not suggesting you do that without forewarning and buy in but you could at the start of the session bring up how slow encounters have been going lately so you suggest giving x amount of time to decide what to do.
See how many in the group really want faster encounters and agree to playing that way.

[Calliope5431]

Bluemagetim wrote:

I kinda look at this situation with some skepticism.

Mainly because I don't know your groups dynamic.
I remember back in the day I played with a DM that gave us a limited time to take our turn. If we couldn't decide in a reasonable time our character just stood there for the round.
Im not suggesting you do that without forewarning and buy in but you could at the start of the session bring up how slow encounters have been going lately so you suggest giving x amount of time to decide what to do.
See how many in the group really want faster encounters and agree to playing that way.

It sounds like the issue may be as much people foot dragging on the way to encounters rather than just in the encounters themselves.

Either way, the "just start with two hero points and don't give any more" solution is a good one. No need to accuse people of delaying just to get more hero points, either. Just tell them you're instituting it to make hero point distribution a little fairer and faster (it does legitimately take a bit of time to set a timer and decide/randomize who gets a hero point every hour). It also has the added advantage of making the "burn all your hero points to not die" usage slightly costlier, since otherwise PCs tend to have only a single hero point.

At the end of the day hero points are sort of like magic items in most campaigns. They're a part of system math but they mostly exist to give the DM flexibility in buffing the party. Magic items let you buff the party mid-level. Hero points let you buff them mid-session. Unlike magic items they also exist as a way to reward/incentivize behavior the DM appreciates. They're supposed to be a helpful tool, and not a hindrance.

[Unicore]

One thing to consider, if the consequences of critical failure on checks is consistently too extreme (which can tend to happen when fighting a lot of higher level enemies with powerful save based AoE effects, especially incapacitation ones), then the players might be suffering fatigue from feeling like Hero Points are the only thing standing between having to make a new character (which can be a head-ache and a session stopper), and continuing on with the character they are invested in, which can take a lot of time and energy, especially at high level.

In addition to considering to just start everyone with 2 hero points, it might also be a good time to take some time out at the start of a session to revisit the session 0 conversation about how comfortable everyone at the table is with character deaths, and ways to either help players feel more comfortable with potentially losing characters (maybe some rare options become available as the game goes on, for example) or have a high level divine NPC owe the party a favor that they all know about that will be returned as leading a high rank resurrect ritual, with a high enough religion bonus to make the ritual easier to pull off.

[SuperParkourio]

Perhaps you should toss the timer if it's causing this behavior. You are expected to award a certain number of Hero Points per session, but that's just a rule of thumb.

I stopped using that timer because I was fed up with the reminder being shoved in my face. I generally award Hero Points for beneficial things the adventure didn't predict the heroes doing, or that it did expect but I didn't give away. For instance, grabbing a nearby 10 foot piece of plywood and using it to push a door open so that everyone can Leap across a trap.

Anyway, just focus on the things the players are doing, not the clock.

[Themetricsystem]

This is truly wild behavior for sure bordering on unbelievable, not that I'm saying you're inventing this but that type of thing flies SOO hard against the current of how I and most others that I play with prefer that I simply can't grok anyone who would prefer a game with such a slow pace.

My suggestion would be the same as what WatersLethe offered as a fix, providing them as rewards (in addition to the one free point at the beginning of a session) should encourage them to stop dragging their feet, though I will warn that if they're metagaming that hard for Hero Points there might be a good chance that they'll not only return to the speedy playstyle but also try to make it go even more quickly and that will almost certainly have some other side effects on their tactics.

[Tactical Drongo]

Alternative suggestion for hero points

take a note out of the Mutants and Masterminds game book

ever player has to get some weaknesses, character flaws or the like, that can get them into trouble

you hand out a hero point if they get into trouble - or you can offer them at opportunities if you really dont like the outcome of a roll or need to cheat

'you critically hit! the bbeg goes down...a bit anticlimactic...here have this hero point and lets see what happens *wink* '

the players can decline the last if its an offer

[Bluemagetim]

If the folks you play with are doing something like this and feel entitled within the rules to do it you can expect this is not going to be the only way they will attempt to metagame.
Just talk to the group. Ask them what they all want out of the experience.
Combats have been slower do we want to get back to faster combats?
Ive been giving out hero poins so far on a timer but the slower combats lately meant ive given more out than I budgeted for in the encounter campaigns overall challenge. I will need to change the method so im not disrupting things.

Thing is, they are your group. You know them and how you can talk to them.

[Deriven Firelion]

Themetricsystem wrote:

This is truly wild behavior for sure bordering on unbelievable, not that I'm saying you're inventing this but that type of thing flies SOO hard against the current of how I and most others that I play with prefer that I simply can't grok anyone who would prefer a game with such a slow pace.

My suggestion would be the same as what WatersLethe offered as a fix, providing them as rewards (in addition to the one free point at the beginning of a session) should encourage them to stop dragging their feet, though I will warn that if they're metagaming that hard for Hero Points there might be a good chance that they'll not only return to the speedy playstyle but also try to make it go even more quickly and that will almost certainly have some other side effects on their tactics.

An hour passes by surprisingly fast when gaming and doing combat. It doesn't take much foot dragging to add a hero point over a 3 or 4 hour session. I can't imagine the addition was so egregious you were adding more than maybe an extra 1 per sessions.

1 per hour is way too fast when you start with one as well. It gives the PCs too many hero points.

[Freehold DM]

This is why I was never in favor of a hero point system to begin with. Someone will always find a way to abuse it. And as much as I love toz, hugs toz plushie this mindset simply doesn't work en masse. There's always going to be a jerk somewhere.

[TOZ]

Yeah, but my statement was for this specific group, not the world.

[Tridus]

I've never seen this happening. As a player I'm usually trying to speed combat up, rather than slow it down. As a GM I tend to only remember to give them out after an encounter is over rather than on a timer, which means getting more of them requires going faster.

Giving them out after an encounter would solve the problem since there's no incentive to go slower now. Or if people are being malicious, take them away entirely.

[magnuskn]

This isn't another "I made this situation up to have a spirited discussion break out on the forum" situation, right RD? ^^

[TRDG]

I'm so glad that after they get their 1 Special Hero point (the text in the back deck) card at the beginning the rest they have to work for, not just a handout. The usual outside the box thinking, cool and clever RP or sacrificing for the good of the party or NPC's.

I (and my players) honestly forget em a lot of the times, but we try our best.

If the topic is true then they are most def gaming (cheating) a mechanic in the game, if you use a timer or not.

If you get honest replies and some or most are doing this then start afresh with them, if not I'd say find some new players for the ones that did it and did not show an ounce of respect for our beloved hobby and game.

Tom

[Matthew Downie]

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

Unless of course you are trying to “win” an RPG.

Trying to win is just another way to say trying to survive. If you care about your character, and you're faced with the constant threat of TPK, you're incentivised to take advantage of every game mechanic that can aid your survival. "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." Lots of players will cast what they think is the most effective possible spell rather than the most interesting spell, or take advantage of metagame knowledge, because they want to survive. This is just an extreme example of that tendency.

In this situation, the GM can remind the players that if they're wasting time in pursuit of hero points, it makes the game less fun for everyone, and that's a sign of bad priorities. It might work.

But it's pretty easy to replace mechanics that reward timewasting with ones that reward activities you want to reward. Award hero points after every encounter to the players who role-played the best, or who wasted the least time.

[Ravingdork]

magnuskn wrote:

This isn't another "I made this situation up to have a spirited discussion break out on the forum" situation, right RD? ^^

Right.

;)

[Easl]

Matthew Downie wrote:

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

Unless of course you are trying to “win” an RPG.

Lots of players will cast what they think is the most effective possible spell rather than the most interesting spell, or take advantage of metagame knowledge, because they want to survive. This is just an extreme example of that tendency.

Geez I haven't played that way since high school. Back in the pleistocene ;) Using OOC knowledge? Can your character not hack it playing the game by the rules? Might as well steal from the bank in monopoly. At that point, you're not "winning" through art and skill, you're cheating.*

But I also think there's neither sense nor need to get into such arguments with players. All of us make go down wrong paths some times. As you and practically everyone on this thread has already said, RD merely has to change the way he distributes HPs so it's action-based instead of time-based. Without editorial commentary on anyone's behavior. Once that's done, his players will naturally change how they play.

*OTOH, the purpose is to have fun. I fully support groups using The First Rule to bend/change all the other rules for the goal of having fun. The problem of using OOC knowledge or stalling for HPs is not necessarily doing that per se, it's a doing that in a game where the players and GMs previously decided they don't want to play that way.

[Dexter Coffee]

I do it every hour and the player's know this. They don't seem to drag to get more. Seems something to being up with the player(s) in question. I have never noticed them dragging around intentionally too much to game another HP, though they talked about it of course, but of course I could just deny it in that case. We're pretty open about "above board" meta stuff when chatting.

I also generally only keep the "clock" going on hero point worthy time after they start adventuring. If they spend an hour of IRL time shopping and prepping etc it doesn't really count unless there is plenty of RP stuff that could potentially qualify.