Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
Yeah, honestly, the general mechanic isn't just there to prevent inappropriate and random death; its to prevent anticlimax, which is one thing that dice in the game sometimes lead to. Its not a very simulationist result, but then, the problems its designed to address wouldn't be a problem to a hardcore simulationist group in the first place.
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Bingo. This risk on random rolls is that sometimes the random results are not what anyone wanted. Especially as the source material that RPGs are basided on, heroic fiction of one form or another, heavily relies on situations where the hero is over matched and yet through faith, virtue, cleverness, and force of will, manages to succeed. It's good drama and good storytelling. It is just bad from the view of probabilities.
Hero Points help to account for this and give it a game mechanic, and one that really is just as viable as rolling dice. Generally, most RPGs tend to make things too random to begin with, in order to promote excitement.
Another tact that RPGs can use to try and simulate the "overmathed hero" situation is to lie like hell, and that is not always a great idea either. Many RPG scenarios make claims about how bad the situation is and how overmatched the characters are, then run a bunch of encounters at the PCs with adversaries who are markedly inferior. A good example are Clone Troopers and Stormtroopers in Star Wars. They are supposed to be some sort of elite fighting force and good shots. They even managed to wipe out most of the Jedi order. Yet they can't shoot straight when fighting against a major characters, and only managed to hit one "PC" (Leia, twice.) in six films.
That sort of results just don't happen often enough with random die rolls to match the setting.
The same hold true with other settings. Elric, Lancelot or Robin Hood, would all go down much too often for comfort.
Plus the RQ/BRP critical and fumble chances, while reasonably low and quite workable for PCs, start to warp things when you start doing things in greater numbers. Run a big enough party and you will generally see a PC take critical every fight. Thats where the points help.