Revisiting the subject of character advancement in the SCRPG, today I'm looking at the Hero Point rules, how to generate them and what you can spend them on. HP are a sort of "temporary advancement" that you earn in one session and then spend to gain benefits in the next session. Mechanically they act a reward for roleplaying to your character's Principles. They're a little unusual compared to broadly similar metacurrencies (eg FASERIP's karma, Mutants & Masterminds' hero points) in that your rewards are deferred rather than offering immediate benefits from them during play, and they can't be saved up from one session to the next.
How You Earn Hero Points
Players generate one HP for the entire group every time they use one of their Principles for an Overcome action, regardless of whether it succeeds or not - so you're not pressured into taking a twist if you roll under an eight with your Max die. This can happen any number of times in an action or montage scene, but in social scenes (where you rarely roll anything anyway) you can only gain a maximum of one HP total - and in meaningful social scenes (see p. 34 for the definition of "meaningful") you'll get your one HP automatically anyway. You can only earn a maximum of five HP per session, and the entire group always has the same total.
In practice, it's pretty easy to generate the maximum HP in a session unless you have a very small group (2-3 players). If you plan on running only a single action scene it's probably a good idea to include enough challenges (either as scene elements or environmental twists) to make it viable for the PCs to make enough Overcomes to hit the cap, remembering there won't always be a chance to apply a Principle to any given Overcome roll. Of course, canny and creative players will make their own opportunities to use their Principles both in and out of action, and the fewer action scenes you have the more time there is for social scenes, so it's not something to worry about too much. Players won't be badly hurt if they don't reach five HP, although it will leave them a little bit weaker in the next session than they could have been.
Hero Point Rewards
At the end of a session (or the beginning of the next one, if you're pressed for time at the end) each player spends their HP on benefits. By default, these bennies are simple bonuses, split up however they want - so five HP could be five +1 bonuses or one +5 or any combination that adds up to five. These bonuses are exclusive but not persistent (the only mods in the game that work that way) so you can only use one on any given roll just like any exclusive mod, and each one is one-use only. This tends to make fewer, larger bonuses more popular than a bunch of small ones, and HP bonuses are the only way a PC can normally reach a +5 bonus, which is almost as powerful as using a collection to maximize a die - and you can combine the two effects, as well as adding in any non-exclusive bonuses you have available. Like any mod you have to declare whether you're using an HP bonus before rolling - unless you've got the ability to apply mods after a roll, which means HP bonuses make those abilities a bit more useful than usual. You also need to be able to narratively justify what a bonus represents, which can require some creativity.
Worth noting that choosing to use a HP bonus isn't a reaction or action, just something you can choose to do when a roll is about to be made. By the RAW, you can use one of your bonuses on another character's turn, including on an ally's action or reaction to something a villain just did. The exclusivity means only one person on a team can do this per roll (no team dogpiling) and it will conflict with any P&E bonuses your ally might have themselves (so usually you won't use HP in that case).
Characters who habitually establish a strong P&E bonus for themselves will often find that helping out other people is the only practical way to use their own HP bonuses. If everyone on the team is generating their own P&E bonuses, your options get more limited (ie you need to look for windows where a normal P&E bonus has been scrubbed off or reduced to lower than potential help from HP bonuses). It might be better to consider the alternative HP rewards section instead with that kind of team.
Alternate Rewards
While spending HP for bonuses is always an option, p.248 lists three other things you can spend them on with your GM's okay. I've never run into a GM who doesn't use the "alternate rewards" and I certainly do myself, but I would ask my players to explain what their choices represent narratively, the same way you're supposed to explain how previous events provide you with your HP bonus when it gets used. It's generally a good idea to be generous about this sort of thing and use the explanations as inspirations for twists during the session.
The three types of alternate rewards are:
Sidekick
This a simple reward that gives a hero a minion with a die size ranging from d4 to d10 based on how many HP you spend. They take their action at the start of their hero's turn. Like all minions they're pretty fragile. While they do recover one die size at the end of a scene where they were damaged if they were taken out completely they're out for the rest of the session - possibly even killed if the player and GM agree it's dramatically appropriate.
Despite the name, these don't actually need to be costumed sidekicks like Bucky or Robin. They work nicely to represent allies like a danger-prone spouse, a gruff private detective, the hero's roommate, a government liaison agent, a robot servant (Skeets!), or some kind of pet. They might be recurring characters, or they might be someone who shows up once or twice and then never appears again. They offer the GM a lot of potential story hooks to use, which makes them the most interesting of the rewards from a narrative standpoint.
If the GM wants they could assign a sidekick an ability (p.206 has many suggestions) to personalize them, although they don't really need one to be worthwhile mechanically. While they may not last long in any given session, they have enough impact on scenes to be well worth the bonus(es) you're effectively trading off to have one. Recurring character sidekicks are probably the best ones to give abilities to, and if the hero takes them regularly they might even change over time - and eventually a GM might promote them to lieutenant or even super status and turn them into full-blown NPCs, at which point they'd cease to be a sidekick.
There's nothing directly preventing you from taking more than one sidekick, but the costs limit your options to either a pair of d4 minions or a d4 and a d6, which definitely aren't going last long in a fight.
Favor From An Ally
Mechanically, this is a reaction that the PC can take at any point to make a free Attack, Defend or Overcome action that rolls a die pool based on the points spent on the reward, representing some kind of assistance from an "off-stage" ally. Narratively, you need to provide some kind of explanation for who/what the ally is and how their help is producing the action. This is pretty easy to do if your favor is being provided by (say) a cosmic entity or magical boon, but takes a bit more creativity if it's an NPC hero or the police commissioner or something similar mundane. If you're really stuck for ideas, your GM might let you justify the favor as a bit of advice, inside information, or one-use gadget that they gave you that just happens to help in your current situation.
Favors are probably most helpful for PCs that lack a strong reaction ability of their own. They can be used regardless of GYRO zone, which can be helpful in Green where there are few reactions available. There's also nothing preventing you from taking multiple favors, and while their die pools will be kind of terrible for the cheaper options even a 3d4 mid die Attack or Defend reaction is pretty competitive with a one-shot exclusive +1 bonus. Just don't count on favors managing a clean success on an Overcome even if you spend heavily on them, rolling an 8+ Mid die is tricky even on 3d12. You'll likely have to take a twist to succeed unless you're lucky.
One oddity about favors is that they can't be used for Boost or Hinder actions. I assume something in playtesting caused a problem with them, but for the life of me I can't see what it would be. A GM who wanted to make favors more versatile and a little better could let a hero use them to Boost/Hinder as well as Attack, Defend and Overcome as a house rule and I don't think anything would break down - the game has plenty of reactionary mod producers already.
If you wanted to be really generous you could even extend it to allow a Mid die Recovery, although I think at that point I'd add one HP to the cost of each tier of the reward (making the top bracket unavailable). Recovery abilities are relatively rare, and reactionary ones are almost unheard of.
Temporary Ability Or Improvement
This category does three things, all of which apply for the whole session. You can add a brand new Red ability to your character sheet. You can upgrade an existing Yellow or Red ability so that it can be used one GYRO zone earlier. Or you can the die size of a power or quality. Needless to say, these can all be pretty strong, and this is the only category that explicitly says you can't take the exact same improvement multiple sessions in a row. As always, you need the GM's okay to take any of these, and the book suggests that these should be the result of some unusual occurrence during the game like exposure to weird radiation, being temporarily possessed, receiving training from a mentor character or getting dosed with exotic chemicals.
Some of these effects can make a PC considerably more powerful for an entire session (being able to access a Red ability in Yellow is especially strong). They certainly tend to outperform an equal HP cost worth of one-shot bonuses and favors, and will generally have more mechanical impact than sidekicks over the course of the session. The extra Red ability and increased die sizes on a power or quality are somewhat tamer, as it's harder to benefit from them as consistently, but they're still probably more impactful than the other reward options.
If that level of power is a concern, it might be worth house-ruling them to be weaker and more in line with other options. My suggestion would be:
The extra Red ability can only be used once per session.
You can only upgrade the GYRO zone of an ability from Yellow to Green or from Red to Yellow once per session. Even toned down, this is still the equivalent of getting a free minor twist, one of the functions of using a Collection.
Power or Quality die size increases can be used for one whole one scene per session.
The other option is to use them as written but be very sparing about how often they become available. Make a them a "special reward" beyond the other Hero Point options so the players can really appreciate the power boost, temporary though they may be. In this case the narrative justification for the upgrade is even more important and should be solidly tied to some significant story event, preferably from the last session's play so the impact feels immediate.
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