Delay on receiving hero points?

[Anthony]

To have a proper comic-book feel, it seems to me like villians should generally be able to spend most of their villian points near the beginning (it's traditional for the heroes to lose early battles), while heroes should be more free to spend hero points near the end.

This has come up as an issue in our games, with PCs being unwilling to go down in some early fight, using up all their hero points, and being useless later.

Anyway, as a solution, I was pondering a delayed hero points mechanic; you start out with some relatively small number of hero points, and gradually get the rest over the course of the adventure. This might fit with a hero point recovery mechanic as well.

Problem I've had is coming up with a good way of implementing this. Has anyone else tried something similar, and any comments on what did and didn't work?

[Jerks]

You might take a look at how Spycraft does it. I don't have the book anymore, but if I'm remembering correctly the hero and villian points were tied in together. At the start of the session the players start with 2 or 3 points, and the storyteller has a points determined by the level and number of the players. Anyway, hero points are given to the players anytime that the GM uses a villian point. For each villian point spent the last player to distinguish his or herself is given an extra hero point. This way, the PCs are limited in the earlier encounters, but by the end of the encounter they've got the hero point advantage.

I'm 99% sure I've got something wrong about the mechanic, but I think you can get the general ideal from above.

[mgg]

I think this is a great idea, Anthony.

Maybe you could store up the hero point per villain point bonus and hand it out to the characters after the scene is over. That way they wouldn't be able to turn the tables instantly.

[Anthony]

Only gaining hero points when you force the villians to spend villian points seems...wrong. It means that if the villians are just getting lucky and stomping all over you without needing to spend villian points, you don't wind up with any hero points to come back from behind later, whereas if the villians are rolling poorly, you get a whole bunch of hero points so you can really stomp on them later.

It might be reasonable to acquire hero points as the villians accomplish objectives; the closer they get to destroying the world or whatever, the more hero points you get.

[arcady]

How often do you let Hero Points refresh?