This is the BEST introduction to the Fantasy Hero and to the Hero System in general, in my opinion. It leads you step by step through character creation with lots of cool examples. It presents an evocative and cohesive default setting resembling a grim "dark ages" style of fantasy. The artwork in the book is consistent with this single unified vision. To be fair this was published in 1985 and most of the art isn't great quality, but it does have some nice full-page pieces of the iconic characters in various adventures.

The Hero System (including fantasy hero) is often presented as a encyclopedia of options, and tries to cater to every possible genre variation, with artwork and examples of different styles and concepts. As a result, most Hero books read like dry textbooks, and are so generically bland that they fail to inspire. In a game where you have to build everything from scratch, inspiration is the most important thing... and too many options are paralyzing until you start to get a handle on them.

I find this book to be inspiring (I still pull it out and read it) and it will lead you by the hand to learn all the core aspects of Hero. It has a short solo adventure to try on your own, and a long adventure to run for your friends and teach them. There is enough here to get a campaign off the ground, but not so much that there is nothing left for you to create.

That said, these rules are old and have been made obsolete by newer editions. The mechanics are solid and have hardly changed, but some terminology and point costs are occasionally different in new editions. As such, be aware that learning this game will not be a perfect introduction to the modern Hero System. But it will teach you all about how powers work, how combat works, how to build characters and monsters and spells. All the core rules and strategies are there pretty much unchanged. I still use the monsters and spells and NPCs from this book in games today. And, it is a great little game in its own right, very playable. even if you never "upgrade" to the latest edition.

This book stands alone with nothing else needed to play. The scan is clean, readable and printer-friendly. If you like it I also recommend the Bestiary (3rd edition) and Spell Book (3rd edition) as supplements also available on this site. There was a magic items book as well that had some really cool ideas, but that is not available in PDF so far as I know.

NOTE: This is actually the first and original edition of Fantasy Hero. It is "3rd edition" because Champions was in its third edition when FH was first published. Third edition games all featured rules that were customized for their genre; ti wasn't until 4th edition that a genre-neutral rulebook was published. I think that is a lot of what gives this game its charm -- it wasn't generic and wasn't trying to be.