Active Defense Rolls

[yamamura]

I am currently getting people who are GURPS fan into Hero. Their major problem is that HERO has no Active Defense Roll. How would you defend Hero having no such roll?

G

[Fitz]

I would say that
(1) There is the Block maneuver, which is about as active a defence roll as you can get, and
(2) adding yet another roll to combat resolution is mostly just a pain in the bum.

[Snarf]

DCV is the Hero Equivalent of active defense. It's the exact same thing, except it factors into your opponents roll instead of you having to roll it yourself.

[Mark Taylor]

What's to defend? It doesn't need one. In GURPS combat (unless you use some of the optional rules from Compendium II), the chances of hitting an opponent (even with a gun) are actually swayed far more by the level of the defender's defenses (including PD) than by the level of the attacker's skill. I don't particularly agree with that, and I'm hoping it's one of the things that will be 'fixed' in the GURPS 4th Edition rules. Actually I have some expectation that it probably will be, given that the way PD works was one of the problems that SJG brought up in the 4E questionaire. One way to do this would be to drop the active defense roll and have defenses act as a penalty to the attacker's roll. Another way would be to keep the active defense roll, but have it function like an ordinary quick contest of skills.

In HERO combat, OCV and DCV have about equal weight in the outcome of an attack roll, which makes more sense and IMO is more elegant. The defender still has his chance to defend. He even has the chance to actively improve his defense by aborting to a defensive action such as a dodge. The fact that he doesn't necessarily roll any dice for it doesn't affect that. Having two rolls to determine whether an attack hits or not is uneccesary, and only slows down the most uninteresting part of any given combat - the misses.

[Hugh Neilson]

The d20 system has no active defense roll. Instead, one is assumed to always roll a 10. One optional rule suggested is to have an AC of d20 + modfifiers, rather than 10 + modifiers.

To aply the same logic to Hero, simply have the attacker roll 3d6 + OCV, and the defender roll 3d6 plus DCV. If the attacker's roll beats the defender's, he hits.

As noted above, however, this just adds one more roll into every attack. It aoso enhancesthe randomness of combat, which you can decide is a good thing, or a bad one.

[stan da ork]

Just a bit of an aside, but anything that increases randomness in combat is generally more helpful to the NPCs and more detrimental to the PCs. Most NPCs last only one fight, and most of the time the PCs win. Extra randomness just makes the fight last a different number of turns (less if the PCs get lucky, more if they don't). However, the PCs are getting attacked in every single fight in the game. That means the chances of a really bad roll (on their part) or a really good roll (on an enemy's part) occurring are much greater. For example, if the PC martial artist terribly fails his defense roll, it makes it that much easier for the enemy brick to paste him with a haymaker, whereas if he didn't make a roll and just got an average result, the brick will probably never hit him. Sure, the brick could always roll a 3, but he could do that in either case. Only when the defensive roll is used can the PC roll an 18 and pretty much guarantee he's getting whacked.

In any case, coming from any system with active defenses (where the players get to roll) to one with only passive defenses (or mostly passive) is always going to look at first like the PCs can do nothing to defend themselves. But as has already been stated, HERO already accounts for defensive actions, and you can even use active defenses if you want (dodge, block, dive for cover, missile deflection, etc.). If the players just refuse to accept that, I'd try the randomness argument above, and see if that helps.

[Blue]

Why don't we have tails? I mean, lots of living things have tails, right? ;)

One of the best systems I ever played was the MEGS system. In that one, you didn't eve make a damage roll. You compared stats, rolled for attack, and how well you hit determined the damage. I would never have thought to ask the MEGS designers, "Why isn't there a damage roll". It's just not necessary.

[TheEmerged]

Also, there ARE active defense rolls in HERO. One (block) was already mentioned. The other two are Dive For Cover action and the Missile Deflection power.

[yamamura]

Thanks so far for ideas. I for one like the fact of NO Active Defense Rolls pretty much for the reason stated. But these are die-hard GURPS fan and it is not easy. Wish me luck.


G

[Dust Raven]

I am currently getting people who are GURPS fan into Hero. Their major problem is that HERO has no Active Defense Roll. How would you defend Hero having no such roll?

G
I would just say that in HERO, the chance of hitting a target is just boiled down to a single roll (sometimes two, if a roll for Block, Dive For Cover or Missile Deflection fails). Statistically, there's not much difference, and it saves time. The rules already account for targets that aren't aware of the attack or are unable to defend themselves for some reason.