Sean Waters
Sep 6th, '06, 05:07 AM
OK, been done. This, however, approaches the problem fromt he other end and encourages gaming responsibility. Well, maybe.
Hero has, at heart, great flexibility. Not only can you do almost anything with it, given the points, but you can also do one thing in several different ways in many cases.
This means that producing a single effect can be done in a lot of different ways and this can make it extremely difficult to create logical defences against. Poison, chemicals, stuff like that, they just don’t really work with standard PD and ED, at least it seems that way to me. We had bottles of concentrated acid at school, all those years ago. The bottle did not have a particularly high PD or ED but would resist the acid.
You could build acid with NND…but it is not always done that way. I’ve seen drain mechanics, killing attacks…..whatever. This means that Joseph Glass, the chemically resistant man, has to buy an awful lot of defences potentially, to be acid resistant.
Now this is not a total solution by any means, but it does make building Joe Glass that bit easier.
We have a new limitation for attacks: Unusual Defence
The value depends on how common the defence is: it is a sort of reverse NND. Basically normal defences apply tot he attack BUT if the target has a specific defence then it does not effect the target at all.
So the limitation might range from –1/4 for something like ‘snake venom resistant’ to –1/2 for ‘any poison resistant’ to –1 for ‘has resistant defences’ (at least if it is a superhero campaign).
Most of the defences should be LS type defences. You might need to make up a few more, specifically chemical resistance – 1 point for acid resistance, 1 for alkali resistance and say 3 for resistant to all chemical attacks other than poisons.
OK it won’t solve the problem because it still requires thoughtful design BUT it does mean that you can now buy someone who can ignore acid without having to spend a shed-load of points in an unnecessarily complicated way.
I know also this is not really new – it is just a manifestation of the ‘Limited Power’ limitation, but naming it specifically might get it used more. Worth a try.
Thoughts?
Hero has, at heart, great flexibility. Not only can you do almost anything with it, given the points, but you can also do one thing in several different ways in many cases.
This means that producing a single effect can be done in a lot of different ways and this can make it extremely difficult to create logical defences against. Poison, chemicals, stuff like that, they just don’t really work with standard PD and ED, at least it seems that way to me. We had bottles of concentrated acid at school, all those years ago. The bottle did not have a particularly high PD or ED but would resist the acid.
You could build acid with NND…but it is not always done that way. I’ve seen drain mechanics, killing attacks…..whatever. This means that Joseph Glass, the chemically resistant man, has to buy an awful lot of defences potentially, to be acid resistant.
Now this is not a total solution by any means, but it does make building Joe Glass that bit easier.
We have a new limitation for attacks: Unusual Defence
The value depends on how common the defence is: it is a sort of reverse NND. Basically normal defences apply tot he attack BUT if the target has a specific defence then it does not effect the target at all.
So the limitation might range from –1/4 for something like ‘snake venom resistant’ to –1/2 for ‘any poison resistant’ to –1 for ‘has resistant defences’ (at least if it is a superhero campaign).
Most of the defences should be LS type defences. You might need to make up a few more, specifically chemical resistance – 1 point for acid resistance, 1 for alkali resistance and say 3 for resistant to all chemical attacks other than poisons.
OK it won’t solve the problem because it still requires thoughtful design BUT it does mean that you can now buy someone who can ignore acid without having to spend a shed-load of points in an unnecessarily complicated way.
I know also this is not really new – it is just a manifestation of the ‘Limited Power’ limitation, but naming it specifically might get it used more. Worth a try.
Thoughts?