Advantages Issues

[Steve Long]

Hi folx! Here are some thoughts about Advantages that have occurred to me over the years, along with my brief thoughts on them. I’m posting them here to stimulate discussion, but not to limit or restrict it. These aren’t necessarily all the issues about Advantages that could be considered, nor the only thoughts about them. Feel free to post anything here that you think is relevant and reasonably constructive; you don’t have to limit yourself to what I’ve posted.

Regardless of whatever opinion I post on an idea, I’m always willing to be convinced otherwise if you think you can do it. ;) The fact that I’m posting an opinion doesn’t necessarily mean my mind’s made up on an issue; it just indicates my current thinking on the subject.

Periodically I may post other questions and thoughts that occur to me.

This section also includes questions about Power Modifiers in general.


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

Steve’s Thoughts: What I mean by this is that instead of +½, we’d write it +.5. The main benefit to doing this is that it would increase granularity since we’d no longer be limited to ¼, ½, ¾, 1, and so on. You could have a +.15 Advantage, a -.60 Limitation, and so on. That would allow for much more precise pigeonholing than the current four-step system.

While granularity is desireable, there are also some drawbacks. First, it takes more spaces on the page to write +.5 than +½, or -.75 than -¾. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but trust me — when it comes to wanting to make character sheets compact and easy to use, and over the course of hundreds of thousands of lines of text in dozens of books, it’s a concern that can’t be overlooked.

Second, is this level of granularity really desireable? One, while current HERO System users could master the difference with almost no effort, I think it could be more confusing to newcomers. Two, I shudder to think over the arguments that could result regarding the value of an Advantage (“It should be a +.35.” “No, you idiot, that’s clearly a +.41!”). Three, even if this change takes place, I still think most Power Modifiers will end up as .25, .50, .75, and 1 partly out of habit, partly because those values are appropriate, and partly because we like to think in terms of such numbers. Fourth, I don’t think there are really *that* many situations where wedging Power Modifier values into the current four-step system causes unbalance or other problems.


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

Steve’s Thoughts: This may depend partly on the answer to the question in the “General Issues” thread about whether we should abandon the concept of Active Points and Real Points. One possibility would be to make them adders and subtractors rather than multipliers and dividers, since the concepts of multiplying and dividing by a fraction seem to scare off some newcomers despite the facts that (a) it’s pretty basic math, and (b) calculators are really cheap. Another would be to let Advantages and Limitations “cancel each other out” before application, so that a +¾ Advantage and a -½ Limitation would result in a (¾ - ½ =) +¼ Advantage. A third would be to have Advantages affect *effectiveness* rather than points, so that a power with a -¼ Limitation is somehow 20% less effective, not 20% less costly (though this raises the question of why to take one if it doesn’t “save” anything).

Overall, though, my current thinking is that none of these changes are worth it (even if all their implications can be worked out). I’m always open to new ideas, but I think the current Power Modifier rules structure works fine.


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

Steve’s Thoughts: I don’t think we should, but as long as we’re considering everything I suppose it can’t hurt to throw this one out there.


Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t see a strong need for any, but there are certainly some that could be considered. For example, the Time Duration Power Modifier (from my DH #39 column) might be worth adding, if not in the core book then in a 6E FH genre book. The same could be said for Damage Over Time (DH #47).


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think so. I think AoE (Trail) and the Cage modifier are definitely worthwhile, and probably Sight Range and Voice Range as well. They’re all things that tend to be fairly common and that can be done with the current system, but it will save gamers time and effort to give them an easy, unified way to do them.


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. That’s really all it is, and the expansions and clarifications for Trigger make it possible to create one that functions in basically the same way. However, there would probably need to be a “Damage Shield” additional value adder for Trigger to reflect the fact that a Damage Shield *automatically* hits its target, whereas an ordinary Trigger does not. OTOH, under this scheme the No Range Limitation would be applied to the power, easing the cost burden some.


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. MegaScale works just fine, but the differences between it and personal scale create some confusion on the part of some gamers and some logical disconnects. I think it will work better if the initial level is more expensive (probably +1), but you can use the power at any scale from personal up to the purchased maximum.


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. You can do the same thing with Trigger.


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t say for sure right now, but it sort of seems to me like UOO has gotten way more complicated than it needs to be. Maybe that’s unavoidable; giving a power to another person (either voluntarily or as an attack) is a sort of complicated thing. But at the very least I’d like to create some options so the rules set forth easy ways to do typical Fantasy things like make everyone in an adventuring party invisible, or for a flying character to carry some friends along but not let them fly under their own power.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Everything in a game system interacts with everything else. So I'm wondering how things like Area of Effect and Megascale will work if the hex grid is replaced.

Mind you, there are some who consider Megascale a severely broken mechanic anyway and would not mind seeing it disappear.

[vincemcd]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?


Splitting up the comments Steve has made that I'd like to add my own $0.02 to...


One possibility would be to make them adders and subtractors rather than multipliers and dividers....
I may be an old Fuzion fan, but this is one part of Fuzion that I definitely didn't like - everything was a flat adder or subtractor. While I think that some advantages and limitations probably work better as flat additions or subtractions, I think doing this across the board won't work well.

For example: Penetrating, for instance, might work well as a flat adder per amount of "minimum damage" that gets through defense. Armor Piercing, on the other hand, benefits higher-damage attacks much more than lower-damage attacks, and should be more costly for bigger attacks.


Another would be to let Advantages and Limitations “cancel each other out” before application, so that a +¾ Advantage and a -½ Limitation would result in a (¾ - ½ =) +¼ Advantage.
This will likely depend greatly on any changes to the "Real Cost vs. Active Cost" implementation. Overall, the math is easier while still meaningful. Even if I'm simply going to regularly plug formulas into my computer, anything that'd help play on the fly while not hindering the capabilities of the system is a "win."


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

Steve’s Thoughts: I don’t think we should, but as long as we’re considering everything I suppose it can’t hurt to throw this one out there.

This is already possible, if one sets up all of the advantages on their powers with Naked Advantages. It's a character sheet nightmare to do so, and probably should set off a GM's warning-bells if someone did. Musing aloud, maybe this means that Naked Advantages (or at least some of them) need a little additional cost over "regular" advantages.

I don't see the harm in having this as an option. Maybe just a flat +0 option with GM permission, or maybe make it cost something (probably something as low as a +1 adder).

[James Gillen]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

No, it's easier this way.



Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

Ehh, no.




Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

Steve’s Thoughts: I don’t think we should, but as long as we’re considering everything I suppose it can’t hurt to throw this one out there.

It's worth considering at least.



Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

Not really necessary, but if any really good ones come up, sure.




Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. That’s really all it is, and the expansions and clarifications for Trigger make it possible to create one that functions in basically the same way. However, there would probably need to be a “Damage Shield” additional value adder for Trigger to reflect the fact that a Damage Shield *automatically* hits its target, whereas an ordinary Trigger does not. OTOH, under this scheme the No Range Limitation would be applied to the power, easing the cost burden some.

Not specifically the same question, but on the subject, forcing us to take Continuous on top of Damage Shield was one of the biggest bee-itches I and several other people had with 5th Edition. If it HAS to be Continuous, it should simply be the straight +1 value, with "Damage Shield" defined as a 0-level adjustment like the variants for Area Effect One Hex or the like.



Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. MegaScale works just fine, but the differences between it and personal scale create some confusion on the part of some gamers and some logical disconnects. I think it will work better if the initial level is more expensive (probably +1), but you can use the power at any scale from personal up to the purchased maximum.

I seem to be one of the few people who likes MegaScale.

JG

[Enforcer84]

Ractive query, little thought.

so what would qualify as a .15 advantage? and does there really need to be a .01 level of Granularity?

[Enforcer84]

Personally, I'd kind of like the Semi-Armor Piercing/Armor piercing Advantages combined? I kind of liked the Piercing Points Advantage from long ago, perhaps bought as an Adder? but of course I could see the abuse potential there.

[L. Marcus]

For a little more granularity, why not use Ad and Disad steps of a fifth? Or a multiple of .2, if that's easier to read.

[mabalmer]

Point by point....


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

I could see an argument for and against. For, in that it would allow us to define Advantages and Limitations that really do have a more accurate representation of how powerful they are. Against, in that it's more mathy. And I don't like math. ;) So I'd say no. I could get behind the notion of adding a couple of steps, though - say, 1/3, and 2/3. It would give us two more steps; I think that would be helpful. That's a level of granularity that I think would work well.


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

I can't see why, quite honestly. Do I think some advantages are more expensive than they should be/fail to offer enough benefit for the cost? Sure, but that doesn't mean we should do the calculations any different.


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

While I can see the reason for this, I can also see a reason not to. This is the whole reason we have Multipowers.


Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

I can't think of any off the top of my head. I so rarely create custom Advantages that it's almost a moot point.


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

Absolutely, but with one big point: add some granularity to the actual range of these advantages! The old "one hex per 5 Active" works for many things, and you can buy this up, but what if you DON'T want that? I think reworking the AoE Advantages costs is definitely in order, especially when it comes to range of effect. For strong powers, the AoE is frequently far too large (much as the range limit on powers is so huge as to not be an issue in many cases). Case in point: a 90-AP AoE (line) power has an effective range of 18". While this is nice for a +1 advantage, 18" is the width of a full battlemap. Can we have a version that's a smaller Advantage with less range on it so we don't have to burn up so many Active points when we -don't- want all that range and never did in the first place?

Example: An earth manipulator wants to buy a power that is defined as a whip-force that travels along the ground, knocking things out of the way as it travels. Its kinetic force doesn't last very long, but it is quite powerful while it travels. He buys it as:

EB 9d6; AoE (18" line; +1), No Range (-1/2), Limited AoE (9"; -1/4). 90 AP, 51 RP.

He's paying full price for an effect he doesn't -fully- want, because while he takes a -1/4 Limitation on the power to limit the AoE of the power by half, that doesn't really help him when it comes to getting what he really wants, which is a few extra dice of damage.

See what I'm getting at?


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

As stated before, that's kinda what it is, so yes. :)


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

I'm not sure how else you'd tweak it. It seems pretty straightforward to me. IMO, before you tweak Megascale, I would see how the general measurement changes play out. If you change from hexes to grid squares, and go to 1" = 1m, then that makes Megascale even simpler, as you just multiply distances by whatever factor of ten you need. I kinda like MS as it is.


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

Bag it, I never use it.


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

Don't really have a good answer on this one. Would I like it so that it was easier to use in terms of a "party-effect" power? Yeah, I would, but again, short of changing costs I'm not quite sure how to do that.

[Sean Waters]

I'd like to see advantages and limitaitons overhauled so that an advantage adds something to a power and a limtiaiton takes something away. Two examples at present of advvantages reducing utuility and limtiations increasing it are with damage shield and focus, but there are others.

[L. Marcus]

You feel Focus increases utility in Powers? How so?

[Sean Waters]

You feel Focus increases utility in Powers? How so?

I have a gun focus. I can give it to you to use, even though I have not bought UBO for it, unless I define it as a 'personal only' focus.

[Sean Waters]

Naked advantages:

I can buy an 8d6 EB AP for 60 points in a game capped at 60 AP and I have to use the AP (I'd probably want to anyway unless I was desperate to save END against a low-def target)

OR I can buy 8d6 EB and a 20 point naked advantage, and not have to use the advantage, and so not spend the END.

Finally I could (without violating the AP cap) buy a 12d6 EB and a 30 point naked advantage for AP.

I think we need to either make NAs cost more or increase the utility of 'normal' advantages by making their use optional to acheive some sort of balance here.

Actually another point occurs: there is no cost or other penalty if you define your NA as applying to more than one power. Perhaps there should be?

[Susano]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

Steve’s Thoughts: What I mean by this is that instead of +½, we’d write it +.5. The main benefit to doing this is that it would increase granularity since we’d no longer be limited to ¼, ½, ¾, 1, and so on. You could have a +.15 Advantage, a -.60 Limitation, and so on. That would allow for much more precise pigeonholing than the current four-step system.

While granularity is desireable, there are also some drawbacks. First, it takes more spaces on the page to write +.5 than +½, or -.75 than -¾. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but trust me — when it comes to wanting to make character sheets compact and easy to use, and over the course of hundreds of thousands of lines of text in dozens of books, it’s a concern that can’t be overlooked.

Second, is this level of granularity really desireable? One, while current HERO System users could master the difference with almost no effort, I think it could be more confusing to newcomers. Two, I shudder to think over the arguments that could result regarding the value of an Advantage (“It should be a +.35.” “No, you idiot, that’s clearly a +.41!”). Three, even if this change takes place, I still think most Power Modifiers will end up as .25, .50, .75, and 1 partly out of habit, partly because those values are appropriate, and partly because we like to think in terms of such numbers. Fourth, I don’t think there are really *that* many situations where wedging Power Modifier values into the current four-step system causes unbalance or other problems.


Please, no. One thing that drives me nuts about GURPS is the percentages, whcih are all over the map. The 4 (really) 8-step system is nice and elegent. It goes from -0 to -2 at -1/4 increments and has worked for years that way (so, actually, it's a 9-step system).



Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

Steve’s Thoughts: This may depend partly on the answer to the question in the “General Issues” thread about whether we should abandon the concept of Active Points and Real Points. One possibility would be to make them adders and subtractors rather than multipliers and dividers, since the concepts of multiplying and dividing by a fraction seem to scare off some newcomers despite the facts that (a) it’s pretty basic math, and (b) calculators are really cheap. Another would be to let Advantages and Limitations “cancel each other out” before application, so that a +¾ Advantage and a -½ Limitation would result in a (¾ - ½ =) +¼ Advantage. A third would be to have Advantages affect *effectiveness* rather than points, so that a power with a -¼ Limitation is somehow 20% less effective, not 20% less costly (though this raises the question of why to take one if it doesn’t “save” anything).

Overall, though, my current thinking is that none of these changes are worth it (even if all their implications can be worked out). I’m always open to new ideas, but I think the current Power Modifier rules structure works fine.


Personally, I don't seen the need for a change like this (although I will admit, 25 years ago I thought they did cancel each other out...).



Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

Steve’s Thoughts: I don’t think we should, but as long as we’re considering everything I suppose it can’t hurt to throw this one out there.


My answer? Buy a Multipower with enough slots to acheive the results you want.



Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t see a strong need for any, but there are certainly some that could be considered. For example, the Time Duration Power Modifier (from my DH #39 column) might be worth adding, if not in the core book then in a 6E FH genre book. The same could be said for Damage Over Time (DH #47).


I'd rather see some Advnatages expanded or better defined than start adding news ones, unless the new ones incorporate an effect that must otherwise be built with multiple Advantages and the like. OTOH, I know your DH columns had a lot of good ideas and material in there.



Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think so. I think AoE (Trail) and the Cage modifier are definitely worthwhile, and probably Sight Range and Voice Range as well. They’re all things that tend to be fairly common and that can be done with the current system, but it will save gamers time and effort to give them an easy, unified way to do them.


Yes, please. I don't own the CCH, but I do have The UEP, and liked the new AOE effects. I do, however, disagree with your implimentation of what happens when you miss with an AOE or Explosion (as stated in the UEP) and really don't want to see that made a 6th Ed. ruling. It makes no sense from both a realism and game mechanics standpoint.



Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. That’s really all it is, and the expansions and clarifications for Trigger make it possible to create one that functions in basically the same way. However, there would probably need to be a “Damage Shield” additional value adder for Trigger to reflect the fact that a Damage Shield *automatically* hits its target, whereas an ordinary Trigger does not. OTOH, under this scheme the No Range Limitation would be applied to the power, easing the cost burden some.


Our consensus last night on this exact subject (Damage Shield) was to make the Advantage "all-in-one," and thus remove the need to buy other Advantages to simulate it. Our idea was to make a Damage Shield +3/4, and an Offensive one +1. No need for Continious or other Advantages as it is now all "built in" to DS Advantage.



Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. MegaScale works just fine, but the differences between it and personal scale create some confusion on the part of some gamers and some logical disconnects. I think it will work better if the initial level is more expensive (probably +1), but you can use the power at any scale from personal up to the purchased maximum.


Ah, good. Right now there's a disconnect between a character's max range on a movement power and where Megascale stats. This will eliminate that.



Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t say for sure right now, but it sort of seems to me like UOO has gotten way more complicated than it needs to be. Maybe that’s unavoidable; giving a power to another person (either voluntarily or as an attack) is a sort of complicated thing. But at the very least I’d like to create some options so the rules set forth easy ways to do typical Fantasy things like make everyone in an adventuring party invisible, or for a flying character to carry some friends along but not let them fly under their own power.

Simpler is always better.

[nexus]

Megascale should be better defined and expanded to include optional extras like acceleration time for Mega movement. The advantage tends (for me) to include some logical disconnects that detract from its use.

Time Delay might be rarely used but it seems important for creating things like Time Bombs. I suppose it could be lumped into Trigger (a set period of time passes).

What are the new AE modifiers in the Character Creation book?

[Susano]

Megascale should be better defined and expanded to include optional extras like acceleration time for Mega movement. The advantage tends (for me) to include some logical disconnects that detract from its use.

Time Delay might be rarely used but it seems important for creating things like Time Bombs. I suppose it could be lumped into Trigger (a set period of time passes).

What are the new AE modifiers in the Character Creation book?

Sounds like the same ones from The Ultimate Energy Projector.

[Balok]

so what would qualify as a .15 advantage? and does there really need to be a .01 level of Granularity?I think 0.01 is too fine a granularity, but 0.1 might not be. Basing the system on tenths would also simplify multiplication for the same reasons the metric system works well (unless you learned the English system and it's dug into your brain like a tick). Most folks can figure out what a tenth of something is in their head, and going from there to, say, .3 of it is hardly harder. I don't regard the current math as particularly difficult, but the topic seems to appear again and again when people cite reasons why they're leery of Hero - and one assumes at least one of the major design goals is to bring in new folks.

[Sean Waters]

You can do time delay as a species of trigger.

[Xotl]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

While initially in favour of the cancel-out method, posts later in the thread have revised my opinion against it. The idea of using something other than quarters for costing is intriguing though, if it could be worked out, as the 1/4 scale lacks a bit of granularity for me.


Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t see a strong need for any, but there are certainly some that could be considered. For example, the Time Duration Power Modifier (from my DH #39 column) might be worth adding, if not in the core book then in a 6E FH genre book. The same could be said for Damage Over Time (DH #47).

Those would both be appreciated, preferably in the main book.


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

These would also be handy.


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

I'd love to see logical simplification, and if it solves the Damage Shield problem at the same time so much the better. However, http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1549688&postcount=91 is an excellent post on the subject that I think takes care of things even better.


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

Yes: fold it in to Trigger, as it's logical.

[DavidToomey]

As an alternative to Fnd Weakness...

How about removing the restriction on only one halving for Armor Piercing? In my mind, the first halving is the most effective one anyway...going from 32 to 16 Def is much more debilitating than going from 16 to 8, or 8 to 4...

As an alternative, apply an additional +1/4 to later levels of AP, either once or every time, i.e.

AP1 = + 1/2
AP2 = + 1/2 + (1/2 + 1/4) = +1 1/4
AP 3 = + 1/2 + 1/2 + (1/2 + 1/4) = + 1 3/4 OR + 1/2 + (1/2 + 1/4) + (1/2 + 1/4) = +2
and so on

[Simon]

Regarding the display/representation of Modifiers as decimal values, I think that fractions are easier to read but provide less granularity.

If you stick with fractions, maybe consider moving away from 1/4 increments....take it to 1/10 or somesuch.


One thing that I think would _definitely_ be a good idea would be to bring the rounding rules inline with real-world mathematics. Drop the idea of "when rounding to 2 decimal places, ignore everything after the 2nd decimal place, round to 1 decimal place in the player's favor and then round again to 0 decimal places in the player's favor".

Just got for a straight: round the number to the closest integer/whole number value. .5 rounds up (or down....just make it always round in the same direction regardless of "favor").

[Chris Goodwin]

Here's an idea I've had but haven't seen floated here yet.

Give all Powers a "cost per unit". Call it that if you wish; CPU makes a nice abbreviation ;). Advantages and Limitations now modify cost per unit directly, by an amount equal to their value. For example: Energy Blast has a default cost of 5 points per unit. A +2 Advantage would make it 7 points per unit, and a -3 Limitation would then make it 4 points per unit.

To get the new value of all Modifiers, you simply multiply their existing costs by 4. So, IIF becomes a -1 Limitation, while OAF becomes -4. 0 Endurance Cost becomes a +2 Advantage.

This does a couple of things, but the main one is it removes all of the fractions. It also turns the final cost into straight addition and subtraction then multiplication, instead of multiplication (to find the existing cost-per-unit times the number of units), addition (Advantages), multiplication (Base Points to Active Points), addition (Limitations), and division (Active Points to Real Points).

Many Powers have an obvious Unit; Energy Blast (whatever we end up calling it) is dice; Armor is DEF. Some Powers might not have easy units as is; Life Support, Invisibility, and Desolidification are examples. These could be changed, so that, for instance, Life Support is now a flat 5 points per condition. Or you could just say that each "level" is a unit, and the Modifiers against it modify the cost, even if the first level is 5 points and the second level is +10. You could also arbitrarily decide that, for instance, Desolidification at, say, 8 units at 5 points per unit, if you wanted to keep it at 40 points.

Include a rule that you can't reduce the per-unit cost of a Power below 1. You could also say that if you've reduced the per-unit cost of the Power to 1, then further Limitations against it lower the final cost; so that 10d6 Energy Blast with a +2 in Advantages and -6 in Limitations now costs 10 points; if you for some reason added -3 more Limitations to it, the final cost would be 7 points. We now have an absolute minimum cost of 1 point for any Power.

It also easily does away with Active Points vs. Real Points.

[SSgt Baloo]

I should explain that I'm a bit ambivalent about 6E Hero. I really liked 4th Ed., and while 5ER seems like a fair lot of improvement, there were some changes I choose to ignore. Another thing -- I've had the rules book for at least a couple of years now and I'm still discovering differences between 4th and 5th. Some I like, butr some I don't. I really think a lot of thought should go into how to organize the 6E core book, to make it easier to find the things you want to do, even without initially knowing the name of the power you're looking for (useful for both newbs and old hands, especially when the power/skill/task/perk has been renamed or otherwise changed).


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

No. While you might want to make it as an option for players who want extra crunchy goodness, it would complicate matters for people new to the system.


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

Nope. Works fine. Once again, make it optional for folks who want to adjust granularity.


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

I've occasionally done something like this in my campaigns. It didn't hurt the running of it none. You might want to include some of the other suggestions as an option though.


Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

Maybe, but would it improve gameplay or not?


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

Sounds like a plan.


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

Yes.


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. MegaScale works just fine, but the differences between it and personal scale create some confusion on the part of some gamers and some logical disconnects. I think it will work better if the initial level is more expensive (probably +1), but you can use the power at any scale from personal up to the purchased maximum.

I approve heartily.


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

Time delay is a kind of trigger. Fold it in.


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t say for sure right now, but it sort of seems to me like UOO has gotten way more complicated than it needs to be. Maybe that’s unavoidable; giving a power to another person (either voluntarily or as an attack) is a sort of complicated thing. But at the very least I’d like to create some options so the rules set forth easy ways to do typical Fantasy things like make everyone in an adventuring party invisible, or for a flying character to carry some friends along but not let them fly under their own power.

Once again, yes.

Finally, I'd like to agitate for a streamlined core system with plenty of options for making the game as crunchy as you like.

[Edsel]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?
My thoughts are to keep it as it is now. You can always give an example of how doing math using +.5 is the same as using +1/2. It might make thing easer for the mathematically challenged. The current breakpoints of 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and 1 are good enough.


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?
No.


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?
If the character can choose then that is an Advantage in itself. It becomes a sort of Variable Advantage. Keep it like it is now.


Q: Should any new Advantages be added?
I think we have a good enough selection now. It is easy to add custom Advantages as the GM and gaming group desires.


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?
Yep, I like the additional flexibility.


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. That’s really all it is, and the expansions and clarifications for Trigger make it possible to create one that functions in basically the same way. However, there would probably need to be a “Damage Shield” additional value adder for Trigger to reflect the fact that a Damage Shield *automatically* hits its target, whereas an ordinary Trigger does not. OTOH, under this scheme the No Range Limitation would be applied to the power, easing the cost burden some.
Sounds like a reasonable simplification to me.


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. MegaScale works just fine, but the differences between it and personal scale create some confusion on the part of some gamers and some logical disconnects. I think it will work better if the initial level is more expensive (probably +1), but you can use the power at any scale from personal up to the purchased maximum.
I like this suggestion as well.


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?
Yes, Trigger will work for this.


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?
I have no strong opinion on this one.

[Balok]

I like the cost per unit approach - it seems simpler, and therefore better from the perspective of new people.

[Jhamin]

I'd like to vote for keeping advantages and disadvantages the way they are. In my mind the current setup is very much core to the system.

Making them cancel each other out will do all kinds of wonky things to active and real points, and switching them to decimals will lead people to start arguing over pricing something a .2 vs. .3.

I don't know that enough will be gained to offset all the hastle of changing one of the core mechanics of the system.

[SSgt Baloo]

Here's an idea I've had but haven't seen floated here yet.

Give all Powers a "cost per unit". Call it that if you wish; CPU makes a nice abbreviation ;). Advantages and Limitations now modify cost per unit directly, by an amount equal to their value. For example: Energy Blast has a default cost of 5 points per unit. A +2 Advantage would make it 7 points per unit, and a -3 Limitation would then make it 4 points per unit.

To get the new value of all Modifiers, you simply multiply their existing costs by 4. So, IIF becomes a -1 Limitation, while OAF becomes -4. 0 Endurance Cost becomes a +2 Advantage.

This does a couple of things, but the main one is it removes all of the fractions. It also turns the final cost into straight addition and subtraction then multiplication, instead of multiplication (to find the existing cost-per-unit times the number of units), addition (Advantages), multiplication (Base Points to Active Points), addition (Limitations), and division (Active Points to Real Points).

Many Powers have an obvious Unit; Energy Blast (whatever we end up calling it) is dice; Armor is DEF. Some Powers might not have easy units as is; Life Support, Invisibility, and Desolidification are examples. These could be changed, so that, for instance, Life Support is now a flat 5 points per condition. Or you could just say that each "level" is a unit, and the Modifiers against it modify the cost, even if the first level is 5 points and the second level is +10. You could also arbitrarily decide that, for instance, Desolidification at, say, 8 units at 5 points per unit, if you wanted to keep it at 40 points.

Include a rule that you can't reduce the per-unit cost of a Power below 1. You could also say that if you've reduced the per-unit cost of the Power to 1, then further Limitations against it lower the final cost; so that 10d6 Energy Blast with a +2 in Advantages and -6 in Limitations now costs 10 points; if you for some reason added -3 more Limitations to it, the final cost would be 7 points. We now have an absolute minimum cost of 1 point for any Power.

It also easily does away with Active Points vs. Real Points.

Okay. Beats my suggestions to insensibility. I fully endorse the above suggestions.

[nexus]

Simpler is always better.

Nitpick: Simpler and just as functional is better


Sounds like the same ones from The Ultimate Energy Projector.

Oh okay thanks, I missed that.

[Balok]

Making them cancel each other out will do all kinds of wonky things to active and real points, and switching them to decimals will lead people to start arguing over pricing something a .2 vs. .3.People argue about this now. It seems to me that finer granularity would make resolving such arguments easier.


I don't know that enough will be gained to offset all the hastle of changing one of the core mechanics of the system.If they canceled out, I'd agree. If they just switch to decimals, like .2 or .3, and the basic formula is still the same, I don't see it as a huge change, but more like an enhancement.

JMO.

[steamteck]

Nitpick: Simpler and just as functional is better

.

Quoted for truth that needs to be carefully considered here.



I think damage shield should be a stand alone advantage with no others needed or maybe radically an actual power!

[Susano]

Nitpick: Simpler and just as functional is better

Ah yes, that's very true and I agree 100%. Simplicity is of no use if it hinders character options and/or actions.

[Andrew Byers]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

I strongly hope that you don't make this change. I think the added level of granularity is superfluous and would lead to a lot of additional (silly) arguments that amount to quibbles over a point or two. Quarter point fractions are enough. We really don't want to see arguments over limitations being worth -.35 or -.4.




Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. MegaScale works just fine, but the differences between it and personal scale create some confusion on the part of some gamers and some logical disconnects. I think it will work better if the initial level is more expensive (probably +1), but you can use the power at any scale from personal up to the purchased maximum.

I've been houseruling MegaScale this way since 5th ed. first came out and it's worked well in play so far. I would definitely like to see this become the official rule. Sure, I know that some see MegaScale as unbalancing, but frankly, it's the only reasonable way to simulate some effects.

[ajackson]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?
Well, having dealt with GURPS, which gets completely out of hand with this, I certainly don't want 0.05 advantages. On the other hand, I'd kind of like to see advantages be 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, etc, because that maps to a straight 6/7/8/9/10 points per die, rather than 6.25/7.5/8.75/10 per die.

I'm sort of tempted by discarding 1/4 and 3/4 advantages, and having advantages in tenths. I'm also tempted by converting most of them to adders, but there are problems with that.


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?
As you mention, there are some advantages to treating everything as adders. However, there are also some fairly significant complexities (for example, AP attacks), so pending a complete rewrite of how damage works, it's probably not an option.


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?
I'd like to see Variable Advantage brought back.


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?
It's a common enough use that it should probably be described by itself, but that doesn't mean it can't just be a specific case of Trigger.


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Megascale should probably be an adder, at least when applied to movement powers. As it is, there's basically no purpose to non-combat movement any more.


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

Call me a heretic on this, but I think Usable Against Others should be folded into Transform. The effectiveness of a power used against someone else is rarely particularly linked to how useful it is as a personal power. Easier to balance 'banish someone to an alternate dimension' as being the same as 'transform person into a rock'. Usable By Others is probably okay as is.

[Chris Goodwin]

Well, having dealt with GURPS, which gets completely out of hand with this, I certainly don't want 0.05 advantages. On the other hand, I'd kind of like to see advantages be 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, etc, because that maps to a straight 6/7/8/9/10 points per die, rather than 6.25/7.5/8.75/10 per die.

Yeah, I thought of that a long time ago. That led me to consider, why not just have Advantages and Limitations add to and subtract from unit cost directly instead of multiplication?

I mean, honestly, how important is it to keep multiplication and division?

[Enforcer84]

I have a gun focus. I can give it to you to use, even though I have not bought UBO for it, unless I define it as a 'personal only' focus.
So if I club you with a car I found in a parking lot I should have paid for it?

[Enforcer84]

Naked advantages:

I can buy an 8d6 EB AP for 60 points in a game capped at 60 AP and I have to use the AP (I'd probably want to anyway unless I was desperate to save END against a low-def target)

OR I can buy 8d6 EB and a 20 point naked advantage, and not have to use the advantage, and so not spend the END.

Finally I could (without violating the AP cap) buy a 12d6 EB and a 30 point naked advantage for AP.

I think we need to either make NAs cost more or increase the utility of 'normal' advantages by making their use optional to acheive some sort of balance here.

Actually another point occurs: there is no cost or other penalty if you define your NA as applying to more than one power. Perhaps there should be?
Naked Advantage doesn't count against Campaign AP Caps? Really? I did not know that.

[devlin1]

Yeah, I thought of that a long time ago. That led me to consider, why not just have Advantages and Limitations add to and subtract from unit cost directly instead of multiplication?

I mean, honestly, how important is it to keep multiplication and division?
I agree. I realize the AP totals would change, and I realize that it's a little M&M-ish, but I wouldn't mind, say, Armor Piercing being +3 points/1d6 instead of +1/2. Not a straight adder, but a per-die-of-effect adder (or per meter, for movement powers, and so on). A 6d6 AP "Attack" (I think I'm also in favor of a unified Attack power with Advantages to make it ranged, etc.), assuming each 6d6 still costs 5 points, is 48 points (5 x 6 + 18), as opposed to 45 under the current system.

Limitations would work the same way, except I'd have a -1/2 Limitation subtract only 2 points instead of 3 (so Advantages round up and Limitations round down). Stick a -1/2-equivalent Limitation on there, like OIF, and it brings the cost down to 36 (48 - 12), instead of 30, as it does now. Minimum cost per whatever is 1 point.

Advantages and Disadvantages could be listed with their attendant powers for easy reference instead of off in their own sections. This, too, is quite M&M-ish, but hey, if it works, it works.

I like the mathematical precision of the multipliers and divisors as much as the next guy, but I honestly believe this is one of HERO's biggest barriers to entry. This is the bit that scares people off, and the only real reason I can see to keep it is the stubborn insistence on "doing it the way we've always done it, dagnabbit!" I think that because I have that impulse within me, so I know I can't be the only one. It's the same as people who live in foul-weather climates being proud of their city's harsh winters.

Instituting this change would mean no more charts, no more calculators, and no more comments about HERO requiring slide rules.

[Lord Liaden]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

Steve’s Thoughts: What I mean by this is that instead of +½, we’d write it +.5. The main benefit to doing this is that it would increase granularity since we’d no longer be limited to ¼, ½, ¾, 1, and so on. You could have a +.15 Advantage, a -.60 Limitation, and so on. That would allow for much more precise pigeonholing than the current four-step system.

While granularity is desireable, there are also some drawbacks. First, it takes more spaces on the page to write +.5 than +½, or -.75 than -¾. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but trust me — when it comes to wanting to make character sheets compact and easy to use, and over the course of hundreds of thousands of lines of text in dozens of books, it’s a concern that can’t be overlooked.

Second, is this level of granularity really desireable? One, while current HERO System users could master the difference with almost no effort, I think it could be more confusing to newcomers. Two, I shudder to think over the arguments that could result regarding the value of an Advantage (“It should be a +.35.” “No, you idiot, that’s clearly a +.41!”). Three, even if this change takes place, I still think most Power Modifiers will end up as .25, .50, .75, and 1 partly out of habit, partly because those values are appropriate, and partly because we like to think in terms of such numbers. Fourth, I don’t think there are really *that* many situations where wedging Power Modifier values into the current four-step system causes unbalance or other problems.

Like it or not, we live in the age of decimal designations and ubiquitous electronic calculators. While us old fogeys may be very comfortable with fractions, their use is one of the most frequent complaints I hear from non-HERO players. The younger ones in particular seem to find them intimidating. If the goal is to bring new players to HERO, IMO this would be one merely cosmetic but still useful tack, whose benefits would balance the wordcount drawback.

As far as "increasing granularity" goes, there's no reason why switching to decimals would open the door to +.41 Advantages or -.62 Limitations, any more than the current fractions system employs +2/3 or -1/8. Just restrict all official Advantages or Limitations to multiples of .25, and you should be alright. :)



Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

Steve’s Thoughts: This may depend partly on the answer to the question in the “General Issues” thread about whether we should abandon the concept of Active Points and Real Points. One possibility would be to make them adders and subtractors rather than multipliers and dividers, since the concepts of multiplying and dividing by a fraction seem to scare off some newcomers despite the facts that (a) it’s pretty basic math, and (b) calculators are really cheap. Another would be to let Advantages and Limitations “cancel each other out” before application, so that a +¾ Advantage and a -½ Limitation would result in a (¾ - ½ =) +¼ Advantage. A third would be to have Advantages affect *effectiveness* rather than points, so that a power with a -¼ Limitation is somehow 20% less effective, not 20% less costly (though this raises the question of why to take one if it doesn’t “save” anything).

Overall, though, my current thinking is that none of these changes are worth it (even if all their implications can be worked out). I’m always open to new ideas, but I think the current Power Modifier rules structure works fine.

As I indicated above, I believe that changing to decimals would reduce that "fear factor" for new players.



Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

Steve’s Thoughts: I don’t think we should, but as long as we’re considering everything I suppose it can’t hurt to throw this one out there.

The point about Naked Advantages upthread is a good one, but the rulebook recommends that characters should have a good rationale for buying Advantages "Naked" other than convenience, and that they should have different Modifiers from the Powers they apply to. IMO that puts them in a different category from Advantages that are added directly to the cost of a Power.



Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. That’s really all it is, and the expansions and clarifications for Trigger make it possible to create one that functions in basically the same way. However, there would probably need to be a “Damage Shield” additional value adder for Trigger to reflect the fact that a Damage Shield *automatically* hits its target, whereas an ordinary Trigger does not. OTOH, under this scheme the No Range Limitation would be applied to the power, easing the cost burden some.

I remember the Digital HERO article on expanding Trigger, where you outlined that alternative build for a "damage shield" effect. IIRC the Active Point cost came out the same as for 5E Damage Shield, but the Real Point cost was lower solely because you allowed No Range to be applied to it.

This example reinforces a conclusion I came to long ago - and Steve, I say this with all due respect - there's no logical or game-balance reason why Ranged Power Damage Shields can't take No Range, except that the writeup in FREd said that it couldn't (perhaps just continuing the tradition from 4E), and several published characters appearing soon after FREd came out were built that way, so it was too late to change it. Not that that couldn't be argued as a valid reason, but for Sixth Edition it can be discarded without loss of face. ;)

I could live with a Trigger-based damage shield concept, as long as it didn't come out more expensive in Active Points than the current one. I'm sure I'm in the minority in actually agreeing with the logic of adding Continuous to the official 5E DS build. If No Range had been allowed I, and I think a lot of other HEROphiles, would have been content. However, in my games I've not only allowed No Range, I also allow Damage Shield to be bought without Continuous as a straight +1/2 Advantage. It's still an automatic hit, but has to be turned on with each use and doesn't linger between the user's Phases.

I've seen several concepts in my games that suit this, such as electrified skin/armor, or automatic counterpunching. IME it works great as an Entangle-breaker or a counter to multiple Grabs. Since it's automatically successful it's superior in some circumstances to a standard attack that needs to be targeted. And of course, it's much cheaper than a Continuous Damage Shield.

If you could devise an Advantage used with Trigger that did that, I'd be happy with it; otherwise I'd prefer to leave Damage Shield in the system.



Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t say for sure right now, but it sort of seems to me like UOO has gotten way more complicated than it needs to be. Maybe that’s unavoidable; giving a power to another person (either voluntarily or as an attack) is a sort of complicated thing. But at the very least I’d like to create some options so the rules set forth easy ways to do typical Fantasy things like make everyone in an adventuring party invisible, or for a flying character to carry some friends along but not let them fly under their own power.

Perhaps some version of Area Of Effect would make a viable option, including Selective Target. That way a character with this Power could affect everyone within an area without buying Ranged for the Power, and choose who to give the Power to, while retaining control of its use.

[Eodin]

Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

Steve’s Thoughts: I don’t think we should, but as long as we’re considering everything I suppose it can’t hurt to throw this one out there.

I think that, like MegaScale, a +1/4 added advantage to get the choice is not unreasonable. For that matter, I'm also fond of a +1/4 variable effect (20 pts FF can become 10PD/10ED or 5PD/15ED, as desired).


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. That’s really all it is, and the expansions and clarifications for Trigger make it possible to create one that functions in basically the same way. However, there would probably need to be a “Damage Shield” additional value adder for Trigger to reflect the fact that a Damage Shield *automatically* hits its target, whereas an ordinary Trigger does not. OTOH, under this scheme the No Range Limitation would be applied to the power, easing the cost burden some.

Most definitely.


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. MegaScale works just fine, but the differences between it and personal scale create some confusion on the part of some gamers and some logical disconnects. I think it will work better if the initial level is more expensive (probably +1), but you can use the power at any scale from personal up to the purchased maximum.

PLEASE. Star Hero weapons are a prime example where the current construct is painful.



Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. You can do the same thing with Trigger.


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t say for sure right now, but it sort of seems to me like UOO has gotten way more complicated than it needs to be. Maybe that’s unavoidable; giving a power to another person (either voluntarily or as an attack) is a sort of complicated thing. But at the very least I’d like to create some options so the rules set forth easy ways to do typical Fantasy things like make everyone in an adventuring party invisible, or for a flying character to carry some friends along but not let them fly under their own power.

Yes and Yes. UOO should in some circumstances be treated like an Aid/Succor effect, without having to have the power in the first place, and in other cases should work like an area of effect. I'll think a bit more about what would be a good change...

[Xotl]

Piercing: it's easy to understand, a rather short entry, far more flexible than normal Armour Piercing (why a reduction of half, regardless of defense amount?), and allows the modeling of certain elements that can't be done right now. It's extremely useful in any genre employing guns (sci-fi, comics, military, western), which is more than common enough to justify rescuing it from any one genre book. I would very much like to see it in the main book.

Also:
- I agree with Simon's plea for normal rounding rules as one more piece of intuitiveness.

- On further reflection I quite like the idea of moving to decimals rather than fractions, as long as the decimals were fixed increments like they currently are. It would aid in teaching.

If by some chance the advantage increment amounts are up for examination, it might be worth examining increments of .20 rather than the current .25. .20 is more granular than what we have now while still coming out to 1.0, and without getting down to ridiculously minor amounts. Of course, with increments of .20 you lose the convenient .50 though....

[Vondy]

I would like to see advantages and disadvantages remain as they are or go to a decimal system with only one decimal place. More decimal places give complexity without gain, IMO. Also, I think we will run into balance issues if we change from the calculate active cost with advantages and then refactor with limitations method. The current method (in that regard) has been tuned into form over several versions and opening it back up could have some unforseen consequences. On the other hand, while I am used to advantages being expressed in fractions, having them expressed as decimal points doesn't actually create a mathematical difference in terms of how the calculation is performed (I convert to decimal for calculator use already). It does allow more granularity-precision in costing the value of advantages and limitations. In that latter respect, however, I'm parve. I'm happy with the current system, but if we go to a single decimal place I'll probably be just as happy.

[Bismark]

Piercing: it's easy to understand, a rather short entry, far more flexible than normal Armour Piercing (why a reduction of half, regardless of defense amount?), and allows the modeling of certain elements that can't be done right now. It's extremely useful in any genre employing guns (sci-fi, comics, military), which is more than common enough to justify its rescue from a genre book. I would very much like to see it in the main book.

What he said - plus, it is also incredibly useful for modelling arrows, crossbow bolts, slingshot, etc.

There is even a case for there being a negative version of it as a Limitation (Reduced Penetration is just too coarse for a lot of weapons/ammo)

[JmOz]

Just had an idea for a defence power advantage: Absolute defence, probably a +1 or more. It would turn the defence power so that it functions similar to Force Wall instead of Force Field, no body penetration No damage done

[BobGreenwade]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?I was just contemplating this myself. I think that, even if you don't go the decimal route, breaking down to the 1/8 level is indicated.

My line of thought actually started with 1/8 breakdowns. Hero has gotten to the point where similar Limitations (and I'd give specific examples if I could remember them) have the same game value even though one practically subsumes the other. There are also some specific ideas I have that would require 1/8 levels (Focus, which I'll post on later, is one).

All that said, if you do go with decimals, I think you should limit the breakdowns to increments of .05, at least for now. That's 1/20, and should be more than enough for now. Any finer and things will be a little too subject to the kinds of fine-detail agrument you cite -- plus, I don't think we really need to differentiate in increments of .01 just yet.
Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?No, I agree with you that the current system is fine. It does lead to the perception that Hero is math-intensive, even though this is really the only area where we actually use multiplication to a great extent, or (with a few obvious exceptions like Armor Piercing) division hardly at all.
Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?There should be a mechanic for it. The default should still be mandatory use, but there are occasional situations where the ability to choose is logical. Perhaps some form or variant of Variable Advantage can be devised to handle it.
Q: Should any new Advantages be added?I think we're fine. The ones you mention from DH should be put into print (as in dead-tree books) somewhere else before being slid into the main rulebook. I'm not sure why I feel that way, though, so if others are excited by them then go ahead and slide them in.
Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?I don't have the CCH yet myself, but I am quite fond of the Areas you cite.

I also think something should be done to make Area Of Effect (One Hex) cost less than Explosion.

Now, separately, regarding Armor Piercing: I think there should be a way to allow this Advantage to reduce defenses past half. The way I think it could be done is to increase the cost of each successive increment by +1/4. Thus:

Basic Armor Piercing: +1/2.
Armor Piercing, overcomes one level of Hardened: +1/2 + +1/2 = +1.
Armor Piercing, reduces defenses to 1/4, one level of Hardened reduces to 1/2: +1/2 + +3/4 = +1 1/4.
Armor Piercing, reduces defenses to 1/4, one level of Hardened still reduces to 1/4, two levels reduces to 1/2: +1/2 + +1/2 + +3/4 = +1 3/4.
Armor Piercing, reduces defenses to 1/4, overcomes two levels of Hardened but neutralized by three levels: +1/2 + +3/4 + +3/4 = +2.
Armor Piercing, reduces defenses to 1/8, one level of Hardened reduces to 1/4, two levels to 1/2: +1/2 + +3/4 + +1 = +2 1/4.

Note, of course, that as the Advantage level gets larger the amount of base damage gets smaller for any game with Active Point caps. In a 90 AP game that last Advantage on an Energy Blast would be limited to 8d6 (assuming no other Advantages), versus 18d6 for a raw attack. That's average damage of 28 STUN, as opposed to 63 STUN. Sure, the 28 STUN applies to only 1/8 of the target's defenses, but it's much less likely to "one-punch" the target, do Knockback, or have any other effect other than nickel-and-diming the target into unconsciousness.
Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?Given your explanation, I think this would be a good idea.
Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?Given the tweaking you suggest, I can go along with it. I'd feel more comfortable with +1/2 as the initial value, but that's just me.
Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?I've had the same feeling as you from the beginning. Yes, just fold it in with Trigger.
Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?I do think that the complications are, for the most part, necessary to make it work. And the new (arguably returning) options you mention would be a good thing, applicable in more than just Fantasy.

It also seems to me that the Differing Modifiers aspect of this Advantage is applied differently in FHG than in the rulebook. My copy of FHG is buried at the moment, so I can't be sure, but I remember running into a problem with it when trying to build some expansions to one of the spell lists that use it extensively (I forget the aracnum name).

A version of UOO for "enchanting items" should also be addressed, IMO, though only briefly -- it's worth discussing here, since it could potentially be applicable in several genres, but really belongs most strongly in the Fantasy Hero book.

[BobGreenwade]

One more point, regarding Naked Advantages:

Currently it costs the same to have "Armor Piercing on Ultra-Gun Slot #3" as it does to have "Armor Piercing on any Ultra-Gun slot," "Armor Piercing on any weapon of up to 60 Base Points," or "Armor Piercing on any attack of up to 60 Base Points." These should all be different values, probably using some construct similar to that for Variable Advantage.

[Chris Goodwin]

I'm firmly on the side of believing that adding finer granularity to the current system of fractions is a move in the wrong direction. Having to multiply and divide by fractions is one of the two biggest complaints about the system by newbies. If we can eliminate that, the PR value alone would be astronomical.

Going to decimals means we'll see numbers like:


50 * (1 + 1.35) / (1 + 1.6)

Going to eighths means we'll see:


50 * (1 + 1 1/8) / (1 + 1 3/8)

And both:


50 * (1 + 1.125) / (1 + 1.375)

I don't see any of those as improvements. I see them as business as usual, taken even further in the wrong direction. Denominating Modifiers in terms of 1/8 means that, at some level, you're looking at fractional significant digits in the thousandths. You think the complaints about Hero System math are bad now?

So, why not go back to my previous post on the issue:


10 * (5 + 3 - 2)

where you have 10d6, times (5 points per die +3 Advantages -2 Limitations)

If you wanted to, you could even keep Active Cost, though you might rename it to Advantaged Cost. In my example here, the Advantaged Cost of the Energy Blast would be (10 * (5 + 3)) 80. You could analogize a Limited Cost, which would be the units times the quantity (cost per unit minus Limitations). So, in my example here the Limited Cost would be (10 * (5 - 2)) 30. I'm not sure what you'd use it for, but it's there as a tool. And the Net Cost would be 60.

Some might say, too much like Mutants and Masterminds. But I think GURPS Supers did it first, back in that book's first edition. At any rate, that's no reason for us not to do it.

[ajackson]

There are problems with stacking limitations in strict additive systems. Stack up 4 -1/4 limitations in Hero and you get a power for 1/2 cost. Stack up 4 -20% limitations and you've got a power for 1/5 cost. One way around that might be a a lookup table -- i.e. add up ads and disads and get a percentage, such as:


Ad/Dis Total -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 +0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8
Cost/Level 25 30 35 40 50 60 70 80 100 125 150 175 200 250 300 350 400

[Chris Goodwin]

There are problems with stacking limitations in strict additive systems.

There are problems with multiplying and dividing by fractions ending in 1/4. There are bigger problems with multiplying and dividing by fractions ending in 1/8, and even bigger ones with multiplying and dividing by decimals.

It is my firm and strong belief that anything that increases complexity in this regard is the wrong direction to move in.

[Susano]

There are problems with multiplying and dividing by fractions ending in 1/4. There are bigger problems with multiplying and dividing by fractions ending in 1/8, and even bigger ones with multiplying and dividing by decimals.

It is my firm and strong belief that anything that increases complexity in this regard is the wrong direction to move in.

This is my stand as well. I think the current method is fine. I've seen how GURPS does (or did) it for GURPS Supers and wasn't impressed.

[BobGreenwade]

There are problems with multiplying and dividing by fractions ending in 1/4. There are bigger problems with multiplying and dividing by fractions ending in 1/8, and even bigger ones with multiplying and dividing by decimals.Four words: digital calculator, one dollar.

Such a device, usually available at your local $1 store these days, can multiply and divide by decimals quite easily -- even more easily than with fractions, which have to be converted. It's what I use when I need to calculate a Power's cost and don't have HD available.

On the other hand, "that other system" (Herodom's "F-word") broke things down to addition and subtraction exclusively, but had to deal with the issue of what to do when the value of the Subtractors overwhelmed the value of the base power, and never was able to balance the "minimum cost of 1" (the approach it took) with the urge to eliminate Subtractors that didn't provide any actual cost savings.

[Chris Goodwin]

Four words: digital calculator, one dollar.

Such a device, usually available at your local $1 store these days, can multiply and divide by decimals quite easily -- even more easily than with fractions, which have to be converted. It's what I use when I need to calculate a Power's cost and don't have HD available.

Sure, "all you need is a calculator." That becomes "You need a calculator in order to play!" or, on RPG.net, "You can't play Hero unless you have a degree in calculus!"

We're talking about multiplying and dividing by eighths (three significant digits in decimal) or potentially as far as twentieths (increments of .05). How is this better?

If we need a finer grain, and are going to insist on keeping fractions, let's rescale the Limitations. Maybe we need to increase the current values by -1/2 or so. OAF for -1 1/2 sounds right. No Range for -1.

I don't see how adding complexity is an improvement. I'm not even sure I can accept the notion that adding complexity can be an improvement.


On the other hand, "that other system" (Herodom's "F-word") broke things down to addition and subtraction exclusively, but had to deal with the issue of what to do when the value of the Subtractors overwhelmed the value of the base power, and never was able to balance the "minimum cost of 1" (the approach it took) with the urge to eliminate Subtractors that didn't provide any actual cost savings.

I only vaguely remember how Fuzion did it. Wasn't it straight adders and subtracters to the final cost? Or was it per unit?

[nexus]

Sure, "all you need is a calculator." That becomes "You need a calculator in order to play!" or, on RPG.net, "You can't play Hero unless you have a degree in calculus!"


On rpg.net a game requires calculus to play if it needs addition AND subtraction :rolleyes:

but I see your point.



I only vaguely remember how Fuzion did it. Wasn't it straight adders and subtracters to the final cost? Or was it per unit?

To the final cost, IIRC. I can try to dig out my old Fuzion stuff....

[Chris Goodwin]

On rpg.net a game requires calculus to play if it needs addition AND subtraction :rolleyes:

but I see your point.


Sorry if I'm harping on RPG.net.... when I first got into Champions, teenagers working at McDonald's could still make change for a dollar when the power went out. I'm told they can't do that anymore.... :lol: :cry:

[BobGreenwade]

I only vaguely remember how Fuzion did it. Wasn't it straight adders and subtracters to the final cost? Or was it per unit?"Per unit?" If you mean, like, per die to the cost, then a single Subtractor would reduce the cost to 0 -- it was 1 point per 1d6. The subtractors applied to the final cost of a given Power, so if you had a heavily-limited ability (6 dice, say, with +3 in Adders, -10 in Subtractors) it got tossed down to just 1 point. My example of 6 + 3 - 10 thus cost the same as 6 + 3 - 8, so what (other than "game flavor") is the point of those other -2 in Subtractors, or on the other hand why not just pump up to 8 dice? Going to a straight add/subtract method in Hero would have much the same effect.

OTOH I could see going to a straight-balance method of handling Advantages and Limitations, so in the end you only either multiply or divide, not both.

[Chris Goodwin]

"Per unit?" If you mean, like, per die to the cost, then a single Subtractor would reduce the cost to 0 -- it was 1 point per 1d6.

Ahhh, right. One of many problems with Fuzion.


My example of 6 + 3 - 10 thus cost the same as 6 + 3 - 8, so what (other than "game flavor") is the point of those other -2 in Subtractors, or on the other hand why not just pump up to 8 dice? Going to a straight add/subtract method in Hero would have much the same effect.

OTOH I could see going to a straight-balance method of handling Advantages and Limitations, so in the end you only either multiply or divide, not both.

I'm assuming we're still trying to approximate the 5 points per 1d6 scale. Plus, I've specified what happens once you reach a cost-per-unit of 1 -- any further Limitations decrease the Real Cost directly. So, a 12d6 Energy Blast with -7 in Limitations (-1 3/4 in 5e terms) would have a Real Cost of 9 points ((12 * (5-4)) -3).

Edit: While I am passionate about this :D I'm not wedded to my specific implementation. I am passionate about not going further in a bad direction than we are already. The current system is not necessarily ideal, but if we leave it as is we're no worse off than we are now.

[JohnTaber]

Suggestion = For area effect any area (AEAA) allow the placement of the hexes to be changed each time the power is used.

Reasoning = AEAA is so little hexes (i.e. AE Radius for example gives many times more hexes for the same cost) it should be able to be defined each time the power is used. Currently I don't think there is a good way to have an area effect power where the hexes change without using Variable Advantage or something similar.

[Xotl]

What he said - plus, it is also incredibly useful for modelling arrows, crossbow bolts, slingshot, etc.

This too. I forgot about Fantasy Hero, where Piercing will be very handy for the modeling of crossbows. Basically any game that has standardized weapons and standardized armour benefits immensely from Piercing. I like making a rifle/crossbow that is great against personal armours but doesn't do jack against a tank. Hamfisted normal Armour Piercing simply cannot allow me to accomplish this.

[ajackson]

This too. I forgot about Fantasy Hero, where Piercing will be very handy for the modeling of crossbows. Basically any game that has standardized weapons and standardized armour benefits immensely from Piercing. I like making a rifle/crossbow that is great against personal armours but doesn't do jack against a tank. Hamfisted normal Armour Piercing simply cannot allow me to accomplish this.
A lot of the problem is the way Hero is a bit confused about linear vs logarithmic. If you use AP to reduce a 4 to a 2, that's equivalent to halving the thickness of armor. If you use AP to reduce a 20 to a 10, that's equivalent to dividing armor thickness by 32.

Without a complete restructure of how damage works, making it either purely logarithmic (which is very difficult to implement) or purely linear (in which case the tank has something like 1,000 Def), this isn't really fixable.

[Xotl]

A lot of the problem is the way Hero is a bit confused about linear vs logarithmic. If you use AP to reduce a 4 to a 2, that's equivalent to halving the thickness of armor. If you use AP to reduce a 20 to a 10, that's equivalent to dividing armor thickness by 32.

Without a complete restructure of how damage works, making it either purely logarithmic (which is very difficult to implement) or purely linear (in which case the tank has something like 1,000 Def), this isn't really fixable.

I agree that in a general sense it's something that can't be dealt with, which is why I don't advocate the removal of the normal Armour Piercing advantage; AP is very handy for things like magic and superpowers, where absolute values for armour and weapons don't exist, and is about the best solution available under the circumstances. However, I feel you can gain quite a lot of modeling power that the game currently lacks at its base by incorporating Piercing to deal with Pulp, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Dark and normal Champions elements. Simply adding in Semi-Armour Piercing and the like from Dark Champions doesn't address this at all.

Linear vs. Logarithmic doesn't enter into the occasion with Piercing because all plate armour or tank armour or whatever has the same value, and all weapons that combat them can be designed around them. The values for armour negation become exactly right instead of all over the place. My crossbow bolt negates exactly x PD, equating to plate: no more, no less. And it's all so short and easy to understand.

[Chris Goodwin]

Responding to myself...


I'm assuming we're still trying to approximate the 5 points per 1d6 scale. Plus, I've specified what happens once you reach a cost-per-unit of 1 -- any further Limitations decrease the Real Cost directly. So, a 12d6 Energy Blast with -7 in Limitations (-1 3/4 in 5e terms) would have a Real Cost of 9 points ((12 * (5-4)) -3).

Another bit of coolness: if you want two (or more!) Powers that always work together, add their unit costs together, then take a -1 Linked Limitation against the lot. If the Modifiers or otherwise default conditions (such as Endurance Cost) differ, work them out separately, for each particular component, before adding them, then apply Linked and any other Modifiers that apply to both.

Although, you could do something like the following:

Energy Blast plus Armor (Costs END, -2; CPU 1). Linked, -1; OIF (Shield Gun), -2. Unit Cost: 3. 10 units @3 = 30 Real Cost.

[steamteck]

Armor piercing I've always disliked the flat 1/2 of defenses how about something like the old piercing where you buy extra points of penetration instead?

[Susano]

I've seen variants of AP where you reduce the DEF based on the BODY you roll or some such.

[Opal]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?I don't think so. Going down to quarters is enough granularity, I think. Layer on a few limitations, for instance, and an additional +1/4 can save you nothing. If you had .1 limitations, that could be happening even more. Also, it's hard enough to make judgement calls in 1/4 inrements. If you had to got to 1/8ths or 'steenths,' I think you'd have even more Champions GMs having nervous breakdowns.



Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?There is a good argument for this. There are advantages that really affect how powerful a power is - AP, for instance. An 8d EB AP really is comparable to a 12 EB. There are others that affect how often it hits. An 8d EB Explosion hits several people, an 8d Autofire EB hits one person several times.

But, when you put the two together, it gets wonky. A 2d RKA AP, Autofire, hits multiple times about as hard as a 3d RKA AP, but doesn't cost as much.

It might make sense to create two tiers of limitations: one set that directly impacts the direct effectiveness of the power and is applied first, another that affects how often the power can be used, and is aplied after. Same for limitation, even.

Advantages and limitations on the same tiers could cancel eachother out.



Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?Bad idea, unless we re-think the cost of many advantages, such as Explosion, AE, Damage Shield, etc...


QQ: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?MegaScale is a great idea. Really, it should be expanded to deal with extreme cases of Growth and the like. Key should be making it possible for smaller scale characters to avoid mega-scale action.



Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?
You can do the same thing with Trigger.
It should be specifically mentioned as a possible trigger, and it should be pointed out that no special 'absolute time sense' power need be bought for it....



Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?I think it's been prettymuch OK sinse the Useable /by/ Others vs Useable /against/ Others distinction was drawn.

[sbarron]

I think gettting rid of the fractions is critical for 6th Ed. I particularly agree with elements of Chris' idea, and I said as much here...

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27678.

The problem is, how to apply these changes but keep things the same? My original suggestion back in the day involved converting each 1/4 increment into a whole number. So +1/4 = +1, +1/2 = +2, -3/4 = -3, etc. Then, in order to find your AC and RC, you had to use a chart, since the math didn't work anymore. The advantage of this system is that the math really didn't change, just the designation of the value of each limitation. So, us old timers that wanted to do it the "right" way, could just divide their limits and advantages by 4 and be right back were we started.

However, as you can see from the thread above, my idea took off like a lead balloon. And I still don't have the solution, but maybe now that we're having this discussion again someone can figure it out.

1) Just playing with the math here, you can also just increase the actual cost of everything in the game by a factor of 4, in which case the math would again work just fine.

Like say, each 1d6 of EB costs 20 pts instead of 5 pts, KAs would cost 60 per die instead of 15, etc. The minimum limit would be -1 (currently -1/4). When you run the numbers this way, you're getting the same formula applied to each power. Everything just costs 4 times as much. I guess this also means that all the Characteristics would cost 4 times as much as well, but there you go. However, I suspect that people would complain that we now would have 600 pt starting heroic characters, and it could go way higher, especially if point totals go up to account for figureds going away.

2) More in this vein, we could use 1/2 point limitations instead of 1/4 point limitations, and have the same process as above, but with everything costing 2 times as much rather than 4 times as much. 300 point and 700 point characters don't seem that bad, but you still have the 1/2 point in there, which, while better that 1/4 points, isn't really that awesome of a change.

3) Another way would be to change the power cost calculation formula to...

Real Cost = (Power Cost * (Advantages/4) +1)) / ((Limitations/4) +1), and
Active points = Power Cost * ((Advantages/4) +1).

Doing it this way, the limits themselves are less complicated, because the fractions are gone, but the power calculation formula has become slightly more complex. While its not really the simplification that I'm looking for, it does have the advantage of simplifying all the limits and advantages, and putting the complexity all in one single formula. A lot of people would still probably need a calculator, though.

4) So, can anyone think of any other mathmatical "process" by which we can designate -1/4 limitations as -1 (or something else!), and still get the AP and RC calcs to work the same as ever? :confused:

[Opal]

1) Just playing with the math here, you can also just increase the actual cost of everything in the game by a factor of 4, in which case the math would again work just fine.Actually, this is a common way of dealing with 1/4 limitations. Divide by 1 1/4? Multiply by 4, divide by 5. Divide by 2 3/4? Multiply by 4, divide by 11.

[dstarfire]

Continuous: A while back somebody suggested breaking continous into two parts, thus seperating the lock-on effect from the continues-to-function effect.

Damage shield: I think this should be changed to a simple +1 advantage and the need for continuous dropped. This wouldn't be neccesary if the above change to continuous were made

One of my biggest pet peeves are advantages which force you to take additional limitations (Mobile AoE and No Range, for example), I'd like to see this sort of thing remodeled as varying lvls of an advantage. It's very counter intuitive to pay more for a reduced effect.

[ajackson]

Here's a way, which happens to be already built into the Hero system at several levels, of transforming advantages and limitations from multiplication to simple addition and table lookup: logarithms. Each advantage or disadvantage is rated in levels (I've set it so x2 cost = +5); to find the cost of a power with advantages, just find the number closest to the base cost of the power on the chart below, then count left by one per point of advantages, right by one per point of disadvantages.


1 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 15 17 20 23 26 30 35 40 45 53 60 70 80 92 105 120 140 160
If you don't care about precision, various sorts of rounding are possible. I would be strongly tempted to just move in flat steps of +5 beyond 30 points, for example, which would have the additional benefit that you can just sacrifice 1d of damage for a +1 level advantage.

[Harakani]

Easy ones first...

AP:
I like the idea of an AP adder as an option. I also like "ignores N armour" instead of "halves armour".

More advantages:
More advantages, or more accurately OPTIONS for advantages are an excellent idea. A good adv (or lim) can make a tricksy power construct suddenly trivial. Try doing a 'lock on laser beam' with continuous...

Str adds:
In the same way that HKA gets "Strength adds" other powers should eb able to buy it (where appropriate). Eg an entangle where Str is used. I would also argue OTHER atts could be used. I can see an "Ego adds" for a 'mind based' telekinetic strike, for example. This would be a little like a mini-EC, I think. A mage whose powers ran off int would buy up int and buy powers where his int made him/her more powerful (without having to reflect int being important by putting a magic skill on everything). Obviously you'd need a rule that said "A power may never have more than twice effect" or somesuch.

Stacking powers.
Okay, this bit is controversial. Let me present my reasoning
Argument 1: It would be useful for a GM to be able to "create" a new power thorugh advantages or disdvantages, and for that power to be treated identically to a base power. Example; Base power flight. Costs 20 points for 10". GM decides to make Gliding. Decides is a -1 limitation, and therefore costs 10 points for 10". Also makes up ground gliding from Gliding. Decides this is also -1, and makes it 5 points for 10". Finally a player buys Ground Gliding, OIF (Elven boots -1/2), and now 10" costs 3.
This system would mean it would be possible to have a few base powers for simplicity in learning the system, but have shopping lists of powers for when characters go looking. Give regen it's own power; yeah it's a complicated healing construct, but so what? GM decides all spells HAVE to be bought with Zero End and Requires an Activation Roll, he can just post the new CPU*
Every power in an ultimate power book can be modified straight off the bat.
Argument 2: Xotl's point about advantages and lims cancelling out is an excellent one.
Unfortunately these two points, taken together, only really allow one mathematical system. Doublings. +1 of advantages doubles the cost. +2 of advantages quadruples the cost. -1 of limitations halves the cost. -2 of limitations quarters the cost.
I hate log maths... a table is really the only way for most people without a scientific calculator to cope.
On the other hand, I strongly suspect what would happen is that people would simply balance Advantages and Limitations, or look for the easy doubling/halving. Got a 10" flight OIF jetpack? Give it "no end (+1/2)" to cancel.
The table, incidentally, would look like this
-2 = *0.25
-1.75 = *0.30
-1.5 = *0.35
-1.25 = *0.42
-1 = *0.5
-0.75 = *0.59
-0.5 = *0.70
-0.25 = *0.84
-0/+0 = *1
+0.25 = *1.19
+0.5 = *1.41
+0.75 = *1.68
+1 = *2
+1.25 = *2.38
+1.5 = *2.82
+1.75 = *3.36
+2 = *4

harakani

* I love the CPU idea Chris Goodwin posted, and apologise for using it in a post that seems to be 180 degrees opposed to his idea.

[AmadanNaBriona]

I've seen variants of AP where you reduce the DEF based on the BODY you roll or some such.

That showed up in one of the 4th edition Adventurer's Clubs in the "tinker with the system" feature. I've mucked about with it, and think it works fairly well, especially in a game that also features Piercing. Multiple levels of effect work fairly easily, the amount of armor penetrated is based on the strength of the attack (generally pretty close to the DC of the attack, which would probably be a good standard effect option), not the defenders armor.

[ajackson]

The basic problem with Piercing is that it's really just 'more damage, vs everyone'. One thing I've been pondering recently:

AP: +5 points per level (or maybe -1d6 per level). Each level of AP halves up to 10 points of defense -- thus, AP/3 would halve up to 30 points of defense. As always, hardened defenses cannot be halved.

AP/X is a damage bonus against targets with a defense of up to (levels*7); against targets with lower defenses it's a net reduction in damage.

[JmOz]

Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

Steve’s Thoughts: I don’t think we should, but as long as we’re considering everything I suppose it can’t hurt to throw this one out there.


What about a +1/4 advantage to allow it?

Also, while we're on the topic, the idea of changing to decimal based modifiers, if you did it I would recomend (and it would take some minor redoing) that you make it one decimal place, +1/4 and +3/4 modifiers would either be .2 or .3, and .7 or .8, depending on the particulars for that modifier, for instance, non-persistant would be .2 (Maybe .1 actualy) while cost end to activate would be .3 (or .4 even)

[sbarron]

Also, while we're on the topic, the idea of changing to decimal based modifiers, if you did it I would recomend (and it would take some minor redoing) that you make it one decimal place, +1/4 and +3/4 modifiers would either be .2 or .3, and .7 or .8, depending on the particulars for that modifier, for instance, non-persistant would be .2 (Maybe .1 actualy) while cost end to activate would be .3 (or .4 even)If we're going to keep the 1/4 point value system, rather than actually using the current 1/4, or decimals like .2 or .3, how about just using percentages? I realize its the same thing, but I think for most people it would be easier to get their head around than just looking at .2 or .7. So...

Gestures, -25%, Armor Piercing, +50%, OAF, -100%.

I realize this would require several hundred (thousand?) more words per book, but I think most people would understand +25% easier than they would either +1/4 or +.25. And what scary about adding whole numbers like 25? Not a thing! :thumbup:

[Andrew_A]

Personally I prefer using decimals for advantages. The benefit of this system is that anyone with at least a grade five education can understand it. Every day, people add and subtract dollars and cents. It's the most common form of math in our society. How many people on a day-to-day basis use fractions? Switching to decimals wouldn't end the "HERO requires too much math" complaints, but it would significantly reduce them.

And if we're really worried about arguments ("Is it a .36 advantage or a .47?") then we could just use Lord Liaden's suggestion and say that modifiers can only be in .25 increments. Doing it this way keeps the system as is, while making it easier for the math phobic to understand.

And as for using calculators, I have yet to find a cheap calculator (i.e. $1 or less) that can do fractions. On the other hand, every calculator I've ever seen can do decimals.

Also, I think Chris's system of simply adding and subtracting to the base cost, while flawed, is a great idea. It would simplify the game greatly. Ajacksons idea would be even better, because it would be easy to balance, simple, and innovative.

[Andrew_A]

BTW, adding more advantages can't hurt. There are things that you just can't do in HERO.

For example, you can't really do homing attacks. I'm not talking about "instant hit" absolute attacks. I'm referring to an attack that requires the target to dodge a certain number of times before the attack fizzles out or dissipates. Simulating common or noteworthy fictional abilities should be a priority.

[Opal]

For example, you can't really do homing attacks. I'm not talking about "instant hit" absolute attacks. I experimented with an advantage like that back in the 80s. It's certainly workable, but it does change the dynamics of combat, especially vs low-DEF, high-DCV or active-defense characters (like those who use missle deflection). If you toss several of these at such a character, eventually, one hits, stuns him, and the rest of the attacks chasing him 'dogpile.'

I've generally used No Range Mod before and since, to model 'guided' attacks of any kind.

[Netzilla]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

I whole-heartedly support this idea and have ever since I was introduced to the Hero System with Champs 3rd Edition. I think if you're going to go this route, however, you restrict Modifiers to increments of 0.1 or 0.2 only. That way you're not taking up too much more space on the character sheet and I doubt you'd really need more granularity than that.

Also, I think it will be easier for newcomers to digest the concept of 50 * (1 + .2 + .5) = 5 * 1.7 = 85 than it is for them to get 50 * (1 + ¼ + ½ ) = 50 * 1¾ = 87; not to mention 50 / (1 + .2 + .5) = 50 / 1.7 = 29 compared to 50 / (1 + ¼ + ½) = 50 / 1¾ = 29. Fractions scare people however irrational that response may be.


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

Steve’s Thoughts: This may depend partly on the answer to the question in the “General Issues” thread about whether we should abandon the concept of Active Points and Real Points. One possibility would be to make them adders and subtractors rather than multipliers and dividers

I think this is a horrible idea. They tried this with Fuzion, and while I liked the core of the system, this was one of the reasons I felt the powers system was absolute garbage. It just doesn't reflect the way that Advantages/Limitations scale with the amount of power being modified. Armor piercing means way less on a 2d6 Energy Blast than it does on 10d6. The only way this could potential work is if you apply it as an adder/subtractor to the base cost of the power. Thus a +1 Advantage on Energy Blast raises the base cost from 5/1d6 to 6/1d6.


Another would be to let Advantages and Limitations “cancel each other out” before application, so that a +¾ Advantage and a -½ Limitation would result in a (¾ - ½ =) +¼ Advantage.

This changes the math significantly.
* Traditional: 50 * (1 + ¾) / (1 + ½) = 58.
* Proposed: 50 * (1 + ¾ - ½) = 50 * (1¼) = 62.5
* Traditional: 50 * (1 + ½) / (1 + ¾) = 43
* Proposed: 50 * (1 + ½ - ¾) = 50 * (¾) = 37.5

So, unless my math is wrong, things don't work out right unless the Advantages exactly cancel the Limitations. Now, this is assuming that you want to keep the math the same as it is under the current system. I do think that doing this this way is simpler to express and explain mathematically, but only go this route if you're willing to make large changes in the costs of existing builds.


A third would be to have Advantages affect *effectiveness* rather than points, so that a power with a -¼ Limitation is somehow 20% less effective, not 20% less costly (though this raises the question of why to take one if it doesn’t “save” anything).

Too fuzzy and ill-defined.


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

I don't think Advantages should be mandatory myself, especially when you take a look at things like Variable Advantage.


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

I've often felt that AoE could use a bit more granularity than it has. I also feel that One Hex and Line are currently over-costed when compared to equivalent AoE options (Explosion and Radius respectively).


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

I think that Damage Shield should go back to the way it was in 4th Edition. As it stands now, it ends up being so expensive & complicated that it's not worth it most of the time. I understand the problem with how the old Damage Shield interacted with NND & AVLD attacks, but I think that's best handled by doubling the value of Damage Shield in the case of an attack with an exotic defense (anything other than PD, ED, rPD & rED).


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Perhaps the way MegaScale should work would be +¼ per x10 scale:
* ¼ = x10
* ½ = x100
* ¾ = x1,000 (close enough to the current smallest level of MegaScale).
* 1 = x10,000


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

I tend to use Trigger more often, so sure.


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

It can get complex. I wonder if it should be done as a variation on Area of Effect (similar to how Selective works). I don't know, that's just off the top of my head.

Additional Thoughts:

NND and AVLD should be combined into a single Advantage: Attack vs Exotic Defense
* Base = ½ if the given defense completely negates the attack (NND).
* Base = 1 if the given defense will only reduce the attack (AVLD).
* Add +½ if the given defense is uncommon.

This is functionally the same as what we have now but reduces the number of entries in the Advantages list by one and thus hopefully reduces the amount of text.

BOECV needs another modifier: DCV applies (-½).

[The Shadow]

Here's a way, which happens to be already built into the Hero system at several levels, of transforming advantages and limitations from multiplication to simple addition and table lookup: logarithms.

This is quite brilliant.

It's even better when combined with Chris' 'cost-per-unit' scheme. Just look up what the "CPU" is with the given ads and disads, and bango. No need to look up the closest number, so long as the chart contains 3, 5, 10, and 15.

That said, I think the CPU idea as given should be very workable and very desirable. I'm not afraid of math; I have a degree in physics. I just find HERO character creation to be needlessly complex for the amount of payoff.

[Markdoc]

There are problems with stacking limitations in strict additive systems. Stack up 4 -1/4 limitations in Hero and you get a power for 1/2 cost. Stack up 4 -20% limitations and you've got a power for 1/5 cost. One way around that might be a a lookup table -- i.e. add up ads and disads and get a percentage, such as:


Ad/Dis Total -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 +0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8
Cost/Level 25 30 35 40 50 60 70 80 100 125 150 175 200 250 300 350 400


Yep, this is one of the reasons FUZION flopped: they tried to avoid multiplication and divisoon and ended up with highly abusive constructs for powers almost routinely.

cheers, Mark

[Hugh Neilson]

I would like to see some attention paid to reciprocal advantages and limitations. I don't like the fact, for example, that:

- making Armor cost END is a -1/2 limitation when making a Force Field 0 END Persistent and Invisible is a +2 advantage. Either Armor with no limitation is underpriced or Force Field with those advantages (or a subset of them) is overpriced.

- Why should I ever put "Costs END" on a power when "Visible" and "Not Persistent" get the same savings with less drawbacks? Concept, sure, but if we're going to overcharge for certain concepts, our toolkit isn't what it should be.

- making the power invisible is a +1 advantage, but taking it away is a -1/4 limitation. I think this highlights the need to have differing advantage and limitation values depending on impact on the specific ability. An undetectable attack seems far more valuable than undetectable movement or undetectable defenses, for example.

[SSgt Baloo]

I experimented with an advantage like that back in the 80s. It's certainly workable, but it does change the dynamics of combat, especially vs low-DEF, high-DCV or active-defense characters (like those who use missle deflection). If you toss several of these at such a character, eventually, one hits, stuns him, and the rest of the attacks chasing him 'dogpile.'

I've generally used No Range Mod before and since, to model 'guided' attacks of any kind.

To simulate guided missiles, dropped bombs, etc., there might be a "Takes some amount of time depending upon range to target" limitation for more "realism" in certain genres that call for it. That way you could introduce a terminal defense mechanism simulating jamming, jinking (Sort of like a ranged dodge, but only effective perhaps one phase or segment prior to "impact"), or shooting down the incoming missile/projectile or otherwise dodging behind something that breaks lock or makes the attack miss. Sorry, but I'm an old Electronic Warfare troop and like the idea that you can, with the appropriate defenses (chaff, jamming, flares, or just turning hard just before the missile gets there), defend against guided attacks.


- making the power invisible is a +1 advantage, but taking it away is a -1/4 limitation. I think this highlights the need to have differing advantage and limitation values depending on impact on the specific ability. An undetectable attack seems far more valuable than undetectable movement or undetectable defenses, for example.

Emphasis added.


I just got the mental image of how a hero with invisible running might work. He walks around a corner and nobody knows where he went,

"Where'd he go? He was standing right there just a second ago!":shock:

[Paragon]

Yep, this is one of the reasons FUZION flopped: they tried to avoid multiplication and divisoon and ended up with highly abusive constructs for powers almost routinely.

cheers, Mark

Yeah. Limitations saved preportionately more the lower rank the power was, and Advantages cost preportionately less the bigger it was. This became really abusive about the point the Foci rules came out where you could pay for a typical OAF equivelent for one fifth of the cost if it was small.

[ajackson]

Note that this still somewhat true in Hero. If you put a +1 advantage on a power with no other advantages, it doubles cost. If the power already has +1 worth of advantages, it only bumps cost by 50%.

The logarithmic shift system does eliminate that cheese as well, though at a cost of requiring table lookup.

[Paragon]

Note that this still somewhat true in Hero. If you put a +1 advantage on a power with no other advantages, it doubles cost. If the power already has +1 worth of advantages, it only bumps cost by 50%.

The logarithmic shift system does eliminate that cheese as well, though at a cost of requiring table lookup.

The usual limiting factor there is that as you crunch down the base effect in most powers, you tend to care about it less and less anyway; there are exceptions of course (a lot of things stack ugly with NND, for example) but on the whole you're usually getting into diminishing returns.

[Opal]

making Armor cost END is a -1/2 limitation when making a Force Field 0 END Persistent and Invisible is a +2 advantage. Either Armor with no limitation is underpriced or Force Field with those advantages (or a subset of them) is overpriced. Apts make a real difference, here. You can't put as much armor in a framework as you can FF, because of the Apt difference, you aply an advantage to Armor, it costs more than it costs to add it to a FF - even a 0 END/Persistent FF.


- Why should I ever put "Costs END" on a power when "Visible" and "Not Persistent" get the same savings with less drawbacks?It is a granularity problem, yes. While 'Not Persistent' or 'Visible' may be worth a -1/4 each, and Costs END reasonable at -1/2, even though it includes both of them. It might mean that 'Constant' and 'visible' are 'really' only -1/8th, or that one should be -1/4, but that both should also be -1/4....

[McCoy]

Only thing I have to add here is that I really think we should keep damage shield.

[Susano]

Only thing I have to add here is that I really think we should keep damage shield.

Sure, I just think we need to change the cost so that you don't need to by anything else to make it work.

[Kdansky]

- making the power invisible is a +1 advantage, but taking it away is a -1/4 limitation. I think this highlights the need to have differing advantage and limitation values depending on impact on the specific ability. An undetectable attack seems far more valuable than undetectable movement or undetectable defenses, for example.
Even though I absolutely dislike it, Aye!

Look at Autofire. It just needed special rulings for stacked advantages, because AF by itself is ok, but if you slap 0 END on it, it quickly becomes much more powerful. We should differ for (some?) advantages/limitation how much they are worth, specified in the text of the advantage. Also why does Cost End tack Nonpersistent and Visible on a power for free? That's pretty outrageous.

I can live with these much better if it's advantages: Continuous is +1/2, Damage Shield is +1, but you need to buy both? I say: Make Damage Shield also give Continuos "for free", it's still more expensive than Continuous by itself, but cheaper than both seperately.

A: +1/2
B: +1/2
C: +1/2

A+B+C Special thing (example damage shield): +1 1/4. Yeah, you get 1/4 off.

[Hugh Neilson]

In many of the Power threads, it is noted that certain powers could be built using other powers and advantages. The general rend is to say these should be retained to make the creation of such powers more intuitive.

Damage Shield is a pretty common ability in much of the source material. It should be simple and intuitive to build a Damage Shield power which is reasonably efective for its cost. In 4e, it was. In 5e , it is not. I don't particularly care HOW 6e fixes this, but I believe not fixing it would be a failing in 6e.

[rjcurrie]

In many of the Power threads, it is noted that certain powers could be built using other powers and advantages. The general rend is to say these should be retained to make the creation of such powers more intuitive.

Damage Shield is a pretty common ability in much of the source material. It should be simple and intuitive to build a Damage Shield power which is reasonably efective for its cost. In 4e, it was. In 5e , it is not. I don't particularly care HOW 6e fixes this, but I believe not fixing it would be a failing in 6e.

My problem with Damage Shield being a Power instead of an Advantage is that unless it's a really complex Power allowing for all sorts of Attack types, it becomes very limited. As an Advanatage, you can apply it to any kind of Attack.

I would suggest making Damage Shield a flat +1 and mention in the description that it effectively makes the Power Continuous (and thus, that Advantage does not need to be purchased separately).

[ajackson]

I would suggest making Damage Shield a flat +1 and mention in the description that it effectively makes the Power Continuous (and thus, that Advantage does not need to be purchased separately).
The thing is, Damage Shield doesn't make the power Continuous -- if someone hits your fire damage shield, he doesn't continue burning after he stops being in contact with that damage shield. Calling damage shield a specialized trigger is actually more accurate than calling it a continuous power.

[rjcurrie]

The thing is, Damage Shield doesn't make the power Continuous -- if someone hits your fire damage shield, he doesn't continue burning after he stops being in contact with that damage shield. Calling damage shield a specialized trigger is actually more accurate than calling it a continuous power.

Yeah, you're probably right. However it's worded, it should state that that particular advantage is included in the Damaage Shield advantage and doesn't need to be purchased sepeartately.

[GamePhil]

Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?


I think Damage Shield should be removed as a stand-alone Advantage, but I don't think it should be a form of Trigger, but rather a form of Area of Effect. A Continuous Area Of Effect Power damages anything that touches or enters the area, even between phases, in just the same way Damage Shield does. They even work on the generating character's Phases if the target is constantly exposed to them, again just like DS.

So, for example, you could add Area Of Effect: Surface, for +1/4 or +1/2, which would cover the surface area of one target 1 hex or less. Allow it to move with the target much like Trail moves with the character. Add Continuous to have the target constantly under the effect. And that's it, you don't even need to add something for the Automatic Hit thing like you do with Trigger. You then add No Range and Self Only to get Damage Shield, and you might get a small Limitation if it doesn't hurt the target of your punch.

This also has the advantage of being able to be used on other things, such as your Force Wall, or an Entangle, or a weapon being held by an enemy, you just don't take the Limitations above.

[BobGreenwade]

I think Damage Shield should be removed as a stand-alone Advantage, but I don't think it should be a form of Trigger, but rather a form of Area of Effect. A Continuous Area Of Effect Power damages anything that touches or enters the area, even between phases, in just the same way Damage Shield does. They even work on the generating character's Phases if the target is constantly exposed to them, again just like DS.

So, for example, you could add Area Of Effect: Surface, for +1/4 or +1/2, which would cover the surface area of one target 1 hex or less. Allow it to move with the target much like Trail moves with the character. Add Continuous to have the target constantly under the effect. And that's it, you don't even need to add something for the Automatic Hit thing like you do with Trigger. You then add No Range and Self Only to get Damage Shield, and you might get a small Limitation if it doesn't hurt the target of your punch.

This also has the advantage of being able to be used on other things, such as your Force Wall, or an Entangle, or a weapon being held by an enemy, you just don't take the Limitations above.I really, really like this idea. It's elegant, and it has the double appeal of reducing the amount of text and mechanics while expanding what's possible.

[Susano]

I really, really like this idea. It's elegant, and it has the double appeal of reducing the amount of text and mechanics while expanding what's possible.

Allow me to say: "I agree!"

[Hugh Neilson]

My problem with Damage Shield being a Power instead of an Advantage is that unless it's a really complex Power allowing for all sorts of Attack types, it becomes very limited. As an Advanatage, you can apply it to any kind of Attack.

I would suggest making Damage Shield a flat +1 and mention in the description that it effectively makes the Power Continuous (and thus, that Advantage does not need to be purchased separately).

I don't think it should be a separate power. However, I also don't think it should be a series of advantages and limitations cobbled together to make an ability that's pretty common in the source material.

I think it should be its own separate advantage. I like the idea of making Damage Shield applicable to Entangles, Force Walls, etc. I don't like the idea of a typical damage shield constrict requiring a series of advantages and limitations. I would prefer to see a Damage Shield advantage that has gradations. Say, for example:

+1/2 to convert an attack which normally has Range into a Damage Shield that surrounds the character.

+ 3/4 to convert an attack which normally has No Range into a Damage Shield that surrounds the character

+1/4 more to do damage with HTH attacks other than a Grab

I would suggest that putting a damaging field on a force wall or entangle is more readily accomplished by purchasing an attack linked to the force wall or entangle. A damage shield applied to someone else's weapon is a normal attack (or a continuous attack) with a Focus of Opportunity. I wouldn't mindf these being dovetailed in with a Damage Shield advantage, but I think the 'classic' Damage Shield itself should be complete unto itself in a single power modifier.

[Teflon Billy]

I would like to add my vote for breaking out Damage Shield as its own power, separate and distinct.

I think it's a self contained enough concept that could be easily encapsulated as a Power write-up and then easily be added to any character, foci, or vehicle as a Power that these things possess without having to "tack" it on like it is currently (without needing a bazillion advantages and limitations to express it.)

TB

[steamteck]

I also like Gamephil's idea here.

[Netzilla]

I think Damage Shield should be removed as a stand-alone Advantage, but I don't think it should be a form of Trigger, but rather a form of Area of Effect.

An idea so nice I had to rep it. :thumbup:

[Scott Destroyer]

Hi all,

My thoughts on Steve's list...


Advantages/Limitations expressed as decimals - Seems pointless.
Advantages applied to powers in different way - Ha. The additive method (and, for that matter, expressing enhancement and drawback values as percentages) has been used in GURPS for ages, and yet the concept of "multiplicative modifiers" (i. e., doing it "HERO Style") was grudgingly, optionally introduced in its new 4th Edition because it was unavoidably recognized that a power with +500% enhancements and -80% drawbacks (equivalent in HERO to -4 Limitations) is virtually unusable, and NOT worth 5.2 times the value of the base power. Keep as is, most definitely.
Advantage use optional - Sure, why not. You can almost do that now anyway with naked Advantages, with a little pleading with the GM. If you want to charge an Adder or small Advantage for the flexibility, that could be good, too; depends on how it balances out.
New Advantages - as I've said elsewhere, I'd strongly favor a "Healing" Advantage for some Adjustment Powers (and ditching the Healing power), plus the Advantage version of Damage Resistance that's been discussed. Others, I'd have to think about.
New AOE Options - Haven't seen 'em myself, but sure, why not, if you've room for them.
Damage Shield as Trigger - Works for me.
MegaScale tweaks - There's enough weirdness to MegaScale that something should be done. Usability without the "minimum range/speed" thing is highly desirable yet highly abuseable; +1 for initial level is better than the current system, but some other form of limitation seems necessary too. I'm not sure what, though I wouldn't make it the necessity for MegaSenses or other kludges in use now; the cost should cover everything needed to actually use it.
Eliminate Time Delay - If you mean Delayed Effect, sure, so long as Trigger gets text explicitly letting it do anything Delayed Effect could that it couldn't, possibly for some appropriate Power Modifier.
Change/Revise UOO - I'm sure useful changes could be made there, though they'd require some careful thought.


Thoughts on other issues in the thread...


Armor Piercing/Semi-Armor Piercing/Piercing Points - I'm strongly in favor of letting multiple Armor Piercing halve defenses multiple times, especially if (as I hope) Find Weakness is going away. It hardly seems unbalancing; you're paying the same +1/2 to get rid of first 1/2, then 1/4, then 1/8, etc., of defenses. And the range of defense levels where AP is worth as much as an extra 50% in damage dice is already painfully thin.
"So if I club you with a car I found in a parking lot I should have paid for it?" - HA +6d6, OIF Cars of Opportunity (-1/2), Damage dependent on size of car (-1/4), Extra Time (Delayed Phase, to grab car, -1/4), Hand-To-Hand Attack (-1/2). ;) We laugh, but they charge points now to tie someone up with nearby materials in a very similar manner; see "The Big Wrap-Up" in typical "Brick Tricks" multipowers. It's one of the things that annoys me about 5E. Though, to be fair, it could be said that the points are paid to do it in a single combat action.
Homing Attacks - this could easily be done as a variant of the "Continuous" Advantage, perhaps called "Re-Attack".
Damage Shield - This can effectively give someone a lot of extra attacks that don't miss; it should be expensive, arguably on par with SPD (or at least Autofire) that gives a similar amount of extra attacks. That said, I do think it's probably a bit overpriced as is, and the "base it off AOE" idea mentioned by GamePhil is very appealing to me. Also, I see that Sho'Nuff is sbarron's avatar; "the Glow" is one of the archetypical Damage Shields, to me (along with Human Torch-type body-of-energy characters). :)


My own addition to the thread:

I'd love to see a BOECV Advantage that makes a power a Mental Power in all ways, including acting on EGO instead of DEX, ECV vs. ECV targeting, AVLD vs. Mental Defenses, Visibility only to Mental Group Senses except for the target, targetability through a Mind Scan (or 6E equivalent), LOS Range w/no Range Modfier if the Power has range or buys the "Ranged" Advantage, the Indirect aspect of Mental Powers, and the lack of default BODY damage. If that makes it more expensive, fine; the sheer convenience is worth it. I'd also like to see a related lesser Advantage called "Targeted by ECV" or some such, for powers like Psychokinesis, that targets ECV vs. normal CV, lacks the AVLD and still does BODY by default, is normally Visible, and is otherwise as above ("Ah, Lord Vader, the fleet has dropped out of lightspeed and is preparing to - *ACK*").

[Chris Goodwin]

I'd love to see a BOECV Advantage that makes a power a Mental Power in all ways, including acting on EGO instead of DEX, ECV vs. ECV targeting, AVLD vs. Mental Defenses, Visibility only to Mental Group Senses except for the target, targetability through a Mind Scan (or 6E equivalent), LOS Range w/no Range Modfier if the Power has range or buys the "Ranged" Advantage, the Indirect aspect of Mental Powers, and the lack of default BODY damage. If that makes it more expensive, fine; the sheer convenience is worth it. I'd also like to see a related lesser Advantage called "Targeted by ECV" or some such, for powers like Psychokinesis, that targets ECV vs. normal CV, lacks the AVLD and still does BODY by default, is normally Visible, and is otherwise as above ("Ah, Lord Vader, the fleet has dropped out of lightspeed and is preparing to - *ACK*").


This is kind of what I was thinking of. Apparently there's something like it in The Ultimate Mentalist, and I've had something similar in my house rules document ever since 4e. I'm not sure, though, that Mental Powers should get a cost break for doing it; I'd be okay with "packaging" all of the appropriate Advantages into one, but I really want to make sure that you pay for what you get.

[dsatow]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

No. If you think people balked at fractions, wait till they get to decimals.

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

Personally, I like the idea of adders and subtractors but then you have the problem of minimum cost. The problem I have with the current advantages/disadvantages is that at high levels, the effectiveness breaks down. If the game average is 20d6 EB, a 10d6 EB AoE Radius isn't going to do much. Maybe adders for advantages and limitations as currently done?


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

No, it mucks up a lot of different things and would be too big a ripple for most people to accept.


Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t see a strong need for any, but there are certainly some that could be considered. For example, the Time Duration Power Modifier (from my DH #39 column) might be worth adding, if not in the core book then in a 6E FH genre book. The same could be said for Damage Over Time (DH #47).
Sure, both those things are fine. I don't think people mind at all having new advantages.

Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

See prior question's answers.


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

Personally, Damage Shield is a pet peeve of mine. As it currently is (5ER) it costs too much to effectively use (after adding in the +1 constant adv) for most people without doing something min-max like (using strength, using, AVLD/NND, etc.). I'd like to see it back as a 1/2 advantage with constant built in. I'd also like to see it doubled in cost for attack against a special defense(flash, NND, power) like autofire or doubled if the attacker's strength adds to the damage shield strength.

I don't like it as a trigger. I believe making it a trigger will muddy the waters to people trying to learn the system. Further, a damage shield tends to be on all the time and not when triggered. By special effect, that means you can see the special effect and know the kind of damage you will take. A trigger doesn't do that since the effect has not gone off.


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Megascale has problems. I understand why it was created but I have seen too much abuse of megascale. Maybe the +1 starting value would help. I don't know except I don't use it now.


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

I wouldn't be too adverse to that but by definition of the advantage as it currently stands, everyone who wants to make a grenade (3 sec. timer) or time bomb, will need to buy a watch (absolute time sense) otherwise per the trigger advantage, they would not know exactly when it should go off. I would say make it a subset of trigger with 1/4 adv being a set time trigger and 1/2 adv being an adjustable time trigger.

Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

I think this advantage is balanced as is though you might want to clarify it somewhat better. I would also change it from "Usable On Others" to "Usable By Others".

[nexus]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?


Speaking for myself I find it easier to work with decimals in my head and you have to convert fraction before entering them into most calculators. OTOH, the fractions Hero uses aren't difficult to convert decimals and fractions appear to take up less space and are somewhat less intimidating to many people (IME).

[dsatow]

Other items

Personally I'd like to see all the individual flash defenses go away or are at least simplified. Something like a +1/4 advantage if it defends against an additional sense and a +1/2 advantage if it defends against an additional sense group. Thus to protect all five senses would be a +2 advantage.

I've seen too many people use the different flashes as a way to do damage because you don't have an exotoc defense. In one game, I saw NND vs flash touch, NND vs flash sound, NND vs flash mental! The reasoning behind all these were sound and fit the character but that just shows you how resourceful players are.

I think +1/4 adv. for stun is too cheap. I would like to see it go back up to +1/2. People should use EB if they want to do more stun. It encourages people to play the stun lottery.

I think there should be a 1/4 advantage defined as protected against damage shields. I currently allow this in my games under indirect. If using indirect for a HTH attack against damage shield w/o taking damage sounds good, you should probably include it in the description of indirect and/or damage shield.

[Teflon Billy]

Other items

Personally I'd like to see all the individual flash defenses go away or are at least simplified. Something like a +1/4 advantage if it defends against an additional sense and a +1/2 advantage if it defends against an additional sense group. Thus to protect all five senses would be a +2 advantage.

I've seen too many people use the different flashes as a way to do damage because you don't have an exotoc defense. In one game, I saw NND vs flash touch, NND vs flash sound, NND vs flash mental! The reasoning behind all these were sound and fit the character but that just shows you how resourceful players are.

I think +1/4 adv. for stun is too cheap. I would like to see it go back up to +1/2. People should use EB if they want to do more stun. It encourages people to play the stun lottery.

I think there should be a 1/4 advantage defined as protected against damage shields. I currently allow this in my games under indirect. If using indirect for a HTH attack against damage shield w/o taking damage sounds good, you should probably include it in the description of indirect and/or damage shield.I have to agree with FD there.

I'd prefer it started generic and defended against all Flashes and let the player put limitations on FD to limit it to a single sense group.

TB

[SAVeira]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

Either is cool with me.


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

No, yes, maybe. I am unsure to be honest and conflicted here.


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

No, unless, they take the Advantage at a higher cost.


Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

Cannot think any,but that just me.


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

yes. They are get ideas.


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

No. That would make it more difficult and I would like it keep simple.


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Yes. I like the suggest changes. If they are not impulmented, I will use that as a House Rule.


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

Yes, there is no need for it with Trigger.


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

Yes, but I have no idea how it should be changed.

[Erkenfresh]

First, I'd like to say, the 1/4's fractions are just fine. I know it's been said a dozen million times now but hey I'll say it again. ;) If newcomers can't do the division in their heads, then it's time to get a very useful math lesson from their GM.

Armor Piercing. Sometimes, it seems like this advantage costs too much. For example I could get a 8d6 AP enegy blast or a 12d6 energy blast. The latter will do 14 more STUN and 4 more BODY on the average. If you're trying to knock the target out, they'd have to have 28 DEF to make the AP advantage break even. Any less than that and it's not doing any good. Personally, I'd like to see Armor Piercing be replaced by the Piercing adder (as others have mentioned above).

Damage Shield. While many people would like to see a unified attack power, I think Damage Shield should be it's own attack power, possibly with two flavors for "killing" and "non-killing". This goes along the same reasoning for why Regeneration should be it's own power. Damage Shields are a very useful and fairly common type of power to use and the current rules make it very clunky.

Uncontrolled. I like the idea of Uncontrolled but I think it should be expanded to create powers with longer lasting effects. For example, a fire protection spell that lasts 1 hour on somebody and doesn't require line of sight. There are rules for this somewhere in Fantasy Hero, but I seem to remember them as clunky. I ended up creating my own custom advantage called Long Lasting to simplify it (I think it ended up including about 4 or 5 other advantages like UBO, 0 END, Persistent, Continuous, Ranged, blah blah blah etc.).

Using advantages conditionally. I sort of like the idea, but I think it could be overpowered. Maybe if you want to do that sort of thing, you have to buy another advantage called Optional Advantages. At the very least, disabling an advantage shouldn't reduce the END cost of a power. So a 6d6 AoE (Circle) EB will cost 6 END whether you use the AoE or not. Of course, we already have Varied Advantages and Multipowers today...

Lastly, I like the idea of advantages and limitations cancelling each other out. But, I don't know how that would figure into endurance costs or determining active points. Maybe it wouldn't matter in 6E.

[IndianaJoe3]

Q: Should any new Advantages be added?
I believe there should be a generic, "Enhanced Power" Advantage. It corresponds to the, "Limited Power" Limitation and is used in similar situations. Naturally, it is a Caution/Stop/Examine idea. Think of it this way: how many current Limitations started out as a form of Limited Power?


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?Yes. Don't forget about, "AoE: Narrow Cone" from Almanac #1.


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?If you're reworking the size rules, you might as well incorporate MegaScale (for really big monsters).

[Southern Cross]

Actually,I think that Variable Limitation needs a bit of tweaking.As it is set up now,a +1/4 Variable Advantage costs a base +1/2 now matter how many Advantages it mimics,while a +1/2 Variable Advantage limited to mimicking four or less Advantages is a +3/4 Advantage.Worse yet,as Limited Number of Advantages only reduces the value of Variable Advantage by +1/4,it actually becomes less cost-effective as the level of Variable Advantage increases.
My Solution:The value of Variable Advantage is still twice that of the Advantage(s) it's mimicking,and Limited Group of Advantages now becomes a separate -1/4 Limitation.

[Sean Waters]

So if I club you with a car I found in a parking lot I should have paid for it?

You may be missing the point. The question was, "How can the focus limitation provide an advantage?"

The answer is that it includes, for free, the UBO advantage.

[Sean Waters]

Naked Advantage doesn't count against Campaign AP Caps? Really? I did not know that.

It certainly CAN do if the GM so decides, but a NA is considered a seperate special power, by the rules, and so does not automatically form part of the AP cost of the power or powers it applies to. A similar example would be the Find Weakness power - although it makes an atatck substantially more useful it is not automatically considered to add tot he AP of the power or powers it applies to.

This all needs clearing up, really.

[Sean Waters]

We should get rid of adders.

I mean, I like the little guys, but they just don't scale, or they scale very differently from power to power and game to game. There has been a suggestion of 'adder per unit' mentioned already. That would address my concerns but I doublt it could be made to fly in practice.

So, Movement powers become:

+1/4 for NCM (x4)
+1/4 for 4x NCM

Rather than +5 point = 2x NCM.

I've picked the example where adders work at their very best to show that the idea can work even then: they are far more problematic for other powers.

[Sean Waters]

I'd like to see a lot of clarity on the relationship between continuous, persistent and uncontrolled.

The steps should be, IMO,

Continuous (power keeps going if maintained and in LOS, new attack roll required, but you can use other atatcks without having to use the MPA rules) (+1/2)
+Adv removes the need to make new attack rolls for a given target (+1/2)
+Adv power keeps going if not maintained (Some way of turning power off must be defined) (+1/2)
+Adv power keeps going if not in LOS (+1/2)

[Sean Waters]

I'd like to see the cost of the IPE advantage halved for non-attack powers.

[Sean Waters]

I'd like to see Indirect redefined as I get easily confused with the current definitions, which seem very sfx oriented rather than mechanically oriented:

+1/4 Attacker can define a non-standard KB direction when power bought
+1/2 Atatcker can define a non-standard KB direction when power used

+1/4 Attack can circumvent cover or barriers that are not hardened and do not englobe the target
+1/2 Attack can circumvent cover or barriers that are not hardened and englobe the target

I think those options give better definition to the advantage.

[Sean Waters]

Probably not a popular one, but....

I've never really liked megascale as it seems like simply a cheap way to do something that you could do with a number of powers anyway. For example there is already a mechanic for increasing the area of an AoE attack, but megascale makes it so much cheaper. There is already a mechanic for increasing the speed of non-combat movement, but megascale makes it so much cheaper.

I appreciate that it is all about concept realisation, but frankly if you NEED mega ranged weapons and megascale movement and mega area attacks, why not do it as a campaign convention: spaceships use hexes of 10 km. Basically a spaceship weapon would never usefully be able to target something working on a different scale (normal human scale, for example), but that is a campaign convention rather than an adder. Buy spaceship scale weapons and human scale close defence weapons too. Concept realised, and no need to keep explaining to people that, no, they can't buy megascale teleport to get to the other side of the planet, they need to use the normal movement doubling rules.

[SAVeira]

Probably not a popular one, but....

I've never really liked megascale as it seems like simply a cheap way to do something that you could do with a number of powers anyway. For example there is already a mechanic for increasing the area of an AoE attack, but megascale makes it so much cheaper. There is already a mechanic for increasing the speed of non-combat movement, but megascale makes it so much cheaper.

I appreciate that it is all about concept realisation, but frankly if you NEED mega ranged weapons and megascale movement and mega area attacks, why not do it as a campaign convention: spaceships use hexes of 10 km. Basically a spaceship weapon would never usefully be able to target something working on a different scale (normal human scale, for example), but that is a campaign convention rather than an adder. Buy spaceship scale weapons and human scale close defence weapons too. Concept realised, and no need to keep explaining to people that, no, they can't buy megascale teleport to get to the other side of the planet, they need to use the normal movement doubling rules.
I like megascale and I think it solved a lot of problems. Instead of your suggestion, could I recommend that megascale cost just be increased.

[ajackson]

I'd actually prefer that megascale be either an adder or a separate power. Separate power is probably the easiest.

x2 scale is basically equivalent to +2 levels vs range mods (6 points), +1 non-combat multiple (5 points), and something extra to handle area effects. Overall, it's probably about 15 points for x2, or 50 points for x10. This assumes that range mod levels and NCMs are priced correctly, of course.

[Paragon]

It certainly CAN do if the GM so decides, but a NA is considered a seperate special power, by the rules, and so does not automatically form part of the AP cost of the power or powers it applies to. A similar example would be the Find Weakness power - although it makes an atatck substantially more useful it is not automatically considered to add tot he AP of the power or powers it applies to.

This all needs clearing up, really.

This opens the door on a broader problem, though: that AP limits, CV limits and all that are, at best, an incredibly crude power level control mechanism, because they ignore synergies from other abilities, some of which are routinely dramatic in their effects (they also tend to passively encourage characters of certain specific types, there's no trade-offs involved, but that's another issue).

As an example, in practical ways someone with Invisibility usually might as well have a much better DCV and OCV than an otherwise identical character without it, as the majority of opponents (who presumeably don't have exotic targeting senses he's not invisible to) will be operating at substandard DCV and OCV against them, which is not meaningfully different than him just having more OCV and DCV himself.

There are several examples of these sorts of powers that don't directly interact with active point, CV or Defense limits, but still make those more potent than they seem.

[Paragon]

We should get rid of adders.

I mean, I like the little guys, but they just don't scale, or they scale very differently from power to power and game to game. There has been a suggestion of 'adder per unit' mentioned already. That would address my concerns but I doublt it could be made to fly in practice.

So, Movement powers become:

+1/4 for NCM (x4)
+1/4 for 4x NCM

Rather than +5 point = 2x NCM.

I've picked the example where adders work at their very best to show that the idea can work even then: they are far more problematic for other powers.


I think there's some real issues here; the adders are, in fact, what makes Shapeshift as overpriced as it is, as they're set up, in practice, to balance powers like Invisibility or Darkness properly.

[ajackson]

We should get rid of adders.
I disagree. We should look more closely what what adders actually represent, but in many cases adders actually add a flat, non-scaling benefit, so a flat cost is appropriate, or at least just as appropriate as any other power with a flat cost.


So, Movement powers become:

+1/4 for NCM (x4)
+1/4 for 4x NCM

So, if I buy my non-combat flight of 256"/phase as 1" flight (x256 NCM) it costs me 4 points, and if I buy it as 16" flight (x16 NCM) it costs me 48 points. Explain to me how that makes sense? Sure, it takes a bit longer to accelerate, but going from 16 phases to 256 phases is really only about 2 steps on the time chart, which should reduce 48 points to maybe 24 points.

This replicates problems seen with MegaScale

[Opal]

You may be missing the point. The question was, "How can the focus limitation provide an advantage?"

The answer is that it includes, for free, the UBO advantage.True, then again, a UBO power can't generally be taken away and used by your enemies, either. The idea is it's ultimately no better or worse than a personal focus. I'm sure it was only included because so few 'foci' would be personal. Same with Indestructible/Irreplaceable vs Breakable. Foci were one or the other, and considered to be about equal.

[Paragon]

True, then again, a UBO power can't generally be taken away and used by your enemies, either. The idea is it's ultimately no better or worse than a personal focus. I'm sure it was only included because so few 'foci' would be personal. Same with Indestructible/Irreplaceable vs Breakable. Foci were one or the other, and considered to be about equal.

There's a good argument for that, but there are Limitations that have (albiet more situational) benefits that aren't so symmetrical. Consider an area attack that doesn't work on a subset of targets; that's clearly a Limitation if the target subset is reasonably common in opponents, but if you also have that subset of targets on your team, its also clearly got a practical built in advantage.

[James Gillen]

Sorry if I'm harping on RPG.net.... when I first got into Champions, teenagers working at McDonald's could still make change for a dollar when the power went out. I'm told they can't do that anymore.... :lol: :cry:
Even if they knew basic math, they probably wouldn't be allowed to make the change if the electronic cashier couldn't register it [sigh]...

jg

[James Gillen]

The thing is, Damage Shield doesn't make the power Continuous -- if someone hits your fire damage shield, he doesn't continue burning after he stops being in contact with that damage shield. Calling damage shield a specialized trigger is actually more accurate than calling it a continuous power.

It's "Continuous" in the sense that it stays up between your Phases/personal Attack Actions. So I could buy the idea that it's a variant of Continuous, but in that case it shouldn't still cost +1/2 on top of THAT. My opinion seems to be close to others here.

JG

[James Gillen]

I really, really like this idea. It's elegant, and it has the double appeal of reducing the amount of text and mechanics while expanding what's possible.

Like for instance a Human Torch "fire cage."

jg

[Tonio]

So, if I buy my non-combat flight of 256"/phase as 1" flight (x256 NCM) it costs me 4 points, and if I buy it as 16" flight (x16 NCM) it costs me 48 points. Explain to me how that makes sense? Sure, it takes a bit longer to accelerate, but going from 16 phases to 256 phases is really only about 2 steps on the time chart, which should reduce 48 points to maybe 24 points.

Well, 16" Flight with x16 NCM is a LOT more useful than 1" Flight with x256 NCM. Only slightly better for NCM, sure, but a LOT more useful in combat. It SHOULD cost a lot more.

[ajackson]

Well, 16" Flight with x16 NCM is a LOT more useful than 1" Flight with x256 NCM. Only slightly better for NCM, sure, but a LOT more useful in combat. It SHOULD cost a lot more.
Why should improved combat performance increase the cost of the non-combat performance? If you really think that's an issue, let me rephrase this:
Method 1: I paid 2 points to increase my non-combat flight to 256"
Method 2: I paid 16 points to increase my non-combat flight to 256"

[Harakani]

logarithms: Okay, I've managed to look at ajackson's tables (they didn't display the first time) and I am agreeing with him.
An alternate method is that every advantage (and disadvantage) is applied individually.
+1 is *2
three +1 advantages applied to a 10 point power gives
10*2=20, 20*2=40, 40*2=80

Assume for a moment a +1 advantage called "double damage". It seems balanced in that for double the cost it provides double the damage.
However, if someone took it three times they would do eight times the damage for four times the cost. With logs this isn't an issue.

Hopefully the real reason for logs (+ and - cancel, derived powers can be treated as base powers) are important enough that the mathematical fairness isn't a selling point :)

megascale: I love megascale.
I certainly think it is balanced in a lot of ways. I do have some issues.
Hero looks like it was written by programmers because eveything is in powers of 2. The strength chart, NCM movement, Size, increased range... everything but megascale which is in 10s. Now for metric distances it is just too convenient for x10... but if the system went to imperial I would strongly suggest megascale go to a multiple of 2.
I think the lower level of megascale could afford to be a bit more granular... I like the x10, x100, x1000 etc... possibly put x2, x4, x10, x100 instead.
There are issues when megascale attacks or movements happen against non-megascale attacks and movements.
On any attempt to effect someone of a lower scale, the defender gains a bonus equal to 6 times the megascale difference. This is the same bonus as /8 size gives. I would also give it to perception and dive for cover. For non opposed actions all actions would be at 6 times difference penalty. Eg a perception roll to spot someone while flying over them at x1000 would be at -18: You are unlikely to spot someone waving whilst travelling at multiples of the speed of sound.
Dive for cover rules break for megascale areas, unless you also scale up the jumpable area. This gets crazy because a ship cannon hitting a guy might let him jump 60km to safety. Would be reasonable to assume that dive for cover also allows hiding behind a nearby solid object though, where such an object exists.
I think megascale applied to area of effect is more useful than megascale applied to range or movement powers. Note that megascale knockback is an exception to the movement powers thing.

[Vondy]

You may be missing the point. The question was, "How can the focus limitation provide an advantage?"

The answer is that it includes, for free, the UBO advantage.

The answer is: its not a focus, its a prop.

[Tonio]

Why should improved combat performance increase the cost of the non-combat performance? If you really think that's an issue, let me rephrase this:
Method 1: I paid 2 points to increase my non-combat flight to 256"
Method 2: I paid 16 points to increase my non-combat flight to 256"

Ah ok, I see your point. You're thinking of them as two separate powers, as if they were decoupled. As if Noncombat Flight and regular Flight were two separate animals.

As I see it, noncombat movement is "how much faster I can go if I don't pay attention to combat", not "how fast I can go if I don't pay attention to combat".

Maybe NCM should be eliminated, replaced with Limited movement? (For example, 10" Flight + 30" Flight, Side Effects (reduced DCV, etc).) Dunno, haven't thought about that too much.

[dsatow]

megascale: I love megascale.
I certainly think it is balanced in a lot of ways. I do have some issues.
Hero looks like it was written by programmers because eveything is in powers of 2. The strength chart, NCM movement, Size, increased range... everything but megascale which is in 10s. Now for metric distances it is just too convenient for x10... but if the system went to imperial I would strongly suggest megascale go to a multiple of 2.
I think the lower level of megascale could afford to be a bit more granular... I like the x10, x100, x1000 etc... possibly put x2, x4, x10, x100 instead.
There are issues when megascale attacks or movements happen against non-megascale attacks and movements.
On any attempt to effect someone of a lower scale, the defender gains a bonus equal to 6 times the megascale difference. This is the same bonus as /8 size gives. I would also give it to perception and dive for cover. For non opposed actions all actions would be at 6 times difference penalty. Eg a perception roll to spot someone while flying over them at x1000 would be at -18: You are unlikely to spot someone waving whilst travelling at multiples of the speed of sound.
Dive for cover rules break for megascale areas, unless you also scale up the jumpable area. This gets crazy because a ship cannon hitting a guy might let him jump 60km to safety. Would be reasonable to assume that dive for cover also allows hiding behind a nearby solid object though, where such an object exists.
I think megascale applied to area of effect is more useful than megascale applied to range or movement powers. Note that megascale knockback is an exception to the movement powers thing.

I dislike megascale, but in responding to your comment, megascale as doubling is already built into the system. Most movement doubles for +5 points. Area of effects double for +1/4 adv.

[Sean Waters]

The answer is: its not a focus, its a prop.

Not getting that. It's late.

I'm suggesting that if ALL foci were personal and you wanted one that someone else could use, you just buy it with UBO - it isn't a sweeping change, but it would make the whole thing more consistent.

[Pteryx]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

I think they should, but for completely different reasons than granularity. One, most calculators don't have a fraction key. While 1/2, 1/4, and 3/4 are easy to convert, the fact that any conversion of systems needs to be done at all is confusing and scary to some. Two, decimals are easier to type such that they look correct on a standard keyboard than fractions. This makes written discussion of the system look and feel less awkward to people. Three, I think many people are more used to seeing adjustments being expressed in terms of percentages, not fractions -- and decimals correspond very cleanly to percentages compared to fractions. (Heck, percentages are worth consideration as well!)


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

No; I think it works just fine as is. The book could stand to handhold people through the concept that X * 1 = X and X / 1 = X, though; these ideas aren't thought about on a day-to-day basis by most, but need to be kept firmly in mind by HERO players.


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

If anything, make a rule that says you can do this for a particular Advantage if you pay double value for it or the like.


Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t see a strong need for any, but there are certainly some that could be considered. For example, the Time Duration Power Modifier (from my DH #39 column) might be worth adding, if not in the core book then in a 6E FH genre book. The same could be said for Damage Over Time (DH #47).

Absolutely! I feel that things like Time Duration and an actually-written-up Lingering (if there is one, I don't know of it) should be core. It's a pain and a half to have to put together a weird and complex Charges build just because you want something to be limited by time. Why limit it to fantasy? Then you're forcing people to pay $50 just to get one Advantage -- or encouraging them to pirate.

As long as we're talking duration-based Power Modifiers, how about one that gives a random duration?


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

I'm completely in favor of this. The more the better. I've found myself wondering how the heck to build a character with the Cyclops problem, except that it's those who see his bare hands who are affected (merely by crushing Mind Control, thankfully).


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

I certainly wouldn't mind as long as you kept all the functionality as you say.


Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. MegaScale works just fine, but the differences between it and personal scale create some confusion on the part of some gamers and some logical disconnects. I think it will work better if the initial level is more expensive (probably +1), but you can use the power at any scale from personal up to the purchased maximum.

Isn't the inability to use the power at personal scale some of what keeps MegaScale from becoming something it's a good idea for every power it might potentially be half-justifiable on? I completely agree with making the initial level more expensive, though.


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. You can do the same thing with Trigger.

I can see your point there.


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

Steve’s Thoughts: I can’t say for sure right now, but it sort of seems to me like UOO has gotten way more complicated than it needs to be. Maybe that’s unavoidable; giving a power to another person (either voluntarily or as an attack) is a sort of complicated thing. But at the very least I’d like to create some options so the rules set forth easy ways to do typical Fantasy things like make everyone in an adventuring party invisible, or for a flying character to carry some friends along but not let them fly under their own power.

I can't say I understand how the basic concept of "cast Water Breathing on Elmer" is so complicated. If you are finding it so complex, maybe coming at it from a totally different point of view is called for. As for needing UOO to carry someone while flying... uh, why? Isn't that what STR is for? Do you need UOO on your Running to carry someone while running too? -- Pteryx

[Sean Waters]

I disagree. We should look more closely what what adders actually represent, but in many cases adders actually add a flat, non-scaling benefit, so a flat cost is appropriate, or at least just as appropriate as any other power with a flat cost.

Then again I'm not keen on flat cost powers either, although it is going to be somewhat difficult to do away with them it is far from impossible. Adders make some powers horribly expensive but for others are far too cheap. For instance the FF adder that allows you to cover any object you hold with your FF is really form of useable simultaneously by others. The cost would be quite different, however (in all but one case) if you bought it that way.

You can't get around this - a 5 point adder on a power that already costs 100 points is an insignificant cost difference, but is a very significant one to a power that costs 20 points. As an advantage it would have the same proportional cost to both powers.


So, if I buy my non-combat flight of 256"/phase as 1" flight (x256 NCM) it costs me 4 points, and if I buy it as 16" flight (x16 NCM) it costs me 48 points. Explain to me how that makes sense? Sure, it takes a bit longer to accelerate, but going from 16 phases to 256 phases is really only about 2 steps on the time chart, which should reduce 48 points to maybe 24 points.

This replicates problems seen with MegaScale

I'm not that bothered about cheap travel powers, as opposed to movement powers. A non-combat move that is high is more of a plot device than anything else: getting from A to B can be dramatic, but only rarely. If it proves to be a problem, the answer would be a rule or guideline that for each doubling NCM you need +5" of base movement. That prevents the 'huge advantage on a tiny power' problem, although I'd think most GMs would be wary of any such construct anyway.

As to acceleration, well, you can buy advantages for that, but without them, the 1" x 256NCM would take (for a SPD 4 character) 64 turns, or over 12 minutes to get up to full speed, and the same to stop.

[Sean Waters]

I like megascale and I think it solved a lot of problems. Instead of your suggestion, could I recommend that megascale cost just be increased.

Taking a specific example - megascale radius AoE. It is always as cheap or cheaper to buy megascale rather than increased radius. Moreover, the usual problem with megascale - it doesn't work well at smaller scales - simply doesn't seem to apply to AoE: everything in the radius gets hit.

If we are going to keep megascale we might as well get rid of the rule allowing you to double your AoE radius for +1/4.

Increasing the cost may work, but all it really does is defer the problem to a higher level - at some point it will be cheaper to use megascale than to use the increased radius mechanic.

You can also buy 'can be scaled back' and remove almost all of the problems that come with megascale. You can have a TP that gets you across the world that can be scaled back so you can TP across the street, or the city or the continent.

My basic problem is this: I don't think megascale does anything that can't be done by other rules in the system. It just does it cheaper and the safeguards are either circumventable or not applicable.

If you increased the cost then why not just use the base mechanics, if you leave it as it is why not remove the mechanics - like increased NCM and increased AoE radius, increased range and so on and so forth.

In fact range is the only one where megascale does something different - it changes the units for range modifiers. This makes is a massive bargain however you slice it.

[Sean Waters]

True, then again, a UBO power can't generally be taken away and used by your enemies, either. The idea is it's ultimately no better or worse than a personal focus. I'm sure it was only included because so few 'foci' would be personal. Same with Indestructible/Irreplaceable vs Breakable. Foci were one or the other, and considered to be about equal.

I'd rather see all foci as personal and you have the option to purchase UBO if you want it, and all foci as breakable with the option to purchase focus only defences at a massive discount (say -4).

If you want an irreplaceable focus, buy it as independent.

[Opal]

A personal UBO focus would be one that you can use, and you can designate others to use, but which enemies wouldn't be able to use against you.

[Sean Waters]

A personal UBO focus would be one that you can use, and you can designate others to use, but which enemies wouldn't be able to use against you.

That's a good point. I may well have been failing to consider enemies as a balancing factor :)

[rjcurrie]

I've always viewed the loaning of foci as being similar to picking up the villailn's weapon. It's okay as a one shot thing to do every once in a while, but if you start doing it frequently, you need to buy UBO on your foci.

[Southern Cross]

As for the Megascale problems,here are a few solutions:
(1) Use meters instead of hexes for scale purposes,and modify Movement Powers and Area Effect Powers accordingly.Megascale powers are modified as follows:
Megascale:(+1/4/+1/2):Each level of Megascale multiplies the scale of an ability (Movement speed,Range,Area Effect by *10 (cumulative).Area Effect powers cost double,as their Range is increased by the same amount.Megascale must be used at it's maximum level unless the Power is bought with the +1/4 Advantage Can Be Scaled Down.
(2)The penalties of moving at Megascale speed should be countered by an equal level of the Rapid Sense Modifier.
(3)Megascale needs a more appropriate (and accurate) name.How about Superscale?

[BobGreenwade]

I was in chat earlier, and the topic of the "Usable As [Second Mode Of Movement]" Advantage came up... it later occurred to me, could a similar Advantage be created for other Power types?

For example, take a sword. (Okay, okay, put it down now; it was just a figure of speech.) It would be an HKA, but it could have a "Usable As Hand Attack" Advantage (+1/4) to represent how the flat of the sword could be used to deliver Normal damage instead of Killing.

This has a suite of strengths and weaknesses compared to doing the same thing with a Multipower so that, while the latter will probably be the preferred method in most cases, the Advantage might be attractive in others.

[James Gillen]

I was in chat earlier, and the topic of the "Usable As [Second Mode Of Movement]" Advantage came up... it later occurred to me, could a similar Advantage be created for other Power types?

For example, take a sword. (Okay, okay, put it down now; it was just a figure of speech.) It would be an HKA, but it could have a "Usable As Hand Attack" Advantage (+1/4) to represent how the flat of the sword could be used to deliver Normal damage instead of Killing.

This has a suite of strengths and weaknesses compared to doing the same thing with a Multipower so that, while the latter will probably be the preferred method in most cases, the Advantage might be attractive in others.

Sweet.
As for alternate mode of movement, most creatures in the real world that fly already have an alternate "conservation mode" for gliding.

JG

[David Blue]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

A: Leave it as it is, and I have nothing to add to what Steve and others have already said.

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

A: Yes, change it. (Well, playtest it first and then change it.) Canceling out is more intuitive for new players, in my limited experience, and has no real disadvantages that I've seen. It would be OK if we didn't do this, though, as the present system already works.

Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

A: No. The solution to the balance problem with Naked Advantages might be to nerf Naked Advantages.

Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

A: Yes, and I have one in mind.

I agree with IndianaJoe3 that there should be a Stop Sign "Enhanced Power" corresponding to the generic "Limited Power", or at least the idea deserves some consideration.

And I like this, by BobGreenwade:

"I was in chat earlier, and the topic of the "Usable As [Second Mode Of Movement]" Advantage came up... it later occurred to me, could a similar Advantage be created for other Power types?

For example, take a sword. (Okay, okay, put it down now; it was just a figure of speech.) It would be an HKA, but it could have a "Usable As Hand Attack" Advantage (+1/4) to represent how the flat of the sword could be used to deliver Normal damage instead of Killing.

This has a suite of strengths and weaknesses compared to doing the same thing with a Multipower so that, while the latter will probably be the preferred method in most cases, the Advantage might be attractive in others."

Flying to gliding, slashing to bashing with the flat of the blade - this seems like the sort of thing the system should explicitly facilitate.

But the main thing I want is to improve an existing option: Standard Effect.

(Or, if this is not the place to discuss that, please say where the discussion should go. It doesn't seem to go anywhere else.)

Standard Effect is just a soft option for the player in the group who can't handle too much dice-rolling and counting, and it's a blessing for the gamemaster who wants speed and ease in combat. It's supposed to be an option, not a disadvantage. However the way it works now is, it's a disadvantage that you get no points for, and the bigger the attack, the more dice rolling you eliminate, the bigger the uncompensated disadvantage becomes. The least you should get for Standard Effect is the standard effect of the power.

Example: Beginner Man has a 12d6 EB, plain vanilla. Average damage is 12 BODY and 42 STUN. That's too much dice rolling, so with the gamemaster's permission, the player takes Standard Effect. Of course, this would make the attack less effective even if Standard Effect gave a fair return for it's non-disadvantage status, because, as the STUN lotto has taught us all, variability is an advantage in the attack. But Standard Effect doesn't produce even a minimally fair return: at three STUN per die, instead of 3.5 (7 STUN for each 2d6), Beginner Man only gets 36 STUN for each full-powered use of his attack.

Please fix Standard Effect. Don't let the game system any longer penalize players who need simplicity for making the game easier for themselves, the gamemaster, and other players waiting for them to finish reading and counting their dice. (And yes I know you can just house rule this to remove the Standard Effect penalty, but you can house rule anything, that's not a good reason to have an awkward rule in the first place.)

And, Improved Standard Effect might be an advantage. Say, knock up your effect from 3.5 STUN per die to 4 per die.

Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?

A: Yes, I strongly approve. Cage in particular is way overdue. Like, ever since the Human Torch started doing them.

...

Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

A: Yes, it needs to be rebuilt, and the values Steve would be bringing to a rebuild are the right ones.

... I’d like to create some options so the rules set forth easy ways to do typical Fantasy things like make everyone in an adventuring party invisible, or for a flying character to carry some friends along but not let them fly under their own power.

Exactly.

From previous discussions, I think the most important point was made by Sean Waters: "I'd like to see advantages and limitations overhauled so that an advantage adds something to a power and a limitation takes something away."

The second most important point, in my opinion, was made by Opal:

"There is a good argument for this. There are advantages that really affect how powerful a power is - AP, for instance. An 8d EB AP really is comparable to a 12 EB. There are others that affect how often it hits. An 8d EB Explosion hits several people, an 8d Autofire EB hits one person several times.

But, when you put the two together, it gets wonky. A 2d RKA AP, Autofire, hits multiple times about as hard as a 3d RKA AP, but doesn't cost as much.

It might make sense to create two tiers of limitations: one set that directly impacts the direct effectiveness of the power and is applied first, another that affects how often the power can be used, and is aplied after. Same for limitation, even.

Advantages and limitations on the same tiers could cancel each other out."

There is a serious problem with how easy it is to create overly effective powers by stacking advantages (with Autofire and some form of AVLD being a typical killer). 6th Edition would be the right time to fix this.

Also, count me as another vote for generic flash defense that a player can take a disad for limiting if desired. The game of "spot the obscure defense to drive your AVLD through" has gotten too good.

[Hugh Neilson]

Also, count me as another vote for generic flash defense that a player can take a disad for limiting if desired. The game of "spot the obscure defense to drive your AVLD through" has gotten too good.

While I agree, I'd rather just buy an NND vs Hardened Smell/Taste Flash Defense and get the extra dice than make it an AVLD.

[David Blue]

While I agree, I'd rather just buy an NND vs Hardened Smell/Taste Flash Defense and get the extra dice than make it an AVLD.
A sensible preference. :)

But I think you always want Killing or Does BODY in some form (and Always Add Autofire) for the full regulation dose of Advantage-stacking madness.

This part of the game system has seriously gone nuts. It badly needs a 6th Edition fix.

[CTaylor]

AE: Any needs a larger area. Compared to AE radius it has like 1/20th as many hexes covered, that's an awful lot to give up for flexibility and control.

AUTOFIRE: Doubling the number of shots should be a +1/4 adventage, not +1/2. More shots doesn't really help as much more as buying autofire already.

DAMAGE SHIELD: I'm not happy with needing to buy continuous on powers with damage shield, it jacks the already expensive price even higher.

NEW ADVANTAGES:

ALWAYS HITS: +1 advantage, turns an attack into stun only, must define a way the attack misses, and won't hit targets behind barriers without indirect. Treat as a special attack for Autofire.

AE MENTAL: this was in an old hero supplement and was dropped, great idea, very useful. I'd like to see this added in again

AE GROUP: only hits people of a certain category, adds to the purchased AE by an advantage with cost based on how specific or general the group is

AE WALL: +1, turns any continuous attack into a force wall-like barrier, 3 hex faces per 5 active points in the power.

COSTS END ONLY TO START: Partly in the rules already for some powers, should be available for all powers. Double END for first use, nothing from that point on unless you change the power in some way.

IGNORES HARDENED: Instead of buying AP over and over, there should be a specific advantage that ignores levels of hardened defenses. +1/4 each level

INCREASED KNOCKBACK: From Champions II, bring it back

SEEKING: power Keeps trying to hit the target

With this advantage, the attack will continue to attempt to hit a target until it succeeds. It is similar to continuous, in that the effect will act on it's own, on the attacker's phases, but different in that it will only take effect once. The attack is launched and the attacker must guide the attack, taking a half phase rolling to hit each phase until the attack succeeds. The Seeking power costs END each phase the character (and thus Seeking Attack) acts on, and requires the attacker to be able to perceive the target for it to hit. Only one Seeking attack can be after a target at once, unless the advantage "Uncontrolled" is purchased for the power. The attacker cannot launch another attack while the seeker is in effect unless it was bought with the Uncontrolled advantage.
If a Seeking attack is purchased with charges, then the charges must be bought with a duration on them (the power need not be built continuous) and the power will seek its target for the duration of the charge. If the attacker cannot see the target any longer, the seeker will launch into a straight line like a normal attack that missed, and stop when it hits a surface or at it's maximum range. The direction traveled may be determined randomly if not clear, and as such may return to the attacker!

The seeking power may be shut off at any time by the attacker. Autofire must be bought with the extra cost if this advantage is used.

Seeking is best used for helicopter-style 'mask and unmask' type of attacks, and with limited uses.

For a +1/2 advantage, the attacker can switch targets on his phase, choosing another person for the seeker to go after.

Seeking, Base level: +1/4 advantage

Can change targets: +1/2 advantage

[CTaylor]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?

I'm not sure that would matter either way, but if it helps people figure the game out and be more comfortable with it, sure. Your point about the space on the page is an important one for writers, though.

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?

Only in this sense: some advantages ought not necessarily increase END Cost, and decoupling some from that structure would be useful.

Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?

If not, add an advantage in that allows it. Certainly letting people use their power weaker than they can is hardly overpowered. If you did so, you'd need to specify the limitation value for not being able to (-1/4 or -.25 would be sufficient, I'd think).

Q: Should any new Advantages be added?

Some, but don't get carried away; any new ones would have to be pretty generic ones, advantages for any game, not specific stuff for Champions: add those into the list for those games.

A summary of modifiers listed only in powers (like "cannot target locations") in the appropriate section with a page reference is a good idea too, they're spread all over.

Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?[/bi]

Don't know what they are but the names sound intriguing and I wouldn't oppose it.

[b]Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

No, and strip the requirement for the power to be continuous off it as well; the +1/2 advantage is to pay for the semi-continuous nature of the power. It's expensive enough already. It's not a triggered power, it's a continuous power that only goes off when someone hits you.

Q: Should MegaScale be tweaked for ease of use?

Easy enough now. I am very unhappy with the idea of increasing the minimum advantage, I prefer the present cost with higher advantages to scale it to smaller areas much, much more. Remember: increasing active cost increases END cost and skill roll penalties, and the more granual you can make this, the better. In fact, I'd like to see more advantages examined for how to make them smaller and scale up.

Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?

It's pretty obscure and I think rarely used. It's basically a time-based trigger.

Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?

I'm ok with how it is now. Just make Aid able to grant powers, too, so you have two options: one fire and forget that fades, one fire and maintain that stays.

[ajackson]

A more generic problem I've noticed: a wide variety of advantages are nearly useless on 'simple' attack powers. In a 60 active point game, 6d6 EB, area effect radius, will only do stun to martial artists and agents, and won't do very much stun even to them; using a 12d6 EB and spreading is almost always as or more effective. The same goes for a 5d6 damage shield, or even (4th edition) an 8d6 damage shield. 8d6 autofire is almost always just a way to burn through lots of END for negligible effect.

By comparison, if you add NND to any of these powers, an otherwise identical power often becomes effective or even excessively powerful, and if you add AP to any of these powers, you typically have at least a competitive power.

I'm not sure what the fix for this is (change advantage costs depending on whether they go vs a standard defense?), but I would like it if advantaged simple damage effects were useful.

[Paragon]

A more generic problem I've noticed: a wide variety of advantages are nearly useless on 'simple' attack powers. In a 60 active point game, 6d6 EB, area effect radius, will only do stun to martial artists and agents, and won't do very much stun even to them; using a 12d6 EB and spreading is almost always as or more effective. The same goes for a 5d6 damage shield, or even (4th edition) an 8d6 damage shield. 8d6 autofire is almost always just a way to burn through lots of END for negligible effect.

By comparison, if you add NND to any of these powers, an otherwise identical power often becomes effective or even excessively powerful, and if you add AP to any of these powers, you typically have at least a competitive power.

I'm not sure what the fix for this is (change advantage costs depending on whether they go vs a standard defense?), but I would like it if advantaged simple damage effects were useful.

This is a bit less of an artifact of advantage costs per se than the fact that active point costs cap these, IME; if you didn't have active point costs, some of these would still be useful (a 10D6 radius attack is sometimes more useful than a 20D6 regular one; same for a 10D6 autofire attack versus a 15D6 regular). Of course without something like Active Points it can be almost impossible to keep balance in a superhero game or some other power intensive games, so that's no help per se.

[ajackson]

Of course without something like Active Points it can be almost impossible to keep balance in a superhero game or some other power intensive games, so that's no help per se.
You can replace 'active points' with 'base points', but that leads to its own set of problems.

[Paragon]

You can replace 'active points' with 'base points', but that leads to its own set of problems.

Yeah. Then the more advantages you can afford to toss on, as long as they're useful, the better.

[Opal]

I'm not sure what the fix for this is (change advantage costs depending on whether they go vs a standard defense?), but I would like it if advantaged simple damage effects were useful.I've been noticing that for a long time, too. The solution I've always been draw to is classifying advantages by whether they improve DCs, or not. (I used to call them 'terminal' vs 'delivery'). You aply the DC-improving advantage first.

So, a 12d EB, 6d NND, or 2 1/2d KA AP are all 60 pts, and and all 12 DCs. If you wanted to make any of them 'explosions' it would be an additional 30 points.

It doesn't help that much, though. While a 4d NND AE is better than a 6d EB AE, so, frankly is a 3d EB AE, vs most oponents.

The simple fact is that normal attacks have a higher minimum of usefulness, because the defenses that aply to them are universal, and tend to be higher than others. A 6d EB just isn't as good as a 2d RKA or 3d NND, in a game where most attacks are are in the 8-12 DC range.

[ajackson]

The simple fact is that normal attacks have a higher minimum of usefulness, because the defenses that aply to them are universal, and tend to be higher than others.
That is, of course, something that can be changed, though it's a relatively radical change. I wouldn't mind seeing all attacks go against some defense or another (and NND gets removed and replaced with AVLD (not vs X) or some special advantage) and having most characters have defenses against most attack types. If the average defense against normal attacks in a 12d game was 24, and the average against special attacks was 12, and that agents average half of that in both cases, 4d NND area and 6d regular area are not that different in utility against heroes (i.e. nearly useless; 2 stun average vs <1 stun average) or agents (8 average vs 9 average).

The other thing to consider is making NND attack (or 'Environmental Attack' or something) into its own power at 10 points per die.

[Opal]

When you think about it, though, isn't one of the points of having mutiple different sorts of attacks, having them vary in effectiveness from situation to stituation?

Normal attacks are dependable. A campaign-limit normal attack puts stun on anyone respecting the campaign-limit on defenses, and does it with every hit. A campaign limit NND does STN to anyone who doesn't have the defense, and nothint to those who do. A campaign-limit RKA puts BOD on many characters, much of the time, but also 'pings' off tougher characters a good third of the time - and does insanely high STN one time in six. Exotic attacks are less dependable. Dependable when you're hitting someone less well defened is great. Dependable when you're hitting someone with a defense higher than your average damage, is great - for the guy you're hitting. The lower the dice you throw compared to the campaign norm, the more you'll want to gravitate towards less dependable, more random attacks.

[Paragon]

When you think about it, though, isn't one of the points of having mutiple different sorts of attacks, having them vary in effectiveness from situation to stituation?



That doesn't change the fact that in practice normal and killing attacks tend to have a threshold of usefulness and an NND (and to a lesser degree, AVLD) doesn't. That's really the problem here; you can compress the dice of them all the way down to a die, and its still good for something, and with the kinds of advantages that get put on it, worth using. If you compress normal attacks enough, it almost doesn't matter what advantages are on it, because no one cares on the receiving end.

That was the one argument in favor of the tact C:NM took with Advantages; it made it easier to actually get things like area normal attacks that someone had to pay attention to. I think it had less than benign side effects, but as long as you have thresholds there's going to be no getting around this problem with what's an essentially divisor system.

[Patriot]

I don't have the time needed to read all these posts, that being said

REMEMBER THE ERRORS MADE In FUZION AND STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM THEM!!!!!


"NUff Said!

[Susano]

I don't have the time needed to read all these posts, that being said

REMEMBER THE ERRORS MADE In FUZION AND STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM THEM!!!!!


"NUff Said!

WHAT???

:D :D :D

[David Blue]

That doesn't change the fact that in practice normal and killing attacks tend to have a threshold of usefulness and an NND (and to a lesser degree, AVLD) doesn't. That's really the problem here; you can compress the dice of them all the way down to a die, and its still good for something, and with the kinds of advantages that get put on it, worth using.
I agree with your point: you can compress the dice of attacks that bypass normal defenses all the way down to a die or less, to almost nothing, and they're still good for something.

In fact it's a lot more than "something". Any experienced muchkin, with trivial effort, can create a cheap attack that slays or otherwise conquers whole planets. It's a big problem. A tiny attack that does BODY and bypasses defenses, stacked with other advantages that cost almost nothing as the base attack is so small, is the best deal the game system has going.

[Paragon]

I don't have the time needed to read all these posts, that being said

REMEMBER THE ERRORS MADE In FUZION AND STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM THEM!!!!!


"NUff Said!

That, however, requires everyone agree what those errors were. I bet you'd get considerable disagreement on that topic.

[ajackson]

I'm pretty sure there's errors in Fuzion that just about everyone here would agree on. For example, 'no power creation system in the main rulebook'.

[Southern Cross]

True.

[Southern Cross]

Or "buying one figured characteristic costs the same amount as increasing the primary characteristic on which it is based".

[Opal]

That was the one argument in favor of the tact C:NM took with Advantages; it made it easier to actually get things like area normal attacks that someone had to pay attention to. I think it had less than benign side effects, Yes, it certainly had it's own set of problems, just on the high end rather than the low end.



but as long as you have thresholds there's going to be no getting around this problem with what's an essentially divisor system.
Those thresholds are defenses. The alternative to having thresholds would be either (a) have no defenses or (b) have defenses all work like Damage Reduction...

[Paragon]

I'm pretty sure there's errors in Fuzion that just about everyone here would agree on. For example, 'no power creation system in the main rulebook'.

But that doesn't change my statement; there are things in C:NM I've seen one Hero fan praise highly and another absolutely hate.

[Paragon]

Yes, it certainly had it's own set of problems, just on the high end rather than the low end.



Right.




Those thresholds are defenses. The alternative to having thresholds would be either (a) have no defenses or (b) have defenses all work like Damage Reduction...

Yeah. The latter is potentially workable, but I suspect its too radical a change, even if done table-fashion so its not unmanagable.

[ajackson]

Note that Fuzion-style adders can be made to work -- it's just that you'd have to restructure the damage system substantially. For example, if Damage were a tasks just like any other task (roll Damage+3d6 vs a TN of Toughness+10) a -4 modifier is roughly equally crippling regardless of the power level. Certain abilities (e.g. AP and NND) wind up making very little sense in these scheme, and it's really a far more radical change than I'd advocate for 6e, but it's not entirely impossible.

[Mini-Nukette]

A thought on Time Duration (Constant/Persistant) and Uncontrolled advantages (and such Powers in general.)

Would assigning a SPD to the actual Power, rather than the character's own, be a good idea? For instance, John's character, Mr Ironhide, has Density Increase(20 CP), and a SPD of 3, and Stoney Joe, Karl's character, has the same power at same strength but a SPD of 5.

Normally, John has to pay the END upkeep three times a Phase, whilst Karl has to pay it five times, yet both players gain the same benefit.

If Density Increase had its own base SPD of 1, then both players would pay its END upkeep every 7th segment.

Another possibility then would be able to pay CP to adjust the Powers SPD, maybe a limitation to some Powers (like Increase Density) or an advantage to others (like a damage-dealing Power), or to allow faster SPD to increase the effective AP on the power, for example if John ups the Increase Density SPD 1 to 5, he can use it at a 30CP active cost (+5 CP for every 2 SPD increase), but needs to pay the END more times that turn.

[CTaylor]

I like the idea of being able to assign speed to a power as an advantage or limitation (so your continuous powers go off at a different speed than yours, for example). MIght be a headache to run, but its an interesting idea. My fire burns fast: it has 6 speed. That poison is slow, it has 2 speed.

[PhilFleischmann]

Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be expressed with decimals rather than standard fractions?
Definitely. Decimals are easier to read, easier to understand, easier to calculate with. It allows for the possibility of greater granularity, even though most modifiers will remain +0.25, +0.5, +0.75, etc. Any American who's ever used money knows what $3.95 means. Even our British friends can understand the concept of two digits after the decimal point (since the late 70's, IIRC). I am reminded of a quote from Isaac Asimov, which I present here, as best as I can remember it:

"The British are a great and noble people who have, over the centuries, taught themselves to endure anything, no matter how dreadful, provided it was 'traditional'. And even they have decided that they are sick and tire of their monitary system and converted over to a decimal currency."

And there need never be a modifier value that it more granular than "nickels" i.e., multiples of 0.05.


Q: Should Advantages and Limitations be applied to Powers in a different way?
The idea of Advantages and Limitations canceling each other out (+1 Adv, -0.75 Lim = +0.25 Adv) is worth considering. It has an effect on the bottom line in many cases, which could be good or bad, and it can make things a bit simpler - you only have to do one multiplication *or* division, instead of both.


Q: Should we allow characters to choose whether to use an Advantage on a power whenever they use the power, rather than making Advantage use mandatory?
I agree that this rule shouldn't change, but it makes a perfect example of an additional Advantage, that would need to be more granular than +0.25. For example AoE for +1; AoE that can be turned off for +1.1.


Q: Should any new Advantages be added?
Any fairly useful Advantages that have been presented in the genre books should be included in the main rulebook. Such as "Lingering" from FH.

[PhilFleischmann]

Q: Should any new Advantages be added?
Is the "Time Duration Power Modifier" you mention the same as Lingering, from FH?

Another Advantage to consider is Defense Powers that cost END based on the attacks they absorb. This would be an Advantage, on a Limitation, depending on whether it's in addition to, or instead of, the normal END cost. Now that I write this out, I realize it should always be considered a Limitation, which can be combined with the Reduced End Advantage, so I'll post it on the Limitations thread instead.


Q: Should some of the optional new Areas of Effect in the Character Creation Handbook be incorporated into the core rules?
Definitely. And as someone else already mentioned, "Any Area" needs to be souped up a bit. Here's a table comparing the number of hexes covered by various areas at various Active Points:


Active Number of Hexes in a:
Points Radius Cone Line Any
10 1 6 4 1
20 7 15 8 2
30 19 28 12 3
40 37 45 16 4
50 61 66 20 5
60 91 91 24 6
70 127 127 28 7
80 169 153 32 8
90 217 190 36 9
And it just gets worse from there. As you can see, AoE: Line, might benefit for a bit more area as well, but it's not as drastic as the Any Area disparity.

One possible solution is to simply double the number of hexes given by Any Area. Probably even better would be to triple it. That would keep the Any Area still smaller than the Line Area, in exchange for the flexibility of having a changeable area. Another posibility is to allow Any Area (or Line) grant hexes based on (Active Points/10)^2. That is, 1 hex at 10 points, 4 hexes at 20 points, 9 hexes at 30 points, etc. Then double this value for Line. This keeps them both below the total sizes of Radius and Cone, but prevents them from being too far outstripped.


Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?
I don't know. Do whatever you need to. Just make sure that 60 points worth of a Damage Shield has the same utility as 60 points worth of the regular attack. Under the current rules, this is not the case. 4d6 EB DS costs the same as 10d6 EB, but is not nearly as useful.


Q: Should Time Delay be eliminated?
Steve’s Thoughts: I think it should. You can do the same thing with Trigger.
Well, sort of. Trigger needs an extra advantage to be "variable" but Time Delay, as-is is already variable, and can be set for whatever time you want each time you use it. Generally, a "trigger" that depends only on time is probably a bit less useful than a Trigger that depend on a particular thing happening. (Like a land mine - if it goes off based on time, you have to guess in advance when someone's going to be there to take the hit.) So I think a fixed "event Trigger" is worth about the same as a variable "time trigger".


Q: Should Usable On Others be changed/revised?
Yes. Usable By Others and Usable As Attack should be split up into two separate Advantages. It would be clearer and less confusing. After all, they work in two very different ways.

[philhall]

I think that advantages and
limitations should balance each other out (a +3/4 advantage and a -1/2
limitation becomes a +1/4 advantage). That's pretty intuitive if you ask me.

[philhall]

An idea hit me: what if we had all advantages mandatory to use on all powers to
which they are purchased except Variable Advantage? VA encompasses the idea of
+0 (no advantage) to the maximum bought by the player for the character. This
would give people the leeway they want, while at the same time enforcing the
ideas behind advantage use.

[IndianaJoe3]

An idea hit me: what if we had all advantages mandatory to use on all powers to which they are purchased except Variable Advantage? VA encompasses the idea of +0 (no advantage) to the maximum bought by the player for the character. This would give people the leeway they want, while at the same time enforcing the ideas behind advantage use.
I think 5e is written this way already. I'm not sure what the point of setting VA to "No Advantage" is, though.

[CTaylor]

I think the Variable Advantage should cost double the maxiumum advantage, not 1+the max. So a +1/2 variable advantage would be a +1 advantage, rather than +1 1/2. This makes low end versions cheaper and high end versions very expensive.

[philhall]

I think 5e is written this way already. I'm not sure what the point of setting VA to "No Advantage" is, though.

Not entirely. I talked to Steve about this one time a long time ago, and he made it clear that any power bought with VA had to have some kind of advantage applied at all times, you couldn't just go with "none" for this particular instance.

The "No Advantage" would allow someone to temporarily turn off an effect they didn't want to use: in binary fashion.

In contrast to this, any other "regular" advantage would be on all the time and you would have no option to turn it off.

It's all about adding utility and functionality, really.

[Paragon]

Not entirely. I talked to Steve about this one time a long time ago, and he made it clear that any power bought with VA had to have some kind of advantage applied at all times, you couldn't just go with "none" for this particular instance.

The "No Advantage" would allow someone to temporarily turn off an effect they didn't want to use: in binary fashion.

In contrast to this, any other "regular" advantage would be on all the time and you would have no option to turn it off.

It's all about adding utility and functionality, really.

Though in practice, unless what you mean is to allow them to take the advantage portion and pump it back into base power, there are always no-impact Advantages you can use.

[Mini-Nukette]

Q: Should Damage Shield be removed as a stand-alone Advantage and just become a form of Trigger?

Like others, I think Damage Shield would be better represented as a separate Power than an Advantage. Perhaps 'Damage Aura' would be a more suitable descriptive term. You could then use it as a stand-alone Power (electrical energy that enshrouds the character, acidic secretions on the skin, randomly jutting spines, and the like) or link it to suitable Powers, such as Armor, Entangle, Force Field, Force Wall etc.

[Paragon]

Like others, I think Damage Shield would be better represented as a separate Power than an Advantage. Perhaps 'Damage Aura' would be a more suitable descriptive term. You could then use it as a stand-alone Power (electrical energy that enshrouds the character, acidic secretions on the skin, randomly jutting spines, and the like) or link it to suitable Powers, such as Armor, Entangle, Force Field, Force Wall etc.

The problem with this is that there are going to be damage shields that aren't, well, damage; I'm not even sure some of the Drain based versions are that uncommon in the sourceworks.

[Hugh Neilson]

Not entirely. I talked to Steve about this one time a long time ago, and he made it clear that any power bought with VA had to have some kind of advantage applied at all times, you couldn't just go with "none" for this particular instance.

The "No Advantage" would allow someone to temporarily turn off an effect they didn't want to use: in binary fashion.

In contrast to this, any other "regular" advantage would be on all the time and you would have no option to turn it off.

It's all about adding utility and functionality, really.

So you take as many levels of "difficult to dispal" as needed to fill up your variable advantage. For myself, I'd default to 0 END first (it's pretty much effortless to use my power unless I put a special twist on it).

[BobGreenwade]

Like others, I think Damage Shield would be better represented as a separate Power than an Advantage. Perhaps 'Damage Aura' would be a more suitable descriptive term. You could then use it as a stand-alone Power (electrical energy that enshrouds the character, acidic secretions on the skin, randomly jutting spines, and the like) or link it to suitable Powers, such as Armor, Entangle, Force Field, Force Wall etc.The problem with making Damage Shield a separate Power is that the Advantage currently can be applied to a variety of different Powers for a variety of different effects -- Energy Blast, RKA, Drain, Flash, Entangle, and so forth. If Damage Shield is its own Power, then it's tied to just one or possibly two effects.

[Mini-Nukette]

The problem with this is that there are going to be damage shields that aren't, well, damage; I'm not even sure some of the Drain based versions are that uncommon in the sourceworks.

If so then Damage Shield is even more of a misnomer. Making it a type of Area of Effect would seem ideal then, and 'Aura' would be quite suitable.

On another issue, the 'granularity' of fractions and decimals, perhaps increasing the scale would be a possible solution. For example:

At x12, -¼ becomes -3, +½ becomes +6, etc.

Active Cost = Power Cost x ((12 + Advantages) / 12)
Real Cost = Active Cost - ((12 + Limitations) / 12)

A little clunky maybe. Feels quite imperial, with the dozen.

At x100, each point becomes equal to +/-1 percent.

Active Cost = Base Cost x ((100 + Advantages) / 100)
Real Cost = Active Cost / ((100 + Limitations) / 100)

or

Active Cost = Base Cost x (100 + Advantages)%
Real Cost = Active Cost / (100 + Limitations)%

[BobGreenwade]

Someone in another thread mentioned the issue of Inherent Growth/Shrinking to represent having a different Size, and I'd like to repeat it here.

The problem, of course, is that it's currently not allowed. The Inherent Advantage seems practically custom-made for the purpose, but it's specifically disallowed from this application.

Now, to my mind, that's not a huge problem, but it does have a couple of glitches.

First, it creates a bit of a disconnect between the disadvantageous aspects of the differently-sized form, and the Disadvantage used to represent them. The current structure for Disadvantages simply doesn't differentiate, at least not explicitly, the difference between being large enough to (for example) have a -6 DCV and -8 DCV. But I go into that in the Disadvantages thread, so it can be fixed independently of this particular point.

The other problem is a tad stickier. I once (under 1st/2nd edition, though updated over time) built an NPC villain with Always On Growth and Density, and Absorption (once it was introduced) that went into both of those Powers. Under the current rules he couldn't do that. Technically he could build the Absorption to go into "all Growth/Density-related Characteristics and Powers" or some combination thereof, and possibly have a Side Effect to reflect the increase in mass and decrease in DCV, but that's a somewhat awkward build. Two other alternate solutions might be to include Size as an optional Characteristic, and to allow Adjustment Powers to "add" Powers that the target (or in this case the character himself) otherwise doesn't have.

I'm not saying necessarily that the restriction against using Inherent on Growth or Shrinking for this purpose absolutely should be lifted. I'm just saying that these are a couple of issues that I think should be addressed.

[CTaylor]

Actually it's not disallowed, it's discouraged. Steve couldn't go as far as I suspect he wanted to, but people took it that way anyhow.

[Southern Cross]

Well,I think that it should be possible to build a character with Always On Size Powers.A universal game system should be allowed to create Colonel Manning & Scott Carey homages....

[Markdoc]

I think that advantages and
limitations should balance each other out (a +3/4 advantage and a -1/2
limitation becomes a +1/4 advantage). That's pretty intuitive if you ask me.

It's intuitive but like many thinsg that are intuitive, it's wrong. In actual use, it's grotesquely unbalancing.

cheers, Mark

[CTaylor]

Most intuitive things tend to be right in my experience, but Mark is correct here: the entire mechanics of the game would change doing your modifiers that way. The first few times I made characters that's how I built them, and it messes everything up.

[philhall]

So you take as many levels of "difficult to dispal" as needed to fill up your variable advantage. For myself, I'd default to 0 END first (it's pretty much effortless to use my power unless I put a special twist on it).

I'm going to respond to both Hugh and Paragon with this, forgive that I don't quote you both, but you're both alluding to the same idea.

The thing is, at least in my mind, you shouldn't have to just load up on meaningless advantages because of a rule that could -- for the most part -- just simply be altered and fix the problem entirely. Yes, you could go for 0END and then buy a bunch of silly stuff to meet the requirement of VA and just be done with it; but again, why should a player be burdened with that when with a simple stroke of the pen Steve can side step the entire issue and just say "done."

One way requires more math (which would be ignored anyway); and another requires none. And keeping with the KISS theory, I prefer the latter. To each his own, I suppose.

[philhall]

It's intuitive but like many thinsg that are intuitive, it's wrong. In actual use, it's grotesquely unbalancing.

cheers, Mark

I'm going to respond to Mark and CTaylor at the same time again...

50 point power as example. (Why 50 points? Why not?)

50 pts (which some +3/4 advantage--pick one) is 50 * 1.75 = 87.5 (87 pts)
Apply to that the -1/2 disadvantage (pick one) is 87.5 / 1.5 = 58.3 (58 pts.)

That's the normal way.

My idea works out to this: 50 pts * 1.25 = 62.5 (62 pts) a difference of 4 points.

Let's try it now with 100 point power....

Normal way costs: 116.67 (117 pts)
My way costs: 125 points

The difference is: 8 points

Can you tell me where this becomes unbalancing? An 8% swing isn't that big of a cost difference, if you ask me.

[Hugh Neilson]

I'm going to respond to Mark and CTaylor at the same time again...

50 point power as example. (Why 50 points? Why not?)

Because 60 is easier to work with. So let's use 60 with a +3/4 advantage = 105, a -1/2 limitation makes it 70. Your way makes it 75, so +5 points, or 7% more expensive.

Let's try it with +3 in advantages (240) and a -1/4 limitation (192)
Your way gets 225- 17.2% more expensive.

Now, let's toss on +1 in Advantages (120) and -2 in limitations (40)
Your way gets 60 (hmm...your way is 50% more expensive)

What about +2 in advantages (180) and a -1 limitation (90)?
Your way gets a cost of 120, which is 33.3% more expensive

What if I have a 1/4 advantage (75) and -1 in limitations (37)?

Your way gets 34 - almost no difference at all.

Let's say it's 0 END, Area Affect, AVLD, Continuous, Does BOD, AP for a total of +5 (360), but needs an OAF (-1), Extra Time to activate (-1), Concentrate throughout (-1) [that's 90 points].

Your way gets 60 x 3 = 180, or triple the cost.

Seems to me the swings from your way get a lot wider than your example implies.

Based on my random (and it's 100% random) sample

[philhall]

Because 60 is easier to work with. So let's use 60 with a +3/4 advantage = 105, a -1/2 limitation makes it 70. Your way makes it 75, so +5 points, or 7% more expensive.

Let's try it with +3 in advantages (240) and a -1/4 limitation (192)
Your way gets 225- 17.2% more expensive.

Now, let's toss on +1 in Advantages (120) and -2 in limitations (40)
Your way gets 60 (hmm...your way is 50% more expensive)

What about +2 in advantages (180) and a -1 limitation (90)?
Your way gets a cost of 120, which is 33.3% more expensive

What if I have a 1/4 advantage (75) and -1 in limitations (37)?

Your way gets 34 - almost no difference at all.

Let's say it's 0 END, Area Affect, AVLD, Continuous, Does BOD, AP for a total of +5 (360), but needs an OAF (-1), Extra Time to activate (-1), Concentrate throughout (-1) [that's 90 points].

Your way gets 60 x 3 = 180, or triple the cost.

Seems to me the swings from your way get a lot wider than your example implies.

Based on my random (and it's 100% random) sample

Yes, you are right that there are swings dependent on what ADVs you add, that's logical. But it all comes down to this: it's more expensive. But that's sort of a meaningless thing when Steve has all but come out and said that he's going to have to give the player more points anyway since the figured characteristics are going to be made into straight out buys, just like the standard characteristics.

So, in the end, I really don't see what the harm is in making that particular change. But I guess this is something on which we will continue to disagree.

[PhilFleischmann]

I think the Variable Advantage should cost double the maxiumum advantage, not 1+the max. So a +1/2 variable advantage would be a +1 advantage, rather than +1 1/2. This makes low end versions cheaper and high end versions very expensive.
IIRC, that's the way the rules are already. What you're describing it the way it was in 4th Ed.

And speaking of Variable Advantages, I use a house rule (that I recommend for 6th) that says a non-attack power with VA only pays 1.5x the advantage, rather than 2x. So a non-attack power with +1/2 of variable advantages costs +3/4. +1 worth of VA would cost +1.5, etc. The reason for this is fairly simple: there simply aren't nearly as many Advantages that apply to non-Attack Powers. There's no such thing as an NND Force Field, or Armor Piercing Flight, or Shape Shift BOECV, or Tracking Scent that Does Knockback, or Growth that Does BODY, etc.

[Hugh Neilson]

Yes, you are right that there are swings dependent on what ADVs you add, that's logical. But it all comes down to this: it's more expensive. But that's sort of a meaningless thing when Steve has all but come out and said that he's going to have to give the player more points anyway since the figured characteristics are going to be made into straight out buys, just like the standard characteristics.

So, in the end, I really don't see what the harm is in making that particular change. But I guess this is something on which we will continue to disagree.

They are more expensive by significantly varying degrees. That is a significant change not to costing overall, but to the relative cost of various abilities.

Unless I believe there is an imbalance at present which your proposal will fix (and I do not), then I can only believe your proposal will cause imbalance. That's the harm.

[CTaylor]

IIRC, that's the way the rules are already. What you're describing it the way it was in 4th Ed.

You know, I think you're right. I'm getting old and my memory isn't what it once was.

[Paragon]

If so then Damage Shield is even more of a misnomer. Making it a type of Area of Effect would seem ideal then, and 'Aura' would be quite suitable.



I'm not going to argue in favor of the term (though I think its intuitive to enough people that its lack of precision is balanced out), but it really does seem closer to a special case of Trigger as Steve's suggested to me than anything else. As someone noted, that has virtues in being able to produce certain sorts of effects too; if you remove the inability to make it ranged, it allows you to do things like distinguish between burning pillars of fire (that damage anyone who come into them but don't do anything to anyone who leaves) and explosions of white phosphorus (that don't necessarily do much to anyone entering after the fact if they're careful but do continue to damage anyone they've hit) by replacing Continuous as the way to do the first, and leaving it for the second.

[Paragon]

I'm going to respond to both Hugh and Paragon with this, forgive that I don't quote you both, but you're both alluding to the same idea.

The thing is, at least in my mind, you shouldn't have to just load up on meaningless advantages because of a rule that could -- for the most part -- just simply be altered and fix the problem entirely. Yes, you could go for 0END and then buy a bunch of silly stuff to meet the requirement of VA and just be done with it; but again, why should a player be burdened with that when with a simple stroke of the pen Steve can side step the entire issue and just say "done."

One way requires more math (which would be ignored anyway); and another requires none. And keeping with the KISS theory, I prefer the latter. To each his own, I suppose.

All I was really suggesting was that the current rule and your suggested change are essentially identical in practical terms, because of the ability to add meaningless Advantages. I don't see the need for the mandatory Advantage, but I don't see it actually impacting the game in reality, either.

[Paragon]

This seems a good place to post this, but I don't recall seeing any reference to it before.

In the 5th Edition version of AVLD, there is a +3/4 Advantage to shift one exotic defense to another. At least generically, this seems--excessive. While obviously you'll hit some people who have, say, Mental Defense and not Power Defense, on the whole the general frequency and value of those defenses don't seem different enough to justify that big an Advantage; I'm not entirely sure it justifies an Advantage at all.

Thoughts?

[Susano]

This seems a good place to post this, but I don't recall seeing any reference to it before.

In the 5th Edition version of AVLD, there is a +3/4 Advantage to shift one exotic defense to another. At least generically, this seems--excessive. While obviously you'll hit some people who have, say, Mental Defense and not Power Defense, on the whole the general frequency and value of those defenses don't seem different enough to justify that big an Advantage; I'm not entirely sure it justifies an Advantage at all.

Thoughts?

I think I'd have to agree. AVLD is already expensive enough as is.

[CTaylor]

That actually seems low to me, and an odd edition, since you can simply buy two AVLD attacks and swap between them.

[Paragon]

That actually seems low to me, and an odd edition, since you can simply buy two AVLD attacks and swap between them.

I don't think you get what it does; it allows you to take something like an Ego Attack and move it from Mental to Power Defense, or put a Flash Attack against Mental Defense. Charging +3/4 for that just seems odd, especially since AVLD itself doesn't really assume moving from, say, ED to any one of them is better than moving it to any other one.

[Hugh Neilson]

This seems a good place to post this, but I don't recall seeing any reference to it before.

In the 5th Edition version of AVLD, there is a +3/4 Advantage to shift one exotic defense to another. At least generically, this seems--excessive. While obviously you'll hit some people who have, say, Mental Defense and not Power Defense, on the whole the general frequency and value of those defenses don't seem different enough to justify that big an Advantage; I'm not entirely sure it justifies an Advantage at all.

Thoughts?

I've posted before that I think the fact you can shift between PD and ED at no cost implies the ability to change from one exotic defense to another at no cost. My reasons pretty much match yours.

Perhaps for +1/4 you should be able to choose between two equally common defenses (a MP of a 12d6 EB vs PD and one vs ED would cost 72, pretty close to the 75 points to have a 12d6 Shiftable attack). Then again, the fact we can already do this with a multipower largely offsets any need to have another way to accomplish the same goal.

[CTaylor]

I don't think you get what it does; it allows you to take something like an Ego Attack and move it from Mental to Power Defense, or put a Flash Attack against Mental Defense. Charging +3/4 for that just seems odd, especially since AVLD itself doesn't really assume moving from, say, ED to any one of them is better than moving it to any other one.

I understand just fine; being able to move to different rare defenses makes you able to basically ignore people's defenses at will. Few people have all of the odd defenses out there at the same time, so you're turning your AVLD into an NND against nearly everyone, without the drawbacks of NNDs.

But if you just built a multipower with several AVLD attacks and called it "polarity shifting" or some Star Trek nonsense techbabble, you could build the same thing for a fraction of the cost that the advantage is.

[Tonio]

I understand just fine; being able to move to different rare defenses makes you able to basically ignore people's defenses at will. Few people have all of the odd defenses out there at the same time, so you're turning your AVLD into an NND against nearly everyone, without the drawbacks of NNDs.

But if you just built a multipower with several AVLD attacks and called it "polarity shifting" or some Star Trek nonsense techbabble, you could build the same thing for a fraction of the cost that the advantage is.

I don't think you still get it... they're talking about having an Ego Attack that can only go against, say, Flash Defense, not an Ego Attack that can go against either Mental Defense or Flash Defense, depending on what you choose when you fire it.

[CTaylor]

Ah OK I understand now, it's not variable, it's just based on something weird. I agree, that's a silly and pointless rule.

[PhilFleischmann]

This seems a good place to post this, but I don't recall seeing any reference to it before.

In the 5th Edition version of AVLD, there is a +3/4 Advantage to shift one exotic defense to another. At least generically, this seems--excessive. While obviously you'll hit some people who have, say, Mental Defense and not Power Defense, on the whole the general frequency and value of those defenses don't seem different enough to justify that big an Advantage; I'm not entirely sure it justifies an Advantage at all.

Thoughts?
You're absolutely right. There are a few things in the book like this, where a premium is charged, not for increased utility, just for being a non-standard power. And it isn't fair.

[Paragon]

I understand just fine; being able to move to different rare defenses makes you able to basically ignore people's defenses at will. Few people have all of the odd defenses out there at the same time, so you're turning your AVLD into an NND against nearly everyone, without the drawbacks of NNDs.

But if you just built a multipower with several AVLD attacks and called it "polarity shifting" or some Star Trek nonsense techbabble, you could build the same thing for a fraction of the cost that the advantage is.


Well, that was my point; if you want to shop for exotics, its easy enough to do that just by taking several different exotics; I'm not seeing how its somehow worse to have a Flash against Mental Defense than a Mind Control against it.

[Paragon]

Ah OK I understand now, it's not variable, it's just based on something weird. I agree, that's a silly and pointless rule.

Yes. I can see some argument that there's some variance in value; you don't tend to see people buy as much, say, Knockback Resistance or Flash Defense (even with 5e Flash) as you do Power Defense or Mental Defense, but even in the worst case +3/4 seems a bit excessive.

[BobGreenwade]

Yes. I can see some argument that there's some variance in value; you don't tend to see people buy as much, say, Knockback Resistance or Flash Defense (even with 5e Flash) as you do Power Defense or Mental Defense, but even in the worst case +3/4 seems a bit excessive.I agree here. Even where something applies against a Defense that's more common (such as a Flash defended by Mental Defense), the effect can be unexpected and provide a tactical advantage that a straightforward, unmodified Power wouldn't. Yet +3/4 is definitely too hefty. I'd go with +1/4 (or, if we switch to increments of 0.05, probably 0.2).

[Tonio]

I agree here. Even where something applies against a Defense that's more common (such as a Flash defended by Mental Defense), the effect can be unexpected and provide a tactical advantage that a straightforward, unmodified Power wouldn't. Yet +3/4 is definitely too hefty. I'd go with +1/4 (or, if we switch to increments of 0.05, probably 0.2).

I'm not so sure. The effect is only unexpected in the "whoa, I've never seen that sort of power construct before" way, i.e. to the player, not the character. A Flash based on Mental Defense is no more unexpected and tactically advantageous than an Ego Attack, or a regular Flash, as long as we're assuming Mental Defense and Flash Defense are similarly rare/common.

But from a gameplay point of view, if the new defense is equally rare or common, the new power isn't any better than the old one. The player might get confused ("Eep! I switch my MP to full Flash Defense, ignoring Mental Defense... I don't wanna get Flashed again!"), but the character wouldn't ("Zounds! I better shore up my mindshield, that last Neural Overload left me blind and deaf!"). The AVLD advantage (lowercase "a") is not that the defense is unexpected, but that it's rarer.

Edit:

Note, though, that I'm basing this argument on both defenses in question (in this case, Flash Defense and Mental Defense), the normal one for the power, and whatever you're switching to, are equally rare or common. In a Psi campaign, where everybody and their cousin has scads of Mental Defense, but Power Defense is rare, switching a power from Mental Defense to Power Defense should cost, while switching a power from Power Defense to Mental Defense should give you some points back.

[Hugh Neilson]

Note, though, that I'm basing this argument on both defenses in question (in this case, Flash Defense and Mental Defense), the normal one for the power, and whatever you're switching to, are equally rare or common. In a Psi campaign, where everybody and their cousin has scads of Mental Defense, but Power Defense is rare, switching a power from Mental Defense to Power Defense should cost, while switching a power from Power Defense to Mental Defense should give you some points back.

While I agree with you that equal rarity is presupposed in allowing cost-free switching, it is also presupposed in the rules as written based on the fact that converting from a normal defense to any exotic defense costs the same +1 1/2 advantage. It would seem reasonable for the "swapping between defenses" rules to discuss cost modifications in games where the rarity of defense types varies from the usual expectation.

[BobGreenwade]

While I agree with you that equal rarity is presupposed in allowing cost-free switching, it is also presupposed in the rules as written based on the fact that converting from a normal defense to any exotic defense costs the same +1 1/2 advantage. It would seem reasonable for the "swapping between defenses" rules to discuss cost modifications in games where the rarity of defense types varies from the usual expectation.If what you're saying is that these Powers that work against exotic defenses are built the way they are for a reason and changing which exotic defense they work against should cost something, then I agree. :)

[Hugh Neilson]

If what you're saying is that these Powers that work against exotic defenses are built the way they are for a reason and changing which exotic defense they work against should cost something, then I agree. :)

I'm saying that

(a) non-exotic attacks can change which non-exotic defense they work against at no cost.

(b) any non-exotic attack can be converted to an exotic attack working against your choice of the three exotic defenses for the same cost, regardless of which defense is selected

(c) with this in mind, it makes NO SENSE that changing from one exotic defense to another should carry a cost.

Let's consider a character we'll call Mento. Mento is a mentalist with a number of typical mental powers. He can also override your senses mentally (Flash) and interfere with your mental command over your muscles (Drain STR and DEX). As Mento's powers are all mental in nature, he decides they should all work against Mental Defense, even the Flash and the Drain.

First, that seems very reasonable from a concept perspective.

Second, Mento's choice does not make Mento a stronger, more effective character. Really, it weakens him. Buying these with their default defenses leaves Mento with some half decent combat options when faced with an opponent with high mental defenses. By building to concept, he makes himself much less effective against such opponents. I think that's a bigger cost than the benefit of his Flash and Drain being effective against targets with Flash and Power defense - he could have used his Ego Attack, Mind Control or Mental Illusions on them to good effect anyway.

Why should Mento be required to pay a +3/4 advantage on those two powers in order to weaken his character? More to the point, why should the player who chooses to use the default and not build to concept be rewarded with not only the advantage of selecting which exotic defense he wants to target, but also a significant point savings/more DC for the same AP?

Can changing defense types also be abused? Sure. I can buy three powers, one affecting each exotic defense. But I can already to that. I can buy Mental Illusions, a ranged DEX Drain and a Flash vs Sight in a Multipower. Each can be used to reduce my target's CV. Each works against a different exotic defense. None has an advantage to change to that exotic defense.

Making unusual abilities cost extra doesn't curtail abuse. It just discourages unusual, but balanced, concepts and power builds.

[CTaylor]

Yeah I don't think changing the defense that a power goes against should cost more than perhaps +1/4. I can see where buying a drain that goes against (say) hardened mental defense or lack of weakness is more powerful than one that goes against power defense, but not by a significant margin.

[Tonio]

Yeah I don't think changing the defense that a power goes against should cost more than perhaps +1/4. I can see where buying a drain that goes against (say) hardened mental defense or lack of weakness is more powerful than one that goes against power defense, but not by a significant margin.

Well, I'd think Hardened Mental Defense and Lack of Weakness are rarer than Power Defense, so yeah, it should cost a bit. Changing it to regular Mental Defense probably shouldn't cost anything, and maybe even be a Limitation, if Mental Defense is common.

[BobGreenwade]

Yeah I don't think changing the defense that a power goes against should cost more than perhaps +1/4. I can see where buying a drain that goes against (say) hardened mental defense or lack of weakness is more powerful than one that goes against power defense, but not by a significant margin.


Well, I'd think Hardened Mental Defense and Lack of Weakness are rarer than Power Defense, so yeah, it should cost a bit. Changing it to regular Mental Defense probably shouldn't cost anything, and maybe even be a Limitation, if Mental Defense is common.Perhaps the Modifier should depend on the relative commonality of the native and new defense.

I do still hold that the default level should be the minimum level of an Advantage, or (if we switch to a resolution finer than +1/4) only slightly higher, for the reasons already given.

[Paragon]

I have to admit I hadn't considered the fact that it doesn't cost different levels to make a normal AVLD apply to the different defenses. I think I'm with Tonio's position that the only reason for an additional cost for switching between them would be if the new defense was rarer than one normally permitted with an AVLD (in which case it should cost more there, too).

[Opal]

AVLD has always bothered me for the same reason. Sure, making an EB AVLD vs Flash Defense is worth it. But making a Drain AVLD vs Flash DEF? OK, in a typical campaign Flash DEF might not be very high, but it may well be /much/ more common that Power DEF.

How common, and how high, exotic defenses are in a given campaign should certainly be taken into consideration when pricing an advantage like that.

For instance, if Power Defense is vanishingly rare, and EGO defense merely uncommon, /and/ Power DEF has a hard limit of 10, while EGO DEF can (and often is) bought into the teens, a Drain: EGO, vs EGO DEF might even be a limitation. Not based on ECV, mind you.

Oh, and I mean Mental Defense and Mentalist anytime I say EGO DEF or Egoist. Sorry. Just be glad I'm over saying Characteristic Defense instead of Power Defense.

[PhilFleischmann]

I've always found that AVLD is not a very efficient buy to begin with. Compare it to Armor Piercing: For +1/2 you bypass half of the target's (non-hardened) defenses. How much should it cost to bypass *all* of a target's (non-hardened) defenses? This would be as much an increase in utility (in terms of actual damage done) over AP as AP is over no Advantage, so it ought to cost double, or +1*.

* I'm not actually advocating a "bypass all non-hardened defeses" for +1, due to playability issues, but if one were to allow it, that would be the fair cost.

[Paragon]

I've always found that AVLD is not a very efficient buy to begin with. Compare it to Armor Piercing: For +1/2 you bypass half of the target's (non-hardened) defenses. How much should it cost to bypass *all* of a target's (non-hardened) defenses? This would be as much an increase in utility (in terms of actual damage done) over AP as AP is over no Advantage, so it ought to cost double, or +1*.

* I'm not actually advocating a "bypass all non-hardened defeses" for +1, due to playability issues, but if one were to allow it, that would be the fair cost.

I think that ignores some thresholding issues present in the fact if you push damage low enough, it doesn't tend to Stun, and gets vacuumed up more by REC. I don't think the first half of the defense and the second are, on the whole, quite symmetrical.

Really the problem with AVLD is that its trapped by the price of NND; it can't very well not be more expensive than that, but that forces its price up beyond what's usually useful.

[Opal]

So, should NND be cheaper?

I don't think that hurts AVLD vs an exotic defense, though. Something like an EGO attack or drain is already priced like an NND. For that matter, would buying NND on a Drain or something even be worth the (any?) points? I'd be more inclined to just take a limitation on the Drain.

[Hugh Neilson]

I think that ignores some thresholding issues present in the fact if you push damage low enough, it doesn't tend to Stun, and gets vacuumed up more by REC. I don't think the first half of the defense and the second are, on the whole, quite symmetrical.

Really the problem with AVLD is that its trapped by the price of NND; it can't very well not be more expensive than that, but that forces its price up beyond what's usually useful.


So, should NND be cheaper?

I don't think that hurts AVLD vs an exotic defense, though. Something like an EGO attack or drain is already priced like an NND. For that matter, would buying NND on a Drain or something even be worth the (any?) points? I'd be more inclined to just take a limitation on the Drain.

We could redefine NND to mean "Attack that goes against an unusual defense?". either it subtracts that defense, if it is a defense, or it simply does not affect anyone meeting the criteria for immunity. They could then both cost +1 and life would go on. An NND with a defense that is not as common as it should be is more powerful than an AVLD against a defense possessed by a reasonable portion of opponents.

[Paragon]

So, should NND be cheaper?

I don't think that hurts AVLD vs an exotic defense, though. Something like an EGO attack or drain is already priced like an NND. For that matter, would buying NND on a Drain or something even be worth the (any?) points? I'd be more inclined to just take a limitation on the Drain.

I'd argue that the fact NND and Ego Attack are priced the same is also a problem.

Should NND be cheaper? Its hard to say. I don't think you can make it too much cheaper, or it starts to encroach on Armor Piercing's niche.

Some of the problem is just the generic problem with Advantages on Attacks; because of AP caps, its just easy for them to get crunched down to the point they aren't useful. NNDs and AVLDs actually do better than Areas and Autofire on normal attacks do here, but you still have the issue that at some point you wonder why you're not just using a regular attack, unless you're dealing with a target with notably high PD/ED.

[Paragon]

We could redefine NND to mean "Attack that goes against an unusual defense?". either it subtracts that defense, if it is a defense, or it simply does not affect anyone meeting the criteria for immunity. They could then both cost +1 and life would go on. An NND with a defense that is not as common as it should be is more powerful than an AVLD against a defense possessed by a reasonable portion of opponents.

I think there needs to be some distinction between all-or-nothing defenses and ones that are conditional there, though. I'm just not convinced the current set is sane in its relationship, mechanically speaking.

[CTaylor]

The price of AVLD, NND, and BOECV has always been a problem to me: if you look at how they work and compare prices, you get way more out of BOECV than AVLD attacks, but its cheaper.

[Paragon]

The price of AVLD, NND, and BOECV has always been a problem to me: if you look at how they work and compare prices, you get way more out of BOECV than AVLD attacks, but its cheaper.

No question. But there's a few downsides to BOECV that are an issue there, which is I suspect how the cost of BOECV and NND were justified, and AVLD was a relative latecomer to the party.

[Chris Goodwin]

The price of AVLD, NND, and BOECV has always been a problem to me: if you look at how they work and compare prices, you get way more out of BOECV than AVLD attacks, but its cheaper.

A new edition is the ideal time to look at them and reconcile their costs and mechanics.

[Opal]

The price of AVLD, NND, and BOECV has always been a problem to me: if you look at how they work and compare prices, you get way more out of BOECV than AVLD attacks, but its cheaper.I've never been sanguine with AVLD bought on attacks that already have exotic defenses. But, NND and BOECV don't seem like a problem. BOECV gets you a bundle of advantages - effectively AVLD, plus Line of Sight - but also some fundamental changes to how the power works, most notably, the ECV thing. BOECV is great for a mentalist who already has a superior EGO, but for an Energy Projector who already has a good OCV with his multipower, NND or even AVLD is the better buy. BOECV also comes with a defined defense, so, while the CV is great for a mentalist, a BOECV power will be well-defended-against by the same things (high ECV and EGO DEF) as your regular mental powers. For the multipower character using OCV, OTOH, the exotic defense factor makes an NND or AVLD worth it.

So, yes, if you campare the powers, BOECV does more than NND or even AVLD, in spite of the costs. But, if you look at thier respective value to a character, the costs are more in line with what they deliver.

[Paragon]

A new edition is the ideal time to look at them and reconcile their costs and mechanics.

Which is why this seemed a good time and place to bring it up.

[CTaylor]

I don't think the drawbacks of BOECV are as great as the advantages; in other words, I think if you put it all down on a spreadsheet, it ends up being better than NND overall, and far better than AVLD. Yet AVLD costs more by far.

It's possible that with a digital system of limitations rather than fractional the problems could be worked out (.8 rather than 1 advantage for NND, or 1.2 for BOECV, for example). AVLD is too blanket for the cost, sometimes its no better than NND, depending on the campaign or the defense chosen.

I pointed this out before the Big Blue Book came out but it didn't go anywhere on Red October. Hopefully it will get better this time around.

[Paragon]

I don't think the drawbacks of BOECV are as great as the advantages; in other words, I think if you put it all down on a spreadsheet, it ends up being better than NND overall, and far better than AVLD. Yet AVLD costs more by far.



I don't think so either, but George and Steve seemed to when I talked to them about it back in the day. Of course part of it might have been the tendency to avoid Advantage levels like 3/4.

[PhilFleischmann]

Sorry for the confusion of my last post. I got distracted and posted prematurely (It's never happened before! Honest! :o) before I completed the idea(s) I was trying to share.

Obviously (or maybe not), an otherwise "normal" attack that bypasses all defenses is going to automatically do BODY, which is why NND/AVLDs do no BODY by default, and the much each define a particular defense they work against.

How 'bout lowering AVLD to +1.25?


It's possible that with a digital system of limitations rather than fractional the problems could be worked out (.8 rather than 1 advantage for NND, or 1.2 for BOECV, for example). AVLD is too blanket for the cost, sometimes its no better than NND, depending on the campaign or the defense chosen.
I was going to say something along these lines as well. The value of NND/AVLD could be adjusted, as needed depending on how common the defense is. A more-common-than-normal defense for an NND might only be a +.9 or +.8, while a less-common-than-usual defense for an NND could be +1.1 or +1.2. And AVLDs could be treated similarly. Hooray for Granularity!

And I also use (as a house rule) a +2 Advantage called AND - Absolutely No Defense. It's reserved for NPCs, but otherwise works like an NND with no defense at all. More of a plot/strategy device than anything else. Sometimes you just have to do whatever you can to not get hit.

And while we're on the subject, I think AVLDs should be able to go against other "limited" defenses besides Mental, Flash, and Power, such as "ED from Force Field" or "Hardened PD".

[CTaylor]

I suspect that has a lot more to do with it than anything else. 3/4 seems harder to work with than 1/2 and 1, so they didn't assign it to anything.

[mmshah]

Variable Effect - Multiple Special Effects should require Variable Effect at an equal level. This is for Adjustment Powers, currently Variable Effect - Multiple Special Effects only requires Variable Effect at the +1/2 level. This allows for the following abuse:

+1/2 Variable Effect
+2 Variable Effect - Multiple Special Effects (All Special Effects)

Depending on how one chooses to define their Special Effects this could easily be everything on a character sheet (All power and characteristics)

My proposed change would require +2 Variable Effect and +2 Variable Effect - Multiple Special Effects for a total of +4 in Advantages for the same effect. Still an enormously powerful effect but at least +4 seems a little more in keeping with what such a powerful ability should cost.

[Markdoc]

So, in the end, I really don't see what the harm is in making that particular change. But I guess this is something on which we will continue to disagree.

Hugh's tagged part of it - that your way leads to extreme swings in cost, But it's also important to realise that those swings don't reflect the increase or decrease in value very well (or at all, really).

You can take his example where you have +1/4 in advantages and -1 in limitations. There you have a severely limited power ... which nets you almost no advantage in savings. You can make plenty of other examples - but basically, you don't get what you paid for. And it makes many current constructs entirely unplayable.

Basically, this is how Fusion tried to do it, and it was generally considered one of Fusion's many failures.

cheers, Mark

[GamePhil]

How about replacing AVLD with AVDD: Attack Versus Different Defense.

Defense is significantly more common than normal: -1
Defense is more common than normal: -1/2
Defense is just as common as the Defense the Power originally goes against: +0.
Defense is less common: +1/2
Much less common: +1
Exceedingly rare (with apologies to Dave Barry): +1 1/2 or higher

All or Nothing for that Defense (having the defense completely negates the Power, and this would be required for anything that acts as a defense but not a Defense) would modify the cost, so you could get NND, defense is Having Flesh, and probably get a pretty good Limitation for it (unless it did Body or the game was unusual).

Or, create all Powers starting with everyday defenses and buy an Advantage to restrict it. Flash could go against ED and need an Advanatage to go against Flash Defense. That would simplify certain things, but is likely to radical a change.

[Hugh Neilson]

How about replacing AVLD with AVDD: Attack Versus Different Defense.

Defense is significantly more common than normal: -1
Defense is more common than normal: -1/2
Defense is just as common as the Defense the Power originally goes against: +0.
Defense is less common: +1/2
Much less common: +1
Exceedingly rare (with apologies to Dave Barry): +1 1/2 or higher

All or Nothing for that Defense (having the defense completely negates the Power, and this would be required for anything that acts as a defense but not a Defense) would modify the cost, so you could get NND, defense is Having Flesh, and probably get a pretty good Limitation for it (unless it did Body or the game was unusual).

I think this makes a lot of sense. Add on that attacks against anything other than PD or ED require an extra +1 to do BOD and we're in pretty good shape.

[Opal]

How about replacing AVLD with AVDD: Attack Versus Different Defense.I like it. Wouldn't the typical level of the defense also matter? In some games, Flash Defense - via sunglasses, helmet visors, and the like - might be very common, almost as common as resistant defense, but typically be around 5 points, while resistant defenses might range from 8-24.

I only see two minor problems. 1) AvDD will require GM adjudication over how common defenses are relative to eachother. Lots of things already do, but it's just one more to the list. 2)smartasses are going to abrevieate it A.D.D. (hey, my character has Ay-Dee-Dee - ooh! shiny... what were we talking about?). ;)

[GamePhil]

First part snipped because of agreement.



I only see two minor problems. 1) AvDD will require GM adjudication over how common defenses are relative to eachother. Lots of things already do, but it's just one more to the list.


Unfortunately true, but I don't see anything to be done about it if commonality of defense is considered a valid issue. It's going to vary from game to game.



2)smartasses are going to abrevieate it A.D.D. (hey, my character has Ay-Dee-Dee - ooh! shiny... what were we talking about?). ;)

I tried to come up with a word other than Different, specifically a synonym that began with L, but nothing came to mind. :cry: I suppose AVVD might work.

[Opal]

Attack vs Alternate Defense?

Really, though, it's not a serious objection.

[Chris Goodwin]

I tried to come up with a word other than Different, specifically a synonym that began with L, but nothing came to mind. :cry: I suppose AVVD might work.

Attack Versus... WHAT?! :eek:

[Susano]

Attack Versus... WHAT?! :eek:

Ahh... a super power for military health training films.

[GamePhil]

Attack Versus... WHAT?! :eek:

Ah, someone noticed. I thought I was being subtle :)

[Netzilla]

I tried to come up with a word other than Different, specifically a synonym that began with L, but nothing came to mind. :cry: I suppose AVVD might work.

I posted a similar suggestion earlier in the thread (post 75), though less detailed and didn't put in anything for downgrading the defense type. I called it Attack Versus Exotic Defense (AVED).

[James Gillen]

Ahh... a super power for military health training films.


Defense vs. VD Power Defense 10 points (10) -Only vs. Sexually Transmitted Disease Effects (-2) plus Life Support vs. broad category of terrestrial disease (5), Real Cost 8 points

[Susano]

Defense vs. VD Power Defense 10 points (10) -Only vs. Sexually Transmitted Disease Effects (-2) plus Life Support vs. broad category of terrestrial disease (5), Real Cost 8 points

You worry me.

[James Gillen]

You worry me.

I have been working on that Erotic HERO project, but this doesn't seem like the kind of company that would endorse it.

JG

[Susano]

I have been working on that Erotic HERO project, but this doesn't seem like the kind of company that would endorse it.

JG

...

That's it, I'm going home, you can keep your money.

[David Blue]

Shouldn't Resistant be a +¼ Advantage only?

In principle, for every attack there is a defense, and the defense must be considerably cheaper than the attack.

This is a sound idea, and Hero mostly follows it, with two gross exceptions. One is the effect of attacks made up of many advantages stacked on a small basic attack - the $2 world-killers that are the biggest hole in the system. The second biggest violation of this sound rule is Killing damage.

Point for point, Killing damage is much better than normal damage. I'd say it's about a +½ better: +¼ for ignoring non-Resistant defenses, +¼ for the STUN lotto. But in fact it's free.

If Killing was a +½ Advantage, it would make sense for Resistant to be +½ too. Or, better, +¼: let's make the defense substantially cheaper than the attack.

If Killing was a +¼ Advantage, it would make sense for Resistant to be +¼. We can't make the defense much chaper than the attack here, because the attack is already so cheap.

What we have is the very strange situation where Killing is +0 and Resistant is +½. Surely this ought to change?

[Hugh Neilson]

Shouldn't Resistant be a +¼ Advantage only?

In principle, for every attack there is a defense, and the defense must be considerably cheaper than the attack.

This is a sound idea, and Hero mostly follows it, with two gross exceptions. One is the effect of attacks made up of many advantages stacked on a small basic attack - the $2 world-killers that are the biggest hole in the system. The second biggest violation of this sound rule is Killing damage.

Point for point, Killing damage is much better than normal damage. I'd say it's about a +½ better: +¼ for ignoring non-Resistant defenses, +¼ for the STUN lotto. But in fact it's free.

If Killing was a +½ Advantage, it would make sense for Resistant to be +½ too. Or, better, +¼: let's make the defense substantially cheaper than the attack.

If Killing was a +¼ Advantage, it would make sense for Resistant to be +¼. We can't make the defense much chaper than the attack here, because the attack is already so cheap.

What we have is the very strange situation where Killing is +0 and Resistant is +½. Surely this ought to change?

The defense also varies from the norm mechanically. In most cases, having enough defenses to reliably reduce STUN to manageable levels eliminates BOD. How often to characters in a 12DC game take BOD from a 12 DC attack? Only if they rely on not getting hit to protect them - if they have the typical 20+ defenses, no BOD is inflicted.

But 1 point of rDEF is sufficient to asllow all your regular defenses to reduce KA stun. No other version of defenses allows you to pull in other defenses against part of the damage. You can't Harden your 1/1 Force Field and make your regular PD and ED resist AP attacks as well.

[Paragon]

How about replacing AVLD with AVDD: Attack Versus Different Defense.

Defense is significantly more common than normal: -1
Defense is more common than normal: -1/2
Defense is just as common as the Defense the Power originally goes against: +0.
Defense is less common: +1/2
Much less common: +1
Exceedingly rare (with apologies to Dave Barry): +1 1/2 or higher

All or Nothing for that Defense (having the defense completely negates the Power, and this would be required for anything that acts as a defense but not a Defense) would modify the cost, so you could get NND, defense is Having Flesh, and probably get a pretty good Limitation for it (unless it did Body or the game was unusual).

Or, create all Powers starting with everyday defenses and buy an Advantage to restrict it. Flash could go against ED and need an Advanatage to go against Flash Defense. That would simplify certain things, but is likely to radical a change.

This is more or less the tact I'd like to take.

[casualplayer]

Blah, blah, rail against halving effects, stupid Armor Piercing, won't casualplayer ever shut up, blah, blah, blah.

I think the conversion to decimal and the encouragement to assign multiples +/- 0.2 to modifiers is too beautiful to not do. Any shaved ape can take a Base 5 system like HERO and multiply times 1.4, and although the Limitation math would be a little more difficult it's no moreso than current RAW. Rep to Chris soonest.

I find that "Damage Shield" is best emulated with powers bought AE: 1 hex-non-selective, Continuous, Personal Immunity, No Range. You have to waive any AP restrictions or there's too little oomph in the power but other than that it works like a charm. You don't get the auto-hit aspect of Damage Shield but I hate that anyway (absolute effects, blah, blah :D) and anyone who did want that incorporated could slap Accurate on the AE. People who want to have the power active but have the option of touching without crisping convert the AE to Selective. Want it to keep going when you're out cold, add Uncontrolled or Persistant. It does seem clunky but it's been a long while since I've seen a power write-up without +2 in Advantages anyway.

And while I think AoE: Trail is just an AoE: Line shooting out your butt while you're moving, sure why not, add it anyway. :D

[nexus]

Blah, blah, rail against halving effects, stupid Armor Piercing, won't casualplayer ever shut up, blah, blah, blah.

I think the conversion to decimal and the encouragement to assign multiples +/- 0.2 to modifiers is too beautiful to not do. Any shaved ape can take a Base 5 system like HERO and multiply times 1.4, and although the Limitation math would be a little more difficult it's no moreso than current RAW. Rep to Chris soonest.

I find that "Damage Shield" is best emulated with powers bought AE: 1 hex-non-selective, Continuous, Personal Immunity, No Range. You have to waive any AP restrictions or there's too little oomph in the power but other than that it works like a charm. You don't get the auto-hit aspect of Damage Shield but I hate that anyway (absolute effects, blah, blah :D) and anyone who did want that incorporated could slap Accurate on the AE. People who want to have the power active but have the option of touching without crisping convert the AE to Selective. Want it to keep going when you're out cold, add Uncontrolled or Persistant. It does seem clunky but it's been a long while since I've seen a power write-up without +2 in Advantages anyway.

And while I think AoE: Trail is just an AoE: Line shooting out your butt while you're moving, sure why not, add it anyway. :D

If you get a Force Wall with that Advantage can you build a Lightcycle from Tron?