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Hugh Neilson

Aug 3rd, '08, 05:27 AM

Because otherwise, in any game where healing is relevant, characters come in two states: combat injury/Fully healed and rested. It's a bit irksome to run a game where after every period of activity, the entire group is fully refreshed within a minute or two, if even the bare minimum of healing is present.

Removal of this issue would be the main reason for capping Healing, in my view.

I've come to think that the best path is:
1. Break regeneration out into its own power again. It works fundamentally differently from Healing, as it is.
Increase the base cost of Regeneration (30 points sounds about right) but make it cheaper to buy extra points of Regeneration (5 points per point of Bod?). This would solve the problem that buying Regeneration usable on others is better than healing and the fact that out of combat 1 point of Regeneration is as good as 10, while still making it possible - even easier - to build a "combat regenerator" who recovers superhumanly fast in combat time.

2. Remove Healing (in other words, fold it back into Aid and treat it like all other adjustment powers). This gets rid of the "doesn't fade" exception and the odd rules on maximums. People who want "doesn't fade" can buy out the duration and people who want "healing" can buy "Only Restores To Starting Values (-½)"

I can see retaining Healing as its own power for ease of access, but it should be possible to build Healing with Aid, and Aid with Healing, using advantages and limitations. The ability to do so at least partially vets the balance between the two.

Similarly, I would not remove Transfer, but it should be possible to build it with a Linked Drain and Aid. And it should work like a linked drain and Aid (that is, if the character is aided to the maximum extent, it should still be possible to use it to drain, it just doesn't add to the user's stat). I'd also like to see Transfer be able to choose from Aid and Heal/Regenerate for its result on the user.

Aid can be further fixed by:
Making it cost END, to bring it in line with other Adjustment powers
Dropping the cost to 5 points per d6 (and removing Succor as a seperate power: it can be built off Aid). Instead add a -½ limitation "Powers fade immediately if not maintained"

Adding a new advantage for adjustment powers "Noncombat duration (+1)" which is required for an adjustment power to purchase a delayed fade rate.
The rationale for this is that in 4th Ed. there were numerous abusive Aid constructs based around multiple stat aids with extended duration. Raising the cost to 10 prevented that - but also nerfed the intended use of Aid as temporary combat boost as it became quite point-inefficient. This Advantage keeps the balance.

4th Ed Aid was clearly abused, and 5th Ed went out of its way to prevent such abuse. The biggest abuses I saw, however, were caused by the fact that Aid also Healed (ie did not fade if the stat was not above starting value). Even 1d6 Healing Aid on END, made Continuous and Persistent, is amazingly powerful in a Supers game.

I'd like to see Aid cost END - it's an odd man out in this regard, and I get the sense it lost its END cost because 10 points was too expensive for what it would do, and 5 points was considered too cheap, but the designers wanted nothing in between. A 7 or 8 point per d6 power would not be the end of the world.

I agree Succor need not be a separate power. I also agree that Aid needs to be costed in such a fashion that it's not more efficient to just buy the stats. A lot of the blame here falls into "Self Only". The value of a limitation should depend on what it does to the power, and it need not be consistent between powers. "Self only" is much more limiting for Aid or Healing than, say, Force Wall, so it should carry a greater limitation.

I think the "noncombat duration", where the first increment costs more, is worth consideration. Maybe that first step goes to every 5 minutes (ie "this will never be a factor in combat") instead of every minute. This needs to be considered in light of its impact on Drains, etc., as well, but "down 10 STR for the duration of the combat" probably isn't the end of the world. It would cost 60 points using that +1 advantage to have the 3d6 Drain needed to sap 10 STR on average.

Thus "healing" would cost 5 points per d6 with the advantages Noncombat duration (+1), extended fade rate (1 year*, at +2½) and the limitation Only Restores To Starting Values (-½) for 22 points active, 15 real. It'd work like any other adjustment power, including the ability to be put in frameworks, adjust maximums, fade rates, etc.

Of course, now a real cost of 15 (reduced if we place more limitations on it) means we DO get that 1d6 Healing Spell that can restore all the characters to full fighting strength after each and every combat, something I thought we were trying to avoid. As well, while your 1 year comment is well taken, your typical adventurer may well lose a lot more than 96 BOD in a year, especially if healing is able to restore fully between encounters. Combined with the ruling that each use of Aid fades independently (and I think that ruling should go), that gives adventurers a one year lifespan. Easy solution? Set some level - a year seems reasonable, but we could require the purchase be to a typical lifespan, I suppose - where the fade rate is eliminated.

I'm quite OK with Regeneration being built with Healing, but it needs to be revised to use the "Reduced Re-use Duration" structure or, alternatively, the noncombat fade rate structure, or whatever structure 6e adopts. At the end of the day, Regeneration IS a variant of healing, so it makes sense to fold it in. That said, as a complex build, I would have no problem making it a separate power or talent, based on Healing.

I'd like to see it made into a separate power of its own. That way, it's not in any way bound by whatever balance rules are in place for Healing. The ideas and balance issues between the two are different enough that I feel keeping them separate is justified. As for what the separate Regen power does:

Emphasis added. If that balance is needed for healing, it is also needed for regeneration. If it is not needed, then let's get rid of it.

5pts to reduce the time it takes for a character to heal Body (see H5ER pg 424) from Recovery per Month to Recovery per Week. This can be quicker by one step on the time chart for +5 points per step, to a limit of Recovery per Turn for 40 points.

Obviously the Base and Step costs can be adjusted for balance. My gut tells me 5 points is pretty close and 10 is probably too much. I could see 10 or even 15 for the Base and then +5 per step (making the fastest Regen 45 or 50 points).

Month to week both imply "resting period" to me, so the initial steps are less valuable than the ending steps where Regen becomes combat-effective.

An alternative suggestion seen fairly often on the Boards is a REC advantage, rather than an adder. I'd rather see a staged advantage, for several reasons.

First, the more REC you have, the better this ability becomes. Second, in games where higher REC is common, the fixed price makes this more and more valuable.

Finally, I'd like to see the ability to have a recovery of 1 BOD per turn, as an example. An advantage can be taken on less than full REC, where an adder cannot (or at least grants no point savings for doing so). If we said +1/4 per time increment, the most common suggestion, that would be +2 for a turn, or 8 points for 1 BOD recovered per turn.

Additionally, however,, I believe it should be possible to regenerate things other than BOD, and these constructs fail to allow for that. Healing does allow for that, so basing any Regen construct on Healing is, in my view, preferable. If we assume (big assumption, I know) that 1 BOD regen is reasonably priced at 8 - 10 points, then 1 CP regen should be reasonably priced at 4 - 5 points.

Markdoc

Aug 3rd, '08, 06:13 AM

CTaylor

Aug 3rd, '08, 07:04 AM

The source material has a lot more examples of regenerating very, very fast than "kinda fast." In other words, the number of genre characters who regenerate one body per hour is very rare, but once per segment is pretty common.

You need two mechanics, it seems to me: the amount recovered, and the speed it is recovered. Perhaps you recover a small amount very rapidly or a large amount slowly (healing in big chunks). Thus 1 body per phase or 10 body per minute need both to be possible to build.

You also have to decide whether or not you can have other stats than body heal in this manner (can you heal your multipower back like that? Does your END heal faster than just post-12 without a recovery?).

To have a power that really is worthy of the name, you have to have regen able to do other things than just heal body: does it heal back points of transform faster? Does it work to "heal" back points of a duplicate that died (in other words, if your duplicate is killed, can you regenerate the total points of that duplicate and eventually get it back).

Ideally, regeneration would be built with a straight cost that can be modified rather than some other power that has lots of modifiers - it can be based on this sort of construct, but hidden like a talent (the mods are there, but not used, they're in the background).

Instant Change should be more a talent style build as well, even if it is kept with transformation.

Netzilla

Aug 3rd, '08, 08:30 AM

I'd like to see it made into a separate power of its own. That way, it's not in any way bound by whatever balance rules are in place for Healing. The ideas and balance issues between the two are different enough that I feel keeping them separate is justified. As for what the separate Regen power does:
Emphasis added. If that balance is needed for healing, it is also needed for regeneration. If it is not needed, then let's get rid of it.

The main things I had in mind where those balance issues cause by the fact that Healing, by default, is 'Usable by Others', while Regen isn't. That causes Healing to have balance issues that Regen doesn't.

Month to week both imply "resting period" to me, so the initial steps are less valuable than the ending steps where Regen becomes combat-effective.

Easily accounted for by making the 'combat-effective' steps (per Turn, per Phase, per Segment) more expensive (+10, +15, +20 or some similar structure).

An alternative suggestion seen fairly often on the Boards is a REC advantage, rather than an adder. I'd rather see a staged advantage, for several reasons.

My main concern with making it an Advantage would be the potential interactions with Advantage Stacking and how cheap it can potentially be (as you note, at the +1/4 per step level it only costs 8 points to regen 1 Body per Turn) and how much cheaper it would be if applied to Endurance of Stun (it would be only 3.5 points to regenerate 1 Stun per Segment; 12 per Turn).

First, the more REC you have, the better this ability becomes. Second, in games where higher REC is common, the fixed price makes this more and more valuable.

Finally, I'd like to see the ability to have a recovery of 1 BOD per turn, as an example. An advantage can be taken on less than full REC, where an adder cannot (or at least grants no point savings for doing so). If we said +1/4 per time increment, the most common suggestion, that would be +2 for a turn, or 8 points for 1 BOD recovered per turn.

Additionally, however, I believe it should be possible to regenerate things other than BOD, and these constructs fail to allow for that. Healing does allow for that, so basing any Regen construct on Healing is, in my view, preferable. If we assume (big assumption, I know) that 1 BOD regen is reasonably priced at 8 - 10 points, then 1 CP regen should be reasonably priced at 4 - 5 points.

I see your points about partial-advantaged Recovery and wanting to Regen other stats. I think you can get the same effect by changing my original write-up to the following:

Regeneration: 2 points per 1 Body regenerated per Week; +5 points per step quicker on the Time Chart up to 1 per Turn. Example: Regenerate 5 Body per Turn costs 45 points.

You can then offer the following optional side-bar rules:
* Regen Any Stat - 1 point to regenerate 1 Active Point of a specific Characteristic
* Faster Regen - Allow characters to by the Regen period down to the per Segment level.
* More expensive Combat Regen - Double or triple the price for any step quicker than per 1 Minute.

Hugh Neilson

Aug 3rd, '08, 09:39 AM

The main things I had in mind where those balance issues cause by the fact that Healing, by default, is 'Usable by Others', while Regen isn't. That causes Healing to have balance issues that Regen doesn't.

Regen has the same balance issue, except that all characters benefit from healing and only one from Regen. Is it better to have all PC's equally "unbalanced", or to have one that is unbalanced and the others balanced? I would suggest "balance" is very much "balance between PC's" and perhaps "balance between PC's and NPC's of significance".

Easily accounted for by making the 'combat-effective' steps (per Turn, per Phase, per Segment) more expensive (+10, +15, +20 or some similar structure).

True. My point was simply that the shorter period shifts are of greater value than the longer periods, where your proposal charged more for "month" to "week" than any other increment. I would suggest the shift from month to week should not be more expensive than week to day, and cheaper than Minute to Turn.

My main concern with making it an Advantage would be the potential interactions with Advantage Stacking and how cheap it can potentially be (as you note, at the +1/4 per step level it only costs 8 points to regen 1 Body per Turn) and how much cheaper it would be if applied to Endurance of Stun (it would be only 3.5 points to regenerate 1 Stun per Segment; 12 per Turn).

Actually, 8 points seems pretty rational to me compared to all prior incarnations of Regeneration. Was the system unbalanced from 1st to 4th, when it was 10 points per BOD? It seems you place a significant premium on the ability to speed recovery of BOD compared to the historical price for such an ability.

I'm unclear what other advantages are commonly placed on REC to justify the advantage stacking concern in this specific case. Certainly UBO must be considered, but if I'm OK with one character recovering all BOD loss in a short timeframe, should I really be a lot more worried about this extending to more of the characters?

As to Stun or END regeneration, you can only go to a per turn recovery. STUN and END are already recovered each turn. It does raise the question of whether the REC advantage allows BOD to be recovered when PS 12 is unavailable due to being below -10 STUN, but that's easily revised to "BOD recovers every PS 12", not "every PS 12 Recovery".

I see your points about partial-advantaged Recovery and wanting to Regen other stats. I think you can get the same effect by changing my original write-up to the following:

Regeneration: 2 points per 1 Body regenerated per Week; +5 points per step quicker on the Time Chart up to 1 per Turn. Example: Regenerate 5 Body per Turn costs 45 points.

You can then offer the following optional side-bar rules:
* Regen Any Stat - 1 point to regenerate 1 Active Point of a specific Characteristic
* Faster Regen - Allow characters to by the Regen period down to the per Segment level.
* More expensive Combat Regen - Double or triple the price for any step quicker than per 1 Minute.

Regen 1 BOD per turn costs 37 points. The question that arises is whether that is a reasonable price, or is overpriced. It's certainly much more expensive than prior versions, but that doesn't establish whether prior versions were appropriately priced. Historically, regeneration was either encountered:

- in supers games, as a substitute for rDEF (characters with regen tended to have lower defenses and used Regen as an alternative to avoiding taking BOD in the first place).

- in heroic games, for creatures that could regenerate - rarely or never for PC's, in the absence of the "regeneration UBO healing spell", which was not an issue until 5e capped Healing, at which time UBO Regen became a simple way of circumventing the healing cap.

Ultimately, whatever form Regen takes, it must balance against Healing.

3 BOD Regen, per turn, under your model costs 41 points. It's 24 under the "REC advantage" approach.

Buying healing, it would be 2d6 Standard Effect (6 points = 3 BOD), 0 END (+1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Reuse 1 turn (+1 1/2) = 70 AP, Self Only (-1/2), extra time 1 turn (-1 1/4) = 25 points, very similar to the REC advantage.

Under the current model, IIRC, it's 3d6 Healing (1d6 = 1 BOD), 0 END (+1/2), Persistent (+1/2), = 60 AP, Self Only (-1/2), delayed effect 1 turn (-1 1/4) = 22 points, already discounted from both of the above.

Of course, your approach makes much higher per increment recoveries much less costly, but 1 or 2 much more costly. Low BOD regen then becomes much more effectively purchased using Healing, while high BOD is much more efficient using your construct. Now we need to prohibit using Healing to get a similar effect at a discount for small values.

Vulcan

Aug 3rd, '08, 12:54 PM

My thoughts on Regen:

If Steve plans to stick to his rules of 'no going back to rules from older editions' (which I don't personally agree with as a rules design philosophy and I'll leave it at that), then we need a distinct way of handling Regen other than, 'I like how 4th Edition handled it better' (which I'm not saying any of the recent posters have done; but I've seen that stated several times before).

I'd like to see it made into a separate power of its own. That way, it's not in any way bound by whatever balance rules are in place for Healing. The ideas and balance issues between the two are different enough that I feel keeping them separate is justified. As for what the separate Regen power does:

5pts to reduce the time it takes for a character to heal Body (see H5ER pg 424) from Recovery per Month to Recovery per Week. This can be quicker by one step on the time chart for +5 points per step, to a limit of Recovery per Turn for 40 points.

Obviously the Base and Step costs can be adjusted for balance. My gut tells me 5 points is pretty close and 10 is probably too much. I could see 10 or even 15 for the Base and then +5 per step (making the fastest Regen 45 or 50 points).

Makes a certain amount of sense to me. Bypass all the inapropriate Healing mechanics entirely, make it a function of REC.

I would propose making the base cost equal to your REC. After all, with this version of Regeneration a higher REC makes it work even better and it should cost more to reflect that.

The GM could, at his option, make the base cost x2, x3, or more if he wants to discourage the use frivolously. Or just disallow it entirely.

Vulcan

Aug 3rd, '08, 01:12 PM

Vulcan

Aug 3rd, '08, 01:21 PM

I think the "noncombat duration", where the first increment costs more, is worth consideration.

Ah. That explains it.

Emphasis added. If that balance is needed for healing, it is also needed for regeneration. If it is not needed, then let's get rid of it.

Is it really needed? I don't think so, but opinions seem to vary.

Hugh Neilson

Aug 3rd, '08, 02:30 PM

Is it really needed? I don't think so, but opinions seem to vary.

I'm not certain it is, or is not, needed. I can certainly see the dislike of "BOD is meaningless unless you die because you can rely on full healing once the combat is over".

The present system allows it to be bought off with the "decreased re-use" advantage. That allows GM's to restrict the extent to which they will allow the re-use to be reduced as they see fit.

I AM convinced, however, that the need - whether compelling or nonexistent, or anywhere in between - is equal for regeneration and healing.

Talon

Aug 3rd, '08, 03:38 PM

Many of the proposals for Regeneration take into account the fact that BODY healing starts at a per-Month rate, and that any improvement on the Time Chart is worth points.

Unfortunately, Aid/Healing do not ever take this into account. Whether a Drain recovers 5/Turn or 5/Century, Healing will remove the damage just as quickly.

As long as this is the case, more granular fixes for Regeneration are going to be less efficient than Healing-based constructs. Ideally, Healing could be made to work in a similar manner.

James Gillen

Aug 3rd, '08, 05:09 PM

Vulcan

Aug 3rd, '08, 06:02 PM

Netzilla

Aug 3rd, '08, 07:30 PM

Regen has the same balance issue, except that all characters benefit from healing and only one from Regen. Is it better to have all PC's equally "unbalanced", or to have one that is unbalanced and the others balanced? I would suggest "balance" is very much "balance between PC's" and perhaps "balance between PC's and NPC's of significance".

That's a pretty significant exception in my mind. If you've got a group with a healer in it and anyone other than that healer gets dropped, then the healer can potentially bring them back into the fight. If the healer gets dropped, not only will the healer not be brought back into the fight, neither will anyone else who drops. Regen doesn't have that level of impact.

Balancing the ability to bring anyone back into the fight isn't the same as balancing the ability to bring only yourself back into the fight. Otherwise, why isn't Recovery subject to the same balance rulings as Healing? Regen is closer to Recovery in my mind than Healing.

True. My point was simply that the shorter period shifts are of greater value than the longer periods, where your proposal charged more for "month" to "week" than any other increment. I would suggest the shift from month to week should not be more expensive than week to day, and cheaper than Minute to Turn.

Perhaps. If you look at the initial write-up I gave, however, that wasn't true. It was 5 points per step regardless of which step it was. I threw in the idea of charging more for the initial purchase because, as I wrote at the time, "the Base and Step costs can be adjusted for balance." The numbers I threw out there were simply first-guess ideas and I had no illusions that they were likely to be the correct costs. I was more interested in getting the idea out there than I was in hard numbers.

Actually, 8 points seems pretty rational to me compared to all prior incarnations of Regeneration. Was the system unbalanced from 1st to 4th, when it was 10 points per BOD? It seems you place a significant premium on the ability to speed recovery of BOD compared to the historical price for such an ability.

I do feel that 4th Edition's 10 per Body per Turn was a bit too cheap. That doesn't mean that I feel 40 or 45 points is correct. Don't get too hung up on the numbers because the numbers are easily adjusted. It's the concept of separating Regen from Healing (allowing us to balance both as befits their unique cases) and paying separate amounts for how much is healed as well as the time frame in which it is healed.

I'm unclear what other advantages are commonly placed on REC to justify the advantage stacking concern in this specific case. Certainly UBO must be considered, but if I'm OK with one character recovering all BOD loss in a short timeframe, should I really be a lot more worried about this extending to more of the characters?

I would be. The ability to bring anyone back into a fight is obviously much more flexible. Especially if it can be done to multiple people at the same time.

As to Stun or END regeneration, you can only go to a per turn recovery. STUN and END are already recovered each turn. It does raise the question of whether the REC advantage allows BOD to be recovered when PS 12 is unavailable due to being below -10 STUN, but that's easily revised to "BOD recovers every PS 12", not "every PS 12 Recovery".

Perhaps I'm confused here. When you were talking about an Advantage, I thought you were talking about placing that Advantage on the thing you wanted to Regenerate. So, if you want Strength to Regen at the per Turn rate, you'd buy the Advantage on Strength. I also thought you were interested in having the ability to Regen at rates faster than per Turn, though perhaps I'm confusing you with another poster. Regardless, that's where my numbers were coming from regarding Stun and END.

Regen 1 BOD per turn costs 37 points. The question that arises is whether that is a reasonable price, or is overpriced. It's certainly much more expensive than prior versions, but that doesn't establish whether prior versions were appropriately priced.

Like I wrote, "the Base and Step costs can be adjusted for balance." I was not trying to imply that I thought 37 or 45 or 112 was the right cost to Regen 1 Body per Turn. If we decided that the correct cost was somewhere between 25 and 30 points, that's easily achieved by setting the correct Cost per Step. Three points per Step would have 1 Body per Turn Regen costing: 2 (1 Body) + 3 * 8 (steps) = 26 points. Putting it at 2 points per Step would have it costing 18 points.

Like I wrote above, the important part is separating Regen from Healing so that we can:
* Balance each power according to their unique needs
* Avoid overly complex builds for conceptually simple powers
* Separate the cost of the amount Regenerated from the time it takes.
* Other factors I'm too tired to think of right before going to bed :p

Historically, regeneration was either encountered:

- in supers games, as a substitute for rDEF (characters with regen tended to have lower defenses and used Regen as an alternative to avoiding taking BOD in the first place).

- in heroic games, for creatures that could regenerate - rarely or never for PC's, in the absence of the "regeneration UBO healing spell", which was not an issue until 5e capped Healing, at which time UBO Regen became a simple way of circumventing the healing cap.

Ultimately, whatever form Regen takes, it must balance against Healing.

Sure. Regen shouldn't be more expensive than healing, but that's again getting away from the concept and focusing on the points, which can be adjusted once we've got buy-off on the concept in the first place. We can't really discuss what something is worth until we're all on the same page regarding what that thing we're pricing is.

<snip cost examples>

Of course, your approach makes much higher per increment recoveries much less costly, but 1 or 2 much more costly. Low BOD regen then becomes much more effectively purchased using Healing, while high BOD is much more efficient using your construct. Now we need to prohibit using Healing to get a similar effect at a discount for small values.

Well, in any situation in which you separate out Healing and Regen, it should either be impossible to build one with the other (for example, you can't use Energy Blast to build an RKA and vice-versa) or you need to make sure that if such is allowed, there's no cost advantage to do so (unlike the Armor vs Force Field imbalance we have currently). However, I'd rather get a concept nailed down before I start worrying too much about the specifics of cost.

Markdoc

Aug 4th, '08, 02:22 AM

STUN-wise, it already happens. Give a party a few turns to take recoveries and everyone's back to full anyway. And a GM is always free to require a -0 'Adjustment Power Cap' on Healing if he wants to limit it.

But STUN isn't the issue - as you note, it's always been like that and goes up and down in combat time anyway. BOD doesn't and it's BOD in particular that's at issue when healing is discussed.

First, what is 'Noncombat duration' or 'extended duration?' I can't find it in the books anywhere, and you don't give a description. What is it that is so nice it's worth a +1 advantage?

It's a new suggested advantage, obviously, and the +1 calculation was based off the facts that a) buffs that last a long time are very, very much more useful than those that evaporate in a short period of time and
b) the cost of Aid was doubled (ie, increased by +1) because of the earlier abuse of Aid buffs with extended durations.
Hence the advantage was conceived as a way of decreasing the cost of Aid back to the point where it can be useful as a short-term buff (and where it is balanced with Drain and Transfer), while avoiding the abuse that occurred in the past.

The fade rate sounds reasonable, but how much damage can an active party sustain over the course of a year? It might be more than you think in some games. By the time you get to this level, you might as well go for the gusto and say '5 points/25 years' It only costs 5 AP more.

Don't think I didn't consider it :) But in truth, without magical healing, but decent care and a bit of rest, your usual adventurer-type will heal near-lethal damage in a month or so, so pushing it further out seemed unwarranted. Still, it was a suggestion - maybe a longer period would be safer. My own feeling was that if the time period is long enough that it is reasonable, given that few PCs spend all of them time in combat and most games include a reasonable amout of downtime. The added benefit/cost of going further is minimal, so I think it's fair to call it a wash, but maybe I'm being over-optimistic.

But with this construct, few if any characters are going to have more than 3d6 (66 AP - and that's with a 5 AP/year fade). Is being able to heal 18 AP worth of any one thing worth that kind of investment outside of a Multipower?

All this construct seems to do is force players to use Multipowers for healer concepts.

Not really. I've used this construct in my FH games in the past because of the problems with healing as written, and it's certainly seen as worthwhile by players, even outside frameworks. So much so, that they have bough it, for the following reasons.
1. By adjusting Aid/healing to work the same as other adjustment powers, you can do the same things with it, such as increasing the maximum. You no longer need to limit it to "the maximum you can roll on the dice".
2. The price can readily be dropped by stacking on the sort of limitations common in heroic level games. In games where players often take BOD, and the option of resting it out in hospital is not an option, healing can often be lifesaver, even if you invest 10 or 15 real points.
3. Even if you just go for as many dice as you can, that 18 AP can be applied repeatedly over the course of an adventure and to multiple recipients. If it's applied to a resource like BOD, which is lost and not easily replenished, then yes, it's very much worth it. In other cases, perhaps not so much. Though being able to augment the STR of a whole unit of soldiers - for a year - is also a very powerful ability in a fantasy setting.

Not in a game with any sort of AP limit.

That's possible - though you are forgetting that Aid can have it's maximum bought up, so even 1d6 with an increased maximum can be very valuable. Still, I've no particular interest in or affection for AP limits, so I admit that's not something I considered.

cheers, Mark

Markdoc

Aug 4th, '08, 02:25 AM

Hugh Neilson

Aug 4th, '08, 05:33 AM

That's a pretty significant exception in my mind. If you've got a group with a healer in it and anyone other than that healer gets dropped, then the healer can potentially bring them back into the fight. If the healer gets dropped, not only will the healer not be brought back into the fight, neither will anyone else who drops. Regen doesn't have that level of impact.

I'm looking at Regen as "healing BOD only". STUN tends to take characters out of combat more than BOD, in my experience. The issue with BOD is that characters gradually accumulate wounds (absent a lucky shot or very powerful opponent), being whittled down over a series of combats, or one large combat. If one character regenerates and recovers all his BOD, he's ready to go, and the rest of the characters are badly injured. If they have unlimited healing, they're all ready to go.

Balancing the ability to bring anyone back into the fight isn't the same as balancing the ability to bring only yourself back into the fight. Otherwise, why isn't Recovery subject to the same balance rulings as Healing? Regen is closer to Recovery in my mind than Healing.

You're looking at this from a perspective of balancing the PC's against their adversaries, which is important. I'm looking at balancing the PC's against each other, which is ALSO important. Is it fair to the other players, whose characters must limp along at reduced BOD, that one character gets to recover all his BOD in a matter of a minute? Ultimately, if Regen isn't balanced in this fashion, it becomes a power that everyone wants. Should it be that common?

Maybe it should - not the kind of regeneration where we watch in awe as the character's wounds knit shut, but at 1 point per 20 minutes or per hour, we get the trope common to many genres that the grievously wounded hero is nonetheless ready to go back into combat after a good night's sleep. But a trope such as that would likely be shared by most or all PC's, not be a schtick of only one.

I do feel that 4th Edition's 10 per Body per Turn was a bit too cheap. That doesn't mean that I feel 40 or 45 points is correct. Don't get too hung up on the numbers because the numbers are easily adjusted. It's the concept of separating Regen from Healing (allowing us to balance both as befits their unique cases) and paying separate amounts for how much is healed as well as the time frame in which it is healed.

The manner of separation, including the cost, are important issues. From a philosophical perspective, I dislike:

- the link to Recovery through an adder (buying up REC buys up this ability without an extra cost for this ability)

- the link of the ability to BOD only - as STUN and END already recover 1/turn, this cannot be used to "regenerate" those stats (not a biggie - they recover fast anyway) and, as other attributes do not use REC to recover, this system cannot "regenerate" them either. Many regenerators, at a minimum, recover COM lost to scarring injuries.

- the lack of a compelling need, in my mind, for a completely separate Regen mechanic. There are two approaches now - natural healing (recovery) and accelerated healing (the Healing power). I like the concept of linking Regen to Healing, although I perceive significant issues in the current implementation. Regen as a talent built from healing seems quite workable to me, at least as workable as combat luck built from armour.

Perhaps I'm confused here. When you were talking about an Advantage, I thought you were talking about placing that Advantage on the thing you wanted to Regenerate. So, if you want Strength to Regen at the per Turn rate, you'd buy the Advantage on Strength. I also thought you were interested in having the ability to Regen at rates faster than per Turn, though perhaps I'm confusing you with another poster. Regardless, that's where my numbers were coming from regarding Stun and END.

I wasn't dealing with Stun or END, and the proposal I was describing proposed an advantage on REC. The possibility of an advantage on the specific stat that Regenerates had not occurred to me, but that's certainly another possibility. All damage - drains, transfers, STUN, END, BOD - recovers over time increments. Perhaps an advantage paid on each stat that allows it to recover the number of points on which the advantage is paid one time increment faster for every +1/4 advantage would merit consideration.

I concur there is a serious balance issue with STUN, END or anything else recovering more frequently than PS 12, so perhaps the advantage provides the restriction that the recovery "stops" a 1/turn frequency. So if I buy a +1 advantage on 5 STUN, four time increments, a Drain that would normally recover 5 points per turn, or ordinary STUN damage, are unaffected. However, if I've been hit with a Stun Drain that recovers per day, I move that four steps down the chart and recover 5 points every 5 minutes. And if I'm KO'd to -25 (recovery per minute), my Advantage allows me to recover every turn instead.

Perhaps, for STUN, this advantage should add 10 points' negative STUN to the REC chart for each stage, rather than dealing in time increments, so this character would not hit GM's Option until -80 STUN instead of the usual -30. Sure, he's one character that's annoyingly hard to put down, but you tell me it's not that big a deal if only one character can recover quickly.

Like I wrote, "the Base and Step costs can be adjusted for balance." I was not trying to imply that I thought 37 or 45 or 112 was the right cost to Regen 1 Body per Turn. If we decided that the correct cost was somewhere between 25 and 30 points, that's easily achieved by setting the correct Cost per Step. Three points per Step would have 1 Body per Turn Regen costing: 2 (1 Body) + 3 * 8 (steps) = 26 points. Putting it at 2 points per Step would have it costing 18 points.

So what is the right price, for 1 BOD, 3 BOD or 10 BOD? Until we have some idea of a reasonable price, we don't really have a construct, do we?

Like I wrote above, the important part is separating Regen from Healing so that we can:
* Balance each power according to their unique needs
* Avoid overly complex builds for conceptually simple powers
* Separate the cost of the amount Regenerated from the time it takes.
* Other factors I'm too tired to think of right before going to bed :p

I'm not convinced separating regen from healing, whether linked to Recovery or otherwise, is the best approach. It would take a balanced (including cost-balanced) approach to convince me. I do think that Self Only is undervalued as a limitation on both Healing and Aid at the present -1/2.

Any Regen construct needs to be cost-balanced against doing the same thing with Healing. Under 5e, I would agree with separating Regen from Healing, because the ability to remove the reuse time was not present. With decreased re-use time now in 5er, and presumably rolling forward to 6e, Regen can be constructed with no need for an optional rule. Why have another power when a sample build or Talent will do fine?

Sure. Regen shouldn't be more expensive than healing, but that's again getting away from the concept and focusing on the points, which can be adjusted once we've got buy-off on the concept in the first place. We can't really discuss what something is worth until we're all on the same page regarding what that thing we're pricing is.

If you can't balance the points, the concept will not work. The ability to construct the same ability another way provides a benchmark for the cost of this ability. To me, if there is a belief the current cost is inappropriate (I'm not convinced it is), then correcting that cost is a superior approach to creating a completely separate mechanic, then invoking the mantra "there are two ways to do it; you must choose the most costly".

Note that, to me, the "current cost" should be 2/3d6 Healing, reduced re-use (+1.5; 1 turn), 0 END (+1/2), Persistent (+1/2), extra Time (one turn; -1 1/4), Self Only (-1/2) 23 AP, 8 RP (closer to 8.5 per increment, which could matter as we buy up more BOD, unless we make this an 8 point per increment Talent). If that cost is viewed as inappropriate, then something in the formula should change, because one of those costs must also be inappropriate.

To the concept vs cost issue, what is left to nail down the concept? OK, let's look at some conceptual issues:

- should the increment reduction be an adder (eg. the 5 points per level you suggest) or an advantage (eg. +1/4 on the cost of the amount of regeneration)?

- should it be possible to use this construct on abilities other than BOD, or is it restricted to BOD?

- should the base ability to be regenerated be paid for again (your 2 CP per BOD base cost), or is it subsumed in already having the ability?

- should the advantage/adder be on the ability to be regenerated, on Recovery or on some other ability?

- should it be possible to expand the scope of Regeneration to multiple abilities using an advantage or adder (eg. "any one ability" or "all abilities reduced")?

- should it be possible to regenerate unusual damage forms (eg. Transform, segments flashed, mental power effects, being STUNNED)

- should it be possible to use Regeneration to recover from KO outside the usual chart for negative STUN? How?

- how fast should it be possible to Regenerate? eg. is the limit per turn; could one regenerate per phase or per segment (with the relevant impact on STUN and END)?

Vulcan

Aug 4th, '08, 06:46 AM

Rather than dispute the whole post, I'll just stick to the meat of it. My opinions vary somewhat from Hugh's in the details, but not enough that I want to further lengthen that post!;)

To the concept vs cost issue, what is left to nail down the concept? OK, let's look at some conceptual issues:

- should the increment reduction be an adder (eg. the 5 points per level you suggest) or an advantage (eg. +1/4 on the cost of the amount of regeneration)?

There are pluses and minuses to both ways, which should probably be related to exactly how we scale the base cost.

- should it be possible to use this construct on abilities other than BOD, or is it restricted to BOD?

Three words that should make my opinion clear. "Regenerate to END."

Another word. NO.

- should the base ability to be regenerated be paid for again (your 2 CP per BOD base cost), or is it subsumed in already having the ability?

I favor the base cost of Regeneration being equal to your REC - but then, I favor linking Regeneration to REC.

- should the advantage/adder be on the ability to be regenerated, on Recovery or on some other ability?

Mechanics-wise, REC is the most similar to the genre examples of Regenertation. It has unlimited effect. No matter how much STUN/END/BODY you have, eventualy REC will replenish them all.

Healing, on the other hand, have limits as to how much they will replenish.

REC is automatic. Healing/Aid takes actions or advantages to do so.

It just makes sense to me. Separate Regen from Healing, and make it it's own power again. Link it to REC, and away we go.

- should it be possible to expand the scope of Regeneration to multiple abilities using an advantage or adder (eg. "any one ability" or "all abilities reduced")?

No, because of the 'Regenerate to END' construct mentioned above.

And if you can't do that with a REC-based Regen, why can you Regen anything else? Use Healing, with all it's limitations; that should be better balanced.

- should it be possible to regenerate unusual damage forms (eg. Transform, segments flashed, mental power effects, being STUNNED)

Transform has been healed back by Regen since 4th, I would say yes - depending on FX. Transform you to missing an arm? Yes, Regen would heal that. You to a frog? No, Regen would not heal that (but you'd be a regenerating frog:D). Perhaps with an adder...

Flash? Maybe. Someone more interested will have to look into it, it doesn't really bug me either way.

But not vs. mental effects or vs. being stunned. Mental effects are already very finely imbalanced now (going from completely ineffective to overwhelmingly powerful in just a couple dice). Throwing another variable just upsets things.

And besides, even Wolvie (the poster-child for Regeneration) gets stunned. With that in genere, Regeneration vs. 'being stunned' seems kinda silly. Just my opinion, though.

- should it be possible to use Regeneration to recover from KO outside the usual chart for negative STUN? How?

That can be handled with other mechanics. Two come to mind:

Healing, Trigger (when unconcious) will go off upon your being knocked out, and eventually either wake you back up or hit it's maximum - hopefully bringing you back to the point where you'll take recoveries more often;

Extra STUN, only to determine frequency of recoveries while unconcious (-1.5 or so).

There are likely others.

- how fast should it be possible to Regenerate? eg. is the limit per turn; could one regenerate per phase or per segment (with the relevant impact on STUN and END)?

If you link REC and Regeneration, per Turn should be plenty. Even a low REC (8ish) will still heal a BODY per phase, and possibly several (if the GM pro-rates it over the course of the turn). And someone with a high REC (say, 30) would likey heal a BODY per phase even when bought at the per minute level.

In light of that, if we link Regen to REC, then the maximum rate should probably be per minute, and the GM should be strongly encouraged to pro-rate the amount.

A GM could then allow, if he so desired, the 'per turn' level. Just so he realizes what he's getting into.

NOTE: The following examples assume the base cost for Regen is equal to the character's REC.

As to the starting level... I think per 5 hours might be just about right, with levels up and down the time chart being a 1/4 modifier. Thus, a 30 REC Regenerator bought up to the minute pays 52 points - a large amount, to be sure, but he's getting a large benefit. The 4 REC normal who just happens to regenerate pays 4 points to be fully healed from a near-fatal wreck in about a day. I could go along with changing that to per day (so the high-end pays 60 points and the normal gets up in 4 days), but the cost starts getting quite expensive for the per-minute level at anything beyond that.

If we use a flat 5-point adder, then per week is the place to start. The normal pays 9 to 14 points (per day or per 5 hours), and the high-end per turn example pays 50 points.

Hmm. Perhaps the adder is the way to go after all.

Talon

Aug 4th, '08, 07:14 AM

- should it be possible to use this construct on abilities other than BOD, or is it restricted to BOD?

Ideally a mechanic for Regeneration, if the cost was matched up with Healing, should be applicable to other effects as well. (BODY recovery is enough of a special case that it wouldn't be the worst thing to have a special case power for it, but if possible it would be nice to avoid.)

- should the base ability to be regenerated be paid for again (your 2 CP per BOD base cost), or is it subsumed in already having the ability?

It should be subsumed. Think of BODY damage as a Drain that recovers per Month (yeah, it's "REC" instead of "5" per month, but close enough); how do you improve that rate?

- should the advantage/adder be on the ability to be regenerated, on Recovery or on some other ability?

I think people would find it counter-intuitive to be anything other than a separate ability, so the Advantage / Adder should be on an Adjustment power.

- should it be possible to expand the scope of Regeneration to multiple abilities using an advantage or adder (eg. "any one ability" or "all abilities reduced")?

See above; it should, although this should fall out of it being an Adjustment Power.

- should it be possible to regenerate unusual damage forms (eg. Transform, segments flashed, mental power effects, being STUNNED)

Transform is BODY damage so that makes sense; other stuff seems a bit of a reach.

- should it be possible to use Regeneration to recover from KO outside the usual chart for negative STUN? How?

If it were an Adjustment power, how this works would be self-evident (whether GMs would allow it at per-Phase rates would be a separate issue).

- how fast should it be possible to Regenerate? eg. is the limit per turn; could one regenerate per phase or per segment (with the relevant impact on STUN and END)?

I think that per Phase is as fast as it should get, although per Phase STUN and END Regeneration is a big balance no-no. (Doesn't mean it shouldn't be possible.)

BobGreenwade

Aug 4th, '08, 08:08 AM

Okay. It looks like we have something of a sorta consensus.

Healing should retain the maximums like the adjustment power it is.

Regeneration, by definition, should not have a maximum.

Therefore, Regeneration should not be part of Healing i.e. Regen should be it's own power.

Any problems with this chain of logic? (Bear in mind, I'm not going into how Regen should be priced or by what mechanic Regen will work just yet.)I agree with this logic, and I can see other reasons to make Regeneration a separate Power, such as how Extra Time is handled differently.

That said, I do think the existing mechanics for Regeneration work well enough for most purposes, or at least close to it, so the write-up in the end could still be fairly close to the existing text.

On the other hand, I wouldn't complain if something different were done, depending on what that "something different" was. For example, if Regeneration was built as a fixed cost per step down the Time Chart that a character recovers BODY (effectively, an Adder for REC), I think that would make a lot of sense.

I think we could also benefit from having the Can Heal Limbs and Resurrection Adders applicable directly to REC, even without the accelerated healing. This could simulate someone who heals at the normal rate, but simply regrows limbs and/or comes back to life in the process.

And speaking of Can Heal Limbs, I also think that different forms of the Adder could be included, so that a character who only grows back actual limbs is different from one who can also heal back eyes, kidneys, nerve damage, and the like.

PhilFleischmann

Aug 4th, '08, 04:16 PM

Something I mentioned on the A-E thread, with regard to Adjustment Powers (like Healing, which is in the F-K range*) is that the reduced fade rate costs should be increased for the first one or two steps down the time chart. I'd say +1/2 for fade 5/minute, +1 for 5/5 min, and +1/4 for each step beyond that.

And also the low cost of the advantage to add to multiple abilities is a problem IMO. How 'bout a flat +1/2 for each additional ability adjusted. So Aid two things is a +1/2, Aid three things is +1, Aid four things is +1.5 etc. shouldn't get doubled utility for each flat +X or Advantage. In ideal circumstances (where the adjusting additional abilities simultaneously is useful), each additional ability adjusted increases the power/utility by 100%. It shouldn't be too much to ask that this cost a mere 50% more.

Or you can use to splitting method, where the Adjustment points of effect are split between some number of abilities in some fixed proportion. IIRC, this is the way it was in 4th edition. EX:

60 points for 6d6 Healing - Half goes to BODY, 1/4 goes to STUN, and 1/4 to END. So if you roll 24 pips of effect,the target heals 6 BODY, 6 STUN, and 12 END.

*And it would be much more convenient if these threads were arranged by power type, rather than alphabetical order.

James Gillen

Aug 4th, '08, 06:22 PM

*And it would be much more convenient if these threads were arranged by power type, rather than alphabetical order.

You may want to ask Steve if we can create an "Adjustment Powers Thread" or something like that. Chris already had a thread about his approach to Mental Powers.

jg

EDIT: Never mind, I see Steve already commented on that.
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1653720#post1653720

Xotl

Aug 5th, '08, 10:27 AM

Posting solely to state how much I like Klaus' Lightning Speed idea from post 380:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1603754&postcount=380

CTaylor

Aug 5th, '08, 11:56 AM

In terms of just rule building, Lightning Speed works better than just Regeneration. It allows you to build all sorts of powers (instant change) rather than just healing faster. The more narrow and restricted in concept and special effect a new power is, the less I like it. The more new nifty things you can conceive of and new possibilities a power presents, the better it is.

Klaus Mogensen

Aug 7th, '08, 06:35 AM

There's more discussion of the Lightning Speed idea (including its use for Regeneration) in a thread in the Rules section: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67301

- Klaus

Vulcan

Aug 9th, '08, 05:44 PM

On the combat issues thread, someone just suggested making killing an advantage (+1 was the one proposed; I think +1/2 might be more appropriate but that's just me) on normal attacks. The mechanic becomes that the BODY of the attack is only stopped by resistant defenses, although the STUN is affected as normal. (There was also a proposal to have the 'killing' advantage do twice as much BODY, which would be approriate for a +1.)

It certainly stops the 'killing attack is better at doing STUN' issue. It also means that damage is rolled the same way for all attacks, a not-insignificant advantage as well.

But is it too much, or too little?

Talon

Aug 9th, '08, 06:02 PM

The Main Man

Aug 9th, '08, 06:36 PM

On the combat issues thread, someone just suggested making killing an advantage (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1662579#post1662579)(+1 was the one proposed; I think +1/2 might be more appropriate but that's just me) on normal attacks. The mechanic becomes that the BODY of the attack is only stopped by resistant defenses, although the STUN is affected as normal. (There was also a proposal to have the 'killing' advantage do twice as much BODY, which would be approriate for a +1.)

It certainly stops the 'killing attack is better at doing STUN' issue. It also means that damage is rolled the same way for all attacks, a not-insignificant advantage as well.

But is it too much, or too little?

Edited for link.

Well, a +3/4 advantage might suffice because it is both the average between the two proposed values and it it is well in line with the current AVLD rules.

While the 2xBODY idea has pretty much been quelled, I do like the idea of "Killing Damage" being an Optional Maneuver and the Power Advantage allows for it to be automatically assumed just like Autofire assigns Rapid Fire/Sweep as a Power Advantage.

The Main Man

Aug 9th, '08, 06:55 PM

Math has been done (by Netzilla). The solution I like best, which looked to balance based on the numbers (which is not the same as "based on playtesting"), is have it be a +1/4 Advantage and grant a BODY bonus equal to 1/2 DC (so a 6d6 EB with the Advantage becomes 6d6 + 3 BODY killing damage).

I think that using the same damage mechanic (roll STUN, check the pips for BODY) for killing and normal damage is the important thing to do in 6th Edition.

That idea is intriguing but I remember a similar Power Advantage in UEP that involved STUN damage for the same value.

Somehow I have been lead to believe that BODY is more valuable than STUN.

2x the value in fact.

2x 1/4 = 1/2; Like Vulcan said.

Hrm...
http://tonymooreillustration.com/v-web/gallery/albums/sketchbook/rorschach.jpg

Hugh Neilson

Aug 9th, '08, 07:37 PM

Math has been done (by Netzilla). The solution I like best, which looked to balance based on the numbers (which is not the same as "based on playtesting"), is have it be a +1/4 Advantage and grant a BODY bonus equal to 1/2 DC (so a 6d6 EB with the Advantage becomes 6d6 + 3 BODY killing damage).I think that using the same damage mechanic (roll STUN, check the pips for BODY) for killing and normal damage is the important thing to do in 6th Edition.With a 50% bonus to BOD, how does KA stack up against Entangle and Force Wall?At +1/2, a 12d6 normal attack averages 12 BOD and an 8d6 KA averages the same 12 BOD.* At +1/4, that KA is a bit under 10d6, which would average 15 BOD, pretty close to the present KA.* 50 AP would be 10d6 normal or 8d6 killing at 12 BOD, so we add 10% to the BOD roll.By the wa, the same issue is also on General Rules Issues.I think at +1/2, and assuming no change to the typical frequency and level of rDEF, this would only be workable if KA's were reduced only by rDEF for both STUN and BOD.

Vulcan

Aug 9th, '08, 07:50 PM

Killing STUN and BODY both vs rDEF? I can get behind that, it simplifies things significantly without affecting playability.

Any of our house mathemeticians want to take a crack at this one?

Hugh Neilson

Aug 9th, '08, 08:09 PM

EDIT: I didn't include the "half the dice BOD enhancement" in the KA's. I've fixed this below:

Again looking at 60 AP, and let's say Standard Super with 20/10 DEF:

at +1/2, I get a 12d6 EB, 42 STUN and 12 BOD, 22 STUN inflicted;
or an 8d6 KA, 28 STUN, 8+4 = 12 BOD, 18 STUN and 2 BOD inflicted.

The KA does slightly less STUN and a bit of BOD against a standard Super. Seems reasonably balanced.

Drop defenses to 10/5. Now the normal attack achieves 32 and 2, while the KA achieves 23 and 7. Much less STUN, but quite lethal. Seems reasonable.

Bump defenses to 30/15 and the normal attack does 12 STUN while the KA does 3. That low DEF lethality is offset with high DEF ineffectiveness. Again, seems fair.

At +1/4, that KA is, say 9 1/2 d6, so average 9.5 + 4.75 = 14.25 BOD and 30.5 STUN, so inflicts 4.25 BOD and 20.5 STUN on average. This seems a bit too good - very little average STUN lost and considerable BOD gets through.

10/5 defenses: 25.5 STUN and 9.25 BOD gets through - far too lethal.
30/15 defenses: 15.5 STUN (more than the normal attack) and just barely no BOD.

CONCLUSION: The +1/2 advantage to convert the attack to one that does 1 extra BOD per 2d6 and acts only against rDEF seems like a reasonable approach based on the standard defenses provided in the rule book.

How about Standard Heroic with 3-8 DC (say 6) and 10/5 defenses?

Well, I'm not going to math it out - everything is exactly half, so +1/2 should still be our big winner.

This approach means KA's will do some BOD to standard characters, but less STUN, so it becomes an attack that is more effective at killing and less effective at knocking out. If that's the objective, this approach seems to do it. And it does so without making entangles, force walles, etc. ineffectual - the BOD against them from a KA has actually declined, from an average roll of 14 under the current system to 12 under the system proposed. So the KA is also made a bit more lethal, but a bit less effective at destruction of property.

The Main Man

Aug 9th, '08, 08:11 PM

But then again they didn't in the first place.

Netzilla

Aug 10th, '08, 04:37 AM

Since my posts on Killing Attack analysis have been referenced, here's the links to the relevant posts so everyone can see the math for themselves:

First up, is a compairson of the Stun Lotto, Hit Locations, Steve Longs 1d3 Stun Lotto, +1/2 AVLD and my original +1/4 Advantage (which can be ignored as it was later changed):
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1553378#post1553378

I felt that the +1/2 AVLD nerfed KA way too much unless you also increase the cost of Resistant Defenses.

Next is the revised version of my +1/4 KA Advantage and a comparison between it's BOD totals versus those of the traditional Killing Attack:
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566275#post1566275

Running the new +1/4 KA Advantage through the same analysis done in the first link above:
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566283#post1566283

Making those comparisons at the Superheroic level:
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566285#post1566285

An analysis of the average BODY gain vs STUN loss of traditional Killing Attacks and my +1/4 Advantage:
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566658#post1566658
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1567658#post1567658

Finally, here's an analysis for a couple proposals that Hugh made me aware of that I also think warrant serious consideration:
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1656380#post1656380

Netzilla

Aug 10th, '08, 04:40 AM

Again looking at 60 AP, and let's say Standard Super with 20/10 DEF:

at +1/2, I get a 12d6 EB, 42 STUN and 12 BOD, 22 STUN inflicted;
or an 8d6 KA, 28 STUN, 8 BOD, 18 STUN and 0 BOD inflicted.

The KA is slightly less effective against a standard Super. Seems OK

At +1/4, that KA is, say 9 1/2 d6, so average 9.5 BOD and 30.5 STUN, so inflicts 0 BOD and 20.5 STUN on average. This seems a bit too good - very little average STUN lost and a decent chance of getting BOD through.

How about Standard Heroic with 3-8 DC (say 6) and 10/5 defenses?

Well, I'm not going to math it out - everything is exactly half, so +1/2 should still be our big winner.

Note that PC's won't take BOD very often. [And, like The Main Man notes below, that's not a change from the status quo.]

One other thing to consider on this is that making Killing Attacks a +1/2 AVLD is that it will make Normal Attacks the more effective method of destroying vehicles, walls, entangles and so forth.

Talon

Aug 10th, '08, 06:04 AM

(Posted in General Rules and F-K; seems to me F-K is the better place for discussion.)

I don't like the idea of making KAs competely AVLD -- in fact, there's been a lot of discussion about going the other way and having non-resistant DEF always work against the STUN of a KA. If you make it an AVLD, then resistant defenses become even more necessary than they are now.

CTaylor

Aug 10th, '08, 07:10 AM

Hugh Neilson

Aug 10th, '08, 07:16 AM

I trust Mr Long won't pay much attention to that particular thrust of the discussion. People can feel free to make their own game that changes critical and long-standing features of Hero Games if they want.

Absent a willingness to consider changes to "critical and long-standing features of Hero Games", there is no point whatsoever to a 6e, in my opinion. Minor tinkering can be handled in supplements and FAQ's. If Hero wants people to shell out the bucks for a brand-new edition, it needs to be sufficiently different, and improved, to justify that investment.

CTaylor

Aug 10th, '08, 10:23 AM

So you didn't buy 4th or 5th editions then? Because they didn't make huge changes and sweeping alterations to core portions of the long-standing rules?

Hugh Neilson

Aug 10th, '08, 10:52 AM

So you didn't buy 4th or 5th editions then? Because they didn't make huge changes and sweeping alterations to core portions of the long-standing rules?

In my view, 4th made some fairly substantive changes. Prior to 4e, all of the systems were separate and independent. Abilities that existed in Fantasy Hero (Aid, Healing) did not exist in Champions, for example. Bringing them together technically makes 4e the 1st edition of unified Hero rules.

And I played 2e right through 3e.

If there is no need for material changes, then it is my opinion there is no need for 6th edition. Whether I like the changes will determine whether I will switch to 6e. If the changes are minor, however, I can easily switch without the need to buy 6e.

Hero needs to motivate gamers to buy the 6e rulebook. Minor tinkering is less likely to bring buyers than major changes. I would suggest that many Board members who note they have 5e, not 5er, have made that decision because of the lack of substantive change between the two editions.

Further, the fact that "it's always been that way" is not a reason to leave it that way. It is, in my view a reason to leave it that way if a change will not improve it. While I have not experienced the problem in my games, it's clear many long-time Hero gamers have had problems with killing attacks, particularly the Stun Multiple. As such, I see a reason to make that change. I also see approaches to doing so that don't cause me to fear for the balance and enjoyment of my games, so that removes my motivation to oppose such a change.

[I haven't seen that approach to eliminating figured characteristics, so I don't support that - but a well-designed system for their elimination could certainly move me to that side as well.]

But if the answer, on reviewing the 5er rules, is "most everything is fine as it is; let's just do a rewrite with some minor tinkering", then my answer would be "then 6e is not worth undertaking at this time". That wouldn't bother me at all, frankly. There may be some issues with 5e, but not enough that I think it cries out for a new edition.

CTaylor

Aug 10th, '08, 04:10 PM

So what you're saying is that you bought the previous editions without changing core rules and substantive alterations to long-standing hero basics, but demand it for the next edition? Why the change?

Vulcan

Aug 10th, '08, 04:35 PM

I don't know about anyone else, but I bought 5E mostly because my copy of 4E was falling apart. :rolleyes:

CTaylor

Aug 10th, '08, 04:57 PM

Well that's good enough reason :) I don't mean that as an insult I'm just confused by the insistence (by Steve Long as well as posters here) that 6th edition has to be a huge change or it's not worth it, when no previous editions have been held to that standard and have been ever bigger successes and sellers.

Talon

Aug 10th, '08, 05:09 PM

I bought 5th Edition because I had the pocket change, and to support Steve taking over and revitalizing the game. I was not happy with the level of change, so am trying to make sure there is more this time. (Not change for its own sake, but change for the better.)

In the 15+ years since a big Hero change, a lot of other games have come along quite a bit. D&D 3rd Edition showed how you could make big changes to a game without alienating the fan base (and, IMO, improve the game). 3.5 showed how you could mess it up. :)

I think 6th Edition should change a lot because there is a lot of room for improvement. It's possible to make a more consistent, easier to learn game without sacrificing the detail that makes the system so good.

Michael Hopcroft

Aug 10th, '08, 05:23 PM

CTaylor

Aug 10th, '08, 05:51 PM

Vulcan

Aug 10th, '08, 06:02 PM

Not to be a spoilsport, but this is the "Powers Issues: F-K" Thread. I understand the point of the current discussion stems from the proposed changes to Killing Attack, but perhaps we could try to keep things a wee bit more to subject?

Hugh Neilson

Aug 10th, '08, 06:05 PM

Well, D&D3rd had a lot of growing up to do in order to be a modern game, but Hero kind of set the standard for what a modern game looks and works like. I agree, not much change is needed, just some streamlining, adjustments, maybe a few new power ideas that some have discussed here. I just don't see the need for huge changes in order to justify a new edition.

I agree huge change is not needed. I don't agree that a new edition is justified if there is only minor tinkering to be done. D&D 3.5 was mentioned by Talon - much of the backlash against 3.5 resulted because the minor level of change did not justify, in many players' minds, the cost of repurchasing all their books again.

Note that D&D 3.0 debuted in 2000, while Hero 5e debuted in 2001.

D&D 3.5 debuted in 2003, and 5er in 2004. The key difference, to me, is that Hero was very careful to change as little as possible, and did not tout 5er as "a new edition". I suspect that their sales suffered for it - I expect D&D 3.5 sold a much greater % of 3.0 sales in its first year than 5er generated as a % of 5e.

4th Ed D&D is out in 2008, and Hero 6e in 2009. I suspect Hero will want strong sales of 6.0. Minor tinkering isn't the way to generate those strong sales, especially in short order. Major change risks alienating some of the existing fan base, but carries the prospect of attracting new fans, and will likely sell much faster to existing fans. At the end of the day, Hero needs to make the business decision as much as the artistic decision. Which approach will sell better?

Plus, of course, I agree with Steve that a new edition is only worth doing if it is a major change. Fine tuning does not merit a brand-new edition.

CTaylor

Aug 11th, '08, 07:01 AM

5th edition wasn't a new edition? How do you figure that? It has sold more than 4th edition, I'm not sure where you're getting your ideas here.

BobGreenwade

Aug 11th, '08, 07:30 AM

5th edition wasn't a new edition? How do you figure that? It has sold more than 4th edition, I'm not sure where you're getting your ideas here.What are you talking about? Who said this?

CTaylor

Aug 11th, '08, 10:58 AM

Hugh did:
The key difference, to me, is that Hero was very careful to change as little as possible, and did not tout 5er as "a new edition". I suspect that their sales suffered for it

My point is that people bought 4th and 5th edition despite their not being deep changes and major shifts in the rules and how the game is built. When Hero tried that, we got fuzion and it died a horrible death. It seems to me that the presumption that we need big changes to justify a new edition and that people won't buy it otherwise is simply without historical precedent or logic.

schir1964

Aug 11th, '08, 11:18 AM

The key difference, to me, is that Hero was very careful to change as little as possible, and did not tout 5er as "a new edition". I suspect that their sales suffered for it

Hugh did:

My point is that people bought 4th and 5th edition despite their not being deep changes and major shifts in the rules and how the game is built. When Hero tried that, we got fuzion and it died a horrible death. It seems to me that the presumption that we need big changes to justify a new edition and that people won't buy it otherwise is simply without historical precedent or logic.
I believe Hugh was referring to 5th Edition -> 5th Edition Revised for that specific part of the post.

- Christopher Mullins

Hugh Neilson

Aug 11th, '08, 11:53 AM

5th edition wasn't a new edition? How do you figure that? It has sold more than 4th edition, I'm not sure where you're getting your ideas here.

What are you talking about? Who said this?

I believe Hugh was referring to 5th Edition -> 5th Edition Revised for that specific part of the post.

Exactly. Thanks, Christopher.

5th Ed had the substantial difference of a new company taking over the IP after a long publishing hiatus. And they did make a fairly large number of changes. Just off the top of my head:

- Sweep and Rapid Attack, plus numerous skills to go with them
- Multiple power attacks in print for the first time
- separation, repricing and mechanics changes to Aid and Healing
- revision of Regeneration, Instant Change and Damage Control
- numerous added advantages and limitations applied to specific powers (Clinging Damage Aura, anyone?; Summon; Resurrection and limb regrowth)
- EC Drain one Drain all limitation
- Hand Attack 3 point per die eliminated

I suspect even a cursory comparison of the two rule books would reveal many more changes. And we do still have posters who note that the changes were not significant enough to cause them to buy 5e, and many more who weren't sold by the changes to buy 5er. Which was deliberate - Steve made the commitment early on that things would not change . A commitment which has not in any way been reiterated in his comments on 6e. In fact, the possibility for changes to KA seems to be high on Steve's radar, compared to other powers in f-k, given the following:

Hi folx! Here are some thoughts about Powers that begin with F-K 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 these Powers 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.

Q: Should the “STR adds damage” feature be removed from HKA?

Steve’s Thoughts: The answer to this may play into the whole issue of streamlining the Adding Damage rules (see the Combat post). However, I think the idea is worth considering. I can see the “gaming logic” that instituted this rule in the first place, but it doesn’t entirely make sense. Just being stronger doesn’t necessarily mean you can make a knife or axe or whatever do more damage than it’s capable of doing. Additionally, it’s not necessarily consistent — there are lots of attacks with the “I hit them really hard, or in a particular way” special effect, such as eye gouges (Sight Group Flash, No Range), and they don’t get any bonus from STR.

However, if this change is made, it almost certainly means that HKA and RKA should be combined into one Power (see below), and that RKA in effect becomes more expensive. If we just have a “KA” Power, then RKA has to be KA + Ranged (+1/2) or HKA has to be KA + No Range (-1/2). If HKA keeps its “STR adds damage” feature, then a KA Power could be “HTH you get +STR, Ranged you get Range,” both costing 15 points per 1d6 (3 DCs).

Q: Should HKA and RKA be combined into one power?

Steve’s Thoughts: This idea has some merit, I think. The text for the two is virtually identical in many respects. Assuming HKA keeps its “STR adds damage” feature (see above), then a single “KA” Power would simply mean for 15 points a character does 1d6 Killing Damage, and when he buys the Power he has to choose HTH (gets +STR) or Ranged (gets Range). Or perhaps, as outlined above, we choose one and do the other with Power Modifiers.

This makes Killing Attack more consistent with other Powers. The rules don’t, for example, have Drain, Ranged and Drain, HTH — they have Drain, and you buy Ranged as an Advantage if you want it. Nor do they feature Energy Blast, Ranged and Energy Blast, HTH — you buy EB as-is, and apply No Range (-1/2) if desired.

Q: Should the STUN Multiplier for Killing Attacks be changed?

Steve’s Thoughts: I don’t think the current STUN Multiplier rules are a problem — or if they are, they’re a problem for the opposite reason most people seem to think. But since they seem to be unpopular, a change might be worth considering. In that case, I think switching to a ½d6+1 STUN Multiplier would be better.

CTaylor

Aug 11th, '08, 12:01 PM

The argument isn't "does there be any changes" (which is what you're defending) but rather "should their be radical, significant changes to core rules" in order to justify a new edition. Like discarding stats, redefining movement, abandoning mental powers rules and replacing the entire mechanic with senses, dumping killing attacks and using one of the more extreme builds suggested here, dumping the speed chart, etc.

That doesn't have to happen to have a new edition. In fact, it would be harmful to do so. Harmful enough to hurt sales (ask the guys behind Fuzion how well that works out).

Incidentally, 5th edition revised wasn't a new edition. It was a revision of an edition, with some clarification and FAQ materials put into the book. Nobody pretended it was, it wasn't intended to be.

Hugh Neilson

Aug 11th, '08, 12:04 PM

Incidentally, 5th edition revised wasn't a new edition. It was a revision of an edition, with some clarification and FAQ materials put into the book. Nobody pretended it was, it wasn't intended to be.

And if all we need is some minor tinkering and clarification, I would suggest that also falls better into the class of "revision" than "new edition". ReFiveEr, anyone?

CTaylor

Aug 11th, '08, 03:02 PM

Surely you can envision some middle ground between minor revisions and changing major rules and long-established concepts of the rules, yes?

Vulcan

Aug 11th, '08, 04:23 PM

And I think over the couse of this whole forum, we have discovered that there are a couple things that really could use a pretty drastic revision to make them better.

This forum is here as a guide to Steve and co. as to how much we want changed, as well as specifics on what we want changed. But endless debates over 'big changes!' - 'no changes' doesn't fulfill that very well.http://www.herogames.com/forums/images/icons/no.gif

It's more effective to argue the merit of the individual changes than the merit of change itself.;)

AnotherSkip

Aug 12th, '08, 05:13 AM

This forum is here as a guide to Steve and co. as to how much we want changed, as well as specifics on what we want changed. But endless debates over 'big changes!' - 'no changes' doesn't fulfill that very well.http://www.herogames.com/forums/images/icons/no.gif

IM rather suspicious that this is just a plot by a longtime Dark Champs writer to have us fight each other while keeping us from messing with Steve in a constant volley of "here! this! try this!" the forum was set by Steve after all.

Klaus Mogensen

Aug 12th, '08, 06:18 AM

So you didn't buy 4th or 5th editions then? Because they didn't make huge changes and sweeping alterations to core portions of the long-standing rules?
I haven't bought 5th or 5eR for exactly that reason. I'm only going to buy 6th if several (to me) core problem are resolved.

- Klaus

Klaus Mogensen

Aug 12th, '08, 06:27 AM

Back to the issue of KAs, one simple solution is to introduce a new +1/4 advantage on normal attacks: "Killing: (Armor Piercing, Body Only)" to replace KAs. Less Stun, more Body, except against hardened defense (which takes the place of rDEF). Basic Armor would be 1 point per 1 DEF; FF would be Armor that costs END.

Only issue that I can see (except the possible oversimplification of merging resistant and hardened) is that KAs would do less Body than NAs vs. characters with little or no defenses.

- Klaus

James Gillen

Aug 12th, '08, 06:46 AM

IM rather suspicious that this is just a plot by a longtime Dark Champs writer to have us fight each other while keeping us from messing with Steve in a constant volley of "here! this! try this!" the forum was set by Steve after all.

I'm surprised nobody else has figured this out yet. :eg:

jg

CTaylor

Aug 12th, '08, 11:37 AM

But endless debates over 'big changes!' - 'no changes' doesn't fulfill that very well.

Actually it does: philosophically, Steve has to tackle this issue (although again, I'd like to point out the debate is NOT between no changes and big changes. Obviously.

Grail Quest

Aug 13th, '08, 08:11 AM

[QUOTE=Steve Long;1536900]
Q: Should Find Weakness be eliminated as a Power?

Find Weakness is a sort of Armour Piercing, which, in turn, is a mechanic that gets blocked by Hardened.
What if we enforced FX on Armour Piercing? If your FX doesn't really apply to the situation and the FX of the armour you encounter, then it doesn't apply. Similarly, if the FX for your Hardened isn't relevant to the FX of the Armour Piercing, then your Hardened doesn't apply.
IF we have this, then we also have a way to make consistent Find Weakness, Killing Attack, AVLD, NND, etcetera: That is, mechanics do not trump FX. What needs to happen on the mechanics side is the Advantage value fits the frequency that the FX will come into play.

A possible extension of this is that since FX is now important, and simply having "Armour Piercing" as an Advantage won't necessarily reduce defenses (do we still want to halve it or handle it differently?), we might let Armour Piercing STACK (possibly with increasing Advantage value when it is bought more than once). We can then have x1/8 defense if "I find weakness with my monofilament knife that slices armour like a hot samurai sword cuts through cheap margarine" (Find Weakness, Killing Attack, Armor Piercing attack) all trigger AP on the target. The target could have a kinetic repulsion field with no Hardened defense at all, but since its FX could reasonably counter all the incoming AP FXes, none of them would reduce its defense.

You would need Hardened defenses only if your armor/defense FX *would* be affected by the incoming AP attack, and you wanted to block it.

Q: Should the “STR adds damage” feature be removed from HKA?

... Just being stronger doesn’t necessarily mean you can make a knife or axe or whatever do more damage than it’s capable of doing. Additionally, it’s not necessarily consistent — there are lots of attacks with the “I hit them really hard, or in a particular way” special effect, such as eye gouges (Sight Group Flash, No Range), and they don’t get any bonus from STR.

You seem to be justifying an underlying mechanic change on the basis of certain FXes. I feel this is flawed. Whatever FX you can come up with to justify your mechanic change, I'm sure someone will have an FX to counter. That's sort of the nature of HERO, being open-ended and "build anything" as it is. You would be customizing the game just to satisfy an FX, and I feel that is not HERO System at all.

A different way of going about thinking about this might be "what could be gained mechanics-wise if HKA started independent from STR".

Q: Should the STUN Multiplier for Killing Attacks be changed?

I feel a better question for looking at this issue is, "Why are we using a STUN Multiplier"? Once we have the answer to this, the rest should follow.
For example, suppose the idea of a Killing Attack is one that is meant to do more BODY than STUN. Why are we not simply buying a bigger base power, and applying a Limitation for the amount of STUN it generates. Instead of making a new mechanic just for one attack power.

schir1964

Aug 22nd, '08, 10:26 PM

Adjustment Powers
I think Adjustment Powers should be broken down into the components that are common to all and make them easily added or subtracted as needed to create the various types of Adjustment Powers.

I would start with the lowest common denominator for the base ability and then add on from there.

Adjustment Power (Adjustment)
Power adds or subtracts points from a target ability (must be defined at purchase).
Power affects a any ability of a specific SFX one power at a time (must be defined at purchase).
Components

Constant
Self Only
Maximum Effect: Maximum that can rolled on the dice purchased.
Costs Endurance: Adjustment Power affects target for as long as endurance.
Cost: 5 Points Per 1d6

Modifiers

Fade Rate (-1/4 Per 1d6): Effect fades xd6 Points after post 12 recovery (1d6 Set Effect = 3 Points or 1 Body).
Extended Fade Rate (+1/2 Per Step Extended): Fade effect is extended via the Time Chart.
Others Only (+1/2): Power may be used on others only (not on self). Power has no range (must touch target).
Self And Others (+1): Power may be used on self and others. Power has no range (must touch target).
No Dice Maximum (+1/2): No dice roll maximum effect restriction.
Instant Power (-1/2): Power and effect is instant.
Restoration (+1): Effect is permanent for any power that below its original value.
Reuse Restriction (-1/2): Once Maximum is reached the effect can not be used against the same power again until such time has passed where the power would have restored normally on its own.
Transfer (+1, +1 1/2): Effect that transfers points from self to target or target to self which must be defined at purchase. From Power Of SFX to Single Power (+1). From Power Of SFX to Power Of SFX (+1 1/2).
Other Standard Modifiers Apply Where Applicable

These would be the basic components needed to build any current adjustment power.

Thus:
Healing (5 Points)
Healing allows one to permanently restore a power up to the dice maximum and only up to the maximum of the target power.

1d6 (5 Points): 1d6 Effect vs SFX (one power at a time).
Restoration (+1)
Instant Power (-1/2)
Reuse Restriction (-1/2)

I realize that something this extreme will probably never be implemented, and I'm sure some of my modifier values are probably way out of whack, but I did want to at least share what I feel the system is capable of. Thanks.

- Christopher Mullins

IndianaJoe3

Aug 23rd, '08, 04:32 PM

Q: Should Find Weakness be eliminated as a Power?

Yes. As currently written, it's abusable because it stacks. It might be better if it was rewritten as a Talent. (Maybe naked Armor Piercing that Requires a Skill Roll?)

Vulcan

Aug 23rd, '08, 06:52 PM

I assume you mean 'it stacks with Armor Piercing."

'AP, Requires Skill Roll' is not the same thing as Find Weakness. Find Weakness is distinct because multiple sucesses grant multiple benefits. No matter how many levels of Armor Piercing you have, it still only halves defenses once.

Find Weakness makes a low-attack powered character work by reducing the level of his target's defense. A GM should probably not allow Find Weakness on a character with a big attack power (and hence the warning sign on the power).

Now I would not be opposed to seeing 'Hardened' block one level of Find Weakness per level of Hardened, but that is just me.

IndianaJoe3

Aug 23rd, '08, 07:30 PM

I assume you mean 'it stacks with Armor Piercing."

It also stacks with itself. (At least it did in 5e. Did 5er change that?) If you succeed on 3 Find Weakness rolls on one target, your designated attack ignores 7/8ths of your target's armor.

Find Weakness makes a low-attack powered character work by reducing the level of his target's defense. A GM should probably not allow Find Weakness on a character with a big attack power (and hence the warning sign on the power). Since Find Weakness stacks with itself, even a weak attack can be devastating. Normally, a 6d6 EB is useless against a 48 ED. 3 FW rolls will cut 48 ED down to 6 ED. Against 6 ED, a 6d6 EB will average 15 STUN and will frequently do BODY.

Vulcan

Aug 23rd, '08, 07:42 PM

Yeah, that's kinda the whole point of Find Weakness. That's why it's so bloody expensive. That's what it does! :rolleyes:

Protecting against that is what Lack of Weakness is for. If you can afford that 48 PD and ED, you might be better off with 45/45 and 6 points Lack of Weakness. Or go for the nine yards and take 40/40 and 16 points Lack of Weakness. That'll make anything less than 24< Find Weakness (which costs 75 points!:eek:) pretty much useless. And that 40/40 will still bounce anything less than 10d6 most of the time, which should be good enough for anyone.

Better yet: Take the Dark Champions fix and wear a trenchcoat. 5 points Lack of Weakness, OIF Trenchcoat. 3 points. :nonp: Maybe a big cape can do the same thing and be more costume-friendly.

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Markdoc

Aug 24th, '08, 12:31 AM

One other thing to consider on this is that making Killing Attacks a +1/2 AVLD is that it will make Normal Attacks the more effective method of destroying vehicles, walls, entangles and so forth.

I'm not sure that's a bad thing, frankly. If you want to smash a hole in a wall, you generally use a big ol' round ball on a chain, you don't shoot bullets at it.

cheers, Mark

Markdoc

Aug 24th, '08, 12:36 AM

I have an opposite concern: I know a lot of the 5th Edition material, and there's a lot of merit to much of it, and it would benefit me as a user for 6th Edition to be as forward-conevrtible as possible. In other words, you can take your existing 5th Edition character and convert it to Version 6 fairly easily, and in such a way that the way it plays is nto altered fundamentally. Much like the conversion between the 3rd and 4th editions of GURPS -- while not seamless, they are possible. By comparison, it's very hard to convert a 2nd edition BESM character to the 3rd edition and converting a 3rd edition D&D vcharacter to 4th Edition is almost impossible by defnition.

Does that make any sense? This is not going to be the final version of the Hero System (at least not if we're lucky), but I should be able to take my 5th edition characters and make them 6th Edition characters fairly simply.

That's key for me too. I don't really care if some characters need to have a bunch of extra points added to be 6th-friendly, or if "roll low" becomes "roll high" or if killing attack becomes an advantage, or if EC's were replaced with a "unified power" limitation. I would care if a significant number of characters became unplayable or if the concept behind powers became so different that a character became unusable.

cheers, Mark

Klaus Mogensen

Aug 24th, '08, 02:31 AM

I'm not sure that's a bad thing, frankly. If you want to smash a hole in a wall, you generally use a big ol' round ball on a chain, you don't shoot bullets at it.
OTOH, axes are preferable to quarterstaffs when chopping through a door.

Maybe some attacks should have a 'smashing' advantage. Swords and quarterstaffs are a lot worse than axes and maces for smashing things.

- Klaus

Netzilla

Aug 24th, '08, 03:47 AM

OTOH, axes are preferable to quarterstaffs when chopping through a door.

Maybe some attacks should have a 'smashing' advantage. Swords and quarterstaffs are a lot worse than axes and maces for smashing things.

- Klaus

Not to mention that you'd probably have to build anti-vehicle weapons and explosives as Normal rather than Killing Attacks. For certain genre, like supers, it works okay because you'd expect superheroes (who mostly rely on Normal Attacks in my experience) to take out tanks. However, I don't know that we want to be building Terran Empire ships with all Normal Attacks.

Markdoc

Aug 24th, '08, 04:05 AM

Not to mention that you'd probably have to build anti-vehicle weapons and explosives as Normal rather than Killing Attacks. For certain genre, like supers, it works okay because you'd expect superheroes (who mostly rely on Normal Attacks in my experience) to take out tanks. However, I don't know that we want to be building Terran Empire ships with all Normal Attacks.

But isn't that just force of habit? We tend to think of attacks as normal (meaning "non-lethal") and killing (meaning "lethal") and we therefore expect them to do more BOD. But to a normal human, being shot with a 24d6 EB or an 8d6 RKA is going to be instantly lethal regardless. If you think of killing attacks as "designed to kill" rather than "designed to do more body" I don't see a disconnect.

For shooting holes in spaceships (or buildings, or entangles), where STUN isn't an issue and defences tend to be resistant by default, it simply makes sense to use whatever generates more BOD. If it generates a lot of stun as well ..... well, so what?

For explosives, we already do this. A grenade is prety clearly a killing attack - it sends little sharp bits of metal zinging around, but has little explosive force. A dtick of dynamite has far more explosive force, but is much less lethal to a person in the open:ie normal versus killing damage.

Over the course of this thread, I have come around to the idea that killing attacks are designed to go only against special defences (rDEF, specifically) and like any other attack that goes against a special defence, it actually makes sense (to me anyway) that they should have fewer DCs than a regular attack.

cheers, Mark

Markdoc

Aug 24th, '08, 04:11 AM

OTOH, axes are preferable to quarterstaffs when chopping through a door.

Maybe some attacks should have a 'smashing' advantage. Swords and quarterstaffs are a lot worse than axes and maces for smashing things.

- Klaus

Right. I thought about this earlier on in the thread: about whether we actually needed different types of damage, but decided (based on experience in games like BRP where they do this) that it's more hassle than it's worth for most games.

So what we can agree with is that when it comes to damaging a door (or any inanimate object) the current meme that 'killing weapons should do more BOD" is not necessarily realistic - in the example above the quarterstaff isn't great, but a heavy club would be just as good as the axe. What we think of as killing weapons or normal weapons covers a wide gamut of attacks.

cheers, Mark

James Gillen

Aug 24th, '08, 12:49 PM

Yeah, but then you have to figure out a mechanic to simulate how smashing is better against a door than slicing, rather than simply saying X amount of damage takes out x amount of BODY.

jg

Klaus Mogensen

Aug 24th, '08, 02:35 PM

New advantage: "Smashing" (+1/4): Attack does double BODY against hard, inanimate objects.

Good for breaking things, less good for hurting people.

- Klaus

Vulcan

Aug 24th, '08, 03:28 PM

That's key for me too. I don't really care if some characters need to have a bunch of extra points added to be 6th-friendly, or if "roll low" becomes "roll high" or if killing attack becomes an advantage, or if EC's were replaced with a "unified power" limitation. I would care if a significant number of characters became unplayable or if the concept behind powers became so different that a character became unusable.

cheers, Mark

I agree wholeheartedly here. I've seen a lot of proposals here that would take entire character concepts (not a particular build, but the whole and entire concept) and render it useless.

Remove the SPD chart and Martial Artists (especially the low DEF, high DCV concepts) fall apart.

Make STR cost double, and a whole host of issues come up when making bricks.

Remove Find Weakness and the 'Find Weakness and half-AP attack' concept goes away (think Bullseye here).

This sort of thing would prevent me from getting 6E.

Vulcan

Aug 24th, '08, 03:30 PM

New advantage: "Smashing" (+1/4): Attack does double BODY against hard, inanimate objects.

Good for breaking things, less good for hurting people.

- Klaus

Simple, effective, decisive. I love it.

schir1964

Aug 24th, '08, 06:28 PM

New advantage: "Smashing" (+1/4): Attack does double BODY against hard, inanimate objects.

Good for breaking things, less good for hurting people.

- Klaus
Clarification: This approach embeds SFX in the mechanics even more than they are now. I guess this goes back to the game design philosophy and how the rules should implement SFX vs mechanics. Should the mechanics have embedded SFX or should they be completely exclusive from each other? Both methods have their advantages and their disadvantages.

- Christopher Mullins

Hugh Neilson

Aug 24th, '08, 07:05 PM

New advantage: "Smashing" (+1/4): Attack does double BODY against hard, inanimate objects.

Good for breaking things, less good for hurting people.

Great for taking down force walls, automatons and many entangles. Do these get a limitation for being hard and inanimate, or pay for an advantage not to be?

OK, automatons are animate - but why would Smashing do more BOD against a steel wall, but not a steel man?

David Blue

Aug 24th, '08, 10:24 PM

Great for taking down force walls, automatons and many entangles. Do these get a limitation for being hard and inanimate, or pay for an advantage not to be?

OK, automatons are animate - but why would Smashing do more BOD against a steel wall, but not a steel man?
I can think of someone who does a lot of Smashing. That's why the Leader invented plasti-thene: so that his so that his super-strong, virtually invulnerable Humanoids wouldn't get Smashed.

That was an advantage. But maybe not one that had to be paid for.

Some gamemasters - and maybe a lot, I don't know - reserve Hardened defenses for hard surfaces. If you're built like Colossus, you can purchase them. If you're built like Thor you can't. In this case it's a big benefit to have the enabling special effect of course. Without it, you are a prey to a lot of extremely nasty attacks.

So whether you build a steel man or a plasti-thene one there are costs and benefits.

Markdoc

Aug 24th, '08, 10:40 PM

Yeah, but then you have to figure out a mechanic to simulate how smashing is better against a door than slicing, rather than simply saying X amount of damage takes out x amount of BODY.

jg

Yep - and is an axe slicing or crushing damage? What about a two handed sword? Basically, adding different types of damage adds a great deal of complication with little actual extra benefit. Generally games I have played in, with rules that included this type of differentiation, ignored this distinction. If players ignore it where it is built in, that's not an argument for including it in 6E.

There's also the issue with hero that this is confusing special effects with SFX even more - generally not a great idea, and the fact that the target is also important - "smashing weapons" for example fare poorly against flexible inanimate objects where "slicing weapons" would excel. And what about energy weapons? It's a bit of a can of worms to open - and one best (IMO) left shut.

cheers, Mark

Doc Democracy

Aug 24th, '08, 11:38 PM

Yep - and is an axe slicing or crushing damage? What about a two handed sword? Basically, adding different types of damage adds a great deal of complication with little actual extra benefit. Generally games I have played in, with rules that included this type of differentiation, ignored this distinction. If players ignore it where it is built in, that's not an argument for including it in 6E.

What I have enjoyed about HERO is that you can differentiate weapons if you want to.

You could buy an axe as 2D6K (+3 BODY versus wooden objects) if you wanted. Or a mace as 2D6K (+3 STUN versus opponents wearing hard armour).

There are all kinds of ways to make weapons distinct if, as GM, you want to put in the effort...without adding different types of damage to the game system.

Doc

Markdoc

Aug 24th, '08, 11:54 PM

What I have enjoyed about HERO is that you can differentiate weapons if you want to.

You could buy an axe as 2D6K (+3 BODY versus wooden objects) if you wanted. Or a mace as 2D6K (+3 STUN versus opponents wearing hard armour).

There are all kinds of ways to make weapons distinct if, as GM, you want to put in the effort...without adding different types of damage to the game system.

Doc

Yep, that's exactly my feeling. In fact, we've already done this in our games, simply by buying (for example) a lightsaber type weapon as +2d6HKA plus 4d6 (standard effect, only to negate DEF, -1). That means it won't destroy a giant armoured vehicle in one swipe, or do any more damage to a soft target than a hard one, but it'll cut through anything up to hardened steel as though it wasn't there at all and it'll cut through harder stuff with a little effort.

I guess I should have been more explicit: I don't want to see different sorts of damage hard-coded into the system - but I'm all in favor of building them when required with the tools we have. In other words, leave that an option, don't make it a requirement.

cheers, Mark

Markdoc

Aug 24th, '08, 11:59 PM

What I have enjoyed about HERO is that you can differentiate weapons if you want to.

And as an aside, this is exactly what sold me on Hero system to start with: the realization that if I used Champions (as it was back then) for my D&D game, I could differentiate between a standard knife and a misercorde by specifying the latter as an AP weapon.

It sounds like a trivial thing, but I still recall that thought going off in my head, realising the degree of control it gave me to design my game and abandoning my visit to the supermarket to rush home and start statting out the wholesale conversion of my game. :D

cheers, Mark

Doc Democracy

Aug 25th, '08, 12:01 AM

And as an aside, this is exactly what sold me on Hero system to start with: the realization that if I used Champions (as it was back then) for my D&D game, I could differentiate between a standard knife and a misercorde by specifying the latter as an AP weapon.

It sounds like a trivial thing, but I still recall that thought going off in my head, realising the degree of control it gave me to design my game and abandoning my visit to the supermarket to rush home and start statting out the wholesale conversion of my game. :D

cheers, Mark

It is why, when I have gone elsewhere for superheroes, that I come back to HERO for all heroic level genres. The control allows me to make the game exactly what I want it to be...

Doc

James Gillen

Aug 25th, '08, 01:23 AM

Yep - and is an axe slicing or crushing damage? What about a two handed sword? Basically, adding different types of damage adds a great deal of complication with little actual extra benefit. Generally games I have played in, with rules that included this type of differentiation, ignored this distinction. If players ignore it where it is built in, that's not an argument for including it in 6E.

There's also the issue with hero that this is confusing special effects with SFX even more - generally not a great idea, and the fact that the target is also important - "smashing weapons" for example fare poorly against flexible inanimate objects where "slicing weapons" would excel. And what about energy weapons? It's a bit of a can of worms to open - and one best (IMO) left shut.

cheers, Mark

Well, obviously that's why HERO has never used it. :)

jg

Klaus Mogensen

Aug 25th, '08, 01:33 AM

Markdoc

Aug 25th, '08, 03:01 AM

A slight reformulation of the "Smashing" advantage:

Smashing (+1/4): Attack does double BODY against vehicles, automatons, walls, and doors.
Less SFX wording. Vehicles, automatons and bases get all sorts of cost breaks, so I think it is fair to allow a cheap advantage against them.

- Klaus

That's better but it still opens the whole "for a small advantage, you can buy a massive increase in effect" can of worms, which is not something that Hero system has ever done. While this advantage looks harmless enough in itself, the whole "double effect" things is a generally horrible mechanic (and also un-Hero-y). What happens when someone wants to pay +1/4 for "does double damage vs mutants"? Or has an effect that does double against automatons and then another+1/4 for double against (for example) undead - are you going to give away quadruple damage vs zombies and the like for +1/2? I really don't think we want to go there. If you want to build this sort of attack, buy more dice and then limit the extra damage down. That's how the system works now. "Only vs vehicles, automatons, walls, and doors" is probably worth at least a -1, maybe more (unless you are playing Robot warriors or something similar)

Advantages are supposed to allow you to alter a power, not increase its active points and/or DC - which is effectively what this does. If you want an attack with more active points, buy more active points.

cheers, Mark

David Blue

Aug 25th, '08, 03:16 AM

... What happens when someone wants to pay +1/4 for "does double damage vs mutants"? Or has an effect that does double against automatons and then another+1/4 for double against (for example) undead - are you going to give away quadruple damage vs zombies and the like for +1/2?...

Advantages are supposed to allow you to alter a power, not increase its active points and/or DC - which is effectively what this does. If you want an attack with more active points, buy more active points.
Good points. I was trying to figure out if Smashing would be a good idea or a bad idea. Now I think it would definitely be a bad idea.

Talon

Aug 25th, '08, 04:06 AM

"Only vs vehicles, automatons, walls, and doors" would be a nice idea for a Limitation...

AnotherSkip

Aug 25th, '08, 04:58 AM

Hugh Neilson

Aug 25th, '08, 05:40 AM

I can think of someone who does a lot of Smashing. That's why the Leader invented plasti-thene: so that his so that his super-strong, virtually invulnerable Humanoids wouldn't get Smashed.

That was an advantage. But maybe not one that had to be paid for.

Some gamemasters - and maybe a lot, I don't know - reserve Hardened defenses for hard surfaces. If you're built like Colossus, you can purchase them. If you're built like Thor you can't. In this case it's a big benefit to have the enabling special effect of course. Without it, you are a prey to a lot of extremely nasty attacks.

So whether you build a steel man or a plasti-thene one there are costs and benefits.

Hardened carries a cost. Shouldn't "resistant to smashing" carry a cost? Maybe plasti-thene lacks resistant defenses, or hardened defenses, or energy defenses.

A slight reformulation of the "Smashing" advantage:

Smashing (+1/4): Attack does double BODY against vehicles, automatons, walls, and doors.
Less SFX wording. Vehicles, automatons and bases get all sorts of cost breaks, so I think it is fair to allow a cheap advantage against them.

Multipower: 12d6 EB
9 1/2d6 Smashing EB

Now I can average 19 BOD instead of 12 against vehicles and automotons. So there's no more point using those as adversaries against me. Or you can bump their defenses to the point they have a shot against me - but then my teammates who don't have Smashing are completely ineffectual.

Why don't I get more damage against Colossus? He's just as robotic, physically. I guess it's OK, as I get bonus damage against zombies and marshmallow men, who should really be resistant to smashing.

Markdoc

Aug 25th, '08, 06:22 AM

Hardened carries a cost. Shouldn't "resistant to smashing" carry a cost? Maybe plasti-thene lacks resistant defenses, or hardened defenses, or energy defenses.

Right but "hardened" is a mechanic. It works against another mechanic. Plastithene is special effect. Maybe plastithene lacks resistant defenses, or hardened defenses, or energy defenses. But then again, maybe it doesn't. There's nothing in the word "plastithene" to tell you how it works.

Why don't I get more damage against Colossus? He's just as robotic, physically. I guess it's OK, as I get bonus damage against zombies and marshmallow men, who should really be resistant to smashing.

And this is exactly why you don't build powers, advantages or limitations against special effects :D

cheers, Mark

Hugh Neilson

Aug 25th, '08, 11:18 AM

Right but "hardened" is a mechanic. It works against another mechanic. Plastithene is special effect. Maybe plastithene lacks resistant defenses, or hardened defenses, or energy defenses. But then again, maybe it doesn't. There's nothing in the word "plastithene" to tell you how it works.

Until we decide it is resistant to "Smashing" damage - then we need an advantage (Softened? ;)) for such defenses which avoid the benefits of the Smashing advantage.

James Gillen

Aug 25th, '08, 11:20 AM

And this is exactly why you don't build powers, advantages or limitations against special effects :D

cheers, Mark

You mean like NND vs. breathing? ;)

jg

Markdoc

Aug 26th, '08, 12:36 AM

You mean like NND vs. breathing? ;)

jg

The special effect determines if an NND works or not - but the mechanic underlying NND is entirely special effect free: you can apply it to any attack, and the defence can be anything: it doesn't have to be a special effect. The mechanic simply states that an NND attack ignores defence (any defence), does only Stun and fails to work at all under a set of common conditions. Those conditions can be a special effect (fire powers) a mechanistic power (Force Field) or even an environmental effect (target must be grounded).

You can buy EB with the limitation "does not work against fire using characters" but the mechanic of EB is not, itself defined by special effect any more than NND is.

cheers, Mark

Vulcan

Aug 26th, '08, 11:47 AM

Yep, that's exactly my feeling. In fact, we've already done this in our games, simply by buying (for example) a lightsaber type weapon as +2d6HKA plus 4d6 (standard effect, only to negate DEF, -1). That means it won't destroy a giant armoured vehicle in one swipe, or do any more damage to a soft target than a hard one, but it'll cut through anything up to hardened steel as though it wasn't there at all and it'll cut through harder stuff with a little effort.

I guess I should have been more explicit: I don't want to see different sorts of damage hard-coded into the system - but I'm all in favor of building them when required with the tools we have. In other words, leave that an option, don't make it a requirement.

cheers, Mark

OK, I can get behind that.:thumbup:

Vulcan

Aug 26th, '08, 11:51 AM

read the Rules on Analyze (it's complimentary to Find weakness)

Under an optional section, assuming the GM allows it. At least in 5E, anyway.

Using a '+1 for 2 points' skill to complement a '+1 for 5 points' skill/power seems like a bad idea to me. Too much capability is given for a much cheaper cost.

I think that should be changed in 6E, but that is just my opinion.

IndianaJoe3

Aug 27th, '08, 05:40 PM

Yeah, that's kinda the whole point of Find Weakness. That's why it's so bloody expensive. That's what it does!

I think we may have to agree to disagree on this, and let Steve sort it out. Armor Piercing used to stack, then it was decided that was overpowered and it got nerfed. Find Weakness is, IMHO, the same way.

I also don't think it's expensive, especially in a high-point-total game. My example (6d6 EB with 14- Find Weakness) is only 60 points.

Vulcan

Aug 27th, '08, 06:31 PM

Sure, but 60 AP attacks are generally underpowered vs. a 48 DEF, so if you're going to get ridiculous about DEF then I'm going to upgrade to a more balanced offense. And if you can afford that 48 DEF, you can also afford a little Lack of Weakness to make the Find Weakness guy's job a little (or a LOT) harder.

Besides, your example assumes that all three rolls are sucessful. Statistically you're going to miss one of them. 6d6 vs. 12 DEF isn't quite so broken.

JmOz

Sep 4th, '08, 04:51 AM

IDea on force wall

A force wall should only be automaticaly transparent to any kind of damage that it does not protect from, so a purely physical FW will have energy go through

Hugh Neilson

Sep 4th, '08, 05:28 AM

IDea on force wall

A force wall should only be automaticaly transparent to any kind of damage that it does not protect from, so a purely physical FW will have energy go through

So for 60 points, I can buy a PD only Force Wall, 0 END, that has 16 defenses (or about 13 - 14 hardened) and be functionally immune to physical attacks (and easily deal with Bricks) with DC's in the same AP range. I guess that could be a reasonable result - his secret EB flies right through the FW and takes me out.

Mind you, a two flex slot MP of +24 PD FW and +24 ED FW (all No Range and Self Only, say) would make for a very well defended character. If you get through with one type of attack, that Wall drops. Against agents or Grond, the character is pretty much impregnable. Against a balanced group of opponents, any given hit likely has a 50/50 chance of bouncing off.

End of the world? Probably not - the 50% of attacks that get through will do a lot more than if they hit a Force Field user since he only gets +12 defenses from the Wall against the STUN damage.

This would also simplify the "Normal vs Exotic" force wall issue - the defenses you don't have sail on through, but you can't take down an exotic FW with your 1d6 Radar Flash attack.

Put me down as "in favour subject to playtest".

Hugh Neilson

Sep 4th, '08, 05:33 AM

Cross posting again - class this one as "Force Wall" or "Invulnerability".

SO for 120 points we are funtionally immune to energy damage. Sure you can get round that - NND attacks, quadruple penetrating,t hat sort of thing, but for practical purposes (and assuming you tone down the excesses of killing attacks) nothing is going to hurt you.

That works out at a nice 10 points per 1d6 (I've previously calculated it costs over 60 points to be completely immune to 1DC of damge, IIRC, taking into account maximum possible rolls - but that is pointless - except for very low dice attacks you are never going to approach the maximum roll)

So 10 points gets you immunity to 1 DC or energy (or physical) damage, pretty much. Assuming there are a number of different energy sfx in your game, I might go for 2 points for immunity to 1DC of a common sfx (like heat/fire) or 1 point for immunity to an uncommon sfx, like sonics.

First off, maybe this should not include Knockback Resistance. The fact that you can't be burned doesn't seem inherently linked to the idea that you can't be pushed back by the pressure of the attack. I'm inclined to include it but have a limitation if it does not stop knockback, but that's no more than -1/4. We could exclude it and have knockback resistance add 1 point to immunity to a spectrum of attacks (PD or ED).

Second, rather than pricing this per DC, what about pricing it per BOD stopped and making it the same as a Force Wall - no BOD through means no STUN through. The system presently has Armor (or PD/ED/Dam Res) and Force Field, but there is no Armor equivalent to Force Wall.

Finally, pricing at 1 or 2 points for a single SFX implies a -4 to -9 limitation for a single SFX, which is not consistent with the current rule of -1/2. That said, that -1/2 needs to be revisited. ED against fire only is not worth 2/3 of ED against all energy attacks. I think we need a limitation for "common", "uncommon", "rare" and "extremely rare" SFX, and they need to be based on the frequency with which the defense will not apply due to this limitation - that's likely way more than -2 for all but the most common SFX.

I'd ditch life support and replace it with this DC Immunity system. We'd have to work out how many DCs you need to be immune to to survive in vaccuum, or the cold of space, but it would have far more general applicability, be easy to administer* and should satisfy those who want immunity without unduly upsetting those who dont want absolutes.

I don't see this as a big issue, however there are some facets of LS that need to remain. Breathing, for example. 1 DC would mean I don't need to breathe, versus how many DC for survival in the Arctic? Diseases also need to be considered. A lot of the LS choices are about more than simple DC's damage that would be taken.

* In play if you have 6DC Immunity to fire and got hit with a 12d6 fire blast, you just roll 6d6. Gets a little more comlpicated with advantaged powers - you'd either just ignore the advantage, and subtract 6d6 (an approach I would favour) or subtract 30 character points from the attack, almost like an instant suppress - more accurate but more comlpicated.

Force Wall approach fixes this. Count the BOD. If less than DC, it does not get through. If more, you get only the FW defense. However, this approach does mean attacks in excess of your invulnerability will do considerably more STUN than under your approach.

Ideally, I'd see this system and FW working the same way, but maybe that's done by revising FW to subtract DC's rather than having this approach mimic the current FW approach. The FW would still drop if it takes more BOD than it has, so that would remain a drawback offsetting the range and area aspects of FW.

ED gets broken down into quite a few categories (fire/sonics/cold etc) PD gets broken down into much fewer and so physical immunities would be more expensive?

How often do you get hit with an electrical attack in your game (a fairly common energy power)? Now, how often do you get struck with a punch, kick, movethrough or other physical damage? I think common physical attacks are WAY more common, so it should cost more to resist them. There are simply a lot more SFX of energy, so restricting to one is more limiting.

'cept 60 points gets you 3/4 damage reduction... :)

Perhaps Damage Reduction also needs to be revised so it scales. 60 points of physical damage reduction could alternatively pay for +50 PD, 20 of which is Resistant. Which purchase will be a better defense in most games?

Assuming you started with 10 defenses, none resistant, 70/20 would seem to make you much more resistant than 10, and take 25% of whatever is left over. They break even at 90 base STUN and 26 - 27 BOD. How often do you see that level of damage in your games? That's between 25 - 27 DC's for Damage Reduction to be the more cost-effective choice.

Talon

Sep 4th, '08, 05:34 AM

I think in particular it helps with the "FW only against Fire" concept, which I don't think you can legally make transparent to non-fire energy attacks.

BobGreenwade

Sep 14th, '08, 04:23 PM

I just came across this issue in connection with Invisibility, but it probably applies to all Sense-Affecting Powers. It has to do with the Limited Effect Limitation.

In 5ER, Limited Effect is worth a -1/4 Limitation whether the single affected Sense is a Normal Sense, a Special Sense, or an obscure Detect. I think it would make a lot more sense (no pun intended -- but it's worth it) if it was structured like so:

If the single Sense is a Normal Sense (like Normal Sight or Normal Hearing), the value is -1/4.
If the single Sense is a common Enhancement (like Infrared Vision or Ultrasonic Hearing), the value is -1/2.
If the single Sense is a less common Enhancement, like X-Ray Vision or Subsonic Hearing, the value is -1.
If the single Sense is a rarely-used Detect, like Mage's Eye (Detect Magic via Sight Group) or a specific forensic test, the value is -2.

That, I think, would be a tad more balanced, and hopefully without becoming overly complicated.

Istaran

Sep 16th, '08, 03:08 PM

Perhaps Damage Reduction also needs to be revised so it scales. 60 points of physical damage reduction could alternatively pay for +50 PD, 20 of which is Resistant. Which purchase will be a better defense in most games?

Assuming you started with 10 defenses, none resistant, 70/20 would seem to make you much more resistant than 10, and take 25% of whatever is left over. They break even at 90 base STUN and 26 - 27 BOD. How often do you see that level of damage in your games? That's between 25 - 27 DC's for Damage Reduction to be the more cost-effective choice.

I think DR definitely needs to scale.

Though when comparing to, say, PD you do need to factor in that resistant DR works against NNDs and AVLDs.

The Main Man

Sep 16th, '08, 03:39 PM

Istaran

Sep 16th, '08, 05:07 PM

How about this?

5pt/10% (or 1pt/2%) vs. a single type of damage (Physical, Energy, Flash, Mental, Power)

It is not basically resistant and should have a Stop sign for levels past 75% (74-76% in this case).

Actually, that's completely not addressing the scaling issue. The scaling issue is that for 100 cp characters, basic defenses are a far better bang for your buck. Alternatively, doubling your BODY, CON, EGO, STUN, and REC would give almost all the benefits of 50% Resistant DR vs Energy, Physical and Mental all at once.. (everything but the rounding errors in your favor) and for low pt characters is actually cheaper. And has nice END implications, and ECV implications. For a 1000 cp character, damage reduction is much more likely to be a good deal. 180 pts for the full 75% DR package is a steal compared to quadrupling a 1000 cp character's BODY, CON, EGO, STUN and REC.

If the usefulness of the power is proportional to your total cp, maybe the cost of the power should be as well?

The Main Man

Sep 19th, '08, 12:53 PM

This post has to do with Entangle and Force Wall so it will also be posted in the F-K thread:

This is a compare and contrast between Entangle and Force Wall:

1a. Entangle costs 5pts for 1 DEF (PD & ED)
1b. FW costs 5pts for 2 DEF (PD or ED)

2a. Entangle costs 5pts for 1d6 of BODY (based on Normal Damage BODY --> Max 2)
2b. Force Wall has 0 BODY

3. Both can have extended areas for +2pts per +1" (or +1pt per +1m if the metric change is made)

4a. Entangle automatically englobes the target
4b. Force Wall can selectively englobe a target

5a. Entangle can selectively form a barrier
5b. Force Wall can englobe a target, effectivly rendering them helpless (if it holds up)

6a. Entangle prevents the use of Accessible Foci
6b. Force Wall allows characters to do anything within it but they must break through to leave

7a. Entangle can stop senses
7b. Force Wall can be Opaque versus senses

8. Both are similarly affected by Teleportation and the Indirect advantages

My proposition is to possibly unify them into a power call Barrier or something like it.

Barrier costs 5pts per 2 DEF (PD or ED), 5pts per 1d6 of BODY, and can be extended by 1"(2m) per 2pts.

For a +0 Advantage, Barrier can Entangle a target, producing the same effect as Entangle already does but the tradeoff is that it must have at least two hex sides to englobe a target and it can only be used for Entangling a target (perhaps an additional Advantage could allow for interchangeability)

I came up with this when one of my players suggested the idea of Entangle better simulating Force Fields in sci-fi because they are always talking about the status of their shields.

While I disagreed on principle I did first have the idea of Force Walls having BODY and then I started to realize how similar the two powers actually are.

Talon

Sep 19th, '08, 03:04 PM

(See the other thread for my comment; crossposting leads to confusion!)

Xotl

Oct 24th, '08, 11:38 PM

EDIT: Ignore this post and Vulcan's reply to it immediately after - it was based on a mistake on my part.

Vulcan

Oct 25th, '08, 07:23 AM

Invisibility by default affects an entire sense group. You can throw on Limited Effect to reduce the coverage from one sense group to just one or two senses within that group, but there's no way to just buy Invisibility to things lying outside the basic 6-sense structure.

In other words, I can't buy Invisibility to Detect Mind or Invisibility to any one or more senses in the Unusual Sense Group without first selecting at least part of a normal sense group to be invisible to as well, even if I don't want that ability. This seems an unnecessary restriction, and Limited Effect doesn't help. Why not remove the requirement that at least one group be picked and allow the player to build his Invisibility in the manner he wants? As it works right now I'm actually prevented from making a lot of different builds.

Invisibility to Detect Mind is a limitation on Inivsible to Mental Group, Doesn't affect Mindscan (at least a -1, since Mindscan is the most common Mental Sense power).

The Unsusal Sense Group is sort of a special case (at least in our group of players). Since these senses don't get a price break for being linked to other senses, that makes them pretty pricey. So for things that affect them, our players treat each Unusual Sense as it's own group. It's generally a rather small increase to the cost, but it keeps the price of Invisibility to Danger Sense (and nothing else) high enough to prevent all of Spider-Guy's enemies from buying it (and making Danger Sense a total waste of points on Spifer-Guy's sheet).

Right now nothing prevents you from buying invisibility (or whatever) to a special sense; determine if the sense being affacted is a targeting sense and price it appropriately. If the power defaults to a group for the first 'increment' and you only want to affect one sense, ask the GM for a limitation.

YMMV, of course.

Xotl

Oct 25th, '08, 10:42 AM

EDIT: this post was based on a misunderstanding of the current rules on my part, so I'm erasing it to save space in the thread.

AnotherSkip

Oct 26th, '08, 05:27 AM

I think you are forcing something that isn't there.
It says buy one targeting sense group for 20 points, non-targeting for 10 points. since unusal senses are their own group then you can buy invisibility to t/nt for that one ability and go with it. You nether need nor are 'forced' to get anything else. IF someone is denying you the flexibilty of hero they are probably wrong.

Frankly to be safe with any power and prevent problems I reccomend non-targeting be dropped from all sense based powers. it causes uneccessary problems with "Ah! i bought my N-ray Smell Targeting. so your invisibility/flash doesn't affect me!" neither the 'upgrade' nor 'cheaper' matters it either overwhelms(Flash) or undewhelms(Invis) the sense, targeting or not.
Eliminating it would whack out a few paragraphs in the book, reduce some level of confusion and mean that invis/flash would read easier on the sheet.

Vulcan

Oct 26th, '08, 07:18 AM

EDIT: This post was done to help explain a point to Xotl; now that it has served it's purpose I'm removing it....

Xotl

Oct 26th, '08, 09:51 PM

EDIT: Post deleted.

Balabanto

Oct 26th, '08, 10:50 PM

Some words about Flash.

Targeting vs. Nontargeting on these effects is broken and somewhat ridiculous. Observe:

I target someone with a sight flash. It costs 60 points. I roll 12d6 and affect the whole group. That's about about a combat turn.

I target someone with a smell flash. It costs 60 points. I roll 20d6 and affect his entire sense group. He's out of that sense for almost TWO turns.

So why is this bad, and/or broken?

Past versions of the game did not differentiate this much between the types of flashes. However, comparatively, the cost of the respective Flash Defenses did NOT change.

Ergo, it costs the same amount to defend myself against 60 points of each equivalent flash, right?

Wrong! It costs nearly DOUBLE that amount. To stop the sight flash, I need to spend 12 points. However, to stop, on average, the smell flash, not only do I need to spend 20 points to stop a largely suboptimal ability, but I ALSO need to spend a few extra points, just in case my shtick happens to be targeting scent.

This totally breaks the Champions theory of 2-2.5x cost=defense, for a special defense. The same defense for a suboptimal flash should not cost double.

PLUS...most defenses for suboptimal flashes are EXTREMELY, nay, almost STUPIDLY hard to justify in the first place. For what reason could Dog Man (Common concept, just look at Wolverine) purchase smell flash defense in the first place?

So not only do I have to come up with an absurd amount of points to stop a secondary attack, no matter how cool it is that I paid 35 points or so for a raw, naked enhanced sense, that is easily stopped for a combat turn by paying only 45 points for 15d6 of Smell Flash.

Furthermore, the defense, no matter how cheap or expensive, CANNOT be placed in any framework, because it is just as special a power as the enhanced sense, which I also had to purchase naked.

Now, you can argue (This is an optional rule, and many GM's don't use it) that you can put all of these special defenses into a force field. But again, the justification of this is somewhat dubious when dealing with less than regular flash attacks.

In Hero System, you're supposed to get what you pay for. You're not getting it here.

Vulcan

Oct 27th, '08, 10:06 AM

Hero Designer is where I first noticed the problem (if it is indeed a problem), yes, and it was that behaviour that led me to my mistaken conclusion concerning Unusual Sense. Good guess.

More importantly, I missed that Detect is actually listed as under the unusual sense group. I still can't find a reference to anything that says every sense in the unusual sense group is its own group, however.

EDIT: I just wound up asking Steve, and he pointed me to the right way of doing things. I'm going to erase my giant post of doom on the subject so as to not waste Steve's time here later, and would appreciate it if you could do the same Vulcan.

I'm on it.

The Main Man

Nov 5th, '08, 07:23 AM

I posted this in the General Rules Issues but I feel that it applies to this thread as well:

First of all, I am in favor of Killing Attacks being a Power Advantage for Normal Attacks so that damage is more consistent.

So here's an idea regarding Killing Attacks that I had last night:

As it stands:

Armor Piercing halves the target's defenses

Penetrating bypasses a minimum amount of damage past the defenses (BODY for Killing Attacks as they currently are vs. STUN for Normal Attacks)

Since AP and Pen do not stack their effects, what if "Killing Damage" was a Power Advantage that stacks onto them to increase their potency?

With this kind of change:

AP would quarter the opponent's defenses for subtracting BODY damage

Pen would instead have a minimum amount of BODY that bypasses defenses.

I would suggest that "Killing" would be worth +1/2 since it must stack with AP or Pen which effectively makes it a +1 Power Advantage.

Now that brings me to the other half of the equation: Resistance.

I think that Resistant is already a +1/2 Power Advantage in disguise as-is, but I might say that when Killing is stacked onto AP or Pen that Hardened is not enough to negate the overall advantage and that Resistant is in turn stacked onto Hardened so then the overall Killing Advantage is negated.

I think that if Resistant worked this way that it woud be a +1/4 Power Advantage since it would stack onto Hardened which would effectively make it a +1/2 Power Advantage like it already is.

Now that my mouthful is complete, any thoughts?

Vulcan

Nov 5th, '08, 11:27 AM

Cross-posted from combat issues:

AP and Penetrating do stack in 5E.

The Main Man

Nov 6th, '08, 12:35 PM

They stack with each other but a target's defenses do not quarter if I buy 2 levels of Armor Piercing - that's the idea.

Vulcan

Nov 6th, '08, 01:40 PM

They stack with each other but a target's defenses do not quarter if I buy 2 levels of Armor Piercing - that's the idea.

Ah. My misunderstanding. I was pointing out something different (that AP and Pen stack to get through Hardened).

The Main Man

Nov 6th, '08, 02:11 PM

Ah. My misunderstanding. I was pointing out something different (that AP and Pen stack to get through Hardened).
You are right about what you thought I was talking about though.:)

The same goes for Indirect as well, but it is just a tad different from AP and Pen.

IndianaJoe3

Nov 28th, '08, 09:20 AM

Q: Should the STUN Multiplier for Killing Attacks be changed?

I was wondering: why roll at all? We could set the default STUN Multiplier to 3 (or maybe 2.5 or 2), and the, "STUN Lotto" goes away. :thumbup:

Klaus Mogensen

Nov 28th, '08, 11:54 AM

I was wondering: why roll at all? We could set the default STUN Multiplier to 3 (or maybe 2.5 or 2), and the, "STUN Lotto" goes away. :thumbup:
This has been suggested. A fixed x3 fits the Hit Location chart best, but will probably require increasing the cost of 1d6K to 20, since then 1d6K will do the same average STUN as 3d6N, and more average BODY.

- Klaus

BNakagawa

Dec 24th, '08, 08:30 AM

This has been suggested. A fixed x3 fits the Hit Location chart best, but will probably require increasing the cost of 1d6K to 20, since then 1d6K will do the same average STUN as 3d6N, and more average BODY.

- Klaus

Changing the amount of body damage for a KA relative to the active point cost is problematic. If you bump the cost to 20 pts/die then normal attacks will do more damage per AP than killing attacks.

Also, killing attacks will be inferior at breaking walls, force walls, entangles and foci than normal attacks.

steamteck

Dec 26th, '08, 09:05 AM

The Main Man

Dec 26th, '08, 10:44 AM

I'm thinking that a flyer with lowered STR could take a Side Effect Limitation.

IndianaJoe3

Dec 26th, '08, 12:01 PM

Do you guys think flight should have its own weight lifting limits instead of the person's STR? Maybe with STR equal to inches of flight? Or maybe a limitation to give such. Lots of flying concepts sure shouldn't lift with their full STR while flying.
I think that 0" of flight would count as a 10 STR for determining how much a flying character can carry. If the character wants to carry more, he can trade inches of Flight for additional STR. For example, a flying character who wanted to carry an additional 100kg would need to sacrifice 5" of flight.

This may be more complex than we need, though.

steamteck

Dec 26th, '08, 12:38 PM

I think that 0" of flight would count as a 10 STR for determining how much a flying character can carry. If the character wants to carry more, he can trade inches of Flight for additional STR. For example, a flying character who wanted to carry an additional 100kg would need to sacrifice 5" of flight.

This may be more complex than we need, though.

Maybe it is but I kind of like it. I'd certainly use it. I probably will add it as a house rule.

Hugh Neilson

Dec 26th, '08, 12:47 PM

I think that 0" of flight would count as a 10 STR for determining how much a flying character can carry. If the character wants to carry more, he can trade inches of Flight for additional STR. For example, a flying character who wanted to carry an additional 100kg would need to sacrifice 5" of flight.

This may be more complex than we need, though.

A limitation on Flight seems more appropriate. I don't think a character with 25" Flight and 10 STR should get extra carrying capacity, so why should one with 5" Flight and 50 STR lose carrying capacity?

PhilFleischmann

Dec 26th, '08, 02:11 PM

Just a thought, but it does seem that they should both lose some carrying capacity. When you stand on the ground and lift something, you're transfering the weight, through your body, to the ground. If you're in the air, you don't have the solid floor to help carry the weight.

As a pidooma answer, maybe all characters should have -10 STR (for carrying capacity only) when flying. Or -5. Or not.

Just a thought. There is a certain common sense to the idea, but I'm not necessarily advocating it.

Lucius

Dec 26th, '08, 03:05 PM

The whole field of the interaction of STR, movement powers, lifting capacity, and things like grab, is probably worth discussing.

For example, few people would argue that a STR 50 can pick up a pretty hefty weight and Run with it - that's practically in the definition of STR. In fact, isn't it literally in the definition of STR?

Similarly, he can probably grab an average character and Run. If he makes the grab roll, etc.

Apparently, there is some question of whether he can do these same things with Flight.

And as I understand it, by the rules, he absolutely CANNOT do that with Teleport, or Extradimensional Movement. Even if it's a willing subject, doesn't he have to have Usable By Others or Usable As Attack to carry someone? And the amount of mass he can carry is not calculated by STR either.

Lucius Alexander

How heavy is a palindromedary?

IndianaJoe3

Dec 27th, '08, 11:32 AM

A limitation on Flight seems more appropriate. I don't think a character with 25" Flight and 10 STR should get extra carrying capacity, so why should one with 5" Flight and 50 STR lose carrying capacity?

You misunderstand - the character with 25" flight and 10 STR can still only carry 100 kg because it's his STR that he's limited by. The character with 50 STR and 5" flight can carry 100 kg around all day if he walks, but he doesn't generate enough lift to fly with it.

Hugh Neilson

Dec 27th, '08, 01:31 PM

You misunderstand - the character with 25" flight and 10 STR can still only carry 100 kg because it's his STR that he's limited by. The character with 50 STR and 5" flight can carry 100 kg around all day if he walks, but he doesn't generate enough lift to fly with it.

I don't misunderstand at all. If you have 10 STR, you can carry 100 kg, whether running, flying or leaping. If you have 50 STR, you can carry 25,600 kg, whether running, flying or leaping.

STR governs how much you can carry. Flight governs how fast you can fly. If you lose a portion of that carrying capacity when flying, that should be governed by a limitation either on Flight or on STR.

steamteck

Dec 27th, '08, 02:02 PM

I don't misunderstand at all. If you have 10 STR, you can carry 100 kg, whether running, flying or leaping. If you have 50 STR, you can carry 25,600 kg, whether running, flying or leaping.

STR governs how much you can carry. Flight governs how fast you can fly. If you lose a portion of that carrying capacity when flying, that should be governed by a limitation either on Flight or on STR.

probably on flight I guess.
However by that logic, couldn't you swim with that same 25,600 kg. To me ,flying is a lot more like swimming. I think a standard limitation for flight is needed here. Although I think the low lift flight is more common than the Superman lift your whole capacity while flying version.

Hugh Neilson

Dec 27th, '08, 07:17 PM

James Gillen

Dec 27th, '08, 09:26 PM

The Main Man

Dec 27th, '08, 09:52 PM

AFAIK, the power Flight represents unhindered, three-dimensional movement - "pure flight" if you will - which is as basically natural to the character as Running, Swimming, or Leaping before Limitations (or Advantages for that matter).

AnotherSkip

Dec 28th, '08, 06:51 AM

Supes Usually has trouble lifting but none carrying while flying. quite a reverse of the issue!

Lucius

Dec 28th, '08, 07:02 AM

You can buy extra Mass on the Teleport, and doing a Grab-By with Flight depends on how much STR you have naturally, like a Grab-By with Running.

JG

Um....that was my point.

edit: That is to say, why should some movement modes but not others give you the benefit of your STR? Why should some modes and not others require an Adder to carry more mass?

Lucius Alexander

Discussing it with a palindromedary

PhilFleischmann

Dec 29th, '08, 01:29 PM

probably on flight I guess.
However by that logic, couldn't you swim with that same 25,600 kg. To me ,flying is a lot more like swimming. I think a standard limitation for flight is needed here. Although I think the low lift flight is more common than the Superman lift your whole capacity while flying version.
Exactly! I think it's due to HERO's superheroic roots, that all forms of movement are treated the same in so many ways.

For a real world experiment, see how much you can lift and run with while standing on the ground, and then try to swim with the same weight. (And no, the weight is not allowed to be something lighter than water.)

On this very thread, many pages ago, I said that Movement Powers should not all cost 2/1" (Flight and Teleport specifically). That, combined with these thoughts, makes me think that perhaps a new idea is even better: Keep Flight (and other movement modes) at the current cost, but create an Advantage that allows you to use your full carrying capacity while flying. Without this Advantage, you're limited to say half your STR, or -10, or whatever. Call the Advantage "Superheroic Flight" or "Superheroic Movement". Say, at +1/2, or maybe +1/4.

SCUBA Hero

Dec 29th, '08, 05:27 PM

Whatever the outcome, the default rules need to be clear.

New example: A 10 STR character with 50 STR TK and 5" of Flight can carry how much, how fast, when flying? When on the ground? :think:

Chris Goodwin

Dec 30th, '08, 08:27 AM

There's currently a discussion of Find Weakness on the 5e discussion forum, and I thought it might be a good time to address it here.

I'm thinking that Find Weakness ought to be eliminated. There are probably better ways to handle a Find Weakness type Power, maybe none of which exactly mimic the Power as it has traditionally existed but maybe which better mimic the notion as it appears in heroic fiction. The ability to locate a weakness might be better handled as an Enhanced Sense, but the effects of the detected weakness could vary, from reduced defenses (Armor Piercing), to no defenses (No Normal Defense), to additional damage (+Xd6 or +Y Stun Multiple).

As it stands, Find Weakness is a very mechanistic, almost meta construct for something that really needs more in-fiction rationale and better mechanical handling proceeding from special effects.

James Gillen

Dec 30th, '08, 10:29 AM

steamteck

Dec 30th, '08, 11:42 AM

I can't think of many high STR flying characters who have struggled with weight restrictions in flight. The Vision can't carry people when flying because he fluctates in density and isn't always solid, but that's not a lift issue. Maybe flying shrunken characters. Seems uncommon enough that it would appropriately be a limitation rather than the default.

Maybe you have some examples of characters whose carrying capacity when flying seems limited more by flight than by STR?

Off the top of my head characters whose lift capacity seems different from their normal STR ( In my memory at least) Iron man ( this has been made a big deal of several times as I remember) Wonder man with his jet belt. Thor and Beta ray Bill, Namor, The original Super Skrull, Buck Rodgers and the infamous mobile infantry armor.

Hugh Neilson

Dec 30th, '08, 12:57 PM

Off the top of my head characters whose lift capacity seems different from their normal STR ( In my memory at least) Iron man ( this has been made a big deal of several times as I remember) Wonder man with his jet belt. Thor and Beta ray Bill, Namor, The original Super Skrull, Buck Rodgers and the infamous mobile infantry armor.

I haven't seen these as examples in the source material (ie the characters forced to drop objects they could normally easily lift in order to fly, as opposed to being encumbered by objects heavy enough to throw them off-balance on the ground), but I could be mistaken.

PhilFleischmann

Dec 30th, '08, 01:44 PM

Hugh Neilson

Dec 30th, '08, 02:36 PM

Another example I've seen in the source material of differing lift capacity on the ground vs flying would be in the case of flying mounts - dragons, gryphons, "pegasi", etc. Remember that "source material" is more than just superhero comic books.

A flying creature's wings (or whatever it uses to fly) generate a certain amount of force that is sufficient to lift the creature off the ground. Perhaps the lift capacity adjustment is merely by the weight of the creature itself. So a 100 kg flying man can lift 100 kg less while flying. Or to put it another way, the character's own weight must be included in his carrying capacity when he's flying. When he's on the ground, the ground carries his weight.

A flying mount would logically have its own carrying capacity, and would be encumbered by its rider. A 3 STR flying can would lack the STR to carry a human, even if it has a 20" flight speed. A 40 STR flying elephant would seem to logically (to the extent one can apply logic to a flying elephant ion the first place :rolleyes:) have no difficulty carrying a couple of humans, even if its flight speed is only 5".

PhilFleischmann

Dec 30th, '08, 02:41 PM

Correct.

AnotherSkip

Jan 1st, '09, 07:53 AM

Klaus Mogensen

Jan 5th, '09, 05:28 AM

PhilFleischmann

Jan 5th, '09, 01:04 PM

A replacement of Find Weakness could be a variant of trading two skill levels for +1DC damage. This variant would instead reduce DEF by 1 for each skill level applied.

I.e., two skill levels could either be applied to do 1d6N more damage (+1 body, +3½ stun) or reduce DEF by 2 (~ +2 body, +2 stun).

This would be particularly useful for breaking stuff.

- Klaus
That's an interesting idea! I think you're on to something there. It may need to be tweaked a bit to get the power level right. And to iron out the details: Does this apply the same to normal and resistant defences? What about Hardened? Or Damage Reduction? Or special defenses (Mental, flash, Power)?

The Main Man

Jan 5th, '09, 03:49 PM

I kind of like this idea - it's like Piercing (from DC) with UAA.

Would Lack of Weakness be necessary or would just buying extra Defense versus that Power or Negative PSL's suffice?

Klaus Mogensen

Jan 6th, '09, 05:10 AM

Would Lack of Weakness be necessary or would just buying extra Defense versus that Power or Negative PSL's suffice?
The ability could be offset by a regular Lack of Weakness power/talent, or defenses that are immune to the ability could be +1/4, or you could buy extra defenses "only to counter bypassing" at -3.

There may not be a need for any new defense, though. After all, there are no specialized defenses against using skill levels to add damage - why then should there be against using skill levels to bypass defense?

- Klaus

The Main Man

Jan 6th, '09, 05:44 AM

The ability could be offset by a regular Lack of Weakness power/talent, or defenses that are immune to the ability could be +1/4, or you could buy extra defenses "only to counter bypassing" at -3.

There may not be a need for any new defense, though. After all, there are no specialized defenses against using skill levels to add damage - why then should there be against using skill levels to bypass defense?

- Klaus

Fair enough.

It seems that simply having more defense may suffice against such a power.

Another reason that I like this version of FW better is because it is not quite as devastating as the current version and it does not seem as unbalancing upon repeated rolls.

CTaylor

Jan 8th, '09, 04:34 PM

I don't know if this would be a variant or rebuild of force wall, or just a weird use of entangle, so I'll put it here. There could be added some sort of method of building a defense that is a separate construct that absorbs damage as if it is a separate character or object before the damage reaches the character or object it protects.

For example, you buy a 10 Body, 5 defense "force wall;" this wall acts as a physical barrier: it takes 10 body to destroy before any of the damage gets through it, and each hit it has 5 defense against. This would act somewhat like a force wall, but be less absolute: it could be chipped away or shrug off an attack entirely, but the protected contents would feel nothing until it was completely knocked down.

PhilFleischmann

Jan 8th, '09, 05:12 PM

Sounds like an Entangle Barrier.

bwdemon

Jan 19th, '09, 10:26 AM

Lucius

Jan 20th, '09, 09:18 AM

My greatest preference here would be to remove the killing attack mechanic altogether and replace it with either/both of the following:

1) Normal Damage + BODY Only limitation

2) A BODY multiplier advantage on normal damage(e.g. +x0.5 BODY for +1/2 advantage)

This gets rid of a needless mechanic and allows the system to remove resistant defenses altogether.

Rather than an Advantage, how about just additional dice of damage with the "no STUN" limitation? And/or possibly a variant on the Penetrating Advantage so that it affects BOD rather than STUN?

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary wants a naked advantage Penetrating that applies to Knowledge and Science skills, for Penetrating Insights into the subject!

Vulcan

Jan 20th, '09, 10:24 AM

Rather than an Advantage, how about just additional dice of damage with the "no STUN" limitation? And/or possibly a variant on the Penetrating Advantage so that it affects BOD rather than STUN?

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary wants a naked advantage Penetrating that applies to Knowledge and Science skills, for Penetrating Insights into the subject!

Both suggestions slam face-first into DC and AP caps really quick. Of course, depending on the genere that could be a good thing...

Lucius

Jan 20th, '09, 11:33 AM

Both suggestions slam face-first into DC and AP caps really quick. Of course, depending on the genere that could be a good thing...

If you think such caps are a good thing, then the fact that something would be too powerful to fly under them is a good thing.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary thought that was the point.

Vulcan

Jan 20th, '09, 12:26 PM

If you think such caps are a good thing, then the fact that something would be too powerful to fly under them is a good thing.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary thought that was the point.

No argument, my question is simply "Are either of the proposals going to be good enough that anyone would bother buying them?"

Lucius

Jan 20th, '09, 02:09 PM

No argument, my question is simply "Are either of the proposals going to be good enough that anyone would bother buying them?"

Good point.

Of course, I'm not sure it's a good idea to try to eliminate Resistant Defenses. Or Killing Attacks. It would be simple enough to just do away with both, but then you have no distinction between blades and bullets vs fists and clubs.

As I've said before, I don't have a problem with Killing Attacks being so effective - I don't even have a problem with the "STUN Lotto" which is actually a realistic depiction of the way such wounds work. My beef is,

1. When you have two kinds of power that are similar, but one is a lot better, the superior one should cost more - be an Advantage, or the inferior one a Limitation, or if they're two seperate powers one is more expensive.

2. Defenses should be cheaper than attacks - not outrageously more expensive.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary buys a Hand to Hand Killing Attack but no hands.

tesuji

Jan 25th, '09, 08:04 AM

RE Healing SFX begone!

Currently under healing there is a noticeable discrepancy.

to heal a person hit by a plasma rifle and injred all i need to have is healing.
to repair an engine hit by a plasma rifle and injured, i need healing AND a repair skill such as mechanics.

now, i already have to define the healing as "only on engines" but why do i also have to have the skill?

i dont have to have paramedic for repairing your chest burns, just healing.

Now i can see some sfx requiring skill, but that would seem to be appropriate for "requires skill roll" as a lim, right?

healing used vs people will see a lot of use in most campaigns, vs objects likely less, which is fine and a decent reason for a lim. but there seems no good reason to mandate that healing my computer and refrigerator also requires me to be able to fix them myself.

so i think the default should be "no skill req" and the req skill thing to be a limitation across the board.

or am i missing why a wand of healing people is so much less abusivr than a wand of healing siege engines so that requiring the skill prevents the abuse.

Markdoc

Jan 26th, '09, 04:48 AM

RE Healing SFX begone!

Currently under healing there is a noticeable discrepancy.

to heal a person hit by a plasma rifle and injred all i need to have is healing.
to repair an engine hit by a plasma rifle and injured, i need healing AND a repair skill such as mechanics.

That depends entirely on your character design. If your "engine healing" is magical or psionic, then there's no reason you should need mechanics. However, in that case, you won't be able to fix anything broken if for some reason, you can't use your power. You won't be able to "diagnose" what's broken AKA "Dammit Jim, I'm a magician, not an engineer!"

If your SFX is really good mechanic, then KS: mechanics is appropriate. Likewise if your healing SFX is "Magic", then you may not need Paramedic. If it's "really good healer" you probably do.

This is not just SFX - both paramedic and KS: Mechanics give you options that healing alone does not.

cheers, Mark

PhilFleischmann

Jan 26th, '09, 02:24 PM

Exactly. I don't see any rules anywhere that requires you to have some Skill in order to be able to use Healing on inanimate objects. As a GM, I would probably require that Healing be specifically bought for use on objects (which then cannot be used on people), but no additional Skill would be required.

tesuji

Jan 27th, '09, 04:58 AM

That depends entirely on your character design. If your "engine healing" is magical or psionic, then there's no reason you should need mechanics. However, in that case, you won't be able to fix anything broken if for some reason, you can't use your power. You won't be able to "diagnose" what's broken AKA "Dammit Jim, I'm a magician, not an engineer!"

If your SFX is really good mechanic, then KS: mechanics is appropriate. Likewise if your healing SFX is "Magic", then you may not need Paramedic. If it's "really good healer" you probably do.

This is not just SFX - both paramedic and KS: Mechanics give you options that healing alone does not.

cheers, Mark

Maybe you misunderstood me.

by the current rules, in order to use magical or psionic healing on an engine you HAVE TO HAVE by rule the "ks engines or maybe mechanics skill in addition to the magical healing power. HERO 5er page 187 3rd para rt column

"...repair complex broken objects, a character must have a relevant skill..." with an exception for extremely simple objects like tables and dishes. Repair siege engines is their example of one requiring skills.

What I want is that requirement removed from the current rule OR it to become the default for "healing people" as well, with an advantage to remove it for those "magical healing" options.

right now, one type of healing has the default requires skill and the other doesn't. I just want the baseline to be consistent. ot failing that maybe a decent reason why "magical healing siege enegines" wwith no skill roll is somehow imbalanced in comparison to "healing people with no skill roll".

Markdoc

Jan 27th, '09, 05:33 AM

Maybe you misunderstood me.

by the current rules, in order to use magical or psionic healing on an engine you HAVE TO HAVE by rule the "ks engines or maybe mechanics skill in addition to the magical healing power. HERO 5er page 187 3rd para rt column

"...repair complex broken objects, a character must have a relevant skill..." with an exception for extremely simple objects like tables and dishes. Repair siege engines is their example of one requiring skills.

What I want is that requirement removed from the current rule OR it to become the default for "healing people" as well, with an advantage to remove it for those "magical healing" options.

right now, one type of healing has the default requires skill and the other doesn't. I just want the baseline to be consistent. ot failing that maybe a decent reason why "magical healing siege enegines" wwith no skill roll is somehow imbalanced in comparison to "healing people with no skill roll".

The power will work on single objects (whether inanimate or animate) the same way - the examples given are plain enough. The extra skill is specifically restricted to complex objects made up of multiple components (presumably to prevent a character saying "I fix the spaceship" instead of "I fix the broken computer") when the GM says there is something wrong. If the player wanted to heal complex biological systems I would assume the same sort of requirement would be in place - for example "I heal the ecosphere" instead of "I heal the injured bear".

cheers, Mark

tesuji

Jan 27th, '09, 06:53 AM

The power will work on single objects (whether inanimate or animate) the same way - the examples given are plain enough. The extra skill is specifically restricted to complex objects made up of multiple components (presumably to prevent a character saying "I fix the spaceship" instead of "I fix the broken computer") when the GM says there is something wrong. If the player wanted to heal complex biological systems I would assume the same sort of requirement would be in place - for example "I heal the ecosphere" instead of "I heal the injured bear".

cheers, Mark

i dont get at all where you get from the examples that "i fix the computer" is ok without a skill.

their examples o objects that require skill include:
A siege engine is a rather basic machine, a rather basic "engine" and yet it requires a skill to heal.
a weapon - again failry simple requires weaponsmith
a suit of armor again faily simple but requires armorsmith

The examples they list as ok without skill are tables and plates.

so when "no skill" is at the table and plate level and "needs skill" is at the weapon, armor, catapult and trebuchet level, i think i am fairly secure at saying "from the examples fixing a computer would require a skill with HEALING COMPUTERS".

As for "healing a starship" being harder, well yeah, cuz the starsjip would likely have a lot more body and require a lot more healing than say a computer. Starship is bigger but not necessarily more complex than a computer.

So, again, what i would like is a consistent set of rules for the repair by "healing power". One where there is a default (skill required or not, i dont care) and then you apply the necessary modifier (requires skill roll lim or a "no skill req adv) to get the power you want.

the way you describe it now might be fine, if the rules were rewritten to say that, that would be possible as well.

The Main Man

Jan 27th, '09, 01:12 PM

As I have been discussing the alteration of Aid in Powers A-E, here's my $0.05 on Healing:

Healing should function just like Aid, except that it's effects are permanent (IOW they do not fade).

Um... that is all actually.

PhilFleischmann

Jan 27th, '09, 02:22 PM

HERO 5er page 187 3rd para rt column

"...repair complex broken objects, a character must have a relevant skill..." with an exception for extremely simple objects like tables and dishes. Repair siege engines is their example of one requiring skills.
This must be another of those 5ER "non-changes". Does this apply to regular Healing, or only Healing of siege engines or other objects? I could certainly see requiring a skill, or some other point expenditure for being able to apply Healing to both people and things.

It seems to me that Healing should be defined when bought as working either on living things, or on machines/inanimate objects, but not both.

If you bought it for one, the GM could certainly permit it to be used on the other, but require a relevent skill roll.

Vulcan

Jan 27th, '09, 02:37 PM

I've always preferred Transform: Broken machine into working machine.

Bypasses the whole issue, although I grant that it costs more.

tesuji

Jan 28th, '09, 04:24 AM

This must be another of those 5ER "non-changes". Does this apply to regular Healing, or only Healing of siege engines or other objects? I could certainly see requiring a skill, or some other point expenditure for being able to apply Healing to both people and things.

It seems to me that Healing should be defined when bought as working either on living things, or on machines/inanimate objects, but not both.

If you bought it for one, the GM could certainly permit it to be used on the other, but require a relevent skill roll.

It is specifically for healing inanimate objects.

The rest of the rule is simple...

healing doesn't work on inanimate.
In order to get it to do so you apply a lim such as -1 only on siege engines.
(FWIW that galls me. if it normally doesn't work on siege engines, then why is "only works on siege engines a lim??? Shouldn't i need a "usable on siege engines advantage to add "siege engines" then have a lim for "only on siege engines"?)

But the skill roll is specifically not req for regular healing living folks but is for inanimate which is where my panties get bunched.

give me a simpler rules where you pick a class of targets by default that your healing works on, give me the ability to add "requires a skill roll" for those sfx that it makes sense for, and give me adv/lim to expand/shrink the scope of healing targets even further and we have a working power.

heck you know what i would rather have? Take the guys aid example above. Decalre that aid can CHOOSE between "does not fade but only up to the characteristic normal total" or "will fade like aid does now but can raise stat above normal"

but i digress.

tesuji

Jan 28th, '09, 04:30 AM

I've always preferred Transform: Broken machine into working machine.

Bypasses the whole issue, although I grant that it costs more.

i prefer as a general rule tyo avoid using transform when it duplicates aother separate power. Since devises are broken using the same damage - body rules it did not seem logical to use healing for people and transform for objects.

Do you let people use transform "wounded person to healthy"?

Transform isnt really that much more expensive when you compare the two and remember healing has a refresh rate.

Kdansky

Jan 28th, '09, 06:09 AM

I like to point out something for Force Wall which has recently come up for me and annoyed me greatly. I call it:

Force Wall Must Be Bought At Maximum AP Or It Is Incredibly Weak For Its Crazy Cost.
The point is: If you play in a 60 AP game, and you get yourself a 5/5 Force Field (and possibly some other defenses, because else you get creamed instantly anyway), this works fine. On the other hand, if you get yourself a 5/5 Force Wall, you pay a lot of points (not 10 as for the field, but 25). Still, your Force Wall will not ever withstand a single Attack from anyone. Even "bad" Force Wall breakers (like EBs with considerable AP in advantages) will easily break through, because 5 Def is just not enough against 60 AP, no matter how those 60 AP are spent. What I was building was a Shield which protected against damage but if it took a big enough hit, it was deactivated until next Phase. Thing is, that shield was rather expensive, forced the character to have Indirect on his Attack and still did not do more than a Force Field would have done. Oh, and it did cost 3 times the Endurance to use.

Long Story short: Force Wall could use some tweaking. I would like some more variants on Ablative (basically, that is what Force Wall is). Why not something along these lines (this is brainstormed):

Ablative:
All Or Nothing - If the defense does not hold the the Attack off completely, it breaks and everything goes through (-3)
Deflector Shields - The Defense is reduced by 2 everytime it is hit by an attack. This replenishes like Charges (-1)
Ablative Armor - The Defense is reduced by 2 everytime it is overcome by an attack. This replenishes like Charges (-1/2)
Recharging Shields - The Defense is reduced by 2 everytime it is hit by an attack, and recovers 2 points every post-segment-12 (-1/4)

+ Perfected Ablative (+1/4 on x defense): These defenses are applied before the attack hits the ablative Defense under it.

Or something along these lines.

Kdansky

Jan 28th, '09, 06:14 AM

Aid:
<description of aid>
Advantages:
Healing Effect (+0): The Aid can no longer go above the maximum, but the changes are permanent.

There, I just removed the Healing power. :/

(Yes, it is not that simple, but close enough)

BobGreenwade

Jan 28th, '09, 07:45 AM

Aid:
<description of aid>
Advantages:
Healing Effect (+0): The Aid can no longer go above the maximum, but the changes are permanent.

There, I just removed the Healing power. :/Roughly my thought as well.

That said, I do think Succor (preferably under a different name, as this one is too ripe for off-color puns) should be treated as a separate Power.

Vulcan

Jan 28th, '09, 08:18 AM

i prefer as a general rule tyo avoid using transform when it duplicates aother separate power.

When a power construct is clumsy (as the 'healing objects' power seems to be) or too expensive for what it does (can't think of anything off-hand but I'm sure there's something) then Transform can be a potential fix.

Granted, YMMV.

Since devises are broken using the same damage - body rules it did not seem logical to use healing for people and transform for objects.

Do you let people use transform "wounded person to healthy"?

Since they have to roll Transform resuls equal to twice the wounded person's base BODY (rather than just rolling however much BODY the character is down), the answer is yes.

I note in passing that nothing is accomplished until your roll equals twice the target's base body, unless you take the 'partial effect' adder (advantage? I don't remember, I've never used it).

tesuji

Jan 28th, '09, 08:31 AM

Since they have to roll Transform resuls equal to twice the wounded person's base BODY (rather than just rolling however much BODY the character is down), the answer is yes.

I note in passing that nothing is accomplished until your roll equals twice the target's base body, unless you take the 'partial effect' adder (advantage? I don't remember, I've never used it).

Agreed but its astill going to be a heckuva lot faster in most cases for low points. Say you have 20 body and have taken only 5 body damage.

for 15 cp i get transform to healthy 1d6. sure i have to bet a 40 result but at 1d6 per phase and 3 phases per turn at standard effect rule of 3 per roll thats 14 rolls or 5 turns or 1 whopping 1 minute and you are healed. That is ture for any amount of damage short of dead.

for healing with say a +1/2 to reduce refresh to "per hour" it takes me into two hours to heal the measley 5 body.

thats one heckuva trade there. 1 minute instead of 1 hour.

the lack of refresh rate and free cumulative nature of transform makes these two not imo simple alternatives.

the only downside would be that if its a desperate combat situation where 1-3 body right now is a must, then healing is better but given that small amount of healing is IMX rarely the deciding element, i would always take the transform options if my gm allowed it.

Now if healing had no refresh rate... whole different story.

Lucius

Jan 28th, '09, 09:41 AM

Currently under healing there is a noticeable discrepancy.

to heal a person hit by a plasma rifle and injred all i need to have is healing.
to repair an engine hit by a plasma rifle and injured, i need healing AND a repair skill such as mechanics.

I'll have to reputize this later.

I think tesuji has stated the situation well. I don't need medical skills to Heal a person, why should I need mechanical skills to heal a machine that is much, much less complicated than a living organism??

As a Limitation, as a suggested campaign rule even, but as the default - no. Please change this. It's needless complication and doesn't even make sense.

Lucius Alexander

I know the palindromedary sometimes seems like a needless complication that doesn't make sense, but you don't see me making it a default rule either do you?

Vulcan

Jan 28th, '09, 11:40 AM

Agreed but its astill going to be a heckuva lot faster in most cases for low points. Say you have 20 body and have taken only 5 body damage.

for 15 cp i get transform to healthy 1d6. sure i have to bet a 40 result but at 1d6 per phase and 3 phases per turn at standard effect rule of 3 per roll thats 14 rolls or 5 turns or 1 whopping 1 minute and you are healed. That is ture for any amount of damage short of dead.

for healing with say a +1/2 to reduce refresh to "per hour" it takes me into two hours to heal the measley 5 body.

thats one heckuva trade there. 1 minute instead of 1 hour.

the lack of refresh rate and free cumulative nature of transform makes these two not imo simple alternatives.

the only downside would be that if its a desperate combat situation where 1-3 body right now is a must, then healing is better but given that small amount of healing is IMX rarely the deciding element, i would always take the transform options if my gm allowed it.

Now if healing had no refresh rate... whole different story.

Either the healing rules don't work the way you think they do, or they don't work the way I think they do, because I have no idea what the heck you're talking about. Refresh rates? Hunh?

Netzilla

Jan 28th, '09, 01:00 PM

Either the healing rules don't work the way you think they do, or they don't work the way I think they do, because I have no idea what the heck you're talking about. Refresh rates? Hunh?

The rule tesuji is talking about is in 5ER on pg 186 under "Repeated Healing". The short of it is that you can only apply the Healing power to a given character once in a 24 hour period. If you try again, you have no effect unless you actually roll higher than the first healing. Then the target is healed up to the amount of the second roll. For example:

Bleeding Guy is down to 5 Body (from 20). Healer Man uses his 4d6 Healing BODY on BG and rolls a 12. BG is now at 5 + 6 = 11 Body. On his next action HM tries again, this time rolling only a 10, so no effect. He tries a third time, managing a 16. BG is now up to 5 (yes, 5) + 8 = 13 Body.

Vulcan

Jan 28th, '09, 01:21 PM

The rule tesuji is talking about is in 5ER on pg 186 under "Repeated Healing". The short of it is that you can only apply the Healing power to a given character once in a 24 hour period. If you try again, you have no effect unless you actually roll higher than the first healing. Then the target is healed up to the amount of the second roll. For example:

Bleeding Guy is down to 5 Body (from 20). Healer Man uses his 4d6 Healing BODY on BG and rolls a 12. BG is now at 5 + 6 = 11 Body. On his next action HM tries again, this time rolling only a 10, so no effect. He tries a third time, managing a 16. BG is now up to 5 (yes, 5) + 8 = 13 Body.

Hunh.

That explains some of the furor I keep hearing about Regen, then.

Hugh Neilson

Jan 28th, '09, 02:27 PM

I'll have to reputize this later.

I think tesuji has stated the situation well. I don't need medical skills to Heal a person, why should I need mechanical skills to heal a machine that is much, much less complicated than a living organism??

As a Limitation, as a suggested campaign rule even, but as the default - no. Please change this. It's needless complication and doesn't even make sense.

I come back to the back cover of 5er. I can imagine a character who can heal inanimate objects despite not knowing how they work. Therefore, the Hero System should permit me to do this.

PhilFleischmann

Jan 28th, '09, 04:54 PM

It is specifically for healing inanimate objects.

The rest of the rule is simple...

healing doesn't work on inanimate.
In order to get it to do so you apply a lim such as -1 only on siege engines.
(FWIW that galls me. if it normally doesn't work on siege engines, then why is "only works on siege engines a lim??? Shouldn't i need a "usable on siege engines advantage to add "siege engines" then have a lim for "only on siege engines"?)

But the skill roll is specifically not req for regular healing living folks but is for inanimate which is where my panties get bunched.

give me a simpler rules where you pick a class of targets by default that your healing works on, give me the ability to add "requires a skill roll" for those sfx that it makes sense for, and give me adv/lim to expand/shrink the scope of healing targets even further and we have a working power.
I agree with you completely here. It is yet another bit of silliness that crept into the rules with 5ER. I was unaware of it, having only FREd.

The Main Man

Jan 29th, '09, 01:55 PM

Roughly my thought as well.

That said, I do think Succor (preferably under a different name, as this one is too ripe for off-color puns) should be treated as a separate Power.
Yes, I completely agree because it is the positive counterpart to Suppress which is not listed as an "alternate" Drain.

Succor's placement in the book is just... weird.:ugly:

IndianaJoe3

Mar 15th, '09, 06:33 PM

Images
Images now rely on ambient conditions to be perceived. They do not create light, and may require a PER roll to detect in adverse conditions.
Advantage: Easily Perceived (+1/4) – An Easily Perceived Image can be detected regardless of the ambient conditions (visible in a dark room or audible in a noisy crowd).
Limitation: Obvious (-1/2) – an Obvious Image is automatically recognized as an image without a Perception roll.

BobGreenwade

Mar 18th, '09, 09:46 AM

I've been looking at a few Sense-Affecting Powers, specifically Images and Invisibility.

First, I think Images should include the Long-Lasting Advantage currently available for Change Environment. There are several possible Special Effects, especially having to do with odors and (perceived) temperature, for which this could be appropriate.

In fact, especially given that some posters here have already suggested something of the kind, I think there should be the tools in place for a GM to easily roll CE and Images into a single Power even if that step isn't actually taken in the core rulebook.

Second, I think Invisibility should include the Affects Body Only Limitation currently available for Shape Shift. The original Invisible Man had this Limitation, and I can see several other ways it could be handled for Sense Groups other than Sight (for example, to Hearing it would silence your heartbeat and breathing but not the swishing noise of your clothing).

Third, in TUM, Mental Group Invisibility doesn't hide the character from Telepathy. To my mind at least, that's like allowing a character to read an invisible book. If a character is Invisible to the Mental Sense Group, that should stop others from using Telepathy (or Mind Link) to read his thoughts.

PhilFleischmann

Mar 18th, '09, 01:15 PM

First, I think Images should include the Long-Lasting Advantage currently available for Change Environment.
:thumbup: Absolutely! In fact, it might be a good idea to allow Long-Lasting to apply to other powers as well, such as Force Wall, or indeed, and Constant, Non-Persistant Power (other than Movement Powers). It's sort of a limited version of Persistant.

Second, I think Invisibility should include the Affects Body Only Limitation currently available for Shape Shift.
:thumbup: Right again! And it could even be applied to other Body-Affecting Powers, such as Growth and Shrinking.

Third, in TUM, Mental Group Invisibility doesn't hide the character from Telepathy. To my mind at least, that's like allowing a character to read an invisible book. If a character is Invisible to the Mental Sense Group, that should stop others from using Telepathy (or Mind Link) to read his thoughts.
:thumbup: Three for three! I would note however that Telepathy would still allow for sending messages *to* the mentally invisible person, but not getting them *from* such a person. Just like you can't hear a person talking if he's Invisible to the Hearing group, but you can still talk to him.

BobGreenwade

Mar 19th, '09, 07:26 AM

I would note however that Telepathy would still allow for sending messages *to* the mentally invisible person, but not getting them *from* such a person. Just like you can't hear a person talking if he's Invisible to the Hearing group, but you can still talk to him.Actually, per 5ER you can hear a person talking if he's Invisible to the Hearing Sense Group, probably as a matter of logic because he's making the sounds deliberately. Thus, while a character with Telepathy can't read the mind of a person who is Invisible to the Mental Sense Group, if the Invisible character has Telepathy himself he can use it to deliberately broadcast his thoughts and communicate telepathically.

On the other hand, maybe the rule for speaking while Invisible to Hearing and broadcasting telepathically while Invisible to Mental should be the reverse -- such things are silenced unless the Invisibility has an Advantage, kind of the equivalent of Personal Immunity. After all, one who is Invisible to Sight can't communicate using sign language.

AnotherSkip

Mar 19th, '09, 08:46 AM

He's making an attack upon our senses with his voice (if you don't believe that can happen, read over some flame wars)

PhilFleischmann

Mar 19th, '09, 02:31 PM

Actually, per 5ER you can hear a person talking if he's Invisible to the Hearing Sense Group, probably as a matter of logic because he's making the sounds deliberately.
What? :jawdrop: That makes no sense at all! (Yet another reason why I'm glad I didn't buy 5ER.) What if he deliberately snaps his fingers, or claps his hands? Can you hear that? What if he deliberately stomps his foot on the floor? Can you hear that?

What if he's Invisible to the Sight sense group and he deliberately waves his arms vigorously? Can you see that? What if he deliberately uses sign language? Can you see that?

On the other hand, maybe the rule for speaking while Invisible to Hearing and broadcasting telepathically while Invisible to Mental should be the reverse -- such things are silenced unless the Invisibility has an Advantage, kind of the equivalent of Personal Immunity. After all, one who is Invisible to Sight can't communicate using sign language.
Oh, I see you beat me to my example! And yes, that's how the rules should be, and how they've always been in my games, and how they'll always be in my games. And AFAIK, how it was in FREd. And most importantly, it's how they should be in 6E. Because it's completely nonsensical otherwise.

I've built characters with the classic "Only you can see or hear me" power. There are multiple ways to do it, but they all have an advantage over regular Invisibility, and this advantage shouldn't be free.

Chris Goodwin

Mar 19th, '09, 07:07 PM

What? :jawdrop: That makes no sense at all! (Yet another reason why I'm glad I didn't buy 5ER.) What if he deliberately snaps his fingers, or claps his hands? Can you hear that? What if he deliberately stomps his foot on the floor? Can you hear that?

Darkness will silence them, but not for purposes of Incantations (unless that ruling has changed).

Blazar

Mar 25th, '09, 03:03 AM

Gliding merging into flight is a good idea.

I also think that the Flight limitation Only In Contact With A Surface should be removed. Instead use Running with different advantages based on surface type or orientation to the ground. I've never liked people being able to buy one power to create the effect of another power but at a cheaper cost.

In E5 Gliding had a limitation Ground Gliding, this should be gotten rid of to. Instead it should be Running with the advantage Invisible Power Effects. In this case to leave no tracks behind. You could even include Infrared so you leave no head signature on the ground.

AnotherSkip

Mar 25th, '09, 05:02 AM

Actually the powers were usually bought up to the levels of running the character had so that it would best repersent a more expensive adder to a power the character allready had. (ie Running)

ajackson

Mar 25th, '09, 08:49 AM

I actually think that you should buy your speed and your special movement capabilities separately -- i.e. your starting speed is 6" and you can buy it up from there, and if you want flight take the +X adder 'flight', which allows you to use your normal movement speed in three dimensions. Sort of off-hand numbers:
Clinging: +10 points; you can use your normal movement along surfaces
Flight: +20 points; you can use your normal movement in three dimensions
Gliding: +10 points; limited flight
Leaping: +5 points; you can make leaps (straight line movement that ignores footing) as part of standard movement, but must start and end movement on solid ground.
Super-Swimming: +5 points; you can use your normal movement underwater.
Teleportation: +20 points; you can teleport as part of standard movement.

Hugh Neilson

Mar 25th, '09, 11:04 AM

This removes the ability to be able to swim faster than you can run, or fly faster than you can walk.

ajackson

Mar 25th, '09, 11:56 AM

This removes the ability to be able to swim faster than you can run, or fly faster than you can walk.
In practice, I don't think that makes a lot of difference, but I suppose having 'movement' be a power with adders works. The major point here is that most exotic movement modes have value that is independent of how fast you can actually travel. 1" flight is a perfectly useful power; in fact, it's useful enough to render a number of skills (such as climbing) irrelevant. Likewise, 1" teleportation lets you get out of just about any restraint, 1" gliding lets you recover from any fall, etc. However, once you have that movement mode, the marginal value of increased movement speed is relatively constant.

Netzilla

Mar 25th, '09, 12:40 PM

In practice, I don't think that makes a lot of difference, but I suppose having 'movement' be a power with adders works. The major point here is that most exotic movement modes have value that is independent of how fast you can actually travel. 1" flight is a perfectly useful power; in fact, it's useful enough to render a number of skills (such as climbing) irrelevant. Likewise, 1" teleportation lets you get out of just about any restraint, 1" gliding lets you recover from any fall, etc. However, once you have that movement mode, the marginal value of increased movement speed is relatively constant.

That seems better handled by making that first 1" of movement cost more than subsequent inches. It would work like skills: base purchase cost and a different cost to increase. So, you might pay 10 points for Teleport 1" and then pay 2 cp per inch to increase it from there.

I wish I could remember who first suggested this idea in these threads so that I could properly attribute them, but it's been too many moons ago for me.

ajackson

Mar 25th, '09, 01:14 PM

I wish I could remember who first suggested this idea in these threads so that I could properly attribute them, but it's been too many moons ago for me.
Heh. Quite possibly me (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1574305&postcount=247).

PhilFleischmann

Mar 25th, '09, 02:40 PM

BobGreenwade

Mar 28th, '09, 12:54 PM

I came across something really complicated earlier today, regarding Force Wall.

I wanted to build a Force Wall based on light, that provided both ED and Sight Group Flash Defense but was Transparent to everything else. Well, it turns out that you can't do that.

For one thing, if you buy Transparent to Physical, you can't buy Transparent to Mental or Power. So the wall of light can be brought down with an Ego Attack or INT Drain.

Even if you bypass that rule and make it Transparent to Physical, Mental, and Power, there's still the matter of other types of Flash Defense -- you can't make it Transparent to Hearing, Smell, Touch, or Mental Flash Defense. So the wall of light can still be brought down with a sonic scream or a stench grenade.

Rather than propose something complicated, I think the simplest solution here would be to simply say that, barring a Limitation to the contrary, a Force Wall is Transparent to any exotic defense that it doesn't provide defense against. I've always played it that way myself, and never had a balance problem because of it.

The Main Man

Mar 28th, '09, 07:25 PM

Hey, I never thought of that.

Maybe Transparent can add onto itself at +1/4 per additional Transparency.

I also think that Force Walls should be able to purchase BODY after all the phrase "our shields are at x%" hardly applies in HERO.

BobGreenwade

Mar 29th, '09, 01:17 PM

And another thought on Invisibility:

One of the powers in USPD (under Body Control) gives a character Invisibility to Infrared Perception, regardless of what Sense Group it's attached to, for the same cost as a Targeting Sense. The rule that allows this should be in the core rules: Invisibility to a type of Detect (and nothing else), regardless of the Sense Group, for that price.

PhilFleischmann

Mar 29th, '09, 02:43 PM

Rather than propose something complicated, I think the simplest solution here would be to simply say that, barring a Limitation to the contrary, a Force Wall is Transparent to any exotic defense that it doesn't provide defense against. I've always played it that way myself, and never had a balance problem because of it.
At the very least, the current rule should certainly be handwaved in the case of the example you gave.

BobGreenwade

Mar 31st, '09, 07:39 AM

I'd like to see something describing how Flash (to Mental Sense Group) affects Mental Powers and related abilities.

My own take, based purely on logic (as opposed to game balance), is thus:

When targeting a mentalist using Mind Scan or Telepathy, the Power immediately stops, and the target of the Mental Power is treated as if he just made a successful Breakout Roll.

When targeting a mentalist using Mind Link or Clairvoyance, the Power also immediately stops, but if the target is still in LOS when the Flash wears off it resumes at that point.

When targeting a mentalist using Mental Illusions or Mind Control, there is no effect.

When targeting someone being affected by Mind Link or Telepathy, the target no longer receives the messages being sent, though with the former two Powers he can still be received.

When targeting someone being affected by Mind Control with the Telepathic Advantage, the Mind Control stays in effect, but the attacking mentalist cannot change commands unless he speaks them aloud.

When targeting someone being affected by Mental Illusions, the illusions remain but the attacking mentalist cannot change their content.

When targeting someone being affected by Mind Scan or being watched by Clairvoyance, there is no effect.

The above can, of course, be changed by Power Modifiers on the Mental Power. For example, if Mind Scan allows the target to attack with Mental Powers, then Mental Group Flash would nullify this. Telepathy or Mind Scan with Feedback would also modify what happens to the mentalist.

Also, some Mental Powers can be redefined as working through another Sense Group (such as Mind Link or Clairvoyance that work through the Radio Sense Group). Such abilities would still have the same effects when targeted with Flash to that alternate Sense Group.

The above is just my own take, and a suggestion. I'm flexible. I'd just like to see something on the topic -- one or two easily-located and clearly-marked paragraphs under Flash or something.

PhilFleischmann

Mar 31st, '09, 12:47 PM

I'd like to see something describing how Flash (to Mental Sense Group) affects Mental Powers and related abilities.
Interesting ideas. I don't think I agree with most of your proposals, but it is worth definining further the exact effect of Flash vs Mental Sense on the use of Mental Powers.

First of all, I'd say that you should need both a Targeting "physical" sense (usually normal sight) and access to "Mental Sense" in order to target Mental Powers. Lacking either of these, Mental Powers suffer the same penalties as attempting to use EB or some other power while Flashed.

Mental Illusions and Mind Control that were already in effect should continue, but are difficult to change. The same for any other Continuous Mental Power.

Telepathy and Mind Scan and Mind Link remain "locked on," but you can't receive any info for the duration of the Flash. The same for a mental-based, Clairsentiance.

Essentially, there is always a simple, default, "mental sense" that everyone has, which is used to target the mind of someone you've already targeted physically, when you use a Mental Power. This is not a "Sense Minds" power, as it doesn't really tell you anything. It's just "I see my target, so I know where his mind is." If your Mental Sense Group is Flashed, you can still see the target, but you can no longer "see" where his mind is.

AnotherSkip

Mar 31st, '09, 06:24 PM

Hugh Neilson

Apr 1st, '09, 05:36 AM

AnotherSkip

Apr 1st, '09, 05:44 AM

It is...
IF you want a distinct choice of "i can get lucky"
or "i want a good average"

keep in mind resistant def should be less common than it is.

and you can generate more energy by hitting someone with your fist than with a bullet.

also the Difference between KA and HA /EA is only in games with purchasing of attacks. resource pools will rarely have this problem and where Equip is 'free' it really doesnt matter.

Netzilla

Apr 1st, '09, 07:16 AM

*pulls out can*
*Pulls out can opener*

I don't think anyone has suggested this, so
Here is a suggestion for Killing attacks

5 pts 1pip
10pts 1/2d6
15pts 1d6-1
20pts 1d6

so at 60 points we have
3d6 KA which = 3-18 Body and 3-90 Stun

for a 12d6 EB/str/ha 12-72 stun
and 0-24 body

the 'less focused' attack (the EB) can do more body but will likely do less stun.

Conceptually, I find it odd that a "Killing" attack would do less BODY but more STUN than a Normal attack. So, first off, I think this would require a renaming of the attack (perhaps "Volatile" or something sexier with a similar connotation).

Second, I haven't run the numbers but I suspect that a 20 point per die Killing Attack will still be a better choice for knocking out moderately-armored foes than an equally priced Normal Attack. However, as I stated, this is supposition on my part. Hopefully I can run some numbers and post the results by this weekend. If I haven't done so by Saturday, someone PM me to remind me.

Thirdly,

keep in mind resistant def should be less common than it is.This is far to genre-specific to be used as a blanket assumption by the system. Resistant defenses should be very common in Fantasy games, Avegners or JLA style superheroes (it seems bullet-proof heroes are more common than not at that power level) any military-fiction based game and several others.

Finally, I'm still not a fan of having 2 different damage mechanics in the game (roll Stun and count Body; roll Body and multiply for Stun). It seems both inelegant and superfluous. That's one of the main reasons I'm a proponent of a Unified Damage. For the rest of my reasons, see this post (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1549108#post1549108).

Also, just as a reminder, there's two re-workings of Killing Attacks that I'm personally in favor of. The first is mine which makes killing an Advantage:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1549108#post1549108
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1553378#post1553378
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566275#post1566275
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566283#post1566283
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566285#post1566285
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566286#post1566286
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566658#post1566658
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1567658#post1567658

Now, I can't claim to be completely unbiased in my favor of this system, after all I wrote it. However, it does have the nice symmetry of increasing Body by the same ratio that Stun is decreased on average. It also retains the same way of counting Stun and Body for both Normal and Killing attacks. However, it is potentially vulnerable to Advantage Stacking.

The other version I like, is that proposed by Hugh Nelson, which I do an analysis of here:
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1656380#post1656380

While the method of counting Body differs a bit from that of Normal attacks it's close enough not to be a big deal and while it doesn't have the symmetry that mine has, it's immune to Advantage Stacking.

I'm strongly in favor of either of these systems making it into 6th Edition and doing away with the volatility of Stun Multipliers all together.

ajackson

Apr 1st, '09, 08:25 AM

Second, I haven't run the numbers but I suspect that a 20 point per die Killing Attack will still be a better choice for knocking out moderately-armored foes than an equally priced Normal Attack.
I have a program from a while ago to generate averages. 3dK is better than 12dN against a defense of 41+. 2dK is better than 8dN against a defense of 28+.

Lord Liaden

Apr 1st, '09, 09:09 AM

Well, Resistant Defense is an extra expense for a character who wants to be protected against Killing Attacks, so that is a balancing factor.

OTOH if the STUN Damage rolled on a KA is only reduced by the amount of Resistant DEF a character has, rather than the total DEF as it is now, this approach may be more balanced.

Klaus Mogensen

Apr 1st, '09, 09:20 AM

I suggested some time back to let 1d6K cost 20 points and have a fixed x3 STUNx (or by Hit Location). Average STUN will be the same as for 3d6N, while average BODY will be midway between 3d6N and 4d6N. The only reason for wanting to buy a killing attack is that it is better against non-resistant defenses - surely that is worth something.

In return, we can remove the rule that Killing attacks do less KB - they will now automatically do less KB per DC. Simplification all around. :)

- Klaus

Lucius

Apr 1st, '09, 04:59 PM

Average KA effects: 10.5 BOD, 28 STUN, 0" Knockback
Average EB effects: 12 BOD, 42 STUN, 5" knockback

Is this a balanced result?

Perhaps it is, given that

1. The Killing attack (or whatever we end up calling it) is actually Attack Vs. Limited Defenses (assuming that part of the system doesn't change)

2. The average is not nearly as important as the fact that one attack is much more likely to deviate significantly from the average. Unless the way defenses work against attacks is radically fundamentally changed, a more volatile attack using fewer dice to generate the same "average" damage is always preferable to a less volatile attack using more dice.

Lucius Alexander

And a backandforthtrian for a change

AnotherSkip

Apr 1st, '09, 08:45 PM

Finally, I'm still not a fan of having 2 different damage mechanics in the game (roll Stun and count Body; roll Body and multiply for Stun).

ok Roll 12d6 Count Body, Roll 1d6 for stun multiplier and Viola we have the same mechanic. :ugly:

The Main Man

Apr 1st, '09, 09:44 PM

ok Roll 12d6 Count Body, Roll 1d6 for stun multiplier and Viola we have the same mechanic. :ugly:

Y'know what, that kinda sounds like a not too bad compromise.That being said, the problem with unification so far has been the quest for the proper value of a Power Advantage.I think that that approach might be incorrect because Killing Attacks *minimally* do more average damage than Normal Attacks only because of how damage is rolled.IOW, Killing damage has really been a +0 Advantage all this time, and is somewhat the opposite of STUN Only.All that Killing has ever meant is bypassing Normal defenses.If Killing damage can be justified as a +0 Advantage, then I do still think that it can also be an Optional Combat Maneuver that is somewhat the opposite number of Pulling a Punch.I think that Resistant Defenses should remain the same cost however because they are still cheaper than a whole die of damage.In conclusion, killing damage can be rather easily ported over to a normal damage mechanic.

Netzilla

Apr 2nd, '09, 02:38 AM

Y'know what, that kinda sounds like a not too bad compromise.That being said, the problem with unification so far has been the quest for the proper value of a Power Advantage.I think that that approach might be incorrect because Killing Attacks *minimally* do more average damage than Normal Attacks only because of how damage is rolled.IOW, Killing damage has really been a +0 Advantage all this time, and is somewhat the opposite of STUN Only.All that Killing has ever meant is bypassing Normal defenses.If Killing damage can be justified as a +0 Advantage, then I do still think that it can also be an Optional Combat Maneuver that is somewhat the opposite number of Pulling a Punch.I think that Resistant Defenses should remain the same cost however because they are still cheaper than a whole die of damage.In conclusion, killing damage can be rather easily ported over to a normal damage mechanic.

Actually, Hugh Nelson's suggestion does basically make Killing a +0 Advantage:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1655395&postcount=604
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1656380#post1656380

The Main Man

Apr 2nd, '09, 12:07 PM

Actually, Hugh Nelson's suggestion does basically make Killing a +0 Advantage:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1655395&postcount=604
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1656380#post1656380

Fair enough.

I will add that the aforementioned "compromise" could make for an interesting alternative mechanic.

Lucius

Apr 2nd, '09, 02:40 PM

Please read to the bottom before responding.

Someone Please Explain - Killing Attacks and Normal Attacks.

There's something going on here that I can't explain or
understand, and I'd like to try. I am probably setting myself up for a
headache, if not a heartache, but I hope someone can help.

Let me begin by laying out the facts as I see them.

First, the facts about how defenses work in Hero.

The successful attacker rolls for damage (unless the set effect
rule is being used.) Relevant defenses are subtracted from that total.
The remainder, if any, is subtracted from the target's STUN
and/or BODy totals.If the amount of STUN damage taken exceeds CON, the
target is tunned. If the target's STUN total ever falls below zero, they are
unconscious. Taking BOD damage has other negative effects, depending on
specific rules in play (disabling, etc) up to and including being dead
when BOD total drops as far below zero as it began above zero.

In short, the more damage in excess of defense is inflicted, the
more effective the attack power is.

Damage that does not exceed defenses is completely ignored.

Other games work differently, the next edition could be
different, house rules can change things, but this is the way damage and
defense works in Hero Fifth. I don't think this can be factually
disputed.

Now, some facts about dice.

Rolling a single die is very random, or volatile, or whatever
word you want to use to describe the fact that if you roll a fair six
sided die, every number from 1 to 6 has an equal chance of appearing.

If you roll multiple dice, adding the numbers together to get a
total, then the more dice you roll, the more the results are likely to
be average. The extreme results become more and more unlikely. The odds
of rolling 3 sixes on 3d6 are only 1 in 216, as I understand it. The
odds of rolling 10 sixes on 10d6 are just ridiculous.

Now, some people believe for some reason that rolling more dice
makes the results more random rather than more average and predictable.
The math proves them wrong and a well designed experiment could prove
them wrong, so that is a counterfactual belief, but there are those who
do hold it.

Because Killing Attacks involve fewer dice than Normal Attacks,
if you have a Killing Attack that does approximately the same average
damage as a Normal Attack, it will be more "volatile." It is more likely
to get the very high rolls that are more likely to STUN, more likely to
seriously damage or disable the target (animate or inanimate target,)
more likely to do more damage than a living target can quickly RECover.
The fact that there will be an equal number of very low rolls is not a
corresponding disadvantage, because failing to penetrate defense by 1
point is the same as failing by 10 points or by 20 points. Failures are
all the same, but some successes are better than others, and Killing
Attacks are more likely to get the better successes. This is NOT the
result of the so-called STUN Lottery, but that much maligned mechanic
does make the situation even more extreme.

Now, some people will compare attacks by only comparing average
damage and not taking into account the fact that the more random or
volatile attack is actually superior at inflicting damage while still
doing the same average damage. This is overlooking something, or not
seeing the whole picture. I often do that myself, and I have been guilty
of some truly egregious examples of overlooking the obvious and of
focusing on one aspect of something and failing to see it in context.
But if something has been pointed out, it can't continue to be
overlooked can it?

Specific facts about Killing Attacks

Besides the superior dice rolling mechanic, Killing Attacks have
a kind of Attack Vs Limited Defense. The defenses that stop Killing
Attacks also stop Normal Attacks, but the defenses that stop Normal
Atttacks do not necessarily work against Killing Attacks. Further, the
defense against Killing Attacks is very significantly more expensive
than the defense against Normal Attacks. It has a +50% higher base cost.

Again, these are the facts as I see them and I don't see how
they can be disputed. Comparing the costs of PD, ED, Resistant Defense,
and Armor, and looking at the rules for how damage is applied, will bear
them out. I am very confident that I am correct about this.

And yet...and yet....there are people who insist that Killing
Attacks are not significantly superior to Normal Attacks of the same
point value/average damage.

People that I do not think are likely to hold counterfactual
beliefs, about either math and dice or about the rules. Nor do I think
them likely to have overlooked anything I have pointed out here.

I don't understand.

I also had a conversation last night, one that I found
disturbing and that also brought something into focus for me.

Someone I have a lot of respect for derided choosing a Killing
Attack over a Normal Attack due to its mechanical advantages as
"metagaming." He said "I choose the effect based on the SFX I want.

I said "But if one power is superior to the other - like an
Energy Blast with Explosion - you expect to pay more for it, don't you?"

His response was to deny that the Killing Attack is better than
the Normal Attack.

And I realize that I've seen this kind of thing many times on
the boards. I have seen so many complaints of "My players want to take
Killing Attacks!" People say "That's munchkin!" or "That's metagaming!"
"That's minimaxing!" etc. These complaints are important because they
demonstrate that the imbalance is not just a theoretical mathematical
issue or only a potential problem, but that it is a real and attested
issue causing problems in many games.

And yet if someone suggests that it would be logical to change
the costs of the powers to reflect that one is more effective than
another, the response is to deny that the Killing Attack IS superior to
the Normal Attack of the same Active Point value.

I find this kind of self-contradiction deeply troubling, especially in
people I respect as much as some of the people I'm describing.

If someone actually believed that the point costs of the powers
are currently balanced, they could not possibly accuse someone choosing
one power over the other of "metagaming" or "munchkinism." If there is
no advantage to the choice, there is nothing to object to in it. To make
that accusation is to say that the player's character is getting an
unfair advantage of some kind, like the character who has powers
"Only in Magnetic Field" and a sidekick who generates magnetic fields.
To even say "munchkin!" is admitting that the points AREN'T balanced,
that there's something wrong here.

But if someone knows that the imbalance is there - and they HAVE
to know about it to object to it - why would they object to suggestions
to fix the imbalance? And how can they possibly turn around and deny the
existence of an imbalance they have just acknowledged?

The contradiction here is glaring and stark, and I don't see a
way to resolve it.

Please don't just say "You're wrong!"

Please don't just say "There is no problem."

Please give me something I can make sense of.

Please don't post agreement with me or try to defend me either.
(If you want to express sympathy but can't actually help me understand
what I'm trying to understand, please send a private message.) I'm not
trying to start an argument, I'm not trying to insult anybody, I simply
want to understand how someone can possibly rationally justify a
position that seems so utterly untenable.

If there's something I'm overlooking, please try to explain it
to me. If there's a way to resolve what looks like paradox, please
explain it to me. And please bear with me, I know I can be obtuse.
Sometimes extremely dense.

The fact is, I....I just don't understand. And I want to try to
understand.

Lucius Alexander

Sometimes the palindromedary is not much help.

Crossposted from a thread I started. If you want to respond with an answer to my plea, please do so there.

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72047

PhilFleischmann

Apr 2nd, '09, 05:16 PM

I don't have anything to add to the issue of Killing Attacks specifically, but I do want to respond to this one part:

If you roll multiple dice, adding the numbers together to get a total, then the more dice you roll, the more the results are likely to be average. The extreme results become more and more unlikely. The odds of rolling 3 sixes on 3d6 are only 1 in 216, as I understand it. The odds of rolling 10 sixes on 10d6 are just ridiculous.

Now, some people believe for some reason that rolling more dice makes the results more random rather than more average and predictable. The math proves them wrong and a well designed experiment could prove them wrong, so that is a counterfactual belief, but there are those who do hold it.
This is really a semantic issue: it depends what you mean by "random" and "average". The average roll on 2d6 is 7, which comes up 1/6, or 16.7% of the time. The average roll on 4d6 is 14, which comes up 11.3% of the time. The average roll on 6d6 is 21, which comes up 9.3% of the time, and so forth. So the more dice you roll, the *less* likely you are to roll average.

OTOH, if you're talking about a fraction of the total range, say the middle third, that's a different thing. The range on 1d6 is 1-6, the middle third is 3-4, which comes up 1/3, or 33.3% of the time. The range on 4d6 is 4-24, the middle third is 11-17, which comes up 68.1% of the time. The range on 7d6 is 7-42, the middle third is 19-30, which comes up 81.2% of the time. So the more dice you roll, the *more* likely you are to roll in the middle third of the total range. (And in fact, the more likely you are to roll in the middle quarter, fifth, seventeenth, or whatever, of the range.)

ajackson

Apr 2nd, '09, 05:56 PM

This is really a semantic issue: it depends what you mean by "random" and "average".
In general, the absolute deviation is greater, the percentage deviation is lower, since the standard deviation scales with the square root of the number of dice.

It's also a slight error to say that greater variance is consistently better. With Hero damage mechanics, a certain part of the bottom of the curve is flattened out (if the target has 20 defenses, the defense between 5 damage and 19 damage is unimportant), but a certain part of the top of the curve is also flattened out (once you take the target below -10 stun, extra damage just isn't very important). Also, if you're looking for specific damage thresholds, such as stunning, greater variance is useful if that damage threshold exceeds the median damage, harmful if that damage threshold is less than the median. This is most visible against agents -- against agents with 10 defense and 25 stun, 12d6N will very consistently knock them out (and usually finish them off with knockback), 4d6K only has around a 50% chance of knocking them out, and will frequently fail to even stun them.

However, in the normal range of super vs super, killing is reliably preferable to normal.

Klaus Mogensen

Apr 3rd, '09, 01:12 AM

To handle the problem of more narrow ranges at higher DCs, I proposed some time ago to roll damage as 2d6-2d6 (read as now) + DC x (1 BODY + 3 STUN). This would ensure the same level of variation at all damage levels. KAs would probably be an advantage.

This is probably too broad a change to gain acceptance, but it would work.

- Klaus

Hugh Neilson

Apr 3rd, '09, 05:08 AM

Crossposting again...whatever will I do with my time when Steve locks these threads :o

Again, an option exists within the system that removes the stun lottery. The Stun Lotto is only an issue in games where Hit Locations are not used. If Hit Locations are used: No Stun Lotto. Further, the dichotomy between normal and killing damage and normal and resistant defenses is a useful notation, especially in down to earth genres where its more likely to matter. For a lot of genres tweaking options is easier and more useful than ripping out a mechanic and creating new advantages-limitations to simulate something that already exists. I think most of the comments than run against killing attacks as their own mechanic come from the filter of super-heroic and romantic cinematic style games where 1) the extant options (ergo, hit locations) run counter to the play style that best fits the genre, and 2) the genre devalues (on a conceptual level) killing attacks in the first place. Despite this, it doesn't change the fact that the current killing attack mechanic with the correct options applied models many heroic level genres with suitable verisimilitude. I think the solution you, and others, have proposed is an excellent genre specific method for cases where the current combat options (notably Hit Locations) don't fit. I do not think it would improve the system for all genres, however.

I find that Hit Locations tend to make killing attacks less of an issue, not because they change the multiples but because good hit locations for killing attacks also enhance damage from normal attacks.

When a normal attack getting a head shot doubles its STUN, a 5x multiple for killing attacks is reasonable by comparison. But when the normal attack can never be doubled, a 5x multiple for the KA one time in 6 becomes quite devastating by comparison.

If we were to modify killing attacks to be rolled more like normal attacks, reducing their volatility, the hit location table could apply the same multiples to both KA's and normal attacks, retaining the volatility that comes with a head shot versus a hand shot. In games where hit locations are not used, neither killing attacks nor normal attacks would possess this volatility.

Markdoc

Apr 3rd, '09, 06:35 AM

If we were to modify killing attacks to be rolled more like normal attacks, reducing their volatility, the hit location table could apply the same multiples to both KA's and normal attacks, retaining the volatility that comes with a head shot versus a hand shot. In games where hit locations are not used, neither killing attacks nor normal attacks would possess this volatility.

I'd like this. I'd like it a lot.

cheers, Mark

Klaus Mogensen

Apr 3rd, '09, 07:26 AM

I find that Hit Locations tend to make killing attacks less of an issue, not because they change the multiples but because good hit locations for killing attacks also enhance damage from normal attacks.

When a normal attack getting a head shot doubles its STUN, a 5x multiple for killing attacks is reasonable by comparison. But when the normal attack can never be doubled, a 5x multiple for the KA one time in 6 becomes quite devastating by comparison.

If we were to modify killing attacks to be rolled more like normal attacks, reducing their volatility, the hit location table could apply the same multiples to both KA's and normal attacks, retaining the volatility that comes with a head shot versus a hand shot. In games where hit locations are not used, neither killing attacks nor normal attacks would possess this volatility.
If we look at the hit location table, the average N STUN multiplier is exactly 1, while the average KA STUNx is 2.87 - higher than when rolling (2.67).

My proposal (voiced before) is to have a fixed STUNx of 3 for KAs when not using the hit location tabel. If we change the Hands and Feet STUNx from 1 to 2 and the Thighs STUNx from 2 to 3, we get an average of exactly 3. This would be nice, but not crucial.

Since these changes will make 1d6K do the exact same average STUN as 3d6N, 1d6K should cost more (since it requires special defenses vs. BODY, which it also does more of). Making 1d6K cost 20 points rather than 15 should take care of that.

- Klaus

Netzilla

Apr 3rd, '09, 07:54 AM

Second, I haven't run the numbers but I suspect that a 20 point per die Killing Attack will still be a better choice for knocking out moderately-armored foes than an equally priced Normal Attack. However, as I stated, this is supposition on my part. Hopefully I can run some numbers and post the results by this weekend. If I haven't done so by Saturday, someone PM me to remind me.

Okay, the idea of charging 20 points per die for Killing Attacks has been brought up again. I've never done an analysis of this method like I have for other methods

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1553378#post1553378
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566275#post1566275
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1566658#post1566658
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1567658#post1567658
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1656380#post1656380

So it's probably about time I did so (I know, you're all thrilled). Also, Klaus brought up the suggestion of combining this with a flat x3 multiplier instead of using the Stun Lotto or Hit Locations. I only chose to run the numbers for 20, 40 and 60 Active Points in order to keep the math fairly easy. These three points should give us a decent idea of how this method compares against Normal Attacks.

Now, for the boring statistical part:

****************
20 Active Points
****************
1d6 Killing 1d6 Killing 1d6 Killing
4d6 Normal w/ Hit Locs w/ 1d6-1 w/ x3
---------- ----------- ----------- -----------
Min BODY 0 (00.08%) 1 (16.67%) 1 (16.67%) 1 (16.67%)
Mode BODY 4 (35.03%) all all all
Max BODY 8 (00.08%) 6 (16.67%) 6 (16.67%) 6 (16.67%)
Mean BODY 4.0 3.5 3.5 3.5
Min STUN 4 (00.08%) 1 (01.10%) 1 (05.56%) 3 (16.67%)
Mode STUN 14 (11.27%) 12 (14.78%) 4 (11.11%) all
Max STUN 24 (00.08%) 30 (00.79%) 30 (02.78%) 18 (16.67%)
Mean STUN 14.0 10.02 9.33 10.5
Odds for 15.9% 15.49% 47.22% 16.67%
18+ STUN
Odds for 0% 1.57% 8.33% 0%
25+ STUN
Crossover* N/A 20 18 18

****************
40 Active Points
****************
2d6 Killing 2d6 Killing 2d6 Killing
8d6 Normal w/ Hit Locs w/ 1d6-1 w/ x3
---------- ----------- ----------- -----------
Min BODY 0 (00.0001%) 2 (02.78%) 2 (02.78%) 2 (02.78%)
Mode BODY 8 (24.50%) 7 (16.67%) 7 (16.67%) 7 (16.67%)
Max BODY 16 (00.0001%) 12 (02.78%) 12 (02.78%) 12 (02.78%)
Mean BODY 8.0 7.0 7.0 7.0
Min STUN 8 (00.0001%) 2 (00.18%) 2 (00.83%) 6 (02.78%)
Mode STUN 28 (08.09%) 24 (08.81%) 8 (06.48%) 21 (58.33%)
Max STUN 48 (00.0001%) 60 (00.13%) 60 (00.46%) 36 (02.78%)
Mean STUN 28.0 20.04 18.67 21.0
Odds for 6.07% 8.98% 40.74% 2.78%
36+ STUN
Odds for 0% 0.79% 4.63% 0%
49+ STUN
Crossover* N/A 35 35 36

****************
60 Active Points
****************
3d6 Killing 3d6 Killing 3d6 Killing
12d6 Normal w/ Hit Locs w/ 1d6-1 w/ x3
----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
Min BODY 0 (00.00000005%) 3 (00.46%) 3 (00.46%) 3 (00.46%)
Mode BODY 12 (19.97%) 10,11 (12.50%) 10,11 (12.50%) 10,11 (12.50%)
Max BODY 24 (00.00000005%) 18 (00.46%) 18 (00.46%) 18 (00.46%)
Mean BODY 12.0 14.0 14.0 14.0
Min STUN 12 (00.00000005%) 3 (00.03%) 3 (00.15%) 9 (00.46%)
Mode STUN 42 (06.65%) 24 (08.10%) 12 (04.94%) 30 (12.50%)
Max STUN 72 (00.00000005%) 90 (00.02%) 90 (00.08%) 54 (00.46%)
Mean STUN 42.0 30.06 28 10.5
Odds for 2.54% 6.04% 58.72% 00.46%
54+ STUN
Odds for 0% 0.44% 2.7% 00.00%
73+ STUN
Crossover* N/A 51 48 N/A

* Crossover is the point at which the Killing Attack is likely to equal or exceed
the STUN output of the normal attack.
My Observations:

At all levels, the Normal Attack exceeds the Killing Attack's Mode and Max BODY. The same is true for the Mean BODY except at 60 Active Points. This makes the Normal Attack superior at taking out hard targets (walls, Entangles, Force Walls, Automotons, Vehicles, etc). For example, against a 5 DEF fire door the 3d6 Killing Attack will average 5.5 BODY and against a 6 DEF entangle it will average 4.6 BODY. The 12d6 Normal Attack will average 7 and 6 respectively.

The Killing Attack always has a higher Min BODY.

The Normal Attack always has a higher Min, Mode and Mean STUN.

In all cases except the flat x3 Multiplier the Killing Attack is still capable of exceeding the max STUN output of the Normal Attack.

At both 20 and 40 Active Points all of the Killing Attacks are more likely to do 75+% of the Normal Attack's max STUN than the Normal Attack is. At 60 Active Points, this is no longer true for the flat x3 Multiplier but is still true for the Lotto and Hit Location varieties.

At 40 and 60 Active Points the Hit Location and Stun Lotto Killing Attacks have a Crossover Point that is less than 75% of the Normal Attack's max STUN. At 20 Active Points the Stun Lotto equals this point. The x3 Multiplier never manages this.

These last three points means that, while "gusting" is less extreme than with the current Killing Attack methods, it's still fairly reliable. The x3 method doesn't really "gust" but it's still more likely to hit the high end of the scale than the same AP Normal Attack.

So, let's look at how these perform against some actual targets:

Against a Viper Agent (13 CON, 12 BOD, 4 PD, 8 rDEF, 30 STUN)
* The 12d6 Normal Attack
Will average 30 STUN and 0.78 BODY.
Has a 99.99% chance to Stun and a 53.33% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 1 shot.
* The 3d6 Killing Attack w/ Stun Lotto
Will average 16.7 STUN and 6.04 BODY.
Has a 47.7% chance to Stun and a 23.38% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 1.8 shots.
* The 3d6 Killing Attack w/ Hit Locs
Will average 18.25 STUN and 6.04 BODY.
Has a 58.59% chance to Stun and a 20.08% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 1.6 shots.
* The 3d6 Killing Attack w/ x3
Will average 19.51 STUN and 6.04 BODY.
Has a 74.1% chance to Stun and a 16.2% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 1.5 shots.
Here we can see the Normal Attack retains a significant advantage vs agents.

Against Defender (30 CON, 12 BOD, 5 PD, 15 rDEF, 35 STUN)
* The 12d6 Normal Attack
Will average 22 STUN and 0.00001 BODY.
Has a 7.6% chance to Stun and a 1.66% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 1.6 shots.
* The 3d6 Killing Attack w/ Stun Lotto
Will average 11.6 STUN and 0.93 BODY.
Has a 12.96% chance to Stun and a 11.03% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 3 shots.
* The 3d6 Killing Attack w/ Hit Locs
Will average 11.9 STUN and 6.04 BODY.
Has a 8.64% chance to Stun and a 5.87% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 2.9 shots.
* The 3d6 Killing Attack w/ x3
Will average 11.89 STUN and 6.04 BODY.
Has a 1.9% chance to Stun and a 0% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 2.9 shots.
Here, all of the Killing Attacks average less STUN and more BODY than the Normal Attack. However, both the Lotto and Hit Location versions have a greater chance to Stun and One shot the target. So, the choice is a matter of how lucky you're feeling.

Against Mechanon (40 CON, 20 BOD, 30 rDEF, 90 STUN) (71; 120)
* The 12d6 Normal Attack
Will average 12.04 STUN and 0 BODY.
Has a 0.000004% chance to Stun and a 0% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 7.5 shots.
* The 3d6 Killing Attack w/ Stun Lotto
Will average 6.7 STUN and 0 BODY.
Has a 1.62% chance to Stun and a 0% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 13.4 shots.
* The 3d6 Killing Attack w/ Hit Locs
Will average 4.38 STUN and 0 BODY.
Has a 0.54% chance to Stun and a 0% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 20.5 shots.
* The 3d6 Killing Attack w/ x3
Will average 4.37 STUN and 0 BODY.
Has a 0% chance to Stun and a 0% chance to One Shot the target.
Will KO the target in an average of 20.6 shots.
In this case, the Normal Attack still retains a higher STUN average, but only the Killing Attacks (Lotto and Hit Location) have any real chance to Stun the target. The KA x3 is clearly the inferior choice of attacks vs a Normal Attacks. For the other to Killing Attacks, it's again a matter of how lucky you're feeling.

So, my overall conclusion is that upping Killing Attacks to 20 points per die does balance better against Normal Attacks (though it would almost have to if Killing Attacks are underpriced at 15 per). However, it's still odd that Normal Attacks become the superior means of dealing with hard targets (this definately would require a name change for the mechanic in my mind). Also, unless you also adopt the flat x3 Stun Multiplier, the "gusting" problem is retained even if it is lessened. Finally, this still doesn't address the fact that Killing Attacks are using mechanics unlike anything else in the system and as such stick out like a sore thumb and provide unneeded extra rules. This fix is definately better than doing nothing and better than some of the others offered, but I still think there are even better solutions that have been discussed.

Klaus Mogensen

Apr 3rd, '09, 02:09 PM

Okay, the idea of charging 20 points per die for Killing Attacks has been brought up again. I've never done an analysis of this method like I have for other methods
(analysis snipped)
It is worth noting that the killing attacks will kill agents with two average shots (though I suspect you didn't implement the BODYx from the hit location table, since the BODY average is identical for all modes). If you're going for kills (which you might in fantasy and horror campaigns), KAs are definitely best.

About normal attacks performing better vs. hard targets: Perhaps hard targets should not have fully resistant defenses. If they have, then no KA that is balanced with NA vs. typical character defenses (i.e., not fully resistant) will be as good as NAs vs. hard targets. If hard targets only have half resistant defense, KAs should perform fine.

It might be even better (though more complicated) to vary the amount of rDEF depending on the kind of hard target. For instance, against a stone wall, I would expect blunt attacks to do better than blades and bullets. Against a rope, OTOH, blades would far outperform blunt attacks.

Or drop rDEF altogether and simply let KAs be Armor-Piercing (BODY Only). Then all targets will automatically have half defenses vs. Killing BODY, unless they have hardened defenses. Armor-Piercing (BODY Only) might be a +1/4 advantage on NAs.

- Klaus

AnotherSkip

Apr 3rd, '09, 09:17 PM

Of course we could rename the mechanics if Normal Attacks do better at what Killing attacks are supposed to. :)

though the first fw times i mention a 12d6 Killing attack i'll b a little shocked...

The Main Man

Apr 3rd, '09, 10:32 PM

Lucius - I was there when those comments were made (I'll keep it anonymous since you seem to desire so), but I understood his comments as meaning that:

1) Killing attacks are in fact mechanically superior but

2) A player who chooses to design their powers with Killing attacks solely based off of their mechanical superiority is in fact metagaming because they are only thinking of the raw mechanics and not reasoning from effect enough.

I'm saying this because his comments were originally directed towards me, but perhaps the conversation went somewhere else after I had departed.

Klaus Mogensen

Apr 4th, '09, 12:59 AM

Lucius - I was there when those comments were made (I'll keep it anonymous since you seem to desire so), but I understood his comments as meaning that:

1) Killing attacks are in fact mechanically superior but

2) A player who chooses to design their powers with Killing attacks solely based off of their mechanical superiority is in fact metagaming because they are only thinking of the raw mechanics and not reasoning from effect enough.
As I understand Lucius, 2) is more: Players insist that Killing Attacks aren't mechanically superior and seem to believe this. Is there some disadvantage to KAs that the math doesn't show, but which players feel in play? Could the players actually be right?

- Klaus

Netzilla

Apr 4th, '09, 04:45 AM

(analysis snipped)
It is worth noting that the killing attacks will kill agents with two average shots (though I suspect you didn't implement the BODYx from the hit location table, since the BODY average is identical for all modes). If you're going for kills (which you might in fantasy and horror campaigns), KAs are definitely best.

Good point on how quickly KA kill as compared to the NA (though the KA is still more likely to get a KO than a Kill). I threw in the performance vs VA, Def and Mech at the last minute and I'm sure there's other comparisons I could have made but didn't think to.

As to the BODYx column of the Hit Locs table, no I didn't include that for 2 reasons. First, most folks advocating using the HL spread for the "Stun Lotto" seemed to be suggesting using it just for the StunX, not as a full adoption of the HL rules. Full adoption would require I also modify the NA with by its StunX column and I suspect a lot of players would balk at "having" to adopt the full HL rules if they became the new default. Second, it affects both NA and KA equally, so I don't think it would have changed the comparison much.

About normal attacks performing better vs. hard targets: Perhaps hard targets should not have fully resistant defenses. If they have, then no KA that is balanced with NA vs. typical character defenses (i.e., not fully resistant) will be as good as NAs vs. hard targets. If hard targets only have half resistant defense, KAs should perform fine.

It might be even better (though more complicated) to vary the amount of rDEF depending on the kind of hard target. For instance, against a stone wall, I would expect blunt attacks to do better than blades and bullets. Against a rope, OTOH, blades would far outperform blunt attacks.Some others have suggested moving away from the DEF-only method of giving inanimate objects defense. Personally, I like the current standard from the standpoint of it being 'quick-and-easy'. If common objects change to having multiple DEF values it just takes that much longer to look up and interpret as the GM. It's hardly a game-breaker for me, but it's not an idea I like.

Or drop rDEF altogether and simply let KAs be Armor-Piercing (BODY Only). Then all targets will automatically have half defenses vs. Killing BODY, unless they have hardened defenses. Armor-Piercing (BODY Only) might be a +1/4 advantage on NAs.I've never done an analysis of the AP advantage myself, but I know others have and if I recall correctly it's often worse than the full strength attack. It all depends on the relative DEF level of the campaign. Once you exceed a certain ratio, AP no longer helps you.

Say you've got 12d6 vs 8d6 AP vs 9.5d6 BODY-AP against a target with 24 DEF. The 12d6 will average 18 STUN and 0 BODY. The 8d6 AP will average 16 STUN and 0.003 BODY. The 9.5d6 BAP will average 9.5 STUN and 0.07 BODY. At only 2 DEF per DC, AP doesn't really provide much of an advantage.

Hugh Neilson

Apr 4th, '09, 05:18 AM

As to the BODYx column of the Hit Locs table, no I didn't include that for 2 reasons. First, most folks advocating using the HL spread for the "Stun Lotto" seemed to be suggesting using it just for the StunX, not as a full adoption of the HL rules. Full adoption would require I also modify the NA with by its StunX column and I suspect a lot of players would balk at "having" to adopt the full HL rules if they became the new default. Second, it affects both NA and KA equally, so I don't think it would have changed the comparison much.

Unfortunately, I think the reason KA's are not cited as a problem in genres and campaigns where the hit location rules are used is largely because normal attacks are also affected,and therefore a head hit from any kind of attack is devastating. Just switching from 1d6-1 to Hit Locations 3d6 roll won't markedly change the Stun Lotto. It probably would mean a lot more characters with, say, 8 PSL's to offset hit location penalties. That's pretty costly if the average attack is 6 DC's, but a lot more cost effective if we're up to 12DC's or more for an average attack.

I've never done an analysis of the AP advantage myself, but I know others have and if I recall correctly it's often worse than the full strength attack. It all depends on the relative DEF level of the campaign. Once you exceed a certain ratio, AP no longer helps you.

Say you've got 12d6 vs 8d6 AP vs 9.5d6 BODY-AP against a target with 24 DEF. The 12d6 will average 18 STUN and 0 BODY. The 8d6 AP will average 16 STUN and 0.003 BODY. The 9.5d6 BAP will average 9.5 STUN and 0.07 BODY. At only 2 DEF per DC, AP doesn't really provide much of an advantage.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the guys with high defenses often harden them because they don't want their advantage mitigated by AP or Penetrating attacks.

The Main Man

Apr 4th, '09, 12:27 PM

As I understand Lucius, 2) is more: Players insist that Killing Attacks aren't mechanically superior and seem to believe this. Is there some disadvantage to KAs that the math doesn't show, but which players feel in play? Could the players actually be right?

- Klaus

I understand where he is now, but (and this is getting a bit OT) but I simply stating my interpretation of the original comments.

Vulcan

Apr 4th, '09, 03:56 PM

Hugh Neilson

Apr 4th, '09, 04:12 PM

The advantage normal attacks have over killing attacks is consistency. You can generally count on a normal attack doing between 3 and 4 points of STUN per die. Killing attacks are much more variable because of the STUN multiple. The BODY roll will average between 3 and 4 points per die (but with significantly greater chance of higher and lower results because of the much lower number of dice rolled), but the STUN multiple could make that anything from 3 (3 BODY x 1 STUN) to 20 (4 BODY x 5 STUN) with a fairly flat distribution between them.

So what happens is that killing attacks have a 1 in 3 chance of bouncing entirely, a 1 in 3 chance of doing fairly average damage, and a 1 in 3 chance of doing massive amounts of STUN - far more than the equivalent normal attack is capable of, much less likely to do.

I am starting to lean toward the 'locked' STUN multiple of 3 as the proper solution. That way (for example) a 4d6 KA averages 14 BODY and 42 STUN on the average, vs. a normal 12d6 Attack averages 12 BODY and 42 STUN. The KA could do as much as 72 STUN - but so could the normal attack (the KA remains somewhat more likely to do so because of the lower dice rolled). However, the KA might also only do 12 STUN, just like the normal attack - and is also more likely to do so! :D

And that small amount of extra BODY from equivalent-point attacks is balanced by the KA rolling an extra die for Knockdown/back...http://www.herogames.com/forums/images/icons/icon28.gif

I don't agree that equal STUN is offset by loss of knockback. Knockback is primarily an issue in Supers games. A 12DC normal attack or killing attack will generally knock the target back, on average, 5" or 3.5" - both mean halved DCV. To me, that's pretty much equal.

As well, if you have a choice of steady damage rolls of, say, 39 to 45 STUN or getting 14, 14, 28, 42, 56 or 70, the latter is superior at Stunning the target, and as a result is superior. Against a target with 25 Defenses, the first approach gets 14 to 20 points through every time, average 17. The second gets 0, 0, 3, 17, 31 or 45, an average only 1 point lower but a 1 in 3 chance you'll stun a target of 30 or less CON. Volatility makes the KA a superior attack.

Having the occasional whiff isn't a big price to pay when you know it will take 3 or 4 hits to take down a typical target.

The Main Man

Apr 4th, '09, 04:16 PM

I figure that the x3 multiplier would be a sufficient change with the "STUN Lotto" being an alternative mechanic if the other (conform to Normal damage rolling) does not happen.

The idea is to alter the way one looks at it as being a flat modifier in absence of Hit Locations as opposed to an absence of dice rolling.

Vulcan

Apr 4th, '09, 07:30 PM

I don't agree that equal STUN is offset by loss of knockback. Knockback is primarily an issue in Supers games. A 12DC normal attack or killing attack will generally knock the target back, on average, 5" or 3.5" - both mean halved DCV. To me, that's pretty much equal.

Fair enough. Although I did mention knockdown as well... which result in much the same end result so I conceed the point.

As well, if you have a choice of steady damage rolls of, say, 39 to 45 STUN or getting 14, 14, 28, 42, 56 or 70, the latter is superior at Stunning the target, and as a result is superior. Against a target with 25 Defenses, the first approach gets 14 to 20 points through every time, average 17. The second gets 0, 0, 3, 17, 31 or 45, an average only 1 point lower but a 1 in 3 chance you'll stun a target of 30 or less CON. Volatility makes the KA a superior attack.

I think you misunderstand my proposal. The STUN multiple is fixed at 3. Period. So the volatility is provided by the (in the example) 4d6 rolled for BODY, and then that result is multiplied by 3. Yes, it is more volatile than (in the same example) 12d6 normal attack, as an artifact of rolling less dice. But it is way less volatile than the 1d6-1 STUN multiple of the existing rules.

Klaus Mogensen

Apr 5th, '09, 03:04 AM

I am starting to lean toward the 'locked' STUN multiple of 3 as the proper solution. That way (for example) a 4d6 KA averages 14 BODY and 42 STUN on the average, vs. a normal 12d6 Attack averages 12 BODY and 42 STUN. The KA could do as much as 72 STUN - but so could the normal attack (the KA remains somewhat more likely to do so because of the lower dice rolled). However, the KA might also only do 12 STUN, just like the normal attack - and is also more likely to do so! :D
And that small amount of extra BODY from equivalent-point attacks is balanced by the KA rolling an extra die for Knockdown/back...
As you example shows, a 4d6K will do the same average STUN and more average BODY than 12d6N. The extra BODY might be offset by reduced KB, as you say - but what about the fact that you need Resistant Defenses against KAs? That also needs to be offset.

At Netzilla shows, increasing the cost of 1d6K to 20 points (4 DCs) might make KAs a bit wimpier than NAs in terms of doing STUN to typical targets and in terms of doing BODY to fully resistant targets. The last problem will persist if the cost is increased above 15.

Something that might work would be to keep the cost at 15, but rework the STUNx die so that 1-2 means x2 and 3-6 means x3 - i.e., an average x2.667 multiplier. Then 4d6K would do an average of 14 BODY and 37.333 STUN; i.e., more BODY and less STUN than a NA.

Another is the make the STUNx a flat 3 and the cost 20 per d6, but say that typical entangles and dead objects only have halfway resistant defenses. This will make KAs do more BODY than NAs versus most targets, which offsets that they will do less STUN.

- Klaus

Hugh Neilson

Apr 5th, '09, 04:20 AM

Something that might work would be to keep the cost at 15, but rework the STUNx die so that 1-2 means x2 and 3-6 means x3 - i.e., an average x2.667 multiplier. Then 4d6K would do an average of 14 BODY and 37.333 STUN; i.e., more BODY and less STUN than a NA.

As a minimalist change solution, this works. It doesn't disturb the current averages, but it eliminates the extremes at both ends. It caps the KA's STUN at the same level as an equivalent normal attack. There's still some volatility in that a 4d6 KA will get that maximum 72 STUN 1 time in a bit under 2,000 rolls (the normal attack needs a bit over 2 billion rolls), but the violatility would be markedly reduced.

Advanced options could then include multiples of 1,2,3,3,3,4 or the d6-1, for those who want a lot more volatility, with a discussion on the impact this has on KA's becoming the "attack of choice" for getting STUN through to high defense targets.

Hit locations remains as a more "realistic" structure where ALL attacks - normal or killing - do more damage hitting certain locations and less damage hitting others

I like it - it resolves the issue with a minimum of change to the existing rules.

Vulcan

Apr 5th, '09, 01:16 PM

As you example shows, a 4d6K will do the same average STUN and more average BODY than 12d6N. The extra BODY might be offset by reduced KB, as you say - but what about the fact that you need Resistant Defenses against KAs? That also needs to be offset.

At Netzilla shows, increasing the cost of 1d6K to 20 points (4 DCs) might make KAs a bit wimpier than NAs in terms of doing STUN to typical targets and in terms of doing BODY to fully resistant targets. The last problem will persist if the cost is increased above 15.

Something that might work would be to keep the cost at 15, but rework the STUNx die so that 1-2 means x2 and 3-6 means x3 - i.e., an average x2.667 multiplier. Then 4d6K would do an average of 14 BODY and 37.333 STUN; i.e., more BODY and less STUN than a NA.

Another is the make the STUNx a flat 3 and the cost 20 per d6, but say that typical entangles and dead objects only have halfway resistant defenses. This will make KAs do more BODY than NAs versus most targets, which offsets that they will do less STUN.

- Klaus

Good point. I can go with either of those proposals.

IndianaJoe3

Apr 5th, '09, 03:28 PM

Time for my last thoughts on Powers (F-K).

Find Weakness
Find Weakness is now a Talent.

Images
Images now rely on ambient conditions to be perceived. They do not create light, and may require a PER roll to detect in adverse conditions.
Advantage: Easily Perceived (+1/4) – An Easily Perceived Image can be detected regardless of the ambient conditions (visible in a dark room or audible in a noisy crowd).
Limitation: Obvious (-1/2) – an Obvious Image is automatically recognized as an image without a Perception roll.

Killing Attack – Hand-To-Hand
The STUN Multiplier is fixed at 3.

Killing Attack – Ranged
The STUN Multiplier is fixed at 3.

The Main Man

Apr 5th, '09, 09:40 PM

My final $.02:

Killing Damage becomes a +0 Power Advantage (I prefer changing the name to "Lethal" but that's besides the point).

It is rolled and calculated just like Normal Damage but it instead requires Resistant Defenses to defend against.

It is a +0 Advantage because:
1) that's how it generally calculates out in 5ER
2) Killing is not always the answer

If that change is not made, then I think that the STUNx should be fixed at x3 with 1d6-1 being an alternative mechanic.
The idea is to present x3 as the Superheroic alternative to the Hit Location Chart, rather than the current presentation of x3 being an alternative to rolling 1d6-1.

I agree that Find Weakness should recede to being a Talent, but I also agree with the idea that Defenses are not the only thing that they work against, but each aspect should be purchased separately.

Hugh Neilson

Apr 6th, '09, 05:36 AM

Captain Crossposter Strikes Again!

Hit locations, and the associated chance of substantially increased damage, have never worked well when I've tried them in superheroic games, and that applies as much for normal attacks as killing attacks - suddenly everyone is a lot more fragile. If that is what you want, cool.

In most other genres, they work OK, but then what they do is change the dynamic of the game: you can trade OCV for more damage. PCs tend to be in the group with the highest DEX/skill, along with the major villains, so most mooks are unlikely to be able to take advantage of hit location rules, which is why they cause less of a problem. Bear in mind though that, even in a hit location game you do not have to specify a location for your aim - you can just take the random roll - and that has pretty similar chances of causing high damage as 1d6-1.

I find the problem is that, without hit locations, only KA's gain the opportunity to do increased damage. When a normal attack also gets a boost from a head shot, the playing field between the two is more level.

To the fragility problem, one could use the hit location rules in a Supers game with the proviso that they affect only STUN and not BOD, damage. Thus, the head shot would have a much better chance to stun or KO, but would (as the source material does) leave the target unconscious, not dead.

Another point on hit locations: I think that, if we have them, there should be one or more powers that mitigate their effects, perhaps done through the life support rules:

Opening automaton powers up for general purchase would allow this to be addressed. Their pricing would need re-examination as they would see more common use, but that's fine.

Lucius

Apr 11th, '09, 01:22 PM

The Main Man

Apr 11th, '09, 03:58 PM

Belated comment on Killing Attacks:

This idea has come up from time to time over the years, as we've endlessly discussed what to do about the Killing/Normal problem, but I don't remember seeing it in these 6th Edition Forums:

While my own preferred solution is to make Normal a Limitation, one benefit of having Killing as an Advantage, Adder, or the like, is that it could then be applied to other powers, like Flash for example, so that instead of "counting Body" it would be "counting pips."

And then of course it would be possible to stack Penetrating on Flash as well.

Lucius Alexander

Counting palindromedaries.

OT1H, you make a compelling point.

But OTOH, I think that if Killing attacks are relatively unaltered, then Flash could conform to it.

That actually would be kind of neat now that I think of it.

1d6 of Flash costs 15 CP, 1/2d6 costs 10CP, and 1 pip costs 5 CP.

You roll the Flash dice and that's the number of segments that the Target is flashed - no need to mention BODY whatsoever now that I think about it.

Klaus Mogensen

Apr 12th, '09, 02:12 AM

Some thought about STUN damage and BODY damage:

1 point of STUN costs one character point. 1 point of BODY costs one character point if you buy the figured STUN back. IOW, BODY and STUN cost the same. The difference is that BODY damage is more deadly and takes far longer to heal.

Since they cost the same, you would imagine that characters would want much more BODY than STUN, yet this is not the case. Only a couple of the Champions 4e sample characters have BODY > 15 (not even Mechanon or Ogre!), and most have BODY 9-12.

The reason is simple: A typical attack does about 3 times as much STUN as BODY, but this damage is applied against the same defenses. If you have decent protection against STUN, you're not likely to take BODY damage.

I have used this as an argument to split defenses in Body Defense and Stun Defense (BD and SD) rather than PD and ED. However, the thought could be taken a step further. Since losing BODY is so much worse than losing STUN, shouldn't BODY (and BD) be more precious than STUN (and SD)?

Perhaps BODY should cost 2 points without adding to STUN, and BD should cost 3 points (+1 for Resistant).

Armor should thus cost 4 points per +1 BD and 2 points per +1 SD, and Force Field half that. This means that Armor that subtracts 1 point from the STUN and BODY from all physical and energy damage will cost twice what it does now. However, (1) I expect most will choose to buy only about half as much BD as SD, and (2) I think defenses now are too cheap compared to STUN and REC.

In support of (2): Let's say that a character is hit three times in a turn by attacks that do 5 STUN through defenses. He could be protected from this by buying +5 PD, +5 PD, which currently costs 10 points, or he could buy +15 STUN, +15 REC, which currently costs 45 points. Now, which do you suppose he buys? Sure, REC has other uses, and STUN also protects against NND and AVLD attacks, and it isn't at half value against armor-piercing attack, but even so, defensens seems a much better deal (particularly as they also protect against BODY).

- Klaus