Why is Speed so unpopular?

[phoenix240]

Outside of the Hero System community mostly. The Speed mechanic and its function seem to be one of the primary complaints brought up by people that don't care for the Hero System aside from the math and perceived complexity of play and character generation. It's never really seemed that complicated to me and has even proven very smooth in online play. Juggling initiative mechanics can be a real pain in PBEM/PbP.

[NuSoardGraphite]

It's too predictable. That's the main complaint I've seen. Other than that, I don't really see any flaws in it. It's one of my favorite aspects of HERO and one of the deciding factors when I chose it as my system of choice.

[Lucius]

I suggest you ask the people it's unpopular with. If I make a guess why they don't like it, I'm just guessing.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary thinks I should guess anyway

[sinanju]

"Too predictable" is not a complaint I've seen. The one I've most often encountered is the difficulty of keeping of who goes when. Which, yes, in theory can be done easily enough if you use some kind of chart. But which in practice, in games I've seen or played in sometimes, proves troublesome. People (players or sometimes NPCs) get overlooked when their segment comes around, only to realize too late that they missed their phase.

There's also the issue of a potential wide disparity in a player's involvement in the game. Especially if he's new to the game and doesn't grok the importance of speed, he could find himself sitting through long stretches of combat with nothing to do while players with considerably faster characters are busily engaged in smiting the bad guys.

But really, the guy in our gaming group who least likes Champions (we play it sometimes, in rotation with GURPS, Fudge, Seventh Sea, D&D and other systems) doesn't care for that--but has more issues with calcuating OCV & DCV and counting the stun and body on large handfuls of dice, and comparing it to defenses which can vary dramatically from one character to another (or on the SAME character, depending on what kind of attack it is). I think he has a point, frankly, but I still enjoy the game.

[phoenix240]

I suggest you ask the people it's unpopular with. If I make a guess why they don't like it, I'm just guessing.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary thinks I should guess anyway

Generally they are

1. Unpleasant to deal with.

2 I have and the answers have been variation on "It suxxors!!!!1111eleven..."

And I was also curious what people in the community felt about the situation and if my experiences were unusual or fairly common as far as that goes.

Edit: To be fair, when I can get a civil answer its often something like it slows down game play which I really haven't seen, at least not anymore than other initiative systems.

[Bloodstone]

Not exactly my favorite mechanic when you have to change it in mid combat.

The Speed chart isn't exactly the most intuitive thing to learn. I remember the first time one of my fellow player spent XP and bumped up from a 4 SPD to a 5, expecting to just get 1 more phase to act on. They were not expecting the middle phases they acted on to actually change.

I also remember there was quite a lot of confusion with held actions and aborting when we first started playing...

[Doc Democracy]

I think that the easy way of doing SPD is to give every player a a green ticket which means they are free to act. When they act they give the ticket to the GM who keeps track of the phases and returns the ticket when the character is able to act again. It is easy for the players as they know when they have a ticket they can act.

The GM is usually the most aware of the system (though a more experienced player could administer player phases leaving the GM free to do villain stuff).

Doc

[CrosshairCollie]

I just took some index cards and wrote down, in thick black marker, which segments each speed acts on, but them where everybody can see them, and flip them as we move through segments, and count down DEX. It's usually not even that necessary, as we only have to track speeds 5-7 (with a very rare 4) in superhero games, and 3-4 in heroic games. I consider the predictability of the Speed Chart to be a feature, not a bug. I like it that way.

[Lucius]

I think that the easy way of doing SPD is to give every player a a green ticket which means they are free to act. When they act they give the ticket to the GM who keeps track of the phases and returns the ticket when the character is able to act again. It is easy for the players as they know when they have a ticket they can act.

The GM is usually the most aware of the system (though a more experienced player could administer player phases leaving the GM free to do villain stuff).

Doc

That's the ticket!

But personally I plan to run Heroic games in which all the player characters will have SPD 3 and opposition will range from 2 to 4.

As for reasons to dislike it - I do find that the way SPD interacts with Movement can confuse people. Even experienced players will assume "One character has a Run of 8 m and the other of 12; the second character is faster" when if their SPDs are 3 and 2 they have the same ground speed, and if the first has SPD 4 the second character is actually slower.

Lucius Alexander

I have a ticket to ride a palindromedary

Lucius Alexander

[Derek Hiemforth]

Speed reminds me of the famous Winston Churchill quote about democracy ("It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.") Yes, SPD has some flaws (predictability, artificiality, weirdness with segmented movement). The only thing it really has going for it is that it works better than any of the alternatives I've ever seen for simulating how some characters take more actions than others in the same amount of time.

[Clonus]

Outside of the Hero System community mostly. The Speed mechanic and its function seem to be one of the primary complaints brought up by people that don't care for the Hero System aside from the math and perceived complexity of play and character generation. It's never really seemed that complicated to me and has even proven very smooth in online play. Juggling initiative mechanics can be a real pain in PBEM/PbP.

I'm not all that good at organization and that mean that I had trouble as a GM keeping track of when everyone moved.

[Shiva13]

In my experience, SPD is the most abused characteristic in the system. It is the most prone to getting artificially inflated, simply over a player's desire to have their character act more in a turn. Instead of actually giving a care to actually the game's scaling.

This causes innumberable problems with actually running a game in the Hero System. It slows things down dramatically, to compensate for those artificially inflated SPD scores. And it starts a SPD arms race that the GM finds themselves having to play "keep up" with just to make adiquate challenges for the PCs.

Let's look at the game's scaling. Every 5 points spent on a characteristic is a doubling on the scale. And since SPD is 10 points a pop, that means a SPD 5 actually represents 4 times the ability to act as a SPD 4. Pretty significant overall.

SPD inflation breaks the system.

[Escafarc]

Well, I would tell Speed not to worry about it. When he grows up he'll be a great race car driver and have a cute girl friend named Trixie.

[Hyper-Man]

That's the ticket!

But personally I plan to run Heroic games in which all the player characters will have SPD 3 and opposition will range from 2 to 4.

As for reasons to dislike it - I do find that the way SPD interacts with Movement can confuse people. Even experienced players will assume "One character has a Run of 8 m and the other of 12; the second character is faster" when if their SPDs are 3 and 2 they have the same ground speed, and if the first has SPD 4 the second character is actually slower.

Lucius Alexander

I have a ticket to ride a palindromedary

Lucius Alexander

And this was one of the situations that the optional Velocity Factor rules were created to help deal with.

[Greywind]

Speed kills.