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Rules that make no sense, make the most sense


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Fantasy Hero Complete pg 186:

"If a character’s STUN total is reduced to zero or below (whether by one attack or multiple attacks) he is Knocked Out. A character can be Stunned or Knocked Out; not both (the Knockout condition “overrides” the Stunned condition)."

 

Pretty sure this has been explicitly stated in every version of the rules since at least 5Er and I think it was the same in 4E as well.

 

Your brother is right to be frustrated. Being Knocked Out already has a specific mechanic to determine how fast you recover.

 

 

I think most characters will be severely limited by having at most one RECovery worth of END to use after being Knocked Out.  They can easily Knock themselves Out again by just spending too much END and burning STUN as its replacement.

 

3e and 4e Champions were different.  5e & 5er show the change.

 

Champions 3e page 76 shows:

If a hero is both Stunned and Knocked Out by the same attack, he spends his next Phase recovering from being Stunned and does not get a Recovery that Phase.

 

Hero System 4e page 161 shows:

A character who is both Stunned and Knocked Out by the same attack spends the next Phase recovering from being Stunned and does not get a Recovery that Phase, even if he would have normally.

 

5e page 274 and 5er page 412 both show:

A character who’s both Stunned and Knocked Out by the same attack begins taking Recoveries in his next full Phase; he does not have to spend a Phase recovering from being Stunned (that’s part of waking up from being Knocked Out).
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I think most characters will be severely limited by having at most one RECovery worth of END to use after being Knocked Out.  They can easily Knock themselves Out again by just spending too much END and burning STUN as its replacement.

 

3e and 4e Champions were different.  5e & 5er show the change.

 

[cut]

 

Hero System 4e page 161 shows:

A character who is both Stunned and Knocked Out by the same attack spends the next Phase recovering from being Stunned and does not get a Recovery that Phase, even if he would have normally.

 

[cut]

To pick a nit, the text for 3E and 4E both say, "both Stunned and Knocked Out by the same attack." It is very possible that the attack that knocks a character out is not the attack that stunned them. So, as written, it does not say that the character loses their recovery that phase unless both criteria are met in a single attack.

 

I don't remember how my gaming groups used to actually play that.

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To pick a nit, the text for 3E and 4E both say, "both Stunned and Knocked Out by the same attack." It is very possible that the attack that knocks a character out is not the attack that stunned them. So, as written, it does not say that the character loses their recovery that phase unless both criteria are met in a single attack.

 

I don't remember how my gaming groups used to actually play that.

 

It really shouldn't matter. 

 

4e page 160 shows:

Regardless of how severely the character has been Knocked Out, he cannot do anything except recover.

 

Technically, Recovering from being Stunned is a distinct Action separate from taking a Recovery (at least according to 5e and 6e).

 

6e2 page 106 shows:

Regardless of how severely the character’s been Knocked Out, he cannot do anything except take Recoveries. He can take his first Recovery on his next full Phase (unless he’s deeply unconscious; see below) at the end of the Segment (after all other characters who have a Phase that Segment have acted). However, he cannot take a Recovery in the Segment in which he was Knocked Out, even if he had a Phase that Segment which had not yet been used. A character who’s Knocked Out must take Recoveries every Phase (or as often as allowed to) until his STUN total is greater than zero. When his STUN total is positive, the character wakes up, and can take whatever Actions he wants to.

....

A character who’s both Stunned and Knocked Out by the same attack (or who’s Stunned by one attack and Knocked Out by another in the same Phase) begins taking Recoveries in his next full Phase; he doesn’t have to spend a Phase recovering from being Stunned (that’s part of waking up from being Knocked Out).

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...

 

The principle behind using the Attacks of Opportunity-like rule in Hero is that if you watch a fight on a map, people teleport about rather than move smoothly and constantly. Everyone is supposed to be moving around and fighting at the same time, and not jumping about phase by phase.  But in terms of game play, they teleport about.  Because of this, people blast past other targets regularly and comfortably in combat.  The ignoring opponents rule only works with people who have held phases or move soon, and generally they're busy enough not to attack you anyway.  It sort of works, but I've found that players appreciate the device, as it prevents bad guys from just brushing past them and taking off without any real consequence.

 

Now, you could in theory come up with a way of making people move very small increments over time so it looks more constant - Aces & Eights did that and it was... nearly unplayable.

 

I think this illustrates a need to define the HERO Turn as the better equivalent to other system's default 'Round' of combat.  It would remind folks that they are nit-picking seconds and possibly speed up combat in the process.

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It really shouldn't matter. 

 

4e page 160 shows:

 

Technically, Recovering from being Stunned is a distinct Action separate from taking a Recovery (at least according to 5e and 6e).

 

6e2 page 106 shows:

Re: It shouldn't matter

Why not? You're quoting the rule as it is different from 5E/6E. It makes a very clear statement about both conditions applying and how that requires recovering from being stunned,

 

Re: 4E p160

That doesn't refute or support anything that you or I have written regarding the Stunned and/or Knocked Out portion, so I'm not sure if that's really the quote you were looking for.

 

Re: "technically" and 6E2 p106

I wasn't commenting about 5E or 6E, so I don't find that to be persuasive regarding the 3E/4E RAW. I do agree that in 5E and 6E they are separate; I also agree that the newer rules have stated a difference in handling Stunned and/or Knocked Out--which is the start of this whole thing.

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The setup (using 3e rules) - A SPD 4 character takes damage on Phase 3 before his DEX.

If he takes more Stun than his CON he is Stunned and will lose his Phase 3 action due to the mandatory requirement to Recover from being Stunned.  He will get to act normally on his DEX on Phase 6.

If he takes additional Stun equal to or greater than his remaining Stun before his DEX on Phase 3 he is Knocked Out. He will remain so until he takes enough Recoveries to be at a positive Stun total.  

He will NOT get a recovery on Phase 6 however.  

Any recoveries besides the Free/Automatic Post Phase 12 Recovery require that the character take 0 damage that Phase.

If his negative Stun Total is less than his REC he will hit a positive Stun value on his DEX on Phase 9.  He will get no other action that Phase.

Being Knocked Out, even if by separate attacks, is always going to be worse than being Stunned.

THIS is what I meant by "it really doesn't matter".  A character will usually be so screwed by getting Knocked Out that any additional Phase lost due to being Stunned has little difference from being at a greater negative Stun total.

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Very few RPGs get past the difficulties of turn-based combat. They are, after all, derived from a history of miniatures warfare where turns were inherent. The few that attempt to address it (Aces & Eights, Runequest, Star Fleet Battles) mostly do it simply by reducing it down to smaller and smaller ticks of the clock. If you ever want to hear a rant on the subject. Youtube RPG/fantasy commenter Lindybeige is good for an hour or more of amusement.

When all is said and done, "Realtime" computer games are just really, really small turns that do not wait for user input. 20 per second is a common figure for RTS games. FPS use anything from 10-100 UPS.

But that obviously can not be applied to a P&P session. If nothing else, tracking all this would become to much of an accounting to make fun.

 

Another system that tries to break movement out of the turn based approach is Shadowrun. There movement is is measured in meters per turn. With you spending a chooseable amount of actions per action phase to maintan the speed/simulate the focus of needed to run.

The tracking of movement is accordingly difficulty.

 

But could we perhaps get back to the original thematic and not discuss the differences in Stun+KO mechanic for the different editions?

 

The OP was:

Title: "Rules that make no sense, make the most sense"

Content:

 There is a standing rule that the special effect does not change the game effect of a power. Yet often we have question if the answer would be different if the power had "Special Effect X"?

When we say 'no' we get reactions like "but that does not make sense". The thing is, nobody ever said it was supposed to make sense! Making sense is the last thing rules are supposed to do.

 

Rules job is not to make sense. Rules job is to make the game balanced:

An RPG session is not like a Book or Film.

- A book has one Author that controlls the environment, the antagonists and the protragonists.

- A RPG sessions has one Author that controlls the environment and antagonists (the GM). And several authors each controling an protagonist (Players).

Multiple Authors invarriably lead to conflicts of interest. Those have to be solved in a somewhat fair manner. We invented game rules (and keep using them) to disolve these conflicts of interest.

 

Rules that don't make sense, get sense invented for them:

D&D has a rule that mages can not wear armor without affecting spellcasting.

In Shadowrun loosing essence to cyberware drops your magic and technomancy atributes.

These rules have been established as far back as the 1st editions. In the current day when the rule is talked about they lead with the explanation. The explanation has become an integral part of the whole world. So much it is hard to translate adventures into rulesets that don't have similar rules.

 

But the real reason the rule exists in the first place? Balance.

The Rules about Essence and Magic was invented because a point bought resource (magic) and a money bought resoruce (cyberware) should not be allowed to stack. It would create inbalanced characters. After it had been invented, sense was invented for it. They never found a way to repalce them with something better, so nowadays it is such an integral part of the game world nobody would even dare to ask "why?"

D&D solved the same issue (just replace cyberware with magic items) by inventing different kinds of bonuses and apply a "highest only" policy for each "class" of bonus.

 

The rule was thought up for balance. It did not make sense other then for balance. So it got sense invented for it.

Once a sense get's invented, there is going to be feedback with the adventures. I know of several D&D adventures where the inability to cast a certain spell due to level constraints or do something due to stacking rules was an integral plot point.

 

Hero rules are likely to not make sense and you can not really invent sense for them:

Because Hero is a toolkit for making settings, it is not tied to any one world. There is not "one" hero world or a handfull of distince hero "settings" like for Shadowrun and D&D. That means for most hero rules it is impossible to invent ingame reasons.

If people try it is most often using the Superheroic or Fantasy settings.

 

Other game examples:

There are many D&D GMs that can not wrap thier head around Attacks of Opportunity. I had at least two of them in my early P&P times. AoO was invented for balance reasons. But they never provided a proper ingame explanation that could be accepted by everyone.

In an odd way the rule about Cyberware and Essence makes more sense then Attack of Opportunity. Because magic/technomancy and Cyberentics are both unknown fields. So we can accept any balancing rule in that area as "fluff" or "setting rule", without even realising it was invented for a totally different reason...

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When all is said and done, "Realtime" computer games are just really, really small turns that do not wait for user input. 20 per second is a common figure for RTS games. FPS use anything from 10-100 UPS.

But that obviously can not be applied to a P&P session. If nothing else, tracking all this would become to much of an accounting to make fun.

 

Another system that tries to break movement out of the turn based approach is Shadowrun. There movement is is measured in meters per turn. With you spending a chooseable amount of actions per action phase to maintan the speed/simulate the focus of needed to run.

The tracking of movement is accordingly difficulty.

 But could we perhaps get back to the original thematic and not discuss the differences in Stun+KO mechanic for the different editions?

 The OP was:

[cut an unnecessary copy of the original post]

The rules are mechanics. Sorry if that de-railed the thread. I'll go elsewhere.

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I'm relatively new to HERO, but based on my experience with similar systems, such as M&M, I tend to straddle the line for special effects: Generally, no, you won't get any bonuses or penalties for shooting fire from your hands vs lightning (unless an enemy has vulnerabilities or the like), however, if you have an especially interesting idea, I'll allow it on rare occasions, since the one big thing that I feel HERO lacks, especially with its basis in Superhero RPGs, is a way to pull off one-off 'power stunts' which are fairly in genre, and I think the "power" skill is a poor way of doing it.

 

As for some of the other stuff in the rest of your post, I feel like I agree to only a certain extent. Yes, some rules are done for balance, but many rules are to enforce genre conventions, whether or not "Balance" is a factor. With a look at D&D, the rules about wizards casting in armor aren't really there for balance. Not when spells and magical items exist which do basically the same thing as having armor does. It's there because Gandalf and Merlin and the like never wore armor.

 

As for AoOs, I don't understand what there's not to get about them: when I first read the rules for them, my first reaction was "Ok, that makes sense. You shouldn't just be able to run past the fighter without any penalty, or cast or shoot a bow, or the like". It feels very much like a blend of balance, yes, but also genre conventions, even if the specified genre convention is only class-based fantasy RPGs (Because D&D, at least for me, no longer represents fantasy but its' own thing).

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Special effects not granting bonuses makes perfect sense to me.

 

In a generic system, potentially covering all genres and all settings, powers will inherently function differently, and so they must be purchased to do what you want them to do.

 

I remember a guy at our local game store who was convinced that telekinesis was the greatest power in the world, because you could just reach into your opponent's brain and give him an aneurism with the tiniest amount of force. I don't know why he decided TK worked that way, but that was his vision of the power. My view of the power was far far more limited. Which of us is right? Both of us are right -- we can each have the power we want when we build our characters. We just have to pay to see our particular vision in the game.

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I remember a guy at our local game store who was convinced that telekinesis was the greatest power in the world, because you could just reach into your opponent's brain and give him an aneurism with the tiniest amount of force.

That reminds me of something that might finally be a good example for what I tried to say.

D&D Cantrip abuse:

http://ffn.nodwick.com/?p=1296

 

The "can't use cantrips to attack people" rule was clearly there for balance. A 0th grade spell doing even 3d6 would be quite a big deal (on the levels where cantrip abuse is relevant). The rule was never quite explained other then "for balance".

And in the comments alone you can see people arguing - even being confused why people would not totally agree with them - on keeping to that clear balance rule.

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 I don't know why he decided TK worked that way, but that was his vision of the power.

 

The psionic characters in the Asimov Robot/Empire/Foundation superseries could kill people by creating a small build-up of heat in people's brain. It's not unheard of. As long as he wasn't like "you said my character had telekinesis, give me my instant death ability!" it's pretty reasonable. Just make him add that to his TK multipower if done in Hero. It'd would be an ACV, AVAD, Does Body, RKA with Limitation (requires called shot to head), possibly RSR(anatomy), and limitation (only works on creatures with brains). Pay the points and you can do anything. :-)

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The psionic characters in the Asimov Robot/Empire/Foundation superseries could kill people by creating a small build-up of heat in people's brain. It's not unheard of. As long as he wasn't like "you said my character had telekinesis, give me my instant death ability!" it's pretty reasonable. Just make him add that to his TK multipower if done in Hero. It'd would be an ACV, AVAD, Does Body, RKA with Limitation (requires called shot to head), possibly RSR(anatomy), and limitation (only works on creatures with brains). Pay the points and you can do anything. :-)

 

Here's one of the reasons that I am starting to adore HERO. Because you could have both kinds of telekinetics in the same game, and it works fine. My power is not necessarily your power, and so forth. 

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In the Hero System, the Telekinesis power is simply STR at Range at its most fundamental. The problem with using it to cause an aneurism is that the target blood vessels aren't visible to the attacker, nor are they really "reachable" in a conventional sense. Consequently, something other than vanilla TK has to be used to represent this power.

 

It would probably make more sense to use basic TK to simply crush someone's skull, as that's mostly just a called shot to the head. I don't imagine that a bunch of CSLs "Only with TK to offset called shot to the head" would add much to the cost of this power. Of course, it doesn't exactly match the prescribed effect, but maybe a charitable GM would allow the SFX to be "aneurism" instead of "crushed skull".

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There is a standing rule that the special effect does not change the game effect of a power. Yet often we have question if the answer would be different if the power had "Special Effect X"?

When we say 'no' we get reactions like "but that does not make sense". The thing is, nobody ever said it was supposed to make sense! Making sense is the last thing rules are supposed to do.

For effects that are too minor to represent with a Modifier, or that can reasonably expect to balance out (other Special Effects would grant similarly useful effects and/or a benefit is matched with a penalty,) then Special Effects can have an impact.

 

For benefits or penalties that are not so balanced or not so minor, then the Power should be built to account for those facts with appropriate Advantages, Limitations, etc.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Special Effect: Palindromedary

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Most GMs I played with allowed the environment to provide all kinds of "free powers" to any character, hero or villain, that thought to (and could) take advantage of them. For example, if a fight takes place around barrels of kerosene and a flame blaster thinks to ignite one with his Fireball power, then guess what...an ad hoc continuous AoE attack (burning pool of kerosene) suddenly appears on the battlefield "for free".

 

Much of the fun of Champions combat comes from figuring out how to gain advantages through creative use of the environment. It's a good habit to get into because you can be sure that any GM worth his salt is going to have his villains taking advantage of it...

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I know it's in The Ultimate Energy Projector.

Which also had suggested Advantages and Limitations for those Special Effects that, on the whole, are more or less advantageous - although that would be a very setting dependent judgment call.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Palindromedary (+1)

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It all depends on how details a GM and Players want the builds on the character sheets to really be.

 

Mundane example - Bullets.

 

For all practical purposes bullets fire from a gun should use some form of IPE vs. Sight.  A deaf character on a battlefield is not going one unless they see the muzzle flash of the weapon or a ricochet near them.

 

Does it come up often?  Probably not but it's one of those "common sense" things that most GM's would rule on in the moment during a game without a second thought.

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I disagree, Hyper. You need to see the source (gun, muzzle flash) and you need to see where it hit (hole in target, falling body, spray of blood, etc.) There is nothing in the rules that specifically states that it needs to be seen throughout the travel process.

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I disagree, Hyper. You need to see the source (gun, muzzle flash) and you need to see where it hit (hole in target, falling body, spray of blood, etc.) There is nothing in the rules that specifically states that it needs to be seen throughout the travel process.

Indeed. The visibiltiy rules only are concerned with the source, the target and that a power was used being "obvious". Plus some inaccurate data about magnitude.

Your power can be invisible to the naked eye. As long as it is still OBVIOUS to the naked eye that it was used, that you used it and what the target was (within normal rules for sightranges and firing ranges), seeing the bullet/projectile/energy/whatever is not nessesary.

 

I consider "Jedi Force Push" to be obvious. While it is not a visible "field" or "hand" grabbing around it and barely audible, it is still obvious to everyone seeing the Jedi and what he moved.

So Jedi TK is plain TK. Invisible as a bullet, but still plain TK without any IPE advantages.

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So, do you let a character who can "hear" the gunshot but didn't see the shooter or the muzzle flash get full DCV or make an attempt to Dodge the attack?  Note that some bullets go FASTER than the speed of sound (they could potentially arrive at the target before the sound they made leaving the gun that fired them).

 

And what happens if my Jedi happens to wear some type of invisibility cloak?   Sure seems like he would be getting IPE on his TK "for FREE".

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I'm not sure what you're point about not seeing the gunman or the muzzle flash is. If someone walks up behind you and stabs you in the back you are at 1/2 DCV for being Surprised despite being hit with an OBVIOUS Accessible Focus. How is getting shot at by someone you didn't see any different? Powers being percievable doesn't mean everyone magically is aware of every attack before it hits them.

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