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SPD and the NCM-Capped Superhero


Scott Anderson

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You are soliciting characters for a 200 points + maximum of 150 points in Disadvantages superhero campaign.  A player has made up a superhero who takes NCM (and if it matters, one level of Age) to represent a very spry old crime fighter. Would you allow him to take

 

+1 SPD, only 3/4 of the time 

 

to represent a martial artist who has lost a few steps?  The rationale is he needs to stop and take it a little slower on the second full Turn out of every four.  Or does this construction invalidate the NCM Disadvantage?  Flavor-wise, both the limited SPD and the NCM + Age make sense, but they seem to run counter to each other.

 

If you do allow it, is this a (-1/4) or a (-1/2)?  I am leaning toward a (-1/4), and I may even make it the first full Turn that the character is SPD 4.

 

What do you think?

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Okay, here's what I ended up suggesting:

 

The character buys his 5th SPD point for the normal 20 Character Points with NCM.  He balances that with the following Disadvantage:

 

Physical Limitation: Drain 2D6 SPD each Post Segment 12 Recovery.  (Frequently, Slightly Impairing, x2 Severity), awarding 20 points.

 

Does this seem right, from a Character Point standpoint?  Obviously the 5th point of SPD is right, but is the Physical Limitation about right too?

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Anything that could possibly change the spd chart in combat is miserable to GM. Save yourself the grief don't allow it. Also nix NCM it sounds like he wants the the Disad points, but not take the consequences.

 

If the PC gets tired every 12 seconds, then perhaps buy Str, Movement, Attacks etc. -1/4 limitation double end cost every other turn.

 

for a disad one could take suceptability. 4d6 end drain every turn after the first turn. Starts after PC goes 5 phases without taking a full recovery.

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In 6ed, Age and Normal Characteristic Maximum does not exist. There are many examples in fiction of old characters who can run circles around young whipper snappers. Lisa Lisa, old Joshap Jostar (I know I butchered his first name), Hopisai (another butchered name), Cologne: all are "old" and still can fight (heck, Lisa Lisa even still looks in her twenties but is in reality about fifty).

 

So, in short, the character can be as old as he wants with no true limitation, except prehaps a Social Limitation: Old Age.

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 Or does this construction invalidate the NCM Disadvantage?  

 

In my opinion, the Normal Characteristics Maximum Disadvantage cannot be invalidated, because it is not and never was valid to begin with. It was and is a bad idea. It will cause problems and headaches and the way to avoid those problems is to eliminate Normal Characteristic Maximum.

 

There are better ways to represent human frailty and age, such as putting Double END Cost on STR and Movement, Physical Limitation: Old, a Limitation on REC of Requires a CON Roll, etc.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And an inefficiently built palindromedary with abnormal psychological problems

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I use NCM only as a campaign rule for heroic and other appropriate settings, not as a disadvantage. I never really liked it as a disadvantage since there are WAY too many ways to circumvent it purely based on character concept. I mean, Iron Man could easily fall into it. Or any number of aliens. Etc.

 

- E

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If we're going 5e by the book, any characteristic with a limitation is a Power and consequently is not impacted by NCM, so no doubled cost.

 

I agree with the viewpoint that this is not a "complication/disadvantage". If the character will spend more points on the doubled stats than he gets from the Disadvantage, then he will suddenly be "SFX Old" with no Disad/Complication. I would not allow a Brick disadvantage points for "no energy powers" or a Blaster to take "no mental powers". The cost of not spending points on certain things is not having access to those certain things.

 

That said, if the concept is that he's an old fighter and he's gotten a little slower, why would he not have 3 SPD now, and a +1 SPD with a limitation? This build implies he was not previously capped at NCM either.

 

To the "oh, no a SPD change" issue, I don't find SPD changes are that huge a deal, especially if one adopts reasonable rules (which is not guaranteed to be RAW). This character's "SPD changes only for 1 turn at a time" model is quite easy to deal with, in my view. I'd be fine with a character buying +1 SPD, activation 8-. He rolls at PS12 and, on an 8-, has one extra SPD for the next turn. That costs 3 points. Over time, he can buy the limitation down, then off, as a means of gradually increasing his reaction speed in combat.

 

As for "not usable in 2nd turn and every 4th turn thereafter", he's losing 25% of the extra phases in principal. If most combats go 2 turns, he's losing half the extra phases. Extra SPD that activates on a 12- would work 74% of the time, and would not be as predictable (in particular, guaranteeing it works on Turn 1). I'd call this "roll made each use", so a 12- would normally be a -3/4 limitation. He could be guaranteed the first turn would work, and then start rolling, using Burnout. Still -3/4, but that would give him a better than even chance of having the extra SPD on the second turn. But once he misses the roll, the SPD is not coming back (probably until he has a chance to rest an catch his breath - say, recover to full END and take a recovery action, not a PS 12, after that).

 

So he is more limited being guaranteed to lose the second turn, and less limited being able to get later turns (how often will the 3rd, 4th or 5th turn matter in your game?). I am coming to -3/4 as a limitation, unless combats in your game routinely run very short (under a turn would make this less limiting even as Burnout) or very long (where the "not gone forever" aspect takes on some value).

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So, NCM is not really well liked?  That actually makes sense.  

 

It's just not a great Disadvantage esp for Superheroic games.. It's only there to limit choices at character gen and when XP are being spent. It's a great thing to have as a campaign guideline (ie all stats need to be below this like, Stats over this like cost double). 

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Anything that allows the character to surpass NCM falls under the umbrella of paying double for the privilege.

 

Not by RAW in 4th and 5th. Maybe it should, but it doesn't. You can simply buy chars as powers to circumvent it.

 

I think 6th only uses it as a campaign parameter from what's been said in the thread, which seems the best way to go about it.

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I think 6th only uses it as a campaign parameter from what's been said in the thread, which seems the best way to go about it.

 

It does have the doubling effect in 6e (though similarly to 4e and 5e, buying characteristics as powers circumvents this), but it's described as an optional rule intended primarily for heroic campaigns, and based on the way it's described in both 6e1 and CC, it's implied that it's not even necessarily suited for all heroic campaigns, nor are the suggested maxima set in stone.

 

It's always felt to me like a relic of older editions that doesn't get removed because a) HERO system attempts a sort of backwards compatibility (or at least the rulebooks seem to imply) that when a new edition comes out, groups can just change over to that new edition with the characters roughly unchanged and the campaign unhalted, and removing NCM would cause weird table issues between the players and GM about whether the old NCM rules still apply, and B) NCM's existence doesn't really hurt anything, since groups don't need to use it. I personally would probably get rid of it, because I've noticed it to be unintuitive to new players used to D&D (for a variety of reasons, that I won't go into, but suffice it to say there are many things about the D&D dynamics of player, GM, and RAW that I hate, and HERO does way better, and NCM tends to highlight that, either in contrast to D&D or in contrast to the rest of HERO)

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Yeah, I don't Hate NCM, but I like to build disadds in a more dynamic way....

 

Example: "Old codger" REnd STR, REnd Running, Act(11) for both...sometimes he is just as spry, but sometimes he gets "winded"....

 

Example: "Trick Knee" +6m running Burnout (11)...etc...

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I agree that NCM works best as a campaign rule, rather than a Disad.

 

That said, if the GM wants to allow it as a Disad, and the player chooses to take it, then buying any characteristic above NCM should cost double regardless of Limitations. I get what RAW says, but it makes no sense to limit Characteristics if you're going to let people ignore the limit simply by calling it a Power instead of a Characteristic.

 

As for the power build itself, I don't have a problem with a Physical Disad (or a Limitation) that reduces the character's SPD. The value of the Disad would depend on how long combats in your game tend to run - if few combats last more than 1-2 Turns, it's less limiting than if you have a lot of longer fights. (Is the intent that the Drain kicks in after the first Phase 12, or only after the first full Turn?)

 

I would recommend going with standard effect tho, to make it less random. I keep everyone's SPD & DEX charted out on an Excel spreadsheet, so having a character's SPD change isn't a total PITA, especially if it only happens post-12; but it's significantly easier if I know in advance that he's going to be SPD 4 on Turn 1, SPD 3 on Turn 2, etc.

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Not by RAW in 4th and 5th. Maybe it should, but it doesn't. You can simply buy chars as powers to circumvent it.

 

I think 6th only uses it as a campaign parameter from what's been said in the thread, which seems the best way to go about it.

Huh, learn something new all the time.  I'd always thought that even powers hit this limit, so a character that was at, say STR NCM hit with an Aid to STR would only get half the effect.  I never had anyone complain about that either.

 

I'll agree, as both player and GM, that NCM is generally a bad, bad, bad idea in superheroic games.  I've only had one character I've played with it work where I wasn't raping the rules.  That was with a mentalist I named "Dirt."  (As in "Old as....")  Dirt was just an old man who'd been a super when he was younger and put the suit back on because the young guys were making a mess of things!  On more than one occasion he just sat on the hood of someone's car, or got a teammate to air lift him to a building top, and used his LOS mental powers to whatever effect he could.  My fellow players loved it (nothing like some old codger telepathically telling you how they'd have done it in his day during combat), and the GM got lots of laughs too, but Dirt was definitely the sole exception.

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I meant actually buying stats as powers rather than using aid or other adjustment powers to boost them. The usual suspect being Power Armor characters.

 

I think the only upside to NCM in a 4th/5th supers game is that I really hate thinking up 150 pts of Disadvantages, so it's low-hanging fruit if the build calls for it.

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I think the only upside to NCM in a 4th/5th supers game is that I really hate thinking up 150 pts of Disadvantages, so it's low-hanging fruit if the build calls for it.

 

Just another reason that the number Of complications required in 6e went WAY down. So that PC take relevant ones and don't look as hard for cheesy ones.

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It sounds to me more like an Endurance issue rather than a Speed issue.  To replicate the effect, I would build it with 5 Speed and low End and low REC.  The character could go nuts in the first Turn, but regains so little from the Post-12, s/he/it has to either take a Recovery or be more judicious with how End is spent.  Perhaps with a "Quick Breather Heal"

 

SPD 5

REC 3

END 25

 

Quick Breath Heal Endurance Self Only Trigger (feels like it) Trigger resets after (1 Turn or later) or w/e.

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I always cut the complications/disads level back from recommended levels.  Anything over 100 and many characters start getting stuff just to get the points instead of to define the character.  Some take more than they need and 100 points is too few, but most of the time its a struggle to even get 100 for many players.

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I definitely think it's better to have a lower number of disadvantages that actually come up regularly in play rather than forcing a player to rack their brains at character creation to create a laundry list that will be quickly forgotten by players and GM. 6th's 75 points seems reasonable. You can have three or four complications that are strong enough to matter and be remembered. That's plenty to define a character -- and to give the GM some RPing hooks, which is the coolest thing about the Disadvantage system -- especially one at the beginning of their career.

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On the original topic: Champions for 5ed had a character generator in it. In that section, there was a Disadvantage package for a "normal person" that had some cool ideas. Like a vulnerability to falling damage and other things that essentially de-cinematized the character. Might be a good source of ideas for a character who's "getting too old for this s..."

 

Another idea I had was increased END cost on STR and Running.

 

Stuff like that might allow you to build an aged character without adjusting SPD. Just use the higher SPD, and pay the END cost. The higher SPD can represent experience in combat rather than raw physicality. The character may have to take one of his phases to recover every now and then (and can be designed to), showing that he's wily enough to make time to take a breather mid-combat, while still being able to go all out for short periods.

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Golden Heroes had an interesting take on that idea. You rolled up a bunch of random powers and had to fit them into a concept. Anything that didn't fit got discarded.

 

I looked up the Normal Guy disads. The disad that it had that applies here was 1.5x Stun from Falling and Knockback damage (Very Common) 15 pts. The other two were just a DNPC and Psych Limit.

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Just another reason that the number Of complications required in 6e went WAY down. So that PC take relevant ones and don't look as hard for cheesy ones.

This is why even in 4th and 5th ed, there were some of us that set lower levels of points from Disadvantages and increased the base points. After about 100 - 150 points, it just all seemed to become "cheese."

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