Average DCV,OCV, and Defenses?

[MainSandwichSalad]

Hey guys, a "Somewhat" first time HERO GM here. I'm running a 175 point heroic modern fantasy game. While the core rule book is helpful in determining the average points players should put into skills and characteristics I don't really see anything about what the Average DCV,OCV and PD and ED should be.  The game is a typical dungeon crawl type game where players find and buy equipment so should PD and ED be restricted to armor and items the players have and should DCV or OCV be restricted to CSL and martial abilites a character may know? I don't really know what to do when it comes to those stats so any advice would be helpful thank you! 

[bluesguy]

So a 45 AP attack on a normal will most likely leave a normal bleeding to death and knocked out (maybe long enough that they can recover).  Then ask how lethal do I want that attack to be fore the player characters.  For a really lethal campaign then 2 rPD/rED + 5 PD/ED will result in some seriously wounded characters within a phase or three (vs. 45 AP attacks).  And just work back from there.

 

[Jhamin]

Unfortunately this is one of those "choose your poison" type questions.  Most games just assume how many hits they want it to take for a hero to go down and then bake it into the system without asking you.  This is why games like Pathfinder have "average damage by Challenge Rating" in the DM guide.  They know how many HP a hero should roughy have and go for it.  Hero lets you choose.  Which is great, but as you are seeing its weird when you have never had too before.

Do you have Fantasy Hero?  There is some discussion about stat levels on pages 109-111.

 

Basically, it's all relative.  As Bluesguy says, you want to decide
A) How much damage does a typical attack do? 
How many hits do I want my characters to be able to take before they go down? 

C) Figure out how much Stun you want everyone to have

D) Figure out how much damage should get through defenses by dividing the average campaign stun by how much how many hits you want it to take to drop people.  This will give you how much stun should get past defenses on each attack.  Because you already know how much damage is on average getting thrown around, you now know how much total def (personal PD+Armor/Spells/Etc) a character should have so the appropriate amount of damage gets through defenses.

 

From there, you set campaign levels. 

A couple of bits of advice:
1) Don't let the worst OCV/DCV be more than 2-3 points from the Best.  Hero rolls 3d6 for everything (which strongly favors lots of totals between 9 and 13) so a 3-4 point gap is a much bigger deal than in a system where you roll 1d20 for everything.  Guys with an OCV of 4 are going to have a *HARD* time hitting a DCV of 7
2) When you are starting out, don't let Speed scores get more than 1 point apart, 2 when you are more experienced.  A 3 speed character will get 2 fewer actions than a 5 speed character (obviously) but when actually playing it out it will *feel* like the 5 speed character is going all the time and the 3 speed one never gets too.  That doesn't feel good for a new player to a system.

3) In Hero, once you are past the defenses every extra die is pure damage.  (As in: If I have 10PD and you punch me for 4d6 & roll a 14, I take 4 stun.  If you punch for 5d6 and roll a 18, I now take 8 stun.  One more caused me to take twice as much damage.)  So when you are figuring out how much damage you want to throw around, keep the ranges fairly small at first.  In actual effectiveness, 8d6 will cause WAY more than 2x as much damage to get through than 4d6.  So initially, keep offenses in a fairly narrow range of damage dice and don't go nuts with weird stuff like AVLD until you have a better feel for the system.

This is only complicated until you have played a few fights.  Once you wrap your head around it it will go fairly quick.  And remember, Hero is mostly complicated when BUILDING characters.  Once you have everyone's character sheets the actual fights go a lot faster.

 

[Ninja-Bear]

@MainSandwichSalad, another thing you can do which helps is take to normals give them weapons and FIGHT! Then mix it up, normal versus skilled. Keep track on what the average die is rolled. If some one rolled fantastic, like getting and average of 5 per die then you’d probably one shotted the opponent no problem. If average die is 2 and they’re still taken out well then something should be increased. You can crunch the numbers but I feel seeing it in action works better. 

[Ninja-Bear]

@MainSandwichSalad, I also wanted to say that Jhamin gave great guidelines.  So take some normals and upgrade them into the suggested guidelines and then perhaps have a few that break them.  I really feel though that when you roll dice, even in a sample scenario, it gives you a better feel for what works.

[eepjr24]

Not sure what system you are coming from (if any) but in 5e D&D parlance, 2 OCV higher is like rolling with Advantage.... all the time. Or from the other side, trying to hit someone with 2 more DCV is close to rolling with disadvantage all the time. 

 

For PD and ED, every 3 normal PD will on average mitigate 1x of STUN multiple or 1d6 Normal damage (Stun and Body). rPD is the equivalent for Killing damage. 

 

Remember that a character with a variety of low level defenses is MUCH more effective than one with say, 8 rPD. A die or two of Damage Negation, 25% Damage Reduction, some normal PD, a level of combat luck and light armor is going to just keep going when the plate mail guy is down. Just something to watch out for as a new GM, not a common problem for inexperienced players. 

 

If you are having trouble with one player being too hard to damage and need to level the playing field, normal foes like goblins or kobolds often have Teamwork, which can really help via multiple attackers and combined attacks. Not saying you need to wave in their face that you can take them down, but things get boring for players if they think they cannot be damaged.

 

- E