Speed

[Doc Democracy]

I have been wrestling with the Speed characteristic.  I love the speed chart, I love the idea of it but it has, increasingly, looked to me as something broken in the system.  My first insight to that was building a speed 12 villain, he was not massively powerful, nor had great defences but he, uniquely at the time, single-handedly held of the whole player team without breaking sweat.

 

I have looked at a number of things, I restrict the players wanting to increase their speed stat, showing them other ways to achieve the same effect, I make compacts, showing them how many additional actions they will get against 100% normals and 90% of villains just by increasing SPD 1 over what I now call the Campaign SPD.

 

I would like some system correction in the rules though, to allow them to design outside the guidelines.

 

My solution? Linking SPD to Reduced END.

 

In more detail.  I set the campaign SPD to 5.  If Johnny Unconventional decides to make his Flash character SPD 12 because anything else "doesn't fit the vision" then the mechanical impact will be that buying reduced END on his powers will cost more.  I will have a small table. 

 

If your SPD is one over the campaign SPD then no change.  For every +1 beyond that, you will add +1/4 to the advantage cost.  So in the game with a Campaign SPD of 5, reducing END by a half, for a SPD 12 character would be a prohibitive ×3.25 of the normal cost, you would be better going straight to x3.5 and taking 0 END.

 

Anyone else sought to address the SPD issue with anything more than kind words and GM fiat on character policing?

 

 

[BNakagawa]

SPD is literally a force multiplier.

 

Which means that its importance is directly linked to the force it is multiplying. If you give a nothingburger agent a 12 SPD, it is still a nothingburger.

 

If you give an effective combatant a 12 SPD, then you have a potential problem. I am more concerned with the rest of the character sheet than just the SPD stat.

[bluesguy]

I just have campaign limits for all characteristics and do my best to adhere to them with the players and any NPC I create.

 

In my fantasy campaign, most players have a 3 Speed.  Minions often have 2 or sometimes 3 Speed.  Minor villains have 3 speed.  Max speed is 4.  Some races have a starting speed of 3 and can go as high as 5.  However I limit how strong and tough they can be.

 

In my Champions campaign, you have to have a reason why your speed is above a 4.  Bricks have a max of 4 speed.  Many heroes who are normals with gadgets have a base speed of 3 or 4 may augment with technology.  The fastest character in the current campaign is a 6.  Goons are 3 speed, some are 4. Minor villains are 4 or 5.  I might have a major villain as a 5 or 6 if they are taking on a whole team.

[unclevlad]

6 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

In more detail.  I set the campaign SPD to 5.  If Johnny Unconventional decides to make his Flash character SPD 12 because anything else "doesn't fit the vision" then the mechanical impact will be that buying reduced END on his powers will cost more.  I will have a small table. 

 

If your SPD is one over the campaign SPD then no change.  For every +1 beyond that, you will add +1/4 to the advantage cost.  So in the game with a Campaign SPD of 5, reducing END by a half, for a SPD 12 character would be a prohibitive ×3.25 of the normal cost, you would be better going straight to x3.5 and taking 0 END.

 

Anyone else sought to address the SPD issue with anything more than kind words and GM fiat on character policing?

 

 

 

Just tell him No.  Because you're also penalizing players who want to run moderate, but not abusive, setups.  Reduced END is also just one route;  he can go with a very high REC, and plan on spending phase 1 recovering quite often.  If melee, he can manipulate END costs...15 STR, +3d6 HA, then martial arts, for example.  

 

Also, buying SPD 12 is spending 70 points there, that no one else is spending.  That's a big chunk right there.  What were you doing with that villain?  Were you in some manner over-compensating, perhaps giving too many low-impact limitations, so he could make up a fair bit of the points spent?  

[Doc Democracy]

Thanks for the replies guys.  Your responses are what I have done in the past, just say no, put strict limits on SPD (along with probably more lax elements of other things).

 

I was just thinking that the joy of the SPD chart is in all those phase interactions, if there is no real difference in SPDs, then we might as well not have it. 

 

@unclevladmentioned that he might manipulate END costs - go for 15 STR, +3D6 HA and then martial arts - that is almost what I am expecting - greater diversity in design, more thought about what is there and then the system forcing him to think hard about END and when to take rests and when to push himself closer to the limits.  There is a lot more fun there.

 

With the villain, I actually thought I had underpowered him.  The heroes were all reasonably experienced and I had only thrown an extra 150 points on him - against 5 heroes, that seemed fine.  It is amazing how long it took them to ensure he was engaged on every segment to reduce his chance of taking a recovery.  I was so proud of them when they worked that out!!  😄

 

Happy for more commentary though.

[Christopher R Taylor]

One thing that helps mix things up on the speed chart is to start combat not on phase 0, but on phase 2d6, so you get a random first phase.  That can result in slow speeds actually acting first, representing surprise, instability, and random circumstance.

[BNakagawa]

for a truly chaotic event, I had considered really randomizing things.

 

Have every combatant put one card with their name on it for each SPD point into a deck. Shuffle and reveal each action. The deck, once depleted, ends the current turn and post 12 recoveries happen.

 

Mass hysteria. It would be pretty wild, but I don't know if it would be very playable in the long term.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah I have considered stuff like that for a game: roll 2d6 and if you come up with your phase or lower you act that segment. Each segment you fail to act, you subtract 1 from the roll, etc.  It sounded interesting but not necessarily better.

[LoneWolf]

The best way to control SPD is to let the players know that if they go to high with their SPD, you will adjust the SPD of all their opponents.  Let them know that you want to keep things reasonable, and their opponents will not have really high SPD.  Be up front with this and let every player know where you stand.  If they insist on buying their SPD higher than you want it simply to increase the SPD of every one of your NPC’s including the normals.   When Aunt May has a 5 SPD instead of 1 that 12 SPD is not as impressive.

 

In campaigns I run having over a 4 SPD needs some kind of justification.   Many martial artists end up with a 5 SP, a 6 SPD or higher SPD is a speedster.   I usually drop the SPD of any published character by 2 points.   We had one character who wanted to buy up his SPD to beyond what his concept fit.  When he was told that if he did that the SPD of every creature in the universe would go up, he quickly changed his mind.  He was a player that was used to playing with published material so did not realize that his SPD was actually fairly high for the campaign.  

 

Having active cost limits on power including STR and counting reduced END as part of that will also prevent people from abusing SPD.   So the character that puts O END on all his attacks end up doing less damage.  The character that puts 0 END on his 15 STR and buys a 3d6 HTH attack is doing 3d6 less damage then the other players.   His DEF, movement and all other powers are also similarly reduced.  Don’t forget that movement and a lot of defense also cost END.   

One of the best ways to deal with a high SPD character is to have some of his opponents save phase. This prevents the high SPD character from taking a recovery.   I took out a speedster once by saving phase until he was jumping over something and put a continuing area of effect attack in the hex he was going to land in.  He had already acted in that phase so could not abort to a dive for cover.  

[MrAgdesh]

20 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah I have considered stuff like that for a game: roll 2d6 and if you come up with your phase or lower you act that segment. Each segment you fail to act, you subtract 1 from the roll, etc.  It sounded interesting but not necessarily better.

Issue #21 Adventurer's Club? More book keeping, too...

[Hugh Neilson]

2d6 would definitely skew the odds.  1 in 36 chance of rolling a 2, but 21/36 of rolling 7-, for example.

[Duke Bushido]

I have never done this, but I have seen it sone at other tables:

 

Tell your players they have X number of actions, where x is their SPD score.

 

Let them use them when and where they will.  If necessary, add a shot clock.  When time euns out, actions unused are forfeit for the next round.

 

It creates a glorious but highly-focused chaos in which the SPD 7 guy suddenly finds himself without further actions when the SPD 2 mook has the drop on him.

 

I have never done it because I _love_ the SPD chart; I just do.  It's a unique, heart-of-the-system sort od thing like the targetting overlay on... Was it Aces and Eights?  It is just neat, unique, and everything else kind of hangs from it.

 

Still, I am,well-aware of its limitations, and the unique problems created specifically because it exists- things like held actions screwing up plans, characters just refusing to take action until everyone else has bevause thwir DEX says they can, players who play a purely reactive game, wanting to pick off an opponent precisely between his half,move (he's coming closer!  My range penalty foes way down!) yet before he attacks (because you cant make them,understand that you are simulating a running attack and it is handled like it is to make it easier to track what is going on, etc)- it goes on and on.

 

Taking that away really throws them off their habits.

 

Also consider disallowing held actions or aborts (or both) and maybe even requiring the players to declare before anyone acts in a phase if they wish to go first, second, etc, and make them stick to it.

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

You could use a d12 instead, but then you get 1s as a result and nobody moves on that plus it involves non-Hero dice.  I still wouldn't do it though, because you'd end up with most phases clustered at the end and it ruins the rhythm and predictability of Speed which actually does simulate real combat rather well.  You can learn patterns and how people fight by watching or fighting with them long enough, patterns represented by when they move in a 12-segment turn.  Make that random and there's no way of doing so.

[Tech]

I might try the D12 sometime. If the D12 did start on 1, then just continue down the Phases since no one attacked.

[mallet]

In my last main fantasy hero game we dropped the Speed Chart, had a few new-to-hero players and the chart just confused them more then helped. 

 

Every turn characters got  number of actions equal to their SPD. 

 

We went in DEX (+ any relevant Lightning Reflexes or other ability mods) order. Highest first, then all the way down to lowest (or any held actions remaining), then start at the top again until all actions had been taken. That was the "end of turn" and when Recovery would happen. 

 

Each "Phase" the DEX order might change by the changing of Lightning Reflexes or other abilities, plus the house rule that for every 1 Body of damage a character had taken their DEX (for action order) was also reduced by 1.  So a 22 DEX Character that had taken 4 BODY damage last phase, now had a 18 DEX position in the action order.  

 

We really enjoyed that rule as it meant as Players and opponents got more injured, they reacted slower in combat. It added a nice amount of realism to the fights, and added new tactics,  without making major rule adjustments or slowing things down. 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

On 6/9/2022 at 6:20 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

You could use a d12 instead, but then you get 1s as a result and nobody moves on that plus it involves non-Hero dice.  I still wouldn't do it though, because you'd end up with most phases clustered at the end and it ruins the rhythm and predictability of Speed which actually does simulate real combat rather well.  You can learn patterns and how people fight by watching or fighting with them long enough, patterns represented by when they move in a 12-segment turn.  Make that random and there's no way of doing so.

 

I've toyed with a "randomize SPD" model to simulate a Plane of Chaos, or disjointed time, but in general, I prefer the SPD chart.

[Lord Liaden]

40 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

I've toyed with a "randomize SPD" model to simulate a Plane of Chaos, or disjointed time, but in general, I prefer the SPD chart.

 

I'm very partial to the Speed Chart myself, but I did play in one group that didn't want to use it, preferring to randomize the order of action. We used a method which I first saw described in an issue of Adventurers Club. Each player rolls a d12 (from one of those "other" games ) at the beginning of each Segment. Those who roll their SPD or less get an action Phase in that segment, acting in order of DEX. Due to the vagaries of chance it would be possible to roll badly time after time and never get to act; to help correct this, after each failed roll the players add 1 to their target number for the next roll, cumulatively, until they succeed. Next Segment the target number would reset to raw SPD again. So the stat is still meaningful, but flexible.

[unclevlad]

15 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I'm very partial to the Speed Chart myself, but I did play in one group that didn't want to use it, preferring to randomize the order of action. We used a method which I first saw described in an issue of Adventurers Club. Each player rolls a d12 (from one of those "other" games ) at the beginning of each Segment. Those who roll their SPD or less get an action Phase in that segment, acting in order of DEX. Due to the vagaries of chance it would be possible to roll badly time after time and never get to act; to help correct this, after each failed roll the players add 1 to their target number for the next roll, cumulatively, until they succeed. Next Segment the target number would reset to raw SPD again. So the stat is still meaningful, but flexible.

 

First thing I thought was, yeah, this could get to be horrible for someone with a low SPD...we've all had terrible stretches of rolls.  So adding 1 sounds good but...what does that do?  So I wrote some quick test code.

First number is the nominal SPD.  The second number is the effective SPD...how many times per turn, using this method, the character would act.  These are chopped to 2 places.  

 

1: 2.97
2: 3.62
3: 4.32
4: 5.06

5: 5.86
6: 6.67
7: 7.5
8: 8.38
9: 9.26
10: 10.15
11: 11.07
12: 12.0

 

So this benefits LOW speeds more than high speeds.  Granted, the higher speeds get an edge, but it's damped for SPDs we'd commonly expect.  Note in particular SPD 2 vs. SPD 5, or 3 vs. 6.  Just something to note, if you're thinking of using this approach.

[Lord Liaden]

Sounds like that could be considered a positive. Lower-SPD characters standing around a lot while higher ones act is a common complaint about the Speed Chart.

[unclevlad]

It's gonna depend on what "standard character SPD" is.  If it's typically 4-6, then the net effect is that the effective SPD is about a point higher.  SPD 7 or higher, it's getting hard to notice.

 

I'll leave it to everyone to decide for themselves whether this is considered a positive or negative.  I am thinking that in many cases, I wouldn't buy beyond SPD 5 without darn good reason.  I'm getting 6 actions a turn as it is.  My consideration might be that I like high-mobility characters.  When not on phases, the base SPD is presumably the controller, so that affects your actual non-combat, distance-travel running or flight speed.

[Lord Liaden]

Mind you, you aren't getting that effective Speed consistently. Over a large enough list of occurrences you are, but on a turn-by-turn basis the result can vary vastly, which was the point of this method.

[Christopher R Taylor]

 

Quote

So this benefits LOW speeds more than high speeds.

 

I'm not sure how you mean this.  No matter how well you roll, you cannot move more often than your SPD characteristic under this method, as I understand it.  You MIGHT act more often earlier, but it all ends up the same in the end.  A 7 speed still moves 7 times in a turn, but a 3 only moves 3 times no matter what you roll.

 

Maybe I was thinking of a different system than the article suggests.

[Duke Bushido]

To adress Doc' initial question, here is something I have toyed with in the past when Speed creep found yet another way around the guidelines:

 

You can only take X recoveries per Turn, where X is usually the lowest SPD in play, and defaults to 2 in most cases.

 

This is especially useful if you aren't allowing Reduced END: 0 END, ans you will end with players still pushing the limit, but they tend to decide for themselves that the limit is now much lower than 12.  Even if they do push into the high end, they will often opt to forego an action or two if another Player is in a better posirion to act.

 

 

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

 

I'm not sure how you mean this.  No matter how well you roll, you cannot move more often than your SPD characteristic under this method, as I understand it.  You MIGHT act more often earlier, but it all ends up the same in the end.  A 7 speed still moves 7 times in a turn, but a 3 only moves 3 times no matter what you roll.

 

Maybe I was thinking of a different system than the article suggests.

 

 

I just went with the method described.  There's no limit mentioned.  The target number starts at your SPD.  Roll.  <= the target number, you can act.  > the target number, bump the target number for the next phase.

 

In this approach, you *have* to be able to act more than your SPD during a turn *at times* because you may well act fewer times in some turns.  Say you have SPD 6.  You roll 8, 8, 2.  Action 1.  7, 9, 3.  Action 2.  10, 8, 4.  Action 3.  9, 11, 3.  Action 4.  Only 4 actions in that turn.  If you can't get 7 or 8 later, you're getting hosed.  And that set of rolls isn't *wildly* unlikely.  Missing your first 2 would happen 5 out of 24 times...so call it 1 in 5.  

 

Now, losing *2* phases would be pretty rare, but losing 1...getting only 5 actions...probably wouldn't be.  

 

Oh.  Lemme point out...the way I computed the numbers above, ONLY reset the test target number when the test passed.  It did NOT reset after a turn.  Doing so would drop the effective SPD by a bit.

 

For this test, tho:

1.  Run "phase 1" to "phase 12" as a trial.

2.  Reset the target number to the SPD (used 6) at the start of each trial.  Run all 12 phases.

3.  Count the number of phases the char would've been able to act.

4.  Then, in how many turns did the character get fewer actions than his SPD?

 

Answer was about 38-39%.  Ran 100,000 trials.

[unclevlad]

OK, test #3.  Run test 2...reset the target # to the char SPD at the start of each "turn".  

 

1: 0.2952
2: 1.608
3: 5.3305
4: 12.1406
5: 19.3412
6: 22.5223
7: 19.33
8: 12.1035
9: 5.3749
10: 1.6128
11: 0.2909
12: 0.0238

 

First number is # of actions the char would get.  Base SPD was 6.  Second number is % of time they get that many actions.  Ran 1,000,000 trials here.