Are Maneuvers And CSLs factored into an Active Point Limit?

[stevilg]

Game has an active point limit to a number (in this case 40 active in heroic a 5th ed game). Is this limit only on the base damage before adding CSL & Maneuvers? Example, move by could have 4 (maybe more) components: 1/2 STR + HA/weapon + V/5 + CSL. I've assumed (could be wrong) the 1/2 STR + HA are limited to 40 active between them (aka 8d6 @ 40 active), and the V/5 & CSL are not? 

[IndianaJoe3]

I do include Skill Levels in DC/CV caps, because if I didn't, some players would abuse them.

[Hugh Neilson]

There are no official rules (optional or otherwise) for caps, so this is the GM/group's call.  Like IndicanaJoe3, I would factor them into any relevant caps.  There's no point setting, say, a 9 DC cap if the character can have a 45 STR, 3d6 HKA, focus on Move  Throughs to add another 9 DCs and have 18 Skill Levels to bump damage, ending up with 36 DCs.

 

I'd be OK with certain maneuvers  that impose other drawbacks (e.g. Haymaker) being left out of DC caps, and I think a lot of us accept Martial maneuvers that result in below-cap DCs having higher than cap CV results.

 

 

[Joe Walsh]

When it comes to limits, I basically go with the advice in Ninja HERO, which recommends damage limits include everything but pushing and Haymakers, CV limits include everything but what's in the GM's control (clever tactics, surprise maneuvers), etc.

 

[Grailknight]

Active Points are not a reliable measure of actual power though they can be used as a general guideline. When speaking of limits, DC's are the best indicator in this case. As noted in the OP, you can generate an attack of 12+ DC's without any Power or Characteristic exceeding 20 Active Points quite easily.

 

So set your campaign at X DC's and don't worry about Active Points per se.  

 

[HeroGM]

In most material they say "consider X when a person is buying Y because Z may over balance the game", especially in books like Ninja Hero / Hero System Martial Arts. So why not official it's like anything else and needs to be compared to the rest of the material in the game in my opinion.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah I consider overall total maximum CV and damage in addition to active point limits, if any.  I have run a game in the past (golden age) where there was just an absolute cap: you cannot, no matter what the circumstances or maneuvers, ordinarily go above this point no matter what you do.  It was a genre-maintaining rule; characters were in a world where both supervillains and ordinary mobster crooks were potentially a threat, as the comics showed at the time.

[unclevlad]

As has been said:  active points doesn't work well, necessarily.  DCs are more straightforward.  Quite a few things...martial maneuvers in particular...are weird for active point determination, but trivial for DCs.

 

Martial DCs, Weaponmaster, Deadly Blow...those count to DC caps.  Martial maneuvers, I'll sometimes allow a bit of flexibility.  For example, if the standard damage cap is 12 DCs, I have no problem with an 11 DC martial strike and a 13 DC offensive strike.  Skill levels...you have to consider, IMO, the tradeoff.  It's 2 SLs for 1 DC.  If the player seems balanced overall...CVs, damage, speed...then trading off 2 CV for 1 DC should not be an issue, even if it tips things over the damage cap.

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

As has been said:  active points doesn't work well, necessarily.  DCs are more straightforward.  Quite a few things...martial maneuvers in particular...are weird for active point determination, but trivial for DCs.

 

Martial DCs, Weaponmaster, Deadly Blow...those count to DC caps.  Martial maneuvers, I'll sometimes allow a bit of flexibility.  For example, if the standard damage cap is 12 DCs, I have no problem with an 11 DC martial strike and a 13 DC offensive strike.  Skill levels...you have to consider, IMO, the tradeoff.  It's 2 SLs for 1 DC.  If the player seems balanced overall...CVs, damage, speed...then trading off 2 CV for 1 DC should not be an issue, even if it tips things over the damage cap.

 

 

 

While I prefer a holistic character evaluation to hard caps, that sort of "zen balance" requires considerable experience, and can't easily be reduced to words on a page.

 

At the same time, hard caps are problematic for some character types.  Consider the Martial Artist in a game that caps CVs at 10 and DCs at 12.

 

His Defensive Strike is +1 OCV, +3 DCV and standard STR damage.

 

His Martial Strike is +2 OCV, +0 DCV and STR damage + 2 DC

 

His Offensive Strike is -1 OCV, -1 DCV and STR damage + 4 DC

 

So he can have an 8 OCV, a 7 DCV and 40 STR.  The best he can do is one of:

 

9 OCV, 10 DCV and 8 DC damage

 

10 OCV, 7 DCV and 10 DC damage

 

7 OCV, 6 DCV and 12 DC damage.

 

When Barney the Brick can have a 10 OCV, 10 DCV and 12 DC at all times, why does anyone want to play the Martial Artist?

 

IIRC, Mutants and Masterminds uses a set-off model.  You should have the equivalent of 10 OCV and DCV, 10 DC and (call it) 25 defenses (in M&M, a +10 damage save).  But you can boost either OCV or DC by up to 2 if you reduce the other by the same amount, and similarly trade off DCV and defenses, allowing scope for a bit of variance.

 

If we set a cap of OCV + DCV + DCs cannot exceed 36, and no one element may exceed 14, maybe we would have a better model.   Of course, we still need to factor in defenses, SPD, movement...

[Steve]

Another thing to consider in a Heroic-level game is hit location effects.

 

A player may be at or below the damage + CV caps, so they are technically in line with the campaign settings.

 

But they have 4+ penalty skills levels offsetting hit location modifiers and keep going for head shots or vitals shots and those sweet damage multipliers.

 

Are such levels forbidden? Or only allowed if the players limit themselves even more in damage and regular combat levels?

 

You can then get weird effects like a player who severely limits their damage and then hardly ever gets through the enemy’s defenses. But when they do….

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

While I prefer a holistic character evaluation to hard caps, that sort of "zen balance" requires considerable experience, and can't easily be reduced to words on a page.

 

 

It really does come down to experience, a sort of feel for what will work and what won't in a campaign.  Games like D&D its pretty easy with levels etc but Hero is more complex and variable.

[unclevlad]

Offensive Strike is net -1 combined OCV and DCV, for the standard maneuver.

 

Another point is defenses and their interaction with DCV.

 

I agree it's more complex, but until you can do it...?  Your assessments will be lacking.

 

There's 2 areas of the system I'd love to see addressed.  #1:  "realistic" damage scaling.  How big is, say, Cyclops' eye blast at full?  In some cases, we've got some guidelines for raw STR (Marvel's game)...but should exponential STR translate to linear damage, and how much damage does a Ben Grimm do with a punch?  We do have some damage numbers for *some* military weaponry, but relatively older stuff.  Nothing like an M1-A2 main gun (or most vehicle-mount weapons, I think).  What could help is to translate point levels to the higher-end damage scales.  #2:  suggestions on defenses, once you've determined damage scaling.  How much total defense is recommended for, let's say, a 12 DC attack?  

 

These aren't simple, I'll grant, as campaigns can have fundamentally different premises.  A comics campaign is all about stunning and hard fighting;  dying is rare.  An urban fantasy/superhero campaign (Harmon's Wearing the Cape, Hayes' Super Powereds) can be a LETHAL campaign...characters do die, or get seriously hurt.  Getting clobbered is Really, Really Dangerous.  Defenses are of necessity higher.  (Sometimes, so is running, or calling for HELP! when you're just flat-out outclassed.)

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

17 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

It really does come down to experience, a sort of feel for what will work and what won't in a campaign.  Games like D&D its pretty easy with levels etc but Hero is more complex and variable.

 

True.  Every now and then, some ability or combination of abilities in D&D turns out unbalanced as well (and the more abilities they publish, the more likely some unforeseen combination arises).

 

17 hours ago, unclevlad said:

I agree it's more complex, but until you can do it...?  Your assessments will be lacking.

 

There's 2 areas of the system I'd love to see addressed.  #1:  "realistic" damage scaling.  How big is, say, Cyclops' eye blast at full?  In some cases, we've got some guidelines for raw STR (Marvel's game)...but should exponential STR translate to linear damage, and how much damage does a Ben Grimm do with a punch?  We do have some damage numbers for *some* military weaponry, but relatively older stuff.  Nothing like an M1-A2 main gun (or most vehicle-mount weapons, I think).  What could help is to translate point levels to the higher-end damage scales.  #2:  suggestions on defenses, once you've determined damage scaling.  How much total defense is recommended for, let's say, a 12 DC attack?  

 

These aren't simple, I'll grant, as campaigns can have fundamentally different premises.  A comics campaign is all about stunning and hard fighting;  dying is rare.  An urban fantasy/superhero campaign (Harmon's Wearing the Cape, Hayes' Super Powereds) can be a LETHAL campaign...characters do die, or get seriously hurt.  Getting clobbered is Really, Really Dangerous.  Defenses are of necessity higher.  (Sometimes, so is running, or calling for HELP! when you're just flat-out outclassed.)

 

No question on the complexity and the need.  For Supers games, I find military hardware is statted out much too powerful.

 

Defenses reducing both STUN and BOD makes it tough for Supers to take BOD damage. If I were going for a Supers game where BOD damage was more likely, I think I would require most defenses be in the form of Damage Negation.  If you have 25 defenses, a 12d6 Normal attack literally can't do BOD - even 24d6 (massive against 25 defenses) needs above-average BOD.  On average, that 12d6 will roll 42 Stun (17 past defenses) and 12 BOD.

 

But if you instead had 8 levels of Damage Negation and 3 Defenses, a 12d6 attack drops to 4d6, rolls 14 STUN (11 past defenses) and 4 BOD (1 past defenses) on average.  Bump the defenses to 5 and BOD damage will still creep through on occasion.  And an opponent with just a few more DCs does a lot more BOD.

[unclevlad]

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

No question on the complexity and the need.  For Supers games, I find military hardware is statted out much too powerful.

 

Defenses reducing both STUN and BOD makes it tough for Supers to take BOD damage. If I were going for a Supers game where BOD damage was more likely, I think I would require most defenses be in the form of Damage Negation.  If you have 25 defenses, a 12d6 Normal attack literally can't do BOD - even 24d6 (massive against 25 defenses) needs above-average BOD.  On average, that 12d6 will roll 42 Stun (17 past defenses) and 12 BOD.

 

But if you instead had 8 levels of Damage Negation and 3 Defenses, a 12d6 attack drops to 4d6, rolls 14 STUN (11 past defenses) and 4 BOD (1 past defenses) on average.  Bump the defenses to 5 and BOD damage will still creep through on occasion.  And an opponent with just a few more DCs does a lot more BOD.

 

First, lemme say this emphasizes my point:  we lack good standards for comparison, for what "proper" attacks and defenses should be.  Because I'd argue the other way...comics portray supers as much too powerful.  Thinking 750 is "cosmically powerful" is ridiculous, IMO, and it strongly influences how we think about things.  Also, we want our 500, maybe 600 point characters to be the stars...if so, we can't let them be taken down easily.  The points constrain how powerful we can make them...so we go the other way, and think we need to scale down military-grade weapons.

 

Your argument about Negation is one approach;  another would be to go with around 12 Resistant defense, with no non-resistant, and damage reduction.  I've been leaning to the reduction angle, as negation a) is more brittle, as you note, and b) reduction sets up that multiple combined attacks can wear the hero down.  But note that both of these are expensive;  for the negation, that's 43 points into defenses.  For 10 Resistant and 50% rDR, it's 45.

 

It also brings up a secondary point...killing damage.  From a DC perspective, 4d6K is the same as 12d6N.  8 dice knocks the former to 1+1...but that's 6 or 7 BODY, 1/3 of the time.  Against 3, even assumed to be resistant...that's not a nick.  And it's common.  Add even 2 more DCs, make it a full 2d6?  The problem is partly related to going with Negation, in that it has the side effect of massively INCREASING variance simply due to the fewer dice, and even more heavily, for that same reason, the risk for MASSIVE damage due to an only mildly unlikely roll.  2d6 will be 10+ BODY 1/6th of the time.  That's much too common to ignore.  

 

But...what that's noting is that Champions was intended to be a comic book supers game...you weren't *supposed* to take BODY very often.  The core issue is the translation into something like "the real world."  In that sense, then yes...the fact that (IMO) military hardware damage is accurate, means it's much too high.  You can play Champions at the suggested levels, or you can play realistic...can't do both simultaneously.

 

 

[unclevlad]

Now, that said, there's another, mechanical level.

 

Given a 12d6 game where most bad guys will be running at 4-5 SPD...

a)  how long should I anticipate a combat to take, typically?

b)  how long should I expect to be able to last...first, assuming just post-12 recovery, then second, taking no more than 1 extra recovery per turn?  (More than that, and IMO you should look at tweaking the build.)

c)  what should acceptable risk of getting Stunned be?   Sometimes this is campaign-dependent.  In comics supers, there's a loose "gentlemen's agreement" to not nail the downed guy...and in the comics, the heroes are faster to recover.  In something more realistic, getting Stunned is *extremely* dangerous;  you will get targeted before you're back up on your feet, and your team may not be in a good place to cover you.  (And of course, in Hero, when you're stunned, your non-persistent powers stop.)

 

Probably some others.  Feel free to add/expand.

 

 

Oh yeah...and I remember something about killing damage.  Ron Edwards and I had a message board exchange back when Champions Now was in development.  He saw the issues with killing dice;  it's one reason they don't exist in Champions Now.  I believe my suggestion *within a Hero System context* was a +1/4 advantage, Lethal.  Only resistant defenses apply to the BODY of such an attack.  IF it's just +1/4, then the cost of resistant defenses needs to be reconsidered;  they're too high at that point.

[HeroGM]

One thing to remember too is pushing.