Exploding Dice

[Duke Bushido]

Nope; this is not apropos of anything; it has nothing to do with anything we arw currently discussing (as far as I know: I tend to avoid the political thread and the news thread as if they contained a horribly mixture of syphilis and leprosy, so feel free to do le check me)

 

I have heard so many opinions on exploding dice over the years-- even before Savage Worlds.  I cant remember which ones, but it is little more than a board or smdice game mechanic applied to RPGs- well, at least one as part of the core rules; others as house rules.  I have even played Exploding Dice in DnD- had a DM that, if you rolled a damage die at max, then you rolled it again and added them together.  Id ir maxed again- well, you kept adding until it didn't max out.  You'd still add it, but you didnt get another roll.  I have a very fond memory of watching a young GI at the Rec Center back in the 80s..., first level magic user scoring twenty-two points off a magic missile.  It was hilarious, and _amazing_.

 

I know that this board is filled mostly with gaming grognarss and gurus from way back-  I mean, it's not like HERO is pulling in new blood in number higher than ones or twos, and we are dying off faster than that.

 

Most of what I hear about exploding dice-- outside of Savage Worlds-- is how awful it is because of how unpredictable it makes things.  I have no intention- or interest- in changing your minds. Why should I?  I dont use it much myself. 

 

I can honestly tell you, though, that this is because most of my games are in one way or another built on Champions (this is going to be one of those times were I avoid some tedious touchscreen work by dropping any pretense that I call it "HERO System" anywhere but this board), and while it took some time, I came to realize that typically, long-term Champions players _don't like_ unpredictability and have already decided how much damage they want to inflict and buy- after checking the campaign standards for Defenses-  damage-dealing abilities custom Taylor's to get the some predetermined-as-acceptable amount (more or less) of damage inflicted by purchasing X dice, which will average roll Y, subtracting Z typical defenses means damage D is typically near N applies to the character, with a quick look at campaign guideines demontrating that I should drop a brick in 8 Phases rounds, a speedster in 6, a martial Arts "normal guy" in 4 phases, and an Energy blaster in 5.

 

We tell newbies ans complainers that Champions isnt math heavy then spend forty years creating a perfect "character-building equation" to formulaicly resolve the entire game, satisfied that the bell curve of 36d and the average 3.5 per D6 damage assures of a range of damage that will typically fluctuate only some small number.

 

We tell them that it is not "math heavy" then settle in for a six-hour session of light Algebra disguised as random chance, and are smug that our experience and skill means "standard Effects" is beneath us, because we have already learned how to program it in suring character generation. 

 

Why dont we just have tick boxes?  Bricks get 8 ticks, etc.  Why not just take Standard Effects and write down the actual number of damage that you want your power to inflict?  It would suggest more complexity than just ticking off the boxes, I think.  There wouldn't be, but it would be suggested.

 

But now that no one (again: I _think_ ) is talking about exploding dice, let's talk about something else entirely.

 

Let's talk about critical hits.  DnD famously has this (or did; I dont care any more): roll a natural 20 and you have scored a critical hit!  The single most common house rule in Champions: roll a natural 3, and you have achieved a critical hit!  At least the Champions version is slightly more controlled- more predictable: instead of having our metixulius formulae upset one time in 20, we only suffer this indignity one timw in two-hundred and sixteen: less than one-half of one percent of the attack rolls made during a typical session.  Our simple game of subtraction flows more regularly, and more smoothly.

 

 

Now let's talk about another different thing:  Joe the Plumber.  You all know Joe!  He is that guy who absolutely _bombed_ on Jeopardy, but managed to get on the show because the screening test was kind of heavy with Star Trek questions.

 

Joe the Plumber plumbs, and he plumbs well.  Joe knows his way around copper (Type L _and_ Type M, as well as type K!) In hard and soft.  He is aces at both galvanized and malleable, and unbeatable at at cast iron, PVC, even the old soil pipe.  He spent a lot of time and effort learning CPVC when it popped up, and misses the old polybutelyne because the PEX that replaced it is a serious pain in the butt to work with.

 

He can join and mix and match any kind of supply lines, because he caught on instantly that once you adapt to IPS threads, you can go anywhere. He learned shark bites and pro bites and flow bites and jokes about overbites.  When it comes to plumbing, no one is better, because he has spent his whole life studting and working toward and eventually in this field.

 

Now forget Joe.  Let's look at Hiro, the greatest swordsman who ever lived.  Sold into service of the shotgun at age 4, Hiro has spent every waking moment with a swird in hand, practice, practice, practice, non-stop.

 

Anyway, the short version of this is that Joe has to unclog a line at the shogun's place, and to ensure that he doesn't wander off, Hiro esxorts him to the nearest clean out.

 

Well, ol' Joe gets it rodded out pretty quick- he is the best, after all, and starts rewinding his drain sugar, anxious to be fone from this strange holdover from a bygone era, but in his haste, he loses control of the cable, which whios its way out of the clean out, and absolutely _flings_ efluvium (and a bit of paper) all over Hiro.

 

The insult is unforgivable, and Hiro reaches for his sword.  Joe is going to die.

 

Oh! No!  The shogun tells Hiro rhis is a great opportunity to get some live practice in.  Agreeing, Hiro looks about for a weapon to give Joe.  Eventually, in the junk drawer in the kitchen, he finds an off-brand Leathermab Multiform and hands it to Joe.

 

"There!"  He declares.  "We are know evenly matched!"  Without further comment, he draws his sword.....  

 

Joe got a little lucky, because the author is using a D20, meaning that Joe has a one-in-twenty chance of actuallly hitting Hiro!  Better still, they get the same number of turns!  Jies odds went from "you dumb bastard" to "that  poor, poor man..."

 

The author feels that it makes absolutely no sense that Joe should be able to do that Well against Hiro, and puts down the d20.  He picks up 3d6.  Joe feels, impossibly, even more sick.  Now he is only going to touch Hiro once every 256 attempts.  Worse yet, Joe has a SPD2, while Hiro has trained his whole life foe a Ninja-like SPD 4, which means that Hiro gets two tuens to every one of Joe's!

 

Joe contemplates reconfiguring the Leathermab into needle-noses pliers, pushing them up his nose, and stabbing himself in the brain  just to end it all right now...

 

The author picks up the dice, and he tries to reassure Joe that it is okay! He only has to hit once to win.  See, Hiro will probably hit him three or four times bedire Joe can even act, but that's okay!  Because if Joe hits him just once, Hiro will fall!

 

How can that be?!  Joe screams; that makes no science!  I am not even certain I am holding this thing right!

 

Well, Joe, you need to roll a 3 to hit. That is the only chance you have to hit him.

 

I get that, and I kinda think it sucks!

 

But Joe... That is _also_ the critical hit number....

 

I don't follow.

 

You two are so unevenly matched- you are so hopelessly outclassed- that the only choices you have are to miss completely, or decapitate him in one shot.

 

What?!

 

Don't you see?  If you hit, it is also the CH number.  Every single hit you land is going to be a critical hit!

 

But that's still pretty poor odds for me.  I wont argue with the fundamental wrongness of it- for what I assume are obvious reasons- but is there no better way?  I mean, that's not even an official rule in Champions!

 

Okay, _fine_, the author sighs, and picks up the d20

 

"Sucker!" thinks Joe.  "Now I have a dive percent chance of hitting him!"

 

And every shot you land is going to automatically be a crit!  Cheers the author, reminding Joe that his thoughts were being written for him....

 

 

This has _always_ been my problem with any game that makws "best possible attack roll is a critical."  That, and the idea that a critical is usually a set reward: Insta-kill, double-damage, etc.

 

Now, i understand that this level of predictability is appealing- or at least comforting- to today's HERO player, but it's....

 

Well, I want to say that it is a little odd, especially if the,only way you can hit someone at all results in a crit every time you do it, but the predictability of the odds and the repetitious payout are a bit fun-robbing.

 

That is the advantage of exploding dice.  It can happen for anyone, it can happen at any time- it isn't dependant on a miraculous Hail Mary attack roll, meaning that if you need a 3 or a 20 or a 12 to hit, it doesnr automatically trigger a critical hit.  It pops up here and there, adding a tiny bit extra (a chunk in the defenses) here, then again later (an extra-powerful blow), and once in a blue moon, a significant increase to the results (a critical blow!).

 

It shakes things up,   but on average, not by a lot-- just enough to make everyone potentially dangerous, no matter how many times you ran through the character creation equation, or how many blows it _should_ take to fell a character of a specific type.

 

Now to be fair, I don't use them a lot, ans when I do, I usually cap it (no die can explode more than twice), and if it _does- come for a third re-roll, I usually give something different: half endurance for the attack, or some such.   

 

For what it is worth, I dont usually,charge END on the "extra' dice, either: it is qssumes to be rhe exact same attack, just exceptionally well-places, or maybe stimulating the target's sword allergy or something.

 

 

Why do I cap them?

 

Because I believe if somethinf is available to the players, it should be for the villains as well, and I am,well-known for rolling an inordinate number of sixes.  (Alas, this applies to attack rolls and skill chexks as well)...

 

Anyway, while it was not a current topic or pushing toward an argument, I just wanted to take,a few minutes to remind dolks od the upside of exploding dice, and their value as an alternative to 'critical hits.'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[steriaca]

I have never experienced Exploding Dice before, but I'm kinda ok with the concept. If the players can use it, then so can the game master after all. Just as it is limited to the dice which have rolled maximum and has a maximum effect (as in can't go over the total maximum damage if the attack on a legal push or haymakered attack...nothing too crazy but still impressive).

[Opal]

36 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Don't you see?  If you hit, it is also the CH number.  Every single hit you land is going to be a critical hit!

I don't remember exactly when I noticed that and went to confirming criticals - roll 20, it's an auto-hit, roll again, if it's a hit, it's a crit - '85 maybe? It became official in 3e...

 

... only when I did it, a 20 on the confirmation was a "double crit," if you confirmed -  aaand, exploding dice.  lollol

 

(Also, I've seen "20 is an auto hit, but a crit only if you would have hit anyway")

 

And, no I don't use crits in Champions (nor Hero System, well there was that Robot Warriors.... nevermind)

[Ninja-Bear]

Yea, I’m with @Opal. I’ve seen where if the only chance to hit would be a crit then it isn’t a crit until you have a confirmation roll. Star Wars D6 is the first game that I saw that had the exploding and then they changed that that the wild die if a 1 or 6 had to he re-rolled to confirm if the 6 exploded of if the 1 meant something bad.

[Ninja-Bear]

Now the thing about Exploding Dice and Savage Worlds is that in many cases that is the only way to hit or hurt an opponent. Again even the fans call the system swingy. And the fans of course think that its a feature. I seen a house rule where you roll a Fudge dice and on a plus then the exploded die does in fact explode.

[sentry0]

I don't know if I should be weighing in here of not but here goes.

 

The effect of exploding dice is generally more noticeable if you have a smaller die pool.  Why?  Because less dice means less faces, less faces mean you have a greater chance at seeing the critical success or failure state come up.  Finally, if you have a small dice pool to begin with, adding in an extra die (or more!) can make a big difference.  If you roll a single die you have a 16.67% chance to score a 1 or a 6... that's a 33.33% crit chance.  As you add in more dice, the probability of you seeing the critical state reduces.

 

Here is a spreadsheet that I worked up to illustrate what I'm talking about - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AWGAPns9fgBKNxEo8fZz4gC76Yx92Ag8HuKJfYo5-1s/edit?usp=sharing

 

You can see that on the low end it's quite swingy and unpredictible while the high end is much more predictible.  D&D has a 10% crit state, 5% of the time your roll a natural 20 and 5% of the time you roll that nat 1.  That's roughly about a 3D on the exploding dice crit percentage.

 

Anywho, I hope my math is correct!

[Ninja-Bear]

@sentry0, someone I think Zagmar did a spread sheet on exploding dice for Savage worlds. The thing is if I need say even a 9 to hit and I’m rolling a d4 the chance to get two exploding dice diminishes greatly. Naturally people have stories where they had incredible luck and still killed a foe in one lucky shot. But what game system doesn’t have those stories?

[sentry0]

19 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@sentry0, someone I think Zagmar did a spread sheet on exploding dice for Savage worlds. The thing is if I need say even a 9 to hit and I’m rolling a d4 the chance to get two exploding dice diminishes greatly. Naturally people have stories where they had incredible luck and still killed a foe in one lucky shot. But what game system doesn’t have those stories?

 

My first session I GM'ed was basically ruined because one of our super soldier types rolled a 5d KA and rolled a ridiculous stun multiplier against the BBEG.  Yes, this was when you rolled 1d6-1 to determine the stun multiplier so it was like over 130 stun or something IIRC.

 

I faked it and said he was OK, I needed a few more rounds from him  

[Cygnia]

7th Sea has exploding dice (roll & keep, d10s)...I liked it there.

[Duke Bushido]

My own "critical hit" system (when I use it) is that you must succeed (or fail) by 9.

 

It makes a sort of sense to me that a person of average skill (11 or less) is not going to critically fail a routine task (modifier +/- 0 ), nor is he likely to blow anyone away with a spectacular success at a routine task: he is professionally competent at this level; no more, and no less.

 

An easy task he might accomplish with spextacular results; a difficult task he might flub horribly, but foe the most part, he is comoetent at what he does.

 

I used to do plus or minus 8, bases on the idea of 3 being 8 less than 11, but then the whole "hundreds of millions of competent people who never fail and never shine" reality hit me.  They can still do either with the 9, but not on "routine" tasks.  You can be impressive (succeed By 8 )  or abysmal (fail by 7), but not,"critical") without at least some small boost- excellent facilities, good assistance, easier-than-normal task, etc.

 

Still, I tend to think about exploding dice now and again, and every once in a while, I play with them.

 

I am much happier with the notion of Nat 20? Roll another one to get it crit.  Seems like this would make a crit only about half as likely as it is in Champions, as opposed to ten times as likely.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

By mutual consent we all stopped using critical hits in our gaming group.  They felt too meta: this is a gaming thing, not a simulation thing.  It feels less immersive and outside what plausibly happens in real life.

 

By the same token, exploding dice does the same thing, but in a more manipulable manner.  For example with Savage Worlds, the larger the die you use, the lower percentage chance of the dice "exploding" and hence, you're better off using d6 or d8 maximum and focusing on the attack exploding than using larger dice and lowering your chance.  Nothing whatsoever about the mechanic or idea appeals to me at any level.

[Scott Ruggels]

My exploding dice were to buy the stun multipliers up on my killing attacks.  It also proved that Champions players really hate unpredictability 

[Ninja-Bear]

I had a brick once that was taken out by Ares mace due the Stun X 😱

[Opal]

Oh, Stun Lotto, which is so controversial and we tried so hard to fix for so long?

 

Critical hits and exploding dice are like Stun Lotto on Purpose. 

 

(Which just further illustrates the Duke's point, I think)

[Old Man]

My own experience with exploding dice is limited to Shadowrun (v1 and v2).  As a sort of critical hit mechanic exploding dice can be fun.  As a routine game mechanic they're kind of annoying.  When you're routinely trying to hit target numbers above 14, you're throwing dice pools at least three times if you're going to succeed.  As much as I like to throw fistfuls of d6s, it gets tedious.

 

On top of that is the fact that no one has any idea what the probabilities involved are.  If I'm throwing a 10d6 dice pool against an SR1 target of 15D3, how likely is that?  Not very, but damned if I can work out the odds as a percentage in my head.  This is what the GM hated about Shadowrun, which was that he couldn't balance encounters on the fly.

 

Shadowrun also had a flawed implementation of exploding dice in which each iteration of exploding dice was added to 6 and not 5, so there were discontinuities where target numbers of 6 and 12 were the same as 7 and 13, respectively.

[Duke Bushido]

2 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

They felt too meta: this is a gaming thing, not a simulation thing.  It feels less immersive and outside what plausibly happens in real life.

 

Interesting.  I think that is the first time I have heard that sentiment.  Typically, I hear the exact opposite: that doing,roughly the same damge ober and over feels too meta- like "okay, he hits you; deduct Standard Pistol Damage from your sheet..."  Kind of thing.

 

 

He hits you six times; deduct six instances of Standard Pistol Damage from,your sheet-- rhis is actually worse in HERO than most systems, as a list of one hundred real-world guns will do one of three or four damage values, eeally making it feel like "Standard Pistol Damage" ans "standard rifle damage" is a valid thing.

 

At any rate, the odds of hitting someone six times and effecting them the exact same way each time are pretty slim.  At some point you are going to hit a bone, or a nerve plexus, or puncture a lung, or do something- well, not unexpected, per se, but distinctly more (or less) significant than Standard Weapon 4 Damage.

 

Now overall, it doesn2t matter.  Some groups, knowingly or otherwise, prefer combats of methodic, predictable attrition; we have hundreds of campaign guidelines theeads over the years demonstrating that.  If they are having a good time that way, great! Go for it, because you are doing ir right: you are having fun.  That is the single reason that games- games of any kind- exist, after all.

 

Other people prefer that bit of random- that swing up or down that could indicate a glancing blow that tears open a small flesh wound, and that spectacular shot thar pierces the liver.  The find it less controlled, more chaotic, and more satisfying for whatever reason.

 

As above, if they are having a good time, they are doing it right.

 

 

2 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

By the same token, exploding dice does the same thing, but in a more manipulable manner.  For example with Savage Worlds, the larger the die you use, the lower percentage chance of the dice "exploding" and hence, you're better off using d6 or d8 maximum and focusing on the attack exploding than using larger dice and lowering your chance. 

 

 

 

 

 

The mechanic of exploding dice is refilling and adding any die that has maxed.  That's it.  For HERO, with it's count-damage-twice system, I would suggest adding a die instead of re-rollling a die, just to have all the data on hand for the final damage count.

 

The rest of it- selecting damage dice, alterinf the odds of explosion, various gateways or requirements before exploding, limits on the number of dice or number of times a sie may explode-  someone above suggested not letting the dice explode above what is possible on an all-sixes damage roll--

 

Those are controls; not necessarily mechanics.  I will be honest, the only control I have ever used was that exploding dice could not increase the initial value of the roll more than 50 percent, sometimes 100 percent, but- and again, I dont do it very often, so I cant say this is normal, but I have never had it do either.  As someone else noted, the larger the pool of dice, the less spectacular the results are: mathematically-speaking, every six has a one that it pairs with, and the extra die is going to average to 3.5, so you can expect every six to convert a 1 into a 4.5.  Mathematically, there should be a roughly equal number of each number, so you still have twos, threes, fours, and fives in there as well, which remain unaffected.

 

Looked at another way, very roughly: if 1/6 of your rolls are 6, then 2/6 of your rolls are 4(ish), and the rest are 2, 3, and 5.  The average doesn't change much, particularly in a larger pool with so many other dice to average against.

 

It can be spectacular, though, in a small pool.  Witness the d4 story I opened this discussion with. 

 

 

47 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

 

Shadowrun also had a flawed implementation of exploding dice in which each iteration of exploding dice was added to 6 and not 5, so there were discontinuities where target numbers of 6 and 12 were the same as 7 and 13, respectively.

 

 

Oh, yeah!

 

I had forgotten about that!  Though as a player, sixes felt extra good in Shadowrun, because they were _guaranteed_ to become at least a 7.

 

We felt,like we were gettinf away with something.... 

 

 

[wcw43921]

3 hours ago, Cygnia said:

7th Sea has exploding dice (roll & keep, d10s)...I liked it there.

 

DC Heroes (also known as the Mayfair Exponential Game System (MEGS)) has something similar--you roll 2D10 and if you roll doubles, you get to keep rolling and add up the total.  UNLESS--you roll double ones.  Then it doesn't matter how well you rolled before--you will have FAILED.  With a capital F and a capital AILED.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Duke Bushido, your house rule about limiting how much explosion reminds me that I’ve seen over on Savage Worlds that some people do the same thing. They like the explosion but limit how much it can wxplode.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Interesting.  I think that is the first time I have heard that sentiment.  Typically, I hear the exact opposite: that doing, roughly the same damge ober and over feels too meta- like "okay, he hits you; deduct Standard Pistol Damage from your sheet..."  Kind of thing.

 

A bullet from a given gun will do the same damage or within an extremely small range every time you pull the trigger.  The range is where you hit and how squarely you hit which to me is hit locations and the range you get from a gun (6-7 damage class for a rifle, etc). 

 

I agree that heroic level weapon differences in  damage is very small in range (unless you do the killing to normal damage shift), but its more reasonable than "hey look I did 4 times as much damage because I got lucky on a die roll!"

[Duke Bushido]

A bullet from a given,gun can hit in location 'right torso) and scrape out a small amount of skin and intercostal tissue, or go straight through the heart.

 

A hit in location "head"  can split the helix and antihelix in twain, or rupture through the zygoma, travel through the cerebellum, and remove the largest part of the back of the head.  

 

Two of these shots were much luckier than others.

 

Same gun.

Identical bullets.

Radically different damage.

 

The Hit Location Chart (even if you are playing Aftermath), in addition to being more involved than is "add a die," is incapable of modeling this.

 

Again:  there is nothing personal here.  If you are happy applying consistent statistically-identical damage one phase at a time, _go for it_.  It is right, proper, and good.

 

If You want something with a bit of randomness, a bit of chance- do that, because it is right, proper and good to have fun when you play a game.

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I mean, play whatever you want however you want, I was just telling why my gaming group decided they didn't like crits and how it relates to exploding dice.  For us, I guess, we're more interested in believable simulation and immersion: we find that fun.  Other groups have different desires and interest, like rolling lots of dice for huge numbers, no matter how much sense it makes.

 

As long as you are having fun, that's the point of the exercise.

[Old Man]

 

22 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

A bullet from a given,gun can hit in location 'right torso) and scrape out a small amount of skin and intercostal tissue, or go straight through the heart.

 

A hit in location "head"  can split the helix and antihelix in twain, or rupture through the zygoma, travel through the cerebellum, and remove the largest part of the back of the head.  

 

Two of these shots were much luckier than others.

 

Same gun.

Identical bullets.

Radically different damage.

 

The Hit Location Chart (even if you are playing Aftermath), in addition to being more involved than is "add a die," is incapable of modeling this.

 

Again:  there is nothing personal here.  If you are happy applying consistent statistically-identical damage one phase at a time, _go for it_.  It is right, proper, and good.

 

If You want something with a bit of randomness, a bit of chance- do that, because it is right, proper and good to have fun when you play a game.

 

 

HERO's granularity at low levels is a known characteristic, and we put up with it in the name of having a system that can scale from normals to demigods.

 

Hit locations rarely model the full range of things that can happen with gunfire, but that's mainly because we don't want them to.  Didn't we just finish complaining about stun lotto?  I've played Danger Int campaigns that lasted two phases using hit locations.  That's not going to fly with most game groups.  If it were then Living Steel would be a much more popular ruleset.

 

Hit locations, impairment/disablement, and bleeding is how I like to play, but I'm also aware that this is a much more lethal game mode than most of RPGdom is used to, and even I am used to attenuating that with the existence of magical healing in the campaign.

[Duke Bushido]

For normals- heroic level stuff- I tend to prefer a much more realistic level of lethality myself.  That is why I tend to not use HERO as my first choice for such games.  I tend  use Classic Traveller as the rules set upon which most of my sci-fi (though I do run one on HERO for a long-running group that likes the lower lethality of HERO) and all but two of the westerns I ever ran.  I haved Traveller for Fantasy every now and again, but I find TFT to be a better choice, simply because it is made for it.

 

"Two phases" of HERO" isn't a measure of anything.  Two phases of HERO, with six players, hit location charts, and skill allocations can be forty minutes of real time or more.  Now I get that someone is going to pipe up with "no it isn't," and I agree: with martial discipline and hard ceackdowns on how many questions, asides, no extras (like hir location charts), etc, you can get it down to around ninety seconds owr player, if they add dice quickly, or take the comforting routw of assuming average results.

 

There are things that HERO does nit do quickly, because thise things arw add-one: extra steps.  Roll to hit: I hit,  where? Roll kn the lic2ations chart.  Determine location, determine multiple. Figure damage.

 

Okay, I git hin!  Is he impaired?  Well, let's think....  Is there a xhart for that now or is it a GM option?  How does the imoairment work?

 

Traveller (and other games) you roll and the damage is applied directly,to characteristics; damage is done; impairment is known and implemented, and location doesn't really matter, so pick something that suits the damage done.

 

 

Oh, but HERO can do that, too.  It takes an add-on, of course- an extra step, but if we call them switches and levers then the time dilatiin factor might go unnoticed.

 

All we have to do is build a characteristics drain appropriate to what we want, link them together, then roll to hit, roll hit locations, resolve all that, check,power defense, apply  the drain, start the recovery clock, and hooe no one notices that this model means that power defense prevents impairment, and out two phases are now an hour.

 

Again:  we can protest how fast it _could_ be done, or that I do not have a realistic assessment, but I am,just like most of you: I have been running rhis game since the 80s; no one is going to convince me that I don't know what I know, and what I see every other weekend.  HERO is workable, and dun, and one of my,favorites, but it is a far cry from the pie in the sky it is purported to be foe _,anything_ that isnt superheroes or similar: anime characters with nine foot swords, DnD fighters that fall ten stories unhurt- you know: superheroes.  HEROI can be _made_ to do other things, but it wont do it without adding steps or processes that are going to add lag, and as-written, regardless of the options and switches or whatever you want to call them, the hit location chart can't give you wobbly,variation.

 

If you don't want that, what"s the problem?  You already dont have it; keep not having it.  I am,not foing to,be mad, because I already know rhat heroes biggest appeal to its core fwn base is not it's flexibility.  Beat on a rod long enough, and it will bend, no matter what it was intended to,be.  But its core apoeal is the absolute predictably: the larger the dice pool, the more predictable the results

 

The best way to speed it up is to pick a factor: let's call 10d6 a damage factor-  sorry:  10DC; I forher that it is already divided into damage classes to help predictions and matching.  We don't have to worry about KA and Blast mismatching because we know how to convert, making the differences less important ultimately.

 

So we buy health at 10 levels, but an attack at 2 levels, set defense limits at one level to ensure that normal people are amazed but we know that in ten rounds, one of us is going down, the end Victor determined by a very variation in to hit rolls or the intuitive allocation of one or more of our equally-matched skill levels.

 

We,could shortcut it- eliminate both damage dice and most od the math:  I hit; deduct one level.  I get hit deduct one level.  I get hit again; I deduct another level.  I hit; deduct a level.  I get hit; I deduct a level.

 

Okay, we have a spread; with the current builds, every five back-and-forths gives you three hits and me two... I am down less,than half; you are at half, so call it: victory to you.

 

Nice, smooth, predictable, and quite, just as is best for simulating high action.

 

If You want to add lethality or grit, bring snacks and stay hydrated, because you are going to be here for quite some time.

 

All that being said, it makes the upset over adding a quick wobble something of a surprise.

 

Alas, I am,pretty sure rhis a complete mess, sinve I can only,get here via my phone, which only dispalys ten lines od roughly six words oer line- it is impossibly to,edit, or to track my last sentence, or any point being addressed, and I give up.

 

If it sounds like a rant, it shouldn't: I just cant see enough at a time to know how it sounds, or to know what needs fixing, and food,night, my friends.

 

 

 

 

 

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

Alas, I am,pretty sure rhis a complete mess, sinve I can only,get here via my phone, which only dispalys ten lines od roughly six words oer line- it is impossibly to,edit, or to track my last sentence, or any point being addressed, and I give up.

 

It's fine, we all just assumed you're drunk. 

[steriaca]

When I herd of Exploding Dice (or, basically read it here), the title made me think of a gambler themed Champions villain who chuck dice at superheroes. 

 

Anyone else think that?