Goodman's Tips

[Ninja-Bear]

On 2/26/2023 at 7:29 PM, MrAgdesh said:

I seem to remember that my 14 year old self thought that Goodman’s School of Cost Effectiveness was pretty cool at the time. 
 

My 55 year old self is just annoyed at how the min-maxing abuse advice negatively affected campaigns. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think that the idea of Goodman’s tips was to be able to have more competent heroes and in concept with a budget. However the unintentional side effect was min-maxing.

[Hugh Neilson]

15 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I think that the idea of Goodman’s tips was to be able to have more competent heroes and in concept with a budget. However the unintentional side effect was min-maxing.

 

The challenge is that no one wants to play the incompetent sidekick/comic relief.  Players want characters who are effective and relevant when compared to the other characters.

 

The Goodman tips highlighted Hero mechanics and their impact on more and less effective places to spend points. In a complex game system, that kind of guidance is important to newer players.  With the flexibility in Hero character creation, it's much easier to build an ineffective character than in a class-based system where many choices are buried behind the scenes (would you end up with a 20 END, 20 STUN, 4 REC Brick in a class-based system?).

 

I've lost count of the pre-6e fights over "trained normal" characters. "You can't take a DEX higher than 20 or a SPD higher than 4 for a normal human - that's min-maxing".  The reality was that you can't build an effective character without superhuman reaction times and agility beyond an Olympic gymnast because standard builds made a 23 DEX, 5 SPD standard for a huge hulking brute. But it's OK for your anthropomorphic oak tree to have superhuman DEX and SPD - it's just not OK for Batman or Hawkeye to have similar reaction times and agility!

[LoneWolf]

The way the groups I play with handle that is for everyone to limit their stats especially DEX and SPD.  Our normal SPD is 4.  A few characters like martial artists may have a 5, speedsters usually have 6.   Some characters like bricks may even have a 3 SPD.   Most agents are 3 SPD.  We also reduce the SPD of any published characters.  We warn people when they join a campaign.  It actually works really well in keeping combat moving and character functioning.  The lower SPD also reduces the need for END.

 

If too many people boost their SPD, it will trigger a SPD increase for all NPC’s.  When the players know that they cannot win the SPD war most of them don’t even bother trying to fight it.  We occasionally need to warn new players of this, but they usually come to understand it is in everyone’s best interest to keep the stats reasonable.  
 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think having base lines for stats is useful for being able to build characters (what is Captain America's strength?  What was Nadia Comeneci's dexterity?  What was Rasputin's CON?  That gives you a comparison to make your own character with.  Baselines necessarily mean there are going to be human maxima to the most that a real regular human can possibly be, or there's no ability to make comparisons.

[Hugh Neilson]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I think having base lines for stats is useful for being able to build characters (what is Captain America's strength?  What was Nadia Comeneci's dexterity?  What was Rasputin's CON?  That gives you a comparison to make your own character with.  Baselines necessarily mean there are going to be human maxima to the most that a real regular human can possibly be, or there's no ability to make comparisons.

 

Agreed.  The problem is that Hero first gave us no baseline for normal humans, but provided slow Supers with DEX 18-20, average Supers with DEX 23-26 and fast Supers with DEX 29-35.

 

If Nadia Comeneci's Dexterity was 21, does it make sense for the Hulk to have a DEX of 20? By the time "normal human maxima" were established (no sooner than Fantasy Hero, and that was as much to keep the range comparable to D&D's 3 - 18 scores as any "normal human" concept, although Lift was undoubtedly a factor), backwards compatibility prevented dropping the Brick's DEX to 8-10 (SPD 2), the average Super to 11-14 (SPD 3) and reserving 18 - 20 (SPD 4) for really agile folks like Batman and Daredevil, with higher DEX (and SPD) exclusive to superhumanly agile and fast characters.

[Ninja-Bear]

On 3/7/2023 at 9:29 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

The challenge is that no one wants to play the incompetent sidekick/comic relief.  Players want characters who are effective and relevant when compared to the other characters.

 

The Goodman tips highlighted Hero mechanics and their impact on more and less effective places to spend points. In a complex game system, that kind of guidance is important to newer players.  With the flexibility in Hero character creation, it's much easier to build an ineffective character than in a class-based system where many choices are buried behind the scenes (would you end up with a 20 END, 20 STUN, 4 REC Brick in a class-based system?).

 

I've lost count of the pre-6e fights over "trained normal" characters. "You can't take a DEX higher than 20 or a SPD higher than 4 for a normal human - that's min-maxing".  The reality was that you can't build an effective character without superhuman reaction times and agility beyond an Olympic gymnast because standard builds made a 23 DEX, 5 SPD standard for a huge hulking brute. But it's OK for your anthropomorphic oak tree to have superhuman DEX and SPD - it's just not OK for Batman or Hawkeye to have similar reaction times and agility!

I couldn’t agree more! I think the guideline should be create character. Slim down where appropriate then use  some of Goodman’s tips where needed to make concept/playable character.

[Opal]

On 3/7/2023 at 6:29 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

"You can't take a DEX higher than 20 or a SPD higher than 4 for a normal human - that's min-maxing".  The reality was that you can't build an effective character without superhuman reaction times and agility

You can.  Enough levels, or the right power set, and finesse the speed chart just a bit...

Even the super-efficient 23/5 is 16 points the 20/4 character can put into 5 martial arts levels, or 4 & a DC, or 2 all-combat if they're more diverse combatants.

 

On 3/7/2023 at 10:08 AM, LoneWolf said:

The way the groups I play with handle that is for everyone to limit their stats especially DEX and SPD.  Our normal SPD is 4.

That works.

DEX/SPD is relative, if everyone backs off a little, you don't miss it. The groups I was in, '84-99 were like that.

[Hugh Neilson]

6 hours ago, Opal said:

You can.  Enough levels, or the right power set, and finesse the speed chart just a bit...

Even the super-efficient 23/5 is 16 points the 20/4 character can put into 5 martial arts levels, or 4 & a DC, or 2 all-combat if they're more diverse combatants.

 

I cannot recall anyone accepting that "All Martial Arts" for a character with a wide suite of maneuvers were 3 point, rather than 5 point, levels. The "highly trained normal" is typically envisioned as having CVs markedly better than that average Blaster's 8/8. 

 

Your example also does not get the +1 to DEX based skills (those highly trained normals tend to be pretty good at those - breakfall, acrobatics, etc.), so that's another 5 points to equate with a  23 DEX.

 

"Normal with 20 DEX/4 SPD" cannot equal "mutant with 30 DEX/6 SPD". Discounting MA levels could help (but now you probably also need to allow 3 point levels for a Swiss Army Multipower as well - it provides no more options than a wide suite of MA maneuvers).  10 points for +2 to one DEX skill at a time (forget complementary skills) leaves 6 3 point levels, so you can have the same 10/10 base CV as the 30 DEX.  You get a bit more flexibility and have 2 points left over.  That will not offset +2 SPD or pay for Lightning Reflexes.

 

The more standard 5 point MA levels?  All you get is the same CV on average and a bit of flexibility with no skill bonus, no initiative improvement and a SPD deficit.

 

This is somewhat improved in 6e with DEX not being the key combat stat it was in the past.

[Duke Bushido]

On 3/7/2023 at 6:19 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Agreed.  The problem is that Hero first gave us no baseline for normal humans,

 

 

Just out of curiousity, am I the only guy who assumed that the blank character sheet-- straight 10s and do Figureds from there--  _was_ the human baseline, and you compared against that and the few examples from the book to decide how "super" your characters were?

 

 

[Joe Walsh]

9 hours ago, Opal said:

You can.  Enough levels, or the right power set, and finesse the speed chart just a bit...

Even the super-efficient 23/5 is 16 points the 20/4 character can put into 5 martial arts levels, or 4 & a DC, or 2 all-combat if they're more diverse combatants.

 

That works.

DEX/SPD is relative, if everyone backs off a little, you don't miss it. The groups I was in, '84-99 were like that.

 

Thank you!

 

(Just having a group that wants to work together so everyone can have fun goes a long way.)

 

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

Just out of curiousity, am I the only guy who assumed that the blank character sheet-- straight 10s and do Figureds from there--  _was_ the human baseline, and you compared against that and the few examples from the book to decide how "super" your characters were?

 

We always played it that way because on page 7 of 1e and 2e, and page 11 of 3e, it says, "A normal person is considered to have the base value for each characteristic, on average."

[Hugh Neilson]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Just out of curiousity, am I the only guy who assumed that the blank character sheet-- straight 10s and do Figureds from there--  _was_ the human baseline, and you compared against that and the few examples from the book to decide how "super" your characters were?

 

 

 

I think that was the shared understanding. The question was the meaning of the distance from "10".  When a scientist who falls into a vat of chemicals and gains the ability to fly and project fields of darkness has a DEX of 23 - 26 and a SPD of 5, it doesn't seem like these are being highlighted as superhuman characteristics. That kind of Super in the comics isn't portrayed as super-agile, or hyper-fast.

[Joe Walsh]

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I think that was the shared understanding. The question was the meaning of the distance from "10".  When a scientist who falls into a vat of chemicals and gains the ability to fly and project fields of darkness has a DEX of 23 - 26 and a SPD of 5, it doesn't seem like these are being highlighted as superhuman characteristics. That kind of Super in the comics isn't portrayed as super-agile, or hyper-fast.

 

Yeah, the granularity sure tripped us up. Especially for heroic level / normals. We ended up having to back off and take a more holistic view of all the stuff that makes up a character.  It would have been nice to have something like Normals Unbound or Everyman (not to mention if they'd included a good roster of example characters in each of the 3e heroic games).

[Ninja-Bear]

I find making Agents just SPD 2 makes everyone else more super! And I too thought 10’s were the Average Joe Baseline. 

[Duke Bushido]

 I know I am behind in the conversation, but I wanted to say that we might have gotten lyckier than most: Jim, the GM that taught me Champions, was very bit the comic book guy that I am not, and I am just curious when it comes,to abstracts.

 

We got curious about _exactly_ where "super" started, since so many supers are listed as "the peak of human potential" but avoid (with some real work, sometimes) "superhuman."

 

So we grabbed various Guniess Book of Records from across a few years and started looking things up.

 

We pinned STR world-record level at about 23, even recognizing that this record would one day be broken, but that a person who just lifted that much wasn't really able to do that much else with the strength, so he hadn't reached peak human potential until he could use this strength for a prolonged period, etc.  All other primsries being 10, we figured their peak human potential was around 23.  This left us with an SPD3.3, so we figured peak human and super were probably around 4, with super-super going up from there. 

 

Yes; we assumed there was overlap.  A legendary fighter could train relentlessly to achieve speed 4.  A sixteen year old kid with super powers might also poses a a speed 4.

 

When FH pinned Maxima at 20, we figured we had pretty much nailed it.

 

 

So between some,of us wanting to know where human kind of stopped, in the real,world, and a xomic guru as a GM--

 

Jim pointed out things to us from comjcs that I and some od the others would,never have really known, and he had bices and bices if comjcs from which to grab examples.

 

It boiled down to this:  Batman and iron man and most of the superheroes- even the ones with actual super powers-  traded,blows with each other.  Starfire (I think that is right; google gave me the correct picture) fought-- attacked and dodged, hit and for hit-- at the same rate as Cyborg and the girl,in the red leotard (sorry; name,is lost to me) who was superpowers for real, and all of then we're _slower_ that Robin, who was a trained normal.  The yellow Flash xharcater was faster than Robin (duh).

 

He used that xomic series a lot, because the aet was amazing, so we all paid attention.  He used Firestorm xomics a lot too.

 

Rhe point is, people,with SPD higher than highly-trained normals, in the sourve material, we're -rare-..  The Flag, Superman- those were the ones that broke SPD5: the absolute gods.

 

Considering just how lopsided a boxing match between the Flash and pretty much anyone except,Superman would,be, it mde a sort of sense:  there couldn't actually,be legitimate combat if superhuman reflexes and,reacrions were too often betond the barely-attainable for normal,un-super human beings.

 

We geared bow _powerfully_ the villians,could hit us, not,how often.

 

So we never really got into the DEX SPD escalations that apparently everyone else had to endure.

 

 

[BNakagawa]

I don't honestly see the point in limiting SPD to such low numbers for the sake of 'realism'. If you tried to play a FPS and limit your reaction time to 6 or 4 second blocks, you would be pwned SO HARD.

 

Trained people doing things they are good at act and react so much faster than a 4 SPD would. Maybe even faster than a 6 SPD.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Trained people doing things they are good at act and react so much faster than a 4 SPD would. Maybe even faster than a 6 SPD.

 

A lot of that is covered with combined attacks, automatic weapons, and special combat maneuvers.  There's a big difference between leaning back in your chair with a controller and actually being out there doing it in person.

[assault]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 Starfire (I think that is right; google gave me the correct picture) fought-- attacked and dodged, hit and for hit-- at the same rate as Cyborg and the girl,in the red leotard (sorry; name,is lost to me) who was superpowers for real, and all of then we're _slower_ that Robin, who was a trained normal.  The yellow Flash xharcater was faster than Robin (duh).

 

The girl in the red leotard was Wonder Girl. Related to Wonder Woman, although she's one of the classic examples of botched continuity.

 

More importantly, series like the New Teen Titans were direct influences on Champions. To an extent it was a simulation of them.

 

It wasn't a simulation of "reality".

 

The economics of Champions points reflect this. That's why you have to work so hard to make low Spd/Dex characters work. Yes, even in 6e.

 

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

So we never really got into the DEX SPD escalations that apparently everyone else had to endure.

 

If you stayed within the guidelines given in 2e and 3e, things were pretty good. They still are.

[Duke Bushido]

13 minutes ago, assault said:

 

The girl in the red leotard was Wonder Girl. Related to Wonder Woman, 

 

Thanks.  What I remember most from those comics was th art, though.  It was just gorgeous.  It managed to have a flawless simplicity that drove home the xomplexity of the skill that went into it, and yet all the while looked so absolutely _attainable_.

 

I couldn"t tell you one single story from,any of them, though.

 

 

There was another one whise name escapes, seems,like it was somethtinf he shared with us later- the blue demon?  Doeos that eing any bells?  Costume was kind of,an,ebarrasment (mankini with shoulder pads, of all things), but the art was _great_.

 

Eh- doesnt mayter now, I guess.

 

 

 

13 minutes ago, assault said:

 

If you stayed within the guidelines given in 2e and 3e, 

 

 

You remember who I am, right?   

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DentArthurDent]

I remember sitting at the kitchen table in 1981 with a dozen half-made characters scattered about. You see, I had very definite ideas of what I wanted for each character. I no longer had to follow the poorly designed “classes” and “races” that tried to copy Tolkien without paying legal fees. I could create anything I could imagine.

 

I can’t count all the times I needed “just one more point” for a language fluency, or Area Knowledge, or Professional Skill. I’d take a point from Pre or ED, then put it back when I decided to up the Code against Killing to Total.

 

Was it min/maxing? Absolutely. But the role-playing always drove the decisions. Did I really want to play a character Vulnerable to lasers? Did a stage magician need 14- in Acting? Could the speedster run 20 miles and still have End for a fight?

 

But not everyone in my group wanted to sweat this level of detail. Goodman’s guidelines were written for them. All the things I had worked out on dozens and dozens of notebook pages were written out, neatly and succinctly, for everyone. Now I didn’t need to feel like a shark and everyone else knew their characters were well made.

 

Goodman listed the most common ways to make an efficient character. Now we all have the same information and we can jump into some awesome role-playing. 

 

 

 

 

 

[assault]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

Thanks.  What I remember most from those comics was th art, though.  It was just gorgeous.  It managed to have a flawless simplicity that drove home the xomplexity of the skill that went into it, and yet all the while looked so absolutely _attainable_.

 

I couldn"t tell you one single story from,any of them, though.

 

 

There was another one whise name escapes, seems,like it was somethtinf he shared with us later- the blue demon?  Doeos that eing any bells?  Costume was kind of,an,ebarrasment (mankini with shoulder pads, of all things), but the art was _great_.

 

Eh- doesnt mayter now, I guess.

 

 

 

 

 

You remember who I am, right?   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The artists were George Perez and Romeo Tanghal.

 

The plot that mattered was the Judas Contact, which you probably never read. Google it.

 

It sounds like you are half-remembering Blue Devil, who was one of the many characters who never took off, but was fun.

 

As for who you are are... you can still build characters based on 1,2,3e baselines that can punch a lot of face by 6e standards. (That's something you can't really do with current D&D.)

 

Oh, but one modification: 5e and 6e characters can throw and soak slightly bigger attacks. You need to adjust your old school characters for that.

[GDShore]

I never really understood this argument, we always thought that the "10" number was the baseline start for the hero's, that meant that the "normal" baseline would be lower. As a group we pegged that at "8" (were pleased when FH did same). Why 8, at the two baselines both normal and hero are functionally the same, it is cheaper for the hero to attain super hero stats than the normal. Example using dex. the hero spends 3 points and has a dex of 13 which gives him a dex. roll of 12, the normal spends 3 points has a dex. of 11 and their dex roll is still "11". to reach a dex roll of 12 they need to spend 5 points. (basic stuff I know) We felt that the rules implied that the normal started lower. WE felt that normal's like Olympians had pushed themselves to and beyond normal levels same for researchers same for chess masters ect. We accepted that the rules implied normal started lower, we were using "breakpoint" before Goodman tipped it. ( one of our members had trained as an astronomer and wound up as an oil finder for Shell, had wicked math skills) [we all strained our arms patting ourselves on the back when he did] The real problem with min-max isn't the imbalance between normal and hero it is the arms race between player and GM. I found that in order to give my players an engaging experience my bad guys had to become stronger, faster, smarter and that sparked a rebuild on hero's and so on and so on.  It was decided that we would cap the max a character could go and spend more time working story lines. We lasted more than 15 years before economics ended our group. 

[Scott Ruggels]

22 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I find making Agents just SPD 2 makes everyone else more super! And I too thought 10’s were the Average Joe Baseline. 

I don't like that. But then I made agents as a Challenge to the supers. so around SPD4 Dex 18, for most "Elite" Humans.  and then I would wargame all over the battle mat. Fun times!

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah its a philosophical difference.  I prefer agents be cannon fodder that the PCs wade through like Captain America being buried in Hydra Agents, then throwing them aside.  So they have lowish stats like 3 spd and 15 DEX.

[BNakagawa]

18 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

A lot of that is covered with combined attacks, automatic weapons, and special combat maneuvers.  There's a big difference between leaning back in your chair with a controller and actually being out there doing it in person.

regardless the interface, giving a person a semiautomatic weapon and finding they have a ROF of 10 rounds per minute seems ludicrously low.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

regardless the interface, giving a person a semiautomatic weapon and finding they have a ROF of 10 rounds per minute seems ludicrously low.

Well, you can fire more often than that (multiple attack, for example) but yeah, it is slow.  But that's 10 accurate rounds a minute; you can spray away  like a nutjob and not hit anything with multiple attack maneuvers.