Goodman's Tips

[Scott Ruggels]

The speed clock is not accurate.  We just rolled with it. Also Normals were 10 across the board. 8 across the board I assumed was bad mediaeval nutrition or something. 

[Duke Bushido]

On 3/10/2023 at 10:48 PM, BNakagawa said:

I don't honestly see the point in limiting SPD to such low numbers for the sake of 'realism'.

 

It wasnt (and isn't) for realism.  It was for correct emulation of the genre and its source material, at least with supers.

 

In heroic level games, it works a lot better, actually.  There have been hours (days?  Weeks?) Of conversations on these boards about the speed chart and its weaknesses- namely the drive to have twice as many phases as the opponents or being on thw lower end of that where you get pummeled mercilessly while waiting your turn.  But when the source material is broken down, combat by combat, the vast majority of these combats demonstrate that there aren't that many supers who are much faster in actions-per-turn terms than any other, save those godlike characters for whom either that is their Schtick like speedsters or flagship characters with special "this character is not allowed to be outperformed in any way, ever" rules like Superman.

 

 

 

On 3/10/2023 at 10:48 PM, BNakagawa said:

 

If you tried to play a FPS and limit your reaction time to 6 or 4 second blocks, you would be pwned SO HARD.

 

I find the PlayStation does FPS stuff way better than any RPG, though we did a Pit Fighter campaign once that was kind of fun-- emulating the fighting games that were so huge in the 90s.  I suppose you could consider it a martial Arts campaign of sorts, though, as is typical of us, we didn't use the martial arts rules; we used Powrs and skill levels and called them various "maneuvers."..

 

In terms of FPS games, the entire set up for those is that you are Superman,  you have no peer amongst the hordes of aliens / Ninjas / Zombies / twelve-year-olds that have slept with your mom, whatever.  It's a totally different kind of wish fulfillment and not really relavent to HERO.

 

On 3/10/2023 at 10:48 PM, BNakagawa said:

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.

 

 

For all things, or just those things at which they were trained?  I have seen some nifty footage studying reaction times of boxers when an opening presents itself, and similar stuff with professional trick shooters--  I think we have all seen Bob what-his-name shooting balloons in hundredths of a second.

 

But until I see similar results of the trick shooter boxing and the boxers murdering balloons with bullets, I am going to say this is more a function of skill levels than raw SPD or raw CV.

 

 

On 3/11/2023 at 1:49 AM, assault said:

 

The artists were George Perez and Romeo Tanghal.

 

And a third thank you! 

 

Considering the original designers were comics fans (or so I have been lead to believe) and the name is unusual, you don't suppose Tanghal Tower was aome sort homage, do you?  Or anyone who might actually know?

 

 

 

 

 

On 3/11/2023 at 1:49 AM, assault said:

 

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

 

I would like to say that I did, but I started this post before sunrise this morning, and the kids came into my room--

 

"See?  I _told_ you he was up!"

 

"Yeah, but it's his one Saturday off--"

'He gets up anyway, because he's used to it-"

 

He's sitting right here, too. Kids.  And he hets up at the same time for the same reason that he's grouchy as hell for six weeks after the time change.  He's--  Dammit!  -I's--  I _am_ one of thise people for whom adjusting a sleeping schedule is very difficult.  It is easier to get get up at the same time every day than it is to sleep late one day and wreck it all and have to start all over again.

 

What do you guys want, anyway?  It's not even five yet.  Why are you awake?

 

We have a new truck.

 

Yes; we do.

 

Can we go to Bike Week?

 

Yes; we can.

 

 

And we just got back and I noticed that I hadn't finished this post, so here we go-

 

 

 

On 3/11/2023 at 1:49 AM, assault said:

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

 

Google says you are correct; thanks again!  As before, I can't really tell you anything about the comic (I don't mean this in any insulting way; it is purely a matter of taste when I say that by and large, outside of the old westerns and some Ghost Rider in the late seventies (and some of the early Swamp Things, for the same reson: they were as much occult horror as they were superheroes, at least they were then), comics just dont appeal to me.

 

The art in that Blue Devil one, though, still sticks in my,memory, just like the art from that Titans one.

 

 

On 3/11/2023 at 1:49 AM, assault said:

 

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.

 

 

Not really.

 

As you note, they can throw and soak larger attacks.

 

This suggests that ultimately the end results have not changed, save collateral damage when you miss.

 

Other than that, what have you got?   Bigger attacks, with higher END and REC, to ensure that you can throw your signature moves the same as you did at lower levels?

 

A vaguely- similar "we can drop X level opponents with A amount of hitss, Y level opponents with B amount of hits, and Z level opponents with C amount of hits, right?

 

The PCs can take _roughly_ the same number of hits at higher levels that they could at the old ones, right?

 

Ultimately, the only thing that has changed is collateral damage and character points spent, right?

 

Sorry; I don't know if this is coming across, so let me take a moment to assure anyone reading that this isnt snarky or sarcastic.  I am basing these assumptions on the published NPC books for 5e.  Certain metaceules have remained the same regardless of power levels, which suggests that play-wise, no real change was made.  That being the case, the play / fun is they same, the strategies are the same, so why do to the upping the power levels?

 

At least, that's how I feel about it: if it ain't broke, you can't fix it, so all the work put into fixing is academic at _best_.

 

 

Edited March 12, 2023 by Duke Bushido
Because it was a crapfeat of typos, droppwd lines, and misplaced sentence fragments.

[Ninja-Bear]

13 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

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!

Well Elites I think are fine. Just not the average Agent or Thug.

[Hugh Neilson]

9 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

The speed clock is not accurate.  We just rolled with it. Also Normals were 10 across the board. 8 across the board I assumed was bad mediaeval nutrition or something. 

 

At some point, I don't recall when but 4e at the latest, I think, the baseline shifted from "Normals have 10s across the board" to "0 point Normals have 8s across the board, 2 SPD, 16 STUN, 16 END and 23 points of skills, perks or even stats higher than 10". I think it crossed over with Everyman Skills; both were aimed at Normals having some skills and abilities, not "straight 10s and nothing else".

 

8 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

It wasnt (and isn't) for realism.  It was for correct emulation of the genre and its source material, at least with supers.

 

I think it was Golden Heroes that set actions in terms of Panels.  Supers got twice as many panels per game turn as Normals.  Whether you were a slow, lumbering rock monster or the avatar of the God of Speed, every PC got equal panel time, so equal actions.  They were not shy saying that the game emulated comic books (and were quick to note that there were war, science fiction, fantasy, etc. comic books so the system could be used for any genre).

 

8 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

As you note, they can throw and,soak larger attacks.

 

This suggests that ultimately the end,results have not,changed, save collateral damage when you miss.

 

Other than that, what have you got?   Igger attq is, with higher END and REC,to ensure that you can throw your signature moves the same,as,you sis at lower levels?

 

A vaguely- similar "we can drop X level opponents with A amount of buts, Y level opponents with B amount of hits, and Z level opponents with Z amount of hits, right?

 

The PCs can take -roughly the same,number of hits at higher leveks than the old ones,could at lower levels?

 

Ultimately, the only thing that has changed is collateral,damage and chravter points spent, right?

 

A certain portion of points becomes a character tax. You can't be too far behind on the SPD and CV curve.  With higher SPD, you need more REC/END or reduced END, and more STUN to get you to higher post-PS12 recovery. If average attacks rise, average defenses, STUN and CON need to rise.

 

This is another issue for the Trained Normal - you're expected to have limited defenses AND limited CON, so look forward to a lot of those "4 SPD maximum - you're a normal human!" phases being spent recovering from being stunned.You nail it, Duke - slow "trained normals" are lousy genre emulation.  In the comics, they avoid attacks so they don't need high defenses, STUN and CON.

 

"But they won't be as Super!"

 

No? 

 

15 Defenses still means a Normal can't really hurt them.  5 CV and 3 SPD is still a decent advantage over 3 CV and 2 SPD. 10d6 will still KO and hospitalize some poor 2 PD Normal (5 PD won't fare a lot better). Agents don't have to all be peak human normals (isn't that what Captain America is supposed to be?) to be remotely relevant, and they still compare to other Supers in the same way they did before. But a 35 Defense Doctor Destroyer with a suite of 15d6 attacks will walk all over them - we don't need 1,500 point master villains if we tone down the standard Supers.

 

A nice thought exercise, but the current norms are far too ingrained.  It didn't take long for those 1e starting characters with 8 - 10d6 attacks, 15 - 20 defenses and 20 - 23 DEX/4 - 5 SPD average to be replaced with 12d6, 25 - 30 defense, 23 - 30 DEX, 5-6 SPD villains.

 

If we apply genre emulation and assume those 1e villains were intended to fight a team of 4 or 5 PCs, then the PCs didn't need to be powerful enough to beat them one on one. Unfortunately, 1e didn't have a supervillain team (with lower abilities but better synergies and strategies) to illustrate what PC teams might look like.

 

There's too much published material, and too little Hero capital for new material, to abandon backwards compatibility now. Imagine if Hero had the resources to change all the ground rules and republish all the old Enemies to a new standard - that's basically what every new edition of most games does today.

 

If we take the published Champions characters and drop every Super by 9 DEX, 3 CV and 2 SPD, they don't change much relative to one another.  We can drop Agents a bit less, and mooks a bit less than that, and non-Supers are more credible threats too.

 

I've toyed with dropping every NPC villain by 10 defenses and adding 3 DCs (tougher to address exotic or unusual defenses and exotic attacks) to speed up combat.  If everyone has 12d6 and 35 defenses, an average hit does 7 STUN and combat takes forever.  Leave the PCs at that level, but give the villains 15d6 and 25 defenses.  The Heros average 42 - 25 = 17 STUN to the villains, and the Villains respond with 52 - 35 = 17 average STUN back. Just as easy to have everyone reduce defenses by 10, but that requires the PCs be revised.

 

12d6 and 25 defenses is comparable damage to 9d6 attacks and 15 defenses, if you want to scale it back further.  10d6 attacks and 15 defenses actually makes being STUNNED with a 23 CON an occasional event.

 

Now, let's assume we did drop those 23 DEX, 8 CV, 5 SPD, 12 DC, 25 defense average characters by 9 DEX, 3 CV, 2 SPD, 2 DC and 10 defenses.  That saves (pre-6e) 66 points (ignoring rDEF and the spinoff effect on STUN, REC and END).  In 4e, we save 78 points.  Those points can go into character-customized cool abilities, or we could just reduce total points to compensate.

[Duke Bushido]

Would love to dive deeper into this, and may later, but I we are taking a host break from the game right now, so I am limited on time.

 

 

I have received reactions from laughter to appreciation to scorn for not moving beyond 2e, and I cant cite anyone rwason we never did, but I can say this:

 

3e never came anywhere near us.  When the tiny xorner of a craft store drom which we could order games finally closed up (small town story) and the corner shelves were again filled with crocheted dollies, we would find ourselves drivibg from seventy to a hundred and fifty miles one way to get to our "local" game stores.  If no one in that range had it when we made our quarterly pilgrimages, we didnt get it.

 

So we never even saw a 3e to move on toward.   When we got 4e, we kind of choked on a lot of things--  and to be fair, we did manage to nab Fantasy HERO (the original) on the same trip that netted us BBB, and we already had Star HERO and Mystic Inc and Robot Warriors, and our own home brew vehicle rules, etc, etc--

 

What it amounted to was that 4e seemed to be about pulling stuff from other HERO Games (which we were already doing anyway), a few new powers that "solved" problems,we had either already adressed anyway or never actually had because our interpretations had apparently differed from the 4e (or 3e. It would be a xouole of decases before I got a 3e book, so we thiught some,of these changes may have come,from there; no way to know at the time).

 

The most xommon example I point to is "other than a phenomenal vehicle for min-maxing, what is so different between "Multiform" and "only in appropriate identity" that MF needs to exist at all?

 

Beyond the grotesque pointa discount, we couldn't find any difference that didnt fall under SFX.

 

It went on and on like that throughout the book.   We loved the skills system, right up until we noticed that even though "Security Systems" might be a PS or a KS, it still had (as did most of the legacy Skills) its own rules, costings, etc, so we balked on that, too,

 

There were things that we really did like from newer stuff-- things like the Time Chart, for example, but 

The biggest thing we noticed was that it was more of a step in power levels overall than anything else, and that the same "meta rules" that made your character no more powerful or resistant than he ever was before _comparatively_, and that a lot of the rules seemed,geared toward building world threat level characters on the cheap-- even time Time Chart (which we really did love) made adjuatment powers permanent for a very small investment compared to what we already had in front of us.

 

Points creep and power escalation-  I totally understand the appeal.  But if there is no change in relative power, then it's just pointless.  It is an exercise in trillionairism:  once I have _all_ the money, what is the challenge in using it?  Who can stand against me?

 

Or, to borrow from my old friend and player back then JW:

 

"look, the Hulk sometimes has a good heart, but he has unlimited physical power-  physics-defying, mountain-lifting unlimited physical power.  The Hulk is stupid _for a reason_."

 

So once you have built the Hulk on the cheap, what are you going to spend points on?  INT is going to wreck the character.

 

Granted, if you believe that points grant chracter equality, then you should simultaneously have no problem with this and see the same,pointlessness that I do.

 

If you believe points are just a metering tool to prevent you from starting with everything all at once, why all the over-the-top rebating with the Time Chart and Multiform and other stuff?

 

Why move on beyond what was already working great for us?

 

The last thing, before everyone gets back, is this:

 

Christopher:

 

I am sorry we wrwcked what started our as a nifty idea for a thread.  If you want to start another one _with nothing but Goodman-esque tips, maybe any discussion on the tips can be sequestered in this thread?

 

 

 

[Joe Walsh]

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

3e never came anywhere near us.  When the tiny xorner of a craft store drom which we could order games finally closed up (small town story) and the corner shelves were again filled with crocheted dollies, we would find ourselves drivibg from seventy to a hundred and fifty miles one way to get to our "local" game stores.  If no one in that range had it when we made our quarterly pilgrimages, we didnt get it.

 

So we never even saw a 3e to move on toward.   

 

That makes sense. Hard to upgrade if the new edition isn't available for purchase where you shop!

 

(Those of us with easier access to RPGs may have bought more new editions of things, but we probably had buyers' remorse more often, too. 😄)

 

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

What it amounted to was that 4e seemed to be about pulling stuff from other HERO Games (which we were already doing anyway), a few new powers that "solved" problems,we had either already adressed anyway or never actually had because our interpretations had apparently differed from the 4e (or 3e. It would be a xouole of decases before I got a 3e book, so we thiught some,of these changes may have come,from there; no way to know at the time).

 

You were a lot more thoughtful than I was at the time. It took me until well into the 90s to fully figure out that just because there was a new edition didn't mean I needed to buy it (and if I bought it out of curiosity, that doing so created no obligation to play it to "get my money's worth out of it").

 

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Points creep and power escalation-  I totally understand the appeal.  But if there is no change in relative power, then it's just pointless.  It is an exercise in trillionairism:  once I have _all_ the money, what is the challenge in using it?  Who can stand against me?

 

Reminds me of when one of the players in my AD&D group said something like, "Yay, I gained another level...but that just means I'll be fighting tougher monsters, so is there any point?"

 

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Why move on beyond what was already working great for us?

 

Wish I'd thought of that before buying AD&D 2e, MegaTraveller, Paranoia 2e, Shadowrun 2e, et al. 😂

 

(Heck, just seeing the task system in Travellers' Digest and thinking, "Hmm, seems interesting, but it's so much more complicated than what we're doing, and there doesn't seem to be any benefit..." should have been enough to warn me off of MegaTraveller, but I fell for the hype anyway. 🙃)

 

[Scott Ruggels]

12 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Well Elites I think are fine. Just not the average Agent or Thug.

 

Generic Thugs are SPD 3, Con 15, and STR 15+ and have less coordination.  Anyone Remember Thug #1, #2, and #3?

 

[Duke Bushido]

Dont beat yourself up, Sir.

 

 

There is something good in even those games that seem all bad.

 

I wasnt kidding when I said that we _loved_ the time chart.  We saw it what it essentislly was: the key to super-cheap very-permament Power Destruction and perms-boosts via Adjustment Powers,  but that doesnt mean it wasnt a great idea.  We use it for spells and such when we are doing Fantasy, and even for bits of software when we are doing some,sort of sci-fi.

 

For supers, though, we didnt adopt it (because despite all arguments to the counter, supers are all about the status quo in a way that no other kind of fiction ever has been.  Son't believe me?

 

Star Wars got Sequels; Star Trek Got sequels; the Lord of the rings was three books expanding on and extending the same story.  Robocop went on to become more and more human.

 

Superheroes get reboots to reset them back to the status quo.  Still dont believe me?   Well, we sont have a zombie Superman, but we do have a living one who isnt dead anymore.

 

To maintain any sort of power balance in a status-quo obsessed genre, we solidified a house rule we had been using regarding duration on Adjustment Powers (4e also gave us handy classifications for powers, which we adopted readily, as well as the + / - shorthand for Power Advantages and Limitations (you remember when they were both +X, right?).  It made it possible to do long-term adjustments,  but only the most godlike characters could deliver a perma buff or a perma drain.  Power Destruction, on our model, was quite likely the only,power you had starting out at 250 pts.  Our model made Dispell type builds (another power we already had, if you applied the existing rules in that direction) reasonable and short-term, but pricey enough that you didnt end up with some,sort of computer game-esque "anti X Zone" without deviding up feont that this was foinf ro be the core concept of your character. 

 

As far as the rest of, analysis-wise, I make no secret of being an amateur etymologist.  Most folks hear that and leap straight to "pedant," but this is more a thesauratical error than accurate definition.  It means that I love to study words and their interplay-  what meanings are present in this statement?

 

I wish more people enjoyed it, bevause the problem with the written word is that most of them have multiple meanings, even if thise meanings only come about via context or reference.  A written word is not an open conversation, without which, there is no feedback to double check of the meaning we ran with was the meaning intended, etc, etc.

 

From that hobby / habit, the above observations-- and countless other--  arose.

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Sorry-  I meant to mention that even MegaTraveller (which I detested) had the best system creation and world,creation of any edition of Traveller.

 

Good even amongst the awful.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

You nail it, Duke - slow "trained normals" are lousy genre emulation.  In the comics, they avoid attacks so they don't need high defenses, STUN and CON.

 

Half the X-Men have no business being in a fight, even with armored costumes.  Cyclops has ZERO defenses, except against his and his brother's attacks.  My favorite example of this is Storm, who again has no defenses but environmental ones, and yet is at the forefront of massive attacks.  There's a panel in the "fall of the mutants" series where she's standing up front and center as this lame character spins and throws knives everywhere.  Knives so deadly that they hurt Colossus so badly that he's in the hospital for weeks.  She's standing in front of Colossus with her arms up as if she can protect her face and none of the blades hit her.

 

A lot of what happens in the comics, doesn't work in a game.  Tactics would be completely different; certain glass cannon builds (Cyclops most prominently) would never make it through the first adventure.  The thing we're trying to simulate here is not perfect adherence to comic book stories, but to simulate the feel and sense of the comics.  To make it feel like you're in a comic playing things out the way you would, with your character.

[Opal]

On 3/11/2023 at 4:06 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

But ..you can spray away  like a nutjob and not hit anything with multiple attack maneuvers. 

Which is weirdly realistic, in itself.

 

 

[BNakagawa]

5 hours ago, Opal said:

Which is weirdly realistic, in itself.

 

 

10 accurate rounds? more like 10 nominally directed rounds. It's not like you took the time to set and brace between each shot. Because then you'd have an even lower ROF.

[BNakagawa]

Just as a point of reference, the NBAs 3 point shooting contest gives competitors 70 seconds to shoot up to 25 balls from between 22 and 23.75 feet away from the basket and you also have to move about 70 feet to get to where all of the balls are placed. Most of the participants finish all of their shots within the time limit, so their SPD must be over 4.

[Sketchpad]

12 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Half the X-Men have no business being in a fight, even with armored costumes.  Cyclops has ZERO defenses, except against his and his brother's attacks.  My favorite example of this is Storm, who again has no defenses but environmental ones, and yet is at the forefront of massive attacks.  There's a panel in the "fall of the mutants" series where she's standing up front and center as this lame character spins and throws knives everywhere.  Knives so deadly that they hurt Colossus so badly that he's in the hospital for weeks.  She's standing in front of Colossus with her arms up as if she can protect her face and none of the blades hit her.

 

A lot of what happens in the comics, doesn't work in a game.  Tactics would be completely different; certain glass cannon builds (Cyclops most prominently) would never make it through the first adventure.  The thing we're trying to simulate here is not perfect adherence to comic book stories, but to simulate the feel and sense of the comics.  To make it feel like you're in a comic playing things out the way you would, with your character.

 

I would have to disagree with some of this, Christopher. Between the info I've read through handbooks, gamebooks, and the comics themselves, most of the X-Men costumes have some armor quality to them (as well as some environmental proofing). Additionally, they're all trained in a variety of physical skills such as hand-to-hand and dance. I would imagine, this would give them some form of additional DCV, whether bought naturally or as some kind of ability. 

In the example with Storm, I believe you're talking about about the Marauder known as Riptide, who spins and fires deadly, razor-sharp shuriken as an auto-fire attack. In game terms, the scene you're referring to really demonstrates the peaks and valleys of rolling to hit and/or damage. In Storm's case, she could've had a "Wind Shield" up that protected her, or her DCV was high enough to be missed. Colossus, on the other hand, was an easier target due to his size and mental state at the time (aka, the GM tripped a Complication and said he was at 1/2 DCV). The GM then rolled rather high in the RKA that Riptide used, sinking his shuriken deep in Colossus, but not enough to stop the hero from snapping Riptide's neck. 

[Joe Walsh]

 

On 3/12/2023 at 8:44 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

At some point, I don't recall when but 4e at the latest, I think, the baseline shifted from "Normals have 10s across the board" to "0 point Normals have 8s across the board, 2 SPD, 16 STUN, 16 END and 23 points of skills, perks or even stats higher than 10". I think it crossed over with Everyman Skills; both were aimed at Normals having some skills and abilities, not "straight 10s and nothing else".

 

Yeah, once we got to 4e Normals definitely had skills and such. Give 'em a professional skill and a hobby skill, plus the everyman skills, and then allow for Goodman-ing the straight-10s stats to gain more points to spend, and you could build a pretty interesting character starting with a standard Normal. Then with 5e's switch to already-Goodman'd Normals with straight 8s, some of that flexibility went away.

 

 

16 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Dont beat yourself up, Sir.

 

There is something good in even those games that seem all bad.

 

I wasnt kidding when I said that we _loved_ the time chart.  We saw it what it essentislly was: the key to super-cheap very-permament Power Destruction and perms-boosts via Adjustment Powers,  but that doesnt mean it wasnt a great idea.  We use it for spells and such when we are doing Fantasy, and even for bits of software when we are doing some,sort of sci-fi.

 

Did you end up adopting the modified time chart from Hero System Almanac / 5e?

 

(And please, call me Joe.)

 

 

16 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Sorry-  I meant to mention that even MegaTraveller (which I detested) had the best system creation and world,creation of any edition of Traveller.

 

Good even amongst the awful.

 

Good point. And the starship tour was pretty cool too.

 

 

13 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

A lot of what happens in the comics, doesn't work in a game.  Tactics would be completely different; certain glass cannon builds (Cyclops most prominently) would never make it through the first adventure.  The thing we're trying to simulate here is not perfect adherence to comic book stories, but to simulate the feel and sense of the comics.  To make it feel like you're in a comic playing things out the way you would, with your character.

 

Exactly! I can't imagine how frustrating traditional RPGs must have been for folks who wanted to replicate another medium rather than the feel of it before RPGs tuned to that existed.

 

4 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

Just as a point of reference, the NBAs 3 point shooting contest gives competitors 70 seconds to shoot up to 25 balls from between 22 and 23.75 feet away from the basket and you also have to move about 70 feet to get to where all of the balls are placed. Most of the participants finish all of their shots within the time limit, so their SPD must be over 4.

 

Of course, for best fidelity they should also be playing dodgeball at the same time. 😁

[Hugh Neilson]

5 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

Just as a point of reference, the NBAs 3 point shooting contest gives competitors 70 seconds to shoot up to 25 balls from between 22 and 23.75 feet away from the basket and you also have to move about 70 feet to get to where all of the balls are placed. Most of the participants finish all of their shots within the time limit, so their SPD must be over 4.

Or maybe throwing basketballs is not a combat activity.  How well would you or I do?  They are good enough to suck up some penalties for moving up the Time Chart.  I am thinking that skill is less OCV and more "Basketball Skills".

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

In Storm's case, she could've had a "Wind Shield" up that protected her, or her DCV was high enough to be missed. Colossus, on the other hand, was an easier target due to his size and mental state at the time (aka, the GM tripped a Complication and said he was at 1/2 DCV). The GM then rolled rather high in the RKA that Riptide used, sinking his shuriken deep in Colossus, but not enough to stop the hero from snapping Riptide's neck. 

 

Storm had no powers at the time and was wearing leather bondage gear.  There is no possible explanation for how she got through this with no damage whatsoever and everyone behind her was harmed.  None.  It was a perfect example of "well if she gets hit she probably dies so nothing hits her" logic that happens in comic books all the time.  which was the point of this entire post: it doesn't always work in the game the way it does in comics.

 

Quote

Or maybe throwing basketballs is not a combat activity.  How well would you or I do?  They are good enough to suck up some penalties for moving up the Time Chart.  I am thinking that skill is less OCV and more "Basketball Skills".

 

Yeah I think that's more a PS roll to make a bunch of shots accurately, not attacking the hoop over and over. And as GM Joe notes, nobody is trying to shoot them at the same time, either.

 

However, were I to treat this as a combat activity, its worth considering an optional rule in which you can sacrifice (all) DCV to gain a speed point.  I just wouldn't recommend it because changing speed is an ugly pain in the tail for the GM and messes up the combat chart.

[Sketchpad]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Storm had no powers at the time and was wearing leather bondage gear.  There is no possible explanation for how she got through this with no damage whatsoever and everyone behind her was harmed.  None.  It was a perfect example of "well if she gets hit she probably dies so nothing hits her" logic that happens in comic books all the time.  which was the point of this entire post: it doesn't always work in the game the way it does in comics.

 

Good point. I'd forgotten about her lack of power at the time. Mind you, this is the same Storm that beat Cyclops in and one-on-one fight in Uncanny X-Men #201. This fight displays that she has a pretty high DCV and some serious Dodge skills. Just more evidence that Riptide's roll wasn't high enough to tag her. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Mind you, this is the same Storm that beat Cyclops in and one-on-one fight in Uncanny X-Men #201. This fight displays that she has a pretty high DCV and some serious Dodge skills.

 

 

Yeah but she's not dodging.  She's just standing there with her arms up (not the face! not the face!).  Its just awful and makes no sense.  And you don't dodge AE attacks anyway.

[Opal]

Maybe, in spite of being between the attacker and the ones hit, she wasn't in the AE? 

 

Then there's those AEs that roll to hit everyone in them...

...and, maybe...

"not the face" +5 DCV, 5 combat luck, limitation: look like a putz (can't make PRE attacks for the rest of the fight)

[assault]

On 3/12/2023 at 11:44 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

A nice thought exercise, but the current norms are far too ingrained.  It didn't take long for those 1e starting characters with 8 - 10d6 attacks, 15 - 20 defenses and 20 - 23 DEX/4 - 5 SPD average to be replaced with 12d6, 25 - 30 defense, 23 - 30 DEX, 5-6 SPD villains.

 

The sample characters in 1e were in the 4-7 SPD range. Ogre was 4, Green Dragon was 7. Everyone else was 5 or 6.

The character build examples were: Crusader, a trained normal, SPD 6, Starburst, a guy with real powers, SPD 5, and Ogre, SPD 4.

The first two were intended as PC build examples.

There was never a 4/5 average. It was always 5/6. This seems to have been an intentional design decision, made explicit in 2e/3e.

Not coincidentally, buying SPD in that range was affordable, and sound budgeting.

I don't see any play benefit to shifting that range. It feels like theorycrafting to me.

Comparisons to characters in other genres, or abstract "NPCs are like this" statements don't seem relevant. If you actually need an NPC who is an Olympic level gymnast, you give them stats that make them seem plausible in the game, instead of dogmatically relying on throw away statements.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I do remember most of my earlier characters being 23 DEX and 5 SPD, like a machine stamping out widgets.  I played a flying collider like Cannonball from the New Mutants and had was so ridiculously efficient I ended up buying 7 speed and dominating the campaign.  Everything was through an IIF amulet though and the GM never took it away which I thought was a missed opportunity.

 

Its kind of a Hero truism: if your opponent moves on 2, be wary.

If they move on 7, you're in trouble.

If they move on 11, run away.

[Opal]

1 hour ago, assault said:

I don't see any play benefit to shifting that range. It feels like theorycrafting to me.

 

Like I said, I played in campaigns where the assumed speed was "shifted" - generally, if your power set didn't include superhuman speed, you didn't go above 20/4 (and if nothing else like that, Normal Characteristic Maxima disad).  One benefit was that it aligned the PCs with the "meaning" of the stats.  Another was having slightly less basket-case levels of disads or some more points to flesh out a powerset.

 

So, yknow, 15 years of doing something is not theorycrafting anymore.

 

I also took those characters to conventions, and they still worked.

 

You can shift campaign assumptions, and get good results, but you can also defy them and get good results...

 

At least, you could.  I assume NCM is gone and the points saved by backing off 3-10 DEX and a point or two of speed would be trivial in 6th.

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

12 hours ago, GM Joe said:

 

Did you end up adopting the modified time chart from Hero System Almanac / 5e?

 

Not so much.  We re-interpreted the existing rules from 2e.  We had a lot of debate early on about the recovery rate: points normalized at the rate of 1 pip per segment starting after the segment in which the adjustment occurred.  For additional points, the normalizing could be delayed by an additional segment for 2 points.  So you could spend 8 points and the normalizing would not begin until the fifth segment after the adjustment took place.

 

Problematically, the rules did not really address the _next_ round of normalizing.  The rules as-written could be interpretted that after the initial delay, the adjusted ability normalized one pip per segment from then on, or that that the delay occurred before every pip of normalizing.

 

For what it's worth, the fact that the rules _did_ state that there was an initial delay ("beginning on the segment following") but did not say that the recovery occurred every other turn (ie, that initial "free" delay did not reoccurr), we finally decided that the initial delay was the _only_ delay, and normalizing occured one pip per segment after that.  See?  Etymology.  I _could_ have been a lawyer, if I didn't have such complete disrespect for the entire profession.    )

 

Now we _did_ try adopting the time chart, and of course the first couple of players to buy adjustment powers straight away built what was essentially Power Destruction, with the normalizing rate set at something like one pip per decade or one per century, so we revisited the original rules.

 

Keep in mind that we also had a house rule in play to appease those players who really wanted the recureing delay- essentially a more expensive version of the first modifier:  for three points per additional segment (or it may have been 4.  Been a long time singe 4e came out) THE delay rwvurres before every  segment of normalizing.

 

Short version is that we adopted that mechanic as the default- the delay returns before each pip of normalization.  You pay 2 pts per segment, once you get it to a turn, your two points buy additional turns instead of segments.  When you het it to minutes, your two points buy additional minutes.

 

Same through hours, then days, then weeks, then years, then decades (Yes; we skipped months., math got wonky due to the inconsistency of months).

 

So it is still quite possible to do your Power Destruction, but cost prohibitive enough to make T-form a more viable option, etc, and it also has normalizing rules of its own.

 

Oddly, we only,use this in supers, because for whatever reason, it is the only plwce people want to just strip their oppenent of his powers forever.  (Wierd; I know).

 

We use the time,chart,in all Heroic stuff, because for some reason. Our players dont go nuts with it in other genres.

 

 

12 hours ago, GM Joe said:

Good point. And the starship tour was pretty cool too.

 

I had actually forgotten about that

 

Thanks!

 

Because knowing is half the battle!

 

(The other half is divided equally between red and blue lasers, I believe)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12 hours ago, GM Joe said:

 

 

Exactly! I can't imagine how frustrating traditional RPGs must have been for folks who wanted to replicate another medium rather than the feel of it before RPGs tuned to that existed.

 

I dont know.  We have done western, cyberpunk, and two low fantasy games on Traveller wheels (after Vitizens of the Imperium have us stats for midevial weaponry)

 

Worked really well.

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

17 hours ago, assault said:

 

The sample characters in 1e were in the 4-7 SPD range. Ogre was 4, Green Dragon was 7. Everyone else was 5 or 6.

The character build examples were: Crusader, a trained normal, SPD 6, Starburst, a guy with real powers, SPD 5, and Ogre, SPD 4.

The first two were intended as PC build examples.

There was never a 4/5 average. It was always 5/6. This seems to have been an intentional design decision, made explicit in 2e/3e.

Not coincidentally, buying SPD in that range was affordable, and sound budgeting.

I don't see any play benefit to shifting that range. It feels like theorycrafting to me.

Comparisons to characters in other genres, or abstract "NPCs are like this" statements don't seem relevant. If you actually need an NPC who is an Olympic level gymnast, you give them stats that make them seem plausible in the game, instead of dogmatically relying on throw away statements.

 

I recall more 18 - 20 DEX, SPD 4 characters early on than we see now, but it was definitely "slow Super". 23 DEX/5 SPD was more the norm. 6 SPD was pretty fast.

 

While I did not perceive it at the time, the example characters (other than Starburst and Crusader) seem intended as the team's "villain of the week", and not a team of villains that would go one on one with PCs.  But, of course, we all designed our characters to the standards of Dragonfly, Pulsar and Green Dragon, not Starburst (possibly the only published character with a Multipower that required tradeoffs between attack, defense and movement) and Crusader.

 

Comparisons to characters in other genres become more relevant when you realize that most genres cross over into Comic Book Supers at some point. Adam Strange and Conan, for example; the Avengers interacting with Marvel's Old West characters, the Black Knight, etc.

 

It was really setting "normal characteristic maxima" that caused the disconnect.  When we could look at Green Dragon and say "OK, a highly trained normal human can have a 30 DEX and 7 SPD as a starting character, maybe a 35 DEX and 9 SPD as an experienced character", that was very different from "whoa, normal humans cap out at 20 DEX and 4 SPD".

 

If we dropped every character in the 1e rulebook by 2 SPD and 9 DEX, how differently would the game have played?  Crusader would still move more often than Starburst, and quite a bit more than Ogre.  Their chances to hit, or be hit, would not change relative to one another, although those bank robber thugs might have been a bit more of a threat.

 

For some reason, early on, character design was set to have all Supers with much higher DEX, SPD, PRE and CON than baseline people, but STR, BOD, INT, EGO and COM could just stay at the same levels as normal folks.  CON was a function of DCs and defenses, unlike the other stats.

 

I do recall an old Adventurers Club discussing campaign averages, I think from a poll, and realizing the wide diversity, with some games where average hits would get a very few STUN past defenses, and others where first strike was likely the combat winner.