Linked Powers and Damage Evaluation

[Cloppy Clip]

This is a little bit of an esoteric problem to have, but I'm looking at implementing a 'Rule of X'-type deal where only some advantages count towards the Active Point limit. As a starting point, think of the list of advantages on 6E2 p98, but this list can be modified as need be. But how would I class Linked powers? Two 12d6 powers apply separately to defences, so they're clearly not as effective as a 24d6 power, but there is still a big advantage over a straightforward 12d6 power on its own.

 

So what would you treat this example as for the purposes of the limit: 24d6 (the total number of dice being rolled)? 12d6 (the DC of the strongest attack, ignoring all others)? 20d6 (this is assuming a limitation of -1/2, and working out the effective DC of the power accordingly)?

 

Given the goals of wanting to allow flexibility with advantages while putting a hard limit on things that affect damage, which answer would you go with if you were in my shoes? Thank you.

[unclevlad]

I may be misunderstanding, but I'm hearing 2 separate things here.

 

Some campaigns use an Active Point limit.  Sometimes this is on attacks and similar, others its for any power;  some argue that since frameworks are powers, it counts there too, but IMO that's a complete misread.  If you're implementing an active point cap:

 

--decide WHAT it applies to.  Attacks is the most common;  if you try to apply it to, say, Multiform or Duplicate, you're saying those powers can't be used, pretty much.

--We have to distinguish 2 things...an "active point cap" that's a campaign guideline is quite different from the active point limit in a VPP or MP.  The latter uses ALL advantages and adders, always, because that's RAW.  A campaign guideline can be a bit more versatile, but the only one I'd exclude on a combat power would be Reduced END.  That's because my builds are based on fairly high-power fictional settings.  The higher your speed goes, and with more powerful attacks...I'd rather see Reduced END than 40 REC.  6 SPD, 12d6 attacks?  36 END per turn, without considering movement.  

 

But IMO AP caps are the wrong approach.  The section you're looking at deals with damage classes...and DC caps are a reasonable starting point.  

 

If you're linking 2 attack powers, then I'd say

--compute the DCs in each attack separately, as noted in that section.

--if both attacks deal standard damage, normal or killing, then I'd probably say add half the DCs of the smaller attack.  

--if either or both deal non-standard damage, add the full DCs together.

 

I'd look long and hard at people wanting to link high-damage attacks together, particularly if it's simply a way to add a ton more damage cheap.

[Hugh Neilson]

The other issue to consider is defense types.  If, as UncleVlad suggests, we add half the DCs of the smaller attack, then that attack should be a Flash, a Drain or something else that targets an esoteric defense.  Otherwise, that may as well be 0 DC as it is not getting past defenses.

 

Consider a 12DC game.  8d6 + 8dd6 is pretty much useless if the target has the defenses needed to weather a 12d6 attack.

 

I might look closer at the damage/effects that would pass through on an average hit and compare that to a plain vanilla normal attack at the campaign average and max DC.

[Cloppy Clip]

Judging it based on what's expected to get past average defences is actually a pretty elegant solution. Thank you, both, I'll play around with that when I get a moment and try and work out a general pattern.

 

Some quick juggling of numbers and it seems like, using the numbers from 6E1 p35 for a maxed-out Standard Superheroic campaign, 14d6 Blast is about the same as 12d6 + 9d6 Blast against a Def of 25. I'm not sure that there's a simple formula you can plug numbers into, but that's definitely something to start off.

[unclevlad]

The guidelines are...terrible.  Def/rDef...those are separate numbers.  For total DEF, what...add the Def and rDef?  OK...but do you take the high end on both?  

 

I'll use middle of the total DEF suggested...balanced however you like.  

 

DCs	DEF	ratio	AVG Stun	High Stun
12	22	1.83	20	26
14	37	2.64	12	19
16	52	3.25	4	12
20	72	3.60	-2	8

 

12d6 is SERIOUSLY low on defenses;  16d6 and 20d6 are too high.  (High Stun == average 4 per die.  That's very unlikely with 20d6...only about 10% of the time, whereas it's about 20% for 14d6.)

 

If we use this, tho, rather than the 25 DEF...that's the character's Normal Def only...the 9d6 attack does nothing most of the time.  Which is what Hugh was getting at.

 

I will say, too:  I'm influenced because I *love* Damage Reduction.  Because I don't *want* to buy 35 or so DEF for a 14d6 campaign.  That's just too high;  21 BODY on 14d6 would be amazing.  The mean BODY is, of course, 14;  the standard deviation of BODY is SQRT(14) * SQRT(1/3), or a touch over 2.  So 21 is outside 3 standard deviations, that's getting into the "one roll per 1000" range.  Yet this isn't getting anywhere close.  When you're buying standard defenses, tho, you HAVE to buy that much to avoid being stunned with every shot.  (Or you're buying a ridiculously high CON, which has almost no game value now OTHER than avoiding getting stunned...and even then, you'll get knocked out REAL fast.)

 

As the damage levels rise, I strongly prefer a layered, combination defense, but where STUN reduction takes center stage:  damage negation OR damage reduction.  The problem with both is they're expensive as heck...but in part that's because they also BOTH work against AVAD attacks.  This is conflating 2 things I don't necessarily want, and makes cost analysis impossible.  But at least they offer a more balanced approach...both handle lowering the ridiculous amount of STUN, relative to the BODY, better.

[Hugh Neilson]

Flowing from Unclevlad's comments, one element of Hero game design that does not get nearly enough attention is the DC to Defense ratio.

 

Combat is very different depending on this choice.  Consider that 12 DC game, and assume typical defenses of 24.  (1:2 ratio) An average attack will roll 42 STUN and get 18 STUN past defenses.  A good roll  could STUN a 23 CON character.  If characters have around 40 STUN, 3 hits will just KO them and 4 should put them down, before we consider recoveries.  I'd expect combats with 5-6 SPD characters to end inside of 2 turns.

 

Let's move the goalposts - assume typical defenses of 30.  (1:2.5 ratio) An average attack will roll 42 STUN and get 12 STUN past defenses.  Very few rolls will be high enough to STUN a 23 CON character.  If characters have around 40 STUN, it takes 4 hits to KO them and 5 to put them down, before we consider recoveries.  I'd expect combats with 5-6 SPD characters to last over 2 turns, maybe longer.

 

More extreme, assume typical defenses of 36.  (1:3 ratio) An average attack will roll 42 STUN and only get 6 STUN past defenses.  No one is getting STUNNED.  If characters have around 40 STUN, it will take 7 hits to barely KO them and another 1 or 2 will be needed to put them down, before we consider recoveries. Now, they are definitely getting recoveries!  I'd expect combats with 5-6 SPD characters to last 5 turns or more.

 

That chart is insane - raising DCs by 2 and average defenses by 15 radically changes the ratio.  Average damage past defenses at the 12 DC line will be 20 - that will make for a bit more common STUN results, and fairly short combats. At the 14d6 line, we drop to 12 average  damage past defenses.  Combat will be longer. 

 

At 16 and 20 DC, we're averaging 4 and 2 STUN past defenses. Combat will never end.

[Hugh Neilson]

On damage reduction, if I want 50% resistant physical and energy, that will cost 60 points.   I could have +20 rPD and rED (or 10 resistant and 15 non-resistant).  In a 12 DC game, I could have 2 PD and ED, and take 20 STUN from an average attack, or 27 defenses (10 resistant) and take 15 STUN from an average attack (and live a lot longer - BOD would be way lower).

 

Jack the DCs up to 20. I'll start with 15 PD and ED, all resistant, and choose between the same 2 options.  Reduction drops average damage from that 70 point roll on 20d6 to 27.5.  40 defenses drops it to 30.  Now it's much more comparable.

 

On the question of BOD damage, the Supers model was clearly designed to make BOD damage rare.  if you want a more bloody Iron Age feel, Damage Negation should be the core of defenses.  Your 5 PD/ED and 8 DCs of Negation makes small arms fire laughable.  But the opponent with a 12d6 Blast can get BOD through on a good roll, even though he only averages 9 STUN.  Make that a 15d6 Blast, and blood will flow in every combat.  A much more lethal game.

[unclevlad]

That's because you're buying things badly.  In a 12 DC game, DR may not work out, no.  Or it might, if done with proper consideration to an overall defense plan.  Nor is 5 DEF and 8 DC Negation necessarily smart;  it's too much Negation.  Negation is for reducing STUN first.  Oh, and players who think, buy some of the Negation as STUN Only.

 

But a couple BODY getting through occasionally isn't "bloody Iron Age."  It's not Silver Age supers, either, where no one ever takes BODY.  I WANT the risk.  Yes, I want the character build to risk taking some BODY.  I also target the overall defense build to the damage.  If I've gotta worry about 15 DCs, then 5 DEF and 8 Negation is stupid.  Heck, in a 12 DC where 4d killing is on the table, then 5 rDEF and 8 Negation is dangerous.  I don't think "oh it's all one thing or another."  I'll mix and match MUCH more.  My patterns are oriented to urban fantasy/modern supers fiction...where heroes MAY WELL get hurt, and death IS an occupational risk.  

[Hugh Neilson]

While my examples on Damage Reduction are intended to provide a costs comparison, I believe it shows that the cost is extremely high compared to just buying adequate defenses until the attacks and defenses get higher than 12 DC.  If you want to suggest a "DR + Defenses" combination you think would make sense in a 12 DC game, be my guest.

 

The negation issue is simply a means around the "enough defenses for the STUN makes BOD damage laughable" issue we often see in Supers.  That's fine if you want a Silver Age Supers game. If you want attacks to occasionally or even often get some BOD damage through when dealing with comparable opposition, shifting a lot of the defenses to Negation is a viable approach. Setting the balance depends on how you want that game to work.

 

Picking out of the air, that 5 DEF, 8 DC will leave 4d6 of a 12d6 normal attack, so an average roll of 14 and 4 BOD, so 9 STUN, 0 BOD. A 4d6 KA will be down to 1d6+1 KA.  A good roll on either will do BOD, and higher DCs will do more BOD. I would expect combats in that game to often leave characters hospitalized or dead, and they are unlikely to leave a major conflict without losing some BOD.

 

A bit more DEF and a bit less Negation will carry a different result, but it doesn't take much more DEF before BOD damage become low to no risk again.

 

Feel free to buy some negation as STUN only. I would set the limitation value commensurate with the frequency with which it is likely to matter (or, viewed from a different angle, ensure that it does matter often enough to justify the limitation value that you selected).

[Cloppy Clip]

Oh goodness, sorry for any alarm caused by my using the ability guidelines: I just needed some numbers to crunch to try out what we were discussing, and the table was too hand. This talk about damage models got me thinking, though: how often do we expect a character to be Stunned in a fight? 12d6 vs 24 Def has an average STUN of 18, which has a 53.3% chance to Stun a character with CON 18 and a 22.6% chance to Stun a character with CON 23. Even those two choices have a pretty big impact on how many times someone gets Stunned over the course of a fight, so how much variance are we allowing for? Should every character buy a fixed amount of CON, or does the game work all right if you have the Bricks able to soak up high damage rolls without falling down while Mentalists get knocked over by a stiff breeze?

[unclevlad]

The value of negation relative to other defenses is a PITA.  Negation works against AVADs, Drain STUN, and Drain BODY.  Which opens up a massive rules question:  if I have, say, 5 DCs physical and 5 DCs energy negation, with no limitations, then what's my defense against

 

--AVAD Power Def?

--AVAD Mental Def?

--AVAD Flash Def?

--NND LS: Cold?

 

Is it really applying to ALL of them?  If I buy it as STUN Only, does it still apply?  What about BODY only?  That's a poor choice, but still allowed.  Or, is it AVAD vs. Resistant PD only?  That seems to contradict the "apply the DN to an AVAD even if the char lacks the specified defense."  

 

DR has the same language.  Its 2 principle issues are overly high cost, and horrific structure.  DR applies LAST...so if you've got, say, 12 total DEF and 50% DR, against even 12d6...you're taking 15, and those 30 points of defense are only buying you 15, on average.  Up the basic defenses, reduce the effectiveness of the DR.  DR can be viable...but with pretty specific builds, and even then it's likely to be a somewhat profligate approach.  The core issue with DR is, the cost did not change between 5E and 6E.  In 5E, the point of DR was insurance against a bad KA STUN roll.  There's some risk of that in 6E, but it's much less likely.  5E's DR also says it applies to an NND or AVLD even lacking the specified defense...so the only compensation 6E added was to have it apply to Drain BODY and Drain STUN.  Not even close to equivalent, IMO.

 

Quote

Oh goodness, sorry for any alarm caused by my using the ability guidelines: I just needed some numbers to crunch to try out what we were discussing, and the table was too hand. This talk about damage models got me thinking, though: how often do we expect a character to be Stunned in a fight? 12d6 vs 24 Def has an average STUN of 18, which has a 53.3% chance to Stun a character with CON 18 and a 22.6% chance to Stun a character with CON 23. Even those two choices have a pretty big impact on how many times someone gets Stunned over the course of a fight, so how much variance are we allowing for? Should every character buy a fixed amount of CON, or does the game work all right if you have the Bricks able to soak up high damage rolls without falling down while Mentalists get knocked over by a stiff breeze?

 

Me?  In a game where the villains are dangerous, and MAY well kill?  Being stunned means you are at EXTREME risk.  It's a VERY, VERY bad idea when the guy that just knocked you out, will take advantage.  I'd say even 10% chance of a single roll stunning you is too high.

 

The point of the brick is to either occupy the enemy's brick...or, to try to force as many opponents to attack *him* as possible, drawing the brunt of the action.  The brick's the damage sponge...you can hit him over and over and over, and he's not going down.

 

With many of the other types...a point to remember is that the source material is NOT quantitative, it's narrative.  There's no points...so a Magic VPP can have No Skill Roll and Zero Phase, while supporting a good attack power, defense power(s), and something for movement...all at once.  Try that in Hero, and your eyes bug out at the cost.  It's narrative, so either the mentalist is fairly safe and out of the way (possible) or for some reason the villains choose not to attack...or they just miss all the time.  Spidey's another example.  Spidey has VERY little resistant defense and generally low defense.  His schtick is dodging...tipped off by Spidey Sense, too...and possibly, the ability to roll with the punch, as a form of damage reduction.  You need to give Spidey a DCV about 6 above the villains' OCVs...which is viable for a grunt, but gets to be debatable for named villains.

 

So what do they get?  Narrative protection.  The writer says the attacks miss.  In a game?  We can't do that.  As a secondary point...the source material uses flowing time.  We don't.  We have segmented time.  It's understandable, but the bad guys WILL have their opportunities.

 

Now, to be sure:  glass cannons are a pretty common problem.  The D&D mage, especially prior to 3E, was probably the best exemplar.  (At least in 3E, mages can try to get enough Con to help out.)

 

So...for me, I really want to avoid getting stunned, and I don't want to get KOd by too few hits.  So my blasters and mentalists and martial artists DO have decent defenses.  Not as much as the tough guys, but respectable.  YMMV.

[Hugh Neilson]

YMMV is the key.  How do you want combat to flow in the game?  If, in your game, you want a STUN result to be extremely rare, then defenses and CON should support that.  I don't think that is the intention of the rules - just write out Stunned entirely if it's never intended to happen.  But it's frustrating to players to lose an action, and it puts that Stunned character at a significant disadvantage.

 

Maybe we want a game where it takes 3 - 4 hits to KO in a typical combat.  Defense and STUN totals should be set accordingly.  Maybe you want more rapid combat where 1 -2 attacks can take a character down.  OK, lower defenses to DC.  Or perhaps you prefer longer combats, so you want characters to last through half a dozen hits before being taken out of the fight.  OK, higher defenses to DC.

 

As long as the group is OK with the speed, volatility and risk levels in combat, no choice is "wrong", just different.  Supers combat tends to go on for lengthy periods.  Wild West shootouts might have a fair chance of one hit ending the gunfight, and maybe even ending the character.

 

The only real problem I can envision is when the characters are not consistent.  If the game expects 3-4 solid hits to KO, including being Stunned from 20% of hits, a player who says "nuh-uh!  my characters are designed to never get stunned and soak up at least 6 hits before being KOd" isn't in step with the group. Neither is the one who builds a character who can be KO'd by one good shot, won't weather two and will be stunned by any above-average hit.  There will be a bit of a range, but too wide a range will have more fragile characters with frustrated players watching as the durable characters play half the game session while they are KOd.

[Cloppy Clip]

In the Mental powers thread, I worked out a little rule-of-thumb for characteristics: in effect, the maximum a noteworthy characteristic could be was around 2.5 times the DC of an average attack (noteworthy being something that the character would stand out in terms of, like EGO for a mentalist or INT for a super-genius), with a range of 10. This gives good results for mentalist combat, and I later noticed means that the Power skill scales appropriately, so I'm generally happy to use this rule.

 

Applying this to CON, and assuming that in the average campaign a combatant will have CON as a noteworthy characteristic, it looks like Stuns become harder to score as the DC goes up. This is definitely going to influence gameplay, but I think I'm all right making it a deliberate choice. At Heroic levels, Stuns can be a serious threat but you have the option to max out CON and fairly reliably avoid them, while when you get into Superheroic levels the chances of Stun drop off even for characters at the bottom end of the range. And, of course, an average bystander who doesn't have CON as a noteworthy characteristic won't last long at all. So the game will play differently at different levels, but I think that can be justified by how much more fragile characters can narratively be in Heroic-level games.

 

So long as everyone making a character is informed about the effects of this guideline, I can see it being just another thing to help decide the level of play when we're planning out a game. Does that sound reasonable?

[Doc Democracy]

I think @Hugh Neilson nails it.  There is no right or wrong answer as long as the playing group is bought in and the GM is content to enforce the limits within the game.

 

I tend to set the game so that toe to toe fights tend to be over quickly, slightly higher attacks, slightly lower defences on average.  It means players are incentivised to think about combat options, dodging, recovering, teamwork to gain CV and damage advantages, and thinking about how to tactically approach a fight.

 

When I want the villains to win a fight, I put more detailed thought into the set-up of the combat, for example, which PC needs to go down quickly and whether the villains need an edge for this one that puts a thumb on the combat scales.

[Doc Democracy]

10 hours ago, unclevlad said:

The value of negation relative to other defenses is a PITA.  Negation works against AVADs, Drain STUN, and Drain BODY.  Which opens up a massive rules question:  if I have, say, 5 DCs physical and 5 DCs energy negation, with no limitations, then what's my defense against

 

--AVAD Power Def?

--AVAD Mental Def?

--AVAD Flash Def?

--NND LS: Cold?

 

Is it really applying to ALL of them?  If I buy it as STUN Only, does it still apply?  What about BODY only?  That's a poor choice, but still allowed.  Or, is it AVAD vs. Resistant PD only?  That seems to contradict the "apply the DN to an AVAD even if the char lacks the specified defense."  

 

I like using DN/DR as a special effect specific defence.  If a character should be more resistant to fire then I want a defence that works against all those attack forms regardless of how they are built.

 

I don't think it us entirely RAW but in my games, that is the very specific use I put such things to.  🙂

[Duke Bushido]

On 6/7/2023 at 10:02 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

The other issue to consider is defense types.  If, as UncleVlad suggests, we add half the DCs of the smaller attack, then that attack should be a Flash, a Drain or something else that targets an esoteric defense.  Otherwise, that may as well be 0 DC as it is not getting past defenses.

 

I have been away for a gew days, but I wanted to call attention to this in particular; be extremely war of it.

 

Way back in the heyday of RPGs, when you could find ten geoups playing your game almost by accident, I got to play as a Player a lot more than i do now, and hey- way back then, D and D had set a more adversarial tone for RPGs, and it took a long time for us to ge completely away from that.....

 

Anyway, my favorite "dirty truck's back then was Drain: Recovery.  Id I could get it Ranged or AOE, even better!   Only about a third of GMs picked up on the potential problems when initially presented the character.

 

I particularly like Tranfer: Recover to Transfer, but about half of the GM picked up on that, so it was a harder sell.

 

The wiers thing was that-- was it GSVC?-- eventually there qas an officially published "power comparison" system to tell you who was evenly matched and who wasn't--  like anything else that uses points as a means of determining balance, it was completely useless in reality, but it mase you feel good to know your "power levels" as it were.

 

The best part about this thinf being published was that Cms who had it leaned on it pretty hard, which actually made slipping nasty Drain builds even easier until we all matured a bit and quit with the 'us versus him' mentality.

Anyway, before I drift too far, keep an eye out for just what Hugh mentions:  a well-designed attack versus an atypical defense can be absolutely devastating.  My biggest pro l3m today is making sure I sont accidentally TPK my players with a villain who has taken too big an advantage of an oversight.  I like to pick at weak spots to enxourage them to develop a way to xompensate and overcome, but it just isnt fun to flatten them all on accident.

 

 

 

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

7 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I like to pick at weak spots to enxourage them to develop a way to xompensate and overcome, but it just isnt fun to flatten them all on accident.

 

Duke is right, the closest I came to a TPK in my Champions campaign was not the horsemen of the Apocalypse, it was half a dozen sidekicks of a western themed villain which were termed "the Guys and Gals".  The Gals had a single attack, a garter that they threw and wrapped round the opponents throat.  Cannot remember the actual build but it was "supposed" to make a hero lose an action dealing with it.  In actuality, they found it difficult to remove and suddenly I had three of my five PCs lying on the ground slowly choking to death...

 

It wa solved by a fire themed PC throwing an area effect power that fried all of the garters and a not insignificant amount of damage to his fellow heroes....

[Hugh Neilson]

Mine was a scarecrow-themed member of a fantasy villain team (Kor Hunter's dimension for those who remember him). A small Penetrating KA by a swarm of crows proved devastating, and they lost the battle.  [OK - that allows for the classic "heroes vs big ugly monster in an arena" deathtrap, so we can fail forward.]

 

I didn't intend that particular group to make a second appearance, but the players' discussions and plans of how they would approach a rematch persuaded me - and they crushed their opponents in that rematch, focusing attention on the scarecrow and another that had been especially effective at the outset. So what felt like an "oops, overpowered the enemy" bust turned into a great rematch because the players took a defeat in stride.

[Doc Democracy]

43 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I didn't intend that particular group to make a second appearance, but the players' discussions and plans of how they would approach a rematch persuaded me

 

Ideal - if they are talking about how they could do it, giving them the chance leads to a pretty heroic outcome.  It also highlights the value of a bit of planing and strategy in HERO combat....

[unclevlad]

It's one thing to be adversarial;  gods know, I played enough Living City, and *many* of the modules were built that way, especially in the last year or so, when there was a hardcore, LARGE group that collected a boxcar load of mid to high end magical items.  This was back in the day when gaming conventions, at least in the midwest and back east, were within driving distance almost every weekend...and the players would play every LC module.  

 

Closest I can recall to a TPK in Hero, was largely because the GM for that *liked* to be in competition with the players.  This wasn't adversarial in the sense of tough, this was "I'm cleverer than you and I'm going to steal any good ideas you have and make them MORE abusive."  I will also add:  ILLEGALLY abusive, almost certainly.  The fight I can remember included an execution of a PC.  I'm not kidding here;  I think it was absolutely planned.  The PC had a great DCV;  he was an extremely agile flyer.  NO resistant defenses, tho.  One of the other PCs was built on being a literal D&D-type immortal, with powers like that.  So the bad guy was too.  The GM's "Magic Missile" was, IIRC, RKA, OMCV vs. DMCV, Autofire.  Almost certainly ignoring any number of convenient facts in the process, to be able to crow about how few points the villain was built on.  Yeah, he knocked the flyer down into serious negative BODY.

 

There were a couple fights with that GM, with his villains, that at least came very close.  The fight noted above was pretty late in the semester, so the game was gonna at least go on hiatus anyway, but I *think* that might've been the last session.  Long time ago, tho.