2 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Why?  Is the second character stupid? The first character dodged.  He can't attack.  There is no reason for the second character to put anything to DCV if he wants to attack, rather than flee (if his goal was to steal something and escape), move behind cover so the Dodger can't see him or take some other action rather than just standing toe to toe and trading shots.  

 

If he IS going to attack, why shouldn't he put all levels in OCV?  He can Abort to Dodge in Segment 1 if he needs to. If Character 1 attacks in Phase 3, Character 2 can Abort and get his Dodge bonus right into Phase 8.  Or we could give the lower SPD character a Block instead of a Dodge (he can still use the standard Dodge if he wants).

 

Or he can tough out one Sacrifice Strike (when Character 1 puts everything in OCV) and respond with a much more damaging Offensive Strike after taking that hit, and in the same segment so Character 1 can't Abort to restore his DCV.

 

We could also give Character 2 another 2 skill levels instead of +1 OCV and +1 DCV.

 

Been over all that with him and got the same answers. Apparently, comparisons have to take character psychology into account and that leads to the higher SPD character getting an OCV boost from his Martial Arts while the lower SPD gets an OCV minus. But the second character has the higher OCV/DCV because that was how the conversation started: +1 OCV/DCV base vs +1 SPD.

 

Edited August 31, 2024Aug 31 by Grailknight

Another way to make a character that is supposed to be rather fast is to give them an area effect attack, radius, selective, no range and base the damage on his/her HTH damage. The following is a possible example:

 

Run around and hit EVERYONE:  Blast 9d6, Reduced Endurance (1/2 END; +1/4), Area Of Effect Accurate (12m Radius; +1), Selective (+1/4) (112 Active Points); No Range (-1/2), Extra Time (Full Phase, -1/2), Considered to be Touching Anyone Attacked with Power (-1/4), Individuals Can Block (-1/4)

 

The Radius should be the value no larger than the attacker can run in a phase.

9 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

The reason for the second character not to put everything in OCV is the second character is going first.  If the first character has a higher DEX he saves phase and aborts if he is attacked.  That means the second character has to declare the maneuver and distribute the skill levels.  Since the first character is aborting he can distribute the skill levels in response to the attack.  This may result in a Mexican standoff as both characters wait for the other to attack.  

 

If the second character does not attack the first in 12 and does something else, the first character can go all out against him in 12 and will attack again in 3.   If that happens and the second character is stunned, he is going to be at a severe disadvantage in 3.  

 

The sacrifice strike does as much damage as an offensive strike.  The only difference between them the modifiers to OCV and DCV.   
 

 

As @Grailknight has commented, the deck seems stacked against Character 2.  He is given maneuvers that are inferior for the suggested combat, and is assumed to act without considering Character 1's abilities while Character 1 receives full knowledge of Character 2's abilities.

 

Why is Character 2 going first?  I thought the only differences were SPD, OCV/DCV and maneuvers.  Which one goes first is determined by a rolloff.

 

So Alpha has an attack that gives +1 OCV, -2 DCV and Beta gets -1 OCV, +2 DCV.  Both have a Martial Dodge and 4 skill levels.  Leaving aside any question of alternative character design and neither having the required 10 points of martial maneuvers, we just use that baseline.  Let's given them base CV of 5 and 6 so we have numbers,

 

Nothing stops Beta delaying just like Alpha delays. Beta can also attack with all levels on DCV.  He has OCV 5 and DCV 12. Alpha can Dodge and have DCV 10.  Beta will only hit on a 6-.  If Alpha does not Dodge, Beta will hit on 11-.  If Alpha is not hit and stunned, he can attack with OCV 10, so he will need a 9- to hit.

 

In Ph 3, Beta can abort to Dodge for a DCV of 15 with all skill levels, meaning Alpha needs the same 6- to hit with his 10 OCV. Beta's Dodge will continue until Ph 8.

 

Or they can both stand around all day waiting for the other to make the first move.

Edited August 31, 2024Aug 31 by Hugh Neilson

The example I used is based on a character I ran.  I have used the strategy in actual games and had a lot of success with it.  In my experience I have found that most players tend to try to get in attack as soon as they can.  The vast majority of players are going to try and attack in 12.  Most players when attacking also do not tank their DCV and cancel the next phase, they usually to maintain a decent DCV while attacking. It is also my experience that offensive strike is a lot more common that sacrifice strike even though the maneuvers are similar.  

 

The strategy does not always work, but a higher SPD can make it easier to exploit a mistake made by your opponent and recover from your own mistakes. 

 

If the lower SPD character uses this strategy he will be attacked twice before he gets a chance to attack. The character that gets two attacks has a greater chance to hit than the character that gets one even if the slower character has a +1 CV.  Two attacks at an 11 or less gives you about an 86% chance of success, a 12 or less gives you a 74% chance of success.    
 

The thing is, characters are rarely fighting for the sake of fighting.

 

My players have now realised that if I stake out a fight that seems to have no purpose than fighting, then they are missing something.  Or someone and, regardless of how the fight is going, they are "losing".

 

In the case in point, those two characters might be in an endless standoff regardless of abilities but it is on someone's interest to delay.  The villain might be holding off the hero while the vault is being robbed, the hero might be delaying the villain until police or other help arrives.

 

Having the higher speed probably gives you an action each turn to thwart the other's plans, scooting past them when they abort to dodge, either to intercept the robbery or to escape.

 

The higher the SPD differential, the bigger that utility grows.

 

Doc

4 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

The example I used is based on a character I ran.  I have used the strategy in actual games and had a lot of success with it.  In my experience I have found that most players tend to try to get in attack as soon as they can.  The vast majority of players are going to try and attack in 12.  Most players when attacking also do not tank their DCV and cancel the next phase, they usually to maintain a decent DCV while attacking. It is also my experience that offensive strike is a lot more common that sacrifice strike even though the maneuvers are similar.

 

In most games I play, the objective is not to beat the other players, but for the players to defeat a group of NPCs. That changes the dynamic considerably. 

 

I broadly agree with your assessment of most players' playstyles, certainly in Supers games. My players, at least, are smart enough to question why they lose a battle, and assess better tactics for any rematch or similar opponent in the future.  As well, I find that players with a lot of skill levels, as in our example, typically assign them in a balanced manner, at least until they have a sense of their opponents, so I would not often see either of the two max out their OCV and leave themselves open to counterattack as their opening gambit in a straight-up fight.

 

This seems more like one character thinking tactically while the other flails away blindly than 1 extra SPD winning the day.

 

4 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

If the lower SPD character uses this strategy he will be attacked twice before he gets a chance to attack. The character that gets two attacks has a greater chance to hit than the character that gets one even if the slower character has a +1 CV.  Two attacks at an 11 or less gives you about an 86% chance of success, a 12 or less gives you a 74% chance of success.   

 

In your example, if the lower SPD character also delays, no one ever attacks. If Alpha attacks and Beta dodges, Alpha will get two attacks, each needing 6- to hit as Beta's dodge bonus remains.  That's less than 10% likely to hit once.

Actually in my example the higher character SPD delayed.  The strategy relies on allowing the other character to go first.          

 

My original point on this example was that being a highly trained combatant is more than just a single stat.  My use of this example was in response to Grailknights post about the importance of CV for a highly trained combatant.  His assumption was that CV was the foundation for everything.  My point is that a character can adjust his OCV and DCV to fit the situation, and that a higher SPD character has an advantage in doing so.  In reality both SPD and CV are about equally important for a competent combatant.  

 

In my experience the winner of a fight in the Hero System is often dependent on who is the smarter player or has superior system knowledge.   
 

I still have a tendency to go with characters with lower SPD. Not incredibly low but more to the mid to low average of the game. I have played speedsters but you have to pay rather close attention to END and to getting hit (area effects in particular). Plus, it gives me a decent amount of points to utilize for other things.

34 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

I still have a tendency to go with characters with lower SPD. Not incredibly low but more to the mid to low average of the game. I have played speedsters but you have to pay rather close attention to END and to getting hit (area effects in particular). Plus, it gives me a decent amount of points to utilize for other things.

 

Good point - it's not just 10 (30) points spent on +1 (+3) SPD. The character also needs to invest points in END management.

4 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Good point - it's not just 10 (30) points spent on +1 (+3) SPD. The character also needs to invest points in END management.

 

Thanks, and one thing I forgot to say is even if you are speedster, it doesn't mean you have to be a 12 speed.

What makes a speedster is more than just having a high SPD.  That is part of it, but that is not the only thing.   Things like adding the rapid sense modifier to allow them to search faster or process information faster, or overall levels to simulate that they can effectively take extra time to accomplish things are also important.  

There's 8 pages so far and I admit I have not read the lot, but here goes.  SPD has diminishing returns.  The difference between SPD 5 and SPD 12 is huge, but it is also another 70 points, whereas the difference between SPD 11 and 12 is not great.  When I first started playing we often had SPD 5 or 6 characters but for one game I decided to reduce the SPD to 4 for most of the characters and it really made the combat slow because people were getting fewer actions before a PS12 recovery and they had a few more points for defences.

 

That's another point: if everyone is SPD 4 or 5 , or 5 or 6, or whatever, all the players get roughly the same amount of screen-time.  If you have a SPD 8 PC and 3 SPD 5 PCs the SPD 8 is getting about 1/3 of the active play time, instead of about 1/4.  Equally if everyone is SPD 2 and one character is SPD 4, they are getting twice the screen time of anyone else: the character might be fast but the player won't be.  I think that is probably my main concern with a larger range of PC Speed.

 

Like many things in Hero, SPD 12 if fine for a villain.  Fun even, an interesting challenge.

 

I quite like superheroes to have a SPD of 5 or 6 just because it really does help to emphasise how much better they are at violence than normal humans: they are probably one-shotting them anyway but they do it so much faster this way.

 

I do like the Hero SPD Chart.  It is one of the things that sets Hero apart from so many other games and you can do things with it.  For instance SPD on an activation roll: PS 12 see if it activates and start the next Turn with the appropriate Speed.  Makes combat a little less predictable and interesting.  I've even tried Speed bags: give each player an opaque bag with a number of chips in equal to their Speed and physically identical chips of a different colour to make it up to 12.  Each segment, everyone pulls out a chip to see if they get a phase and then refill the bag PS12.  Bit weird but not awful.

 

One weird way I have done SPD in the past is increased SPD with limitations. The time I used it was for a mentalist. I gave him a 3 SPD and a +3 SPD only for use of Mental Abilities. I did this to show that his mind worked faster than his body. So for total he could go in phases 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 but there was a difference. In phases 4, 8, 12 he could take any action he wanted, but in phases 2, 6, 10 he could only use his mental multipower. This meant that if it was in say phase 9, and he wanted to cancel to a dodge, he had to lose both phases 10 and 12 to do so.

 

As a GM I have allowed limitations like this on some of the character's SPD but stated that you should set it up in a way so that if you couldn't use the extra SPD it didn't have you going in phases that you normally couldn't go when at full SPD.  For example, 3 SPD going to 6 SPD would be fine but 3 SPD going to 5 SPD would not as the phases on 3 SPD are not part of 5 SPD.

Sean's intervention, summing up the debate reminded me that I did not see much discussion of my actual proposal.

 

I suggested that a game defines a SPD for PCs, whether that be 3, 5 or even 8.  Players could then buy more or sell it off.

 

Sean's diminishing returns argument suggests he might not agree with my geometric cost suggestion (+1 SPD 10 points; +2 SPD 20 points etc). I might even have suggested that first point cost 15 or 20 points.

 

I would reduce the available starting points by 10 points for each additional SPD the PCs begin with.

 

Doc

I have say Doc, you have some of the most interesting discussions.

Quote

If SPD is lowered across the board, that indecisive player will still cause delays. Their effect will remain proportional to their relative SPD vs the other players. 

 

Right, and as you say, lowering speed doesn't speed up battles.  I've run games that had characters with 2 speed and characters with 9 speed.  I've run very low end (normal kids at a summer camp with a killer loose) and superhero stuff with high powered characters.  The speed numbers don't change the combat: hero combat requires some time and focus to run.  Our gaming group was very experienced with hero and we all were really smooth in combat, but it still took a while.

26 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Right, and as you say, lowering speed doesn't speed up battles.

 

I definitely have to agree. I am in the habit that if a player is not at least partially ready when their phase comes up, I state that they are holding their phase and move on. This may sound mean, but it is not fair if the other players have to wait for the one person. Now if it is in the case of a brand new player to hero, then I will give them some slack and ask other players to assist them, but if it is that one person who has a tendency to do something else, like play on their phone, when it is not their phase and only think about what they will do when it is their time to go, then moving on and having them be holding until they figure it out is a good thing.

Edited October 17, 2024Oct 17 by Gauntlet

On 8/13/2024 at 11:43 AM, Doc Democracy said:

OK.  I had it gently pointed out to me by @unclevlad that the pricing of REC on END Reserves was for pricing reasons - using turns rather than phases meant that the price was the same across every character rather than having to deal with the vagaries of different SPDs between characters.

 

It occurs to me that SPD is one of the things I police most strongly in my games - higher SPDs are devastating in the right hands - my friend realised that when he allowed me to have a SPD 12 martial artists in an early game with our group.  Even though he was dishing out very small amounts of damage, the fact it was autofire and AP along with the ability to move recover and attack almost before others had moved was hugely advantageous.  I was able to move, recover, and still be in there doing damage.

 

Do we price SPD too cheaply? Or should the price of SPD be about its value relative to the campaign SPD? 

 

So.  if as the GM, I say I expect characters of SPD 5, normals will be SPD 1 and agents SPD 2.  Should characters coming in at SPD 4 get a discount and those at SPD 6 pay more?

 

SPD acts as a multiplier and thus REC, doing damage and moving all get better as SPD increases beyond the average.  Is an arithmetic 10 points per point able to account for that?

 

Are we doing SPD all wrong???

 

Doc

 

PS: my biggest problem with widely divergent SPDs is that the player with the high SPD character gets too much "screentime" as opposed to the other players.  This is even worse when it is someone who is poorly organised or overly concerned with making the absolutely right move.

 

So. More Speed means more flexibility. You are SPD 6, everyone else is SPD 4. That means you spent 20 points more than everyone else on SPD. You could take 4 attack actions and abort to dodge twice, which is nice, but Dodge gives you +3 DCV and for 20 points your could buy +4 DCV permanently for 20 points, or +10 PD and +10 ED.

 

Or you could get two more attacks than everyone else, which is great, but for 20 points you could add 4DCs to your Blast, which is better. 

 

Then there's movement.  Someone with 20m of Running and SPD can cover 80m in a turn, with SPD 6 they can cover 120m. If those extra points were spent on running though, the first character can cover 160m.

 

I don't think SPD is inherently better, it just adds flexibility. You won't be as good as a specialist but you'll be better able to adapt to what you need at the time.

 

Then you've got END and STUN.  Sure a high SPD character COULD take more Recoveries but opponents are going to start delaying phases to scupper that tactic right quick, so HiSpeed is going to either struggle with END or have to buy powers with reduced END (which costs) or do very little on done phases.

 

The biggest problem is screentime.  Give the slow player the slow PC. It's probably a Brick. They're easy to play.

I could accept the flexibility argument if not for the fact people limit AP if attacks and defences.  It is only SPD that tends to get a cap and a floor.

 

There is also the fact that +2 SPD is more advantageous if the average SPD is 2 rather than 4. Your damage output increases, your movement increases, your pace of recovery after combat increases, your ability to do tasks increases.  The downside, as you say, is that you need to manage END more actively.

 

And you still did not answer the core question...

 

😁

21 hours ago, schir1964 said:

I have say Doc, you have some of the most interesting discussions.

 

Now THAT is the kind of engagement I am looking for! 😁

On 10/18/2024 at 7:38 PM, Doc Democracy said:

I could accept the flexibility argument if not for the fact people limit AP if attacks and defences.  It is only SPD that tends to get a cap and a floor.

 

There is also the fact that +2 SPD is more advantageous if the average SPD is 2 rather than 4. Your damage output increases, your movement increases, your pace of recovery after combat increases, your ability to do tasks increases.  The downside, as you say, is that you need to manage END more actively.

 

And you still did not answer the core question...

 

😁

 

Now THAT is the kind of engagement I am looking for! 😁

You are wonderful and wise. How's that?

 

SPD is not priced wrongly. Think about Damage.  The first half of your damage dice are just overcoming defences, then every extra die reduced Stun. That means a faster KO and better chance of Stunning.

 

Each die is as or more useful than the last. Each new point of SPD is useful but probably not quite as useful as the last one you bought.

 

If anything you could make the first point of SPD more expensive and each subsequent one a bit cheaper, say 18 points, then 15, then 12 then 10 points a pip from there. So SPD 5 costs 45 points rather than 30. 

 

I do realise no one is going to actually do that.

 

One idea I've considered with point caps is having two: one for most of your powers and one for your signature power.  That way you get characters that are a bit different.

 

Of course the ultimate arbiter should be the GM's Power: "No!"

On 10/20/2024 at 4:51 AM, Sean Waters said:

Of course the ultimate arbiter should be the GM's Power: "No!"

 

And I definitely do agree with you, the GM definitely needs to be paying attention to his player's characters and SPD being one of the most important things he/she needs to look at.

On 8/19/2024 at 3:05 PM, Grailknight said:

 

You're getting closer to the heart of the problem. It's not just SPD. The rules don't provide a novice GM with enough guidance period. We have probably one of the best character creation books in gaming and a large library of villains/creatures. There are supplements for spells, tech, powers and vehicles. There are plenty of broad settings. There are a number of books exploring archetypes. But there is not a single book dedicated to helping a GM design and balance a campaign. The last time I remember anything of the sort is the magic system creation chapters from 1st edition Fantasy Hero. It won't let most create a complete and balanced campaign from the start, but it'll give the first steps and have advice for fixing mistakes and making improvements.

 

This.

 

Everybody here is well versed with the system and we know what we want from it for our own games. Its probably taken you years to get there, though. 

 

@Doc Democracy I agree about the Speed. I think its the most broken part of the system. Once you find your own way around that, you're laughing.