Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

[austenandrews]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I would rate this idea as similar to wrapping Regeneration into Aid/Healing and Instant Change into Transform - you're losing clarity and ease of play for the sake of an abstract "meta-rule." If gaming were strictly theoretical I could support the notion, but it's a hands-on, real-time affair. Ease of use is important.

 

-AA

[zornwil]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I would rate this idea as similar to wrapping Regeneration into Aid/Healing and Instant Change into Transform - you're losing clarity and ease of play for the sake of an abstract "meta-rule." If gaming were strictly theoretical I could support the notion, but it's a hands-on, real-time affair. Ease of use is important.

 

-AA

Pfah, ease of use my bottom! RPGs were meant to be discussed, not played!

 

I fully admit, serilously, to having a wide streak that gravitates towards the theoretical over practical. Way back when I was a ki dI bought the game "The Next War" and thought it was really cool even though essentially unplayable. And we couldn't afford GDW's massive "Europea" WWII series but if we could have I would eagerly have gotten it, despite not really having anyone who would play it and not being suitable to solitaire play.

 

However, really, I think that Doc Democracy's and even The Horror's idea is viable - consider that you have a rules system that informs what you do when you don't have an ability that is being competitively employed and, truly, the rest takes care of itself.

 

The problem with things like how Regen and Instant Change got hosed is not a weakness in the toolkit model, it's an inconsistency in its deployment (in terms of SFX interaction that is) and strong debate over the cost for the utility - IMHO anyway.

[zornwil]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Well, what would the abilities be used for?

 

I picture them as being things like: lifting, looking cool, commander (or born leader), ace pilot, crack shot (and any other skills really), hardy (I'm thinking diseases here), or maybe even speedy. Most other things would be covered by the powers and use the system of balance for those.

 

If you want an ability done at greater levels than the 5-6 levels provided, maybe a Megascaling or some sort... Oh yes, I can almost feel the power of looking cool at Megascale.

 

 

The Horror

 

Edit: added some stuff I forgot to put in.

The addition was good, I was going to respond earlier, glad I waited.

 

I guess I see it, but would love to see by high-level example rather than by discussion how you perceive it would work. Because this can be a difficult task, I'm not "calling you out" to do so, but merely making comment by way of explanation as to my difficulty in immediately embracing the idea. Whatever the case, I think it has merit.

[StGrimblefig]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I picture them as being things like: lifting, looking cool, commander (or born leader), ace pilot, crack shot (and any other skills really), hardy (I'm thinking diseases here), or maybe even speedy. Most other things would be covered by the powers and use the system of balance for those.

 

If you want an ability done at greater levels than the 5-6 levels provided, maybe a Megascaling or some sort... Oh yes, I can almost feel the power of looking cool at Megascale.

Have you ever read the rules for FUDGE? (http://www.fudgerpg.com/fudge/) It sounds to me like you are talking about some kind of melding of Hero and FUDGE. Specifically, the powers from Hero on top of the character creation of FUDGE.

 

Just a thought. Take it or ignore it at your whim.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Have you ever read the rules for FUDGE? (http://www.fudgerpg.com/fudge/) It sounds to me like you are talking about some kind of melding of Hero and FUDGE. Specifically' date=' the powers from Hero on top of the character creation of FUDGE.[/quote']

 

The system that's currently influencing me is Heroquest. It is that system where you only note down those qualities that mark you out as special and different from the mass of NPC normality.

 

It has a flexibility that Hero does not in that you might decide to defend against someone's attack by using physical defences, or by trying to talk them out of it or in the classic comic book cliche of clashing energy beams cancelling each other in incandescent displays of destruction.

 

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/bferrie/resources/supers.htm

 

Doc

[The Horror]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Have you ever read the rules for FUDGE? (http://www.fudgerpg.com/fudge/) It sounds to me like you are talking about some kind of melding of Hero and FUDGE. Specifically, the powers from Hero on top of the character creation of FUDGE.

 

Just a thought. Take it or ignore it at your whim.

 

Uhm. I might check it out. Thanks for the link.

 

 

The Horror

[slaughterj]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Despite the examples given, I will suggest that having no resistant defenses is far more common in the comics than in the game. And buying a ton of Stun and BIOD doesn't exactly match those characters either, does it?

 

Moving on the same train of throught, how often do you see a Champs super who has ordinary human DEX, Speed, CON, etc. Yet the comics are full of characters who have super powers without enhanced characteristics (or at least significantly enhanced characteristics).

 

It's not that Hero couldn't support this. If, when 1st Ed premiered, we had sample characters with DEX'es lower than we are used to, we might have a very different game today. Let's say the exceptionally slow Brick had a 5 DEX, rather than 18, and a 2 Speed, rather than 4. A typical Super might have had 14 DEX and 3 Speed, rather than 23 and 4. A Martial Artist might have had a "superhuman" DEX and Speed of 23 and 5, rather than the 35 and 7 we've now become accustomed to (and then it was more like 29 and 6). This, and similar "normal" CON levels (to pick the most constant stats at or above human maxima) would have left more points for other abilities and powers, so we might be playing 150 + 100 point characters today, with lower CON, lower DEX and SPD, etc..

 

Lower DC's and lower defenses could have been another route - imagine if an 8d6 Energy Blast were typical, 10d6 the high end, and 12d6 "overwhelming". Instead of DC's 10 - 12, we might have 6 to 9. Defenses could drop by 10 across the board and average damage would be unchanged. DC['s and defenses in tose early characters were actually a bit lower than what we see as "typical" now, but "inflation" started pretty early on.

 

That's not the road taken by even first edition, of course, and it's way too late to go back now. But it's interesting to consider how the game might have evolved differently. If Supers had clustered at lower levels, we might have seen more of a push to design rules that make every point in a stat count for something.

 

As long as the stats are so cheap in a system, which in effect promotes excessive purchase of them and therefore stat inflation, they will be purchased up beyond expected levels. Further, because you have to have some reasonable chance of success, one can't have a DEX of 5 in a supers world where everyone has a DEX of 18, because you will never hit, and that doesn't work in a gaming environment.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

As long as the stats are so cheap in a system' date=' which in effect promotes excessive purchase of them and therefore stat inflation, they will be purchased up beyond expected levels. Further, because you have to have some reasonable chance of success, one can't have a DEX of 5 in a supers world where everyone has a DEX of 18, because you will never hit, and that doesn't work in a gaming environment.[/quote']

 

And that's the key. If average DEX is 18, having a 5 makes one very uncompetetive. If average DEX is 28, a 15 DEX is just as uncompetetive.

 

So if average DEX rises by 5, everyone gets to spend an extra 15 points (10 after "speed rebate") on DEX without actually changing their effectiveness.

[Saxondog]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I put stat inflation down as being the fault of various revisions of the game over the years. When I first played Champions in 81-82, a character was built on 100 points plus up to 100 disadvantages. There weren't enough points to build the dex 25/spd 5-6 guys unless that was your a big chunk of your power.

 

My character had a dex 23 and a speed of 6 and was the fastest in the game. She had a def of 10 and an electic powed MP with an 11d EB. She had to avoid damage the way they do in the comics, by using actions to dodge or take cover. I had enough points left over to splurge on a Pre of 13.

 

I to have looked at the possiblity of melding fudge and hero.

[slaughterj]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

And that's the key. If average DEX is 18, having a 5 makes one very uncompetetive. If average DEX is 28, a 15 DEX is just as uncompetetive.

 

So if average DEX rises by 5, everyone gets to spend an extra 15 points (10 after "speed rebate") on DEX without actually changing their effectiveness.

 

There's more to it though. DEX is undercosted (as well as other stats), and therefore it will be bought up. That creates inflation. This is a fault of the system itself, and even if you try to "behave," the boundaries will be pushed and people will make "dextrous" character designs to justify the higher DEX. Even when I've doubled the cost in a group of non-power-gamers, it was still bought up.

 

Also, to the extent that the range of scores significantly affects one's chances of success also affects things. I.e., with the 3D6 system, DEX 5 gives you OCV 2, versus DEX 18 getting DCV 6, you have a 7- chance of hitting, which is a very low %. If the spread were 4D6 for instance, the gradations would be finer and a spread would be more acceptable.

[zornwil]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

I'm not so sure on the whole stat inflation is really the issue it's made out to be. I don't deny it exists, if we're referencing that characters tend to have rather high stats compared to counterparts in similar written fictions, but this is much along the line as Bblackmoor's recent thread on multi-defensive/too much defensive capability in my mind. It happens because players want to be similarly impactful and competent as what they see in the heroic fiction they are fans of. And as we've seen many times on these boards, regarding supers, people complain how hard it is to make "similarly powerful" characters with "only" 350 points (sheesh, let alone a couple years ago it was "just" 250). I can't speak to other genres, but if we talk about pulp, you sure as heck aren't going to REALLY make Doc Savage on 350 - it's not just all the skills and uber-competence, it's that HE DOES NOT LOSE.

 

Which leads me to the central point here, one which I think bears repeating if only because I believe it bears a LOT of thought for game design for heroic fiction. The heroes of heroic fiction just don't lose almost ever. So we as players surely hate to lose. I don't think most people want their characters to be omnipotent or not to be challenged. But they want to win, because that is what they are emulating and what they enjoyed reading/watching. And when facing uber-villains in a game intended to have BALANCE and to be COMPETITIVE via randomized events and other events outside the players' control (extremely unlike the books and movies we see where a writer/director/actors have COMPLETE control to produce the final result), the stat (and general) "inflation" is a natural response to ensure that competitiveness and ultimately the final victory.

 

And it is, IMHO, a reasonably healthy response. Why? Because we must provide the players with an ability to emulate the heroic fictional heroes' ability to prevail. Because of randomness, because of competitiveness, we have few tools to really do that. One of those few tools is for the players to eliminate some of the weaknesses, particularly the extreme ones, which are all well and good in a written work but deadly in a balanced and competitive RPG environment. The superhero genre provides perfect examples in that the lack of defenses for many supers just doesn't work in a game - they WILL get hit by the enemy even if through luck and they are effectively out of the battle entirely if they do not have SOME appropriate defenses. Chars work the same way, by extension - particularly DEX, to some degree STR (particularly given the derived values such as PD, and also in order to be "truly strong" IF that is your character's schtick), and pretty much ANY characteristic you want to be "strong" in.

 

This is further complicated because characters will vary tremendously in capability. Therefore, as a response, villains will be all-around tough or come in teams with similar diverse abilities. And therefore, the characters who don't have a core competence in an area will still want what we may call an unrealistically high competence, i.e., inflated competence, so they are not one-punched in those encounters, again, as unlike in heroic fiction, there's going to be an inevitable match-up between characters of very different competencies and the potential otherwise for a one-punch to many PCs by a villain who is all-around tough.

 

So I suggest that to some degree this is inevitable and even desirable.

[Just A Guy Name]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

The heroes of heroic fiction just don't lose almost ever. So we as players surely hate to lose. I don't think most people want their characters to be omnipotent or not to be challenged. But they want to win, because that is what they are emulating and what they enjoyed reading/watching. And when facing uber-villains in a game intended to have BALANCE and to be COMPETITIVE via randomized events and other events outside the players' control (extremely unlike the books and movies we see where a writer/director/actors have COMPLETE control to produce the final result), the stat (and general) "inflation" is a natural response to ensure that competitiveness and ultimately the final victory.

 

And it is, IMHO, a reasonably healthy response. Why? Because we must provide the players with an ability to emulate the heroic fictional heroes' ability to prevail...

So I suggest that to some degree this is inevitable and even desirable.

Not to argue with your point (that inflation is caused, at least in part, due to the desire to emulate the competency of fictional characters). I would state that the GM should be the ultimate arbiter anyway (my opinion, though I suspect it's a commonly held one), so there really should be less of an impetus towards stat inflation [because the GM should be working to ensure that the PC's eventually triumph]. I do rather disagree with the idea that inflation is desirable, simply for the reason that it(stat inflation) offends my own conservative sensibilities, but I am less certain of my membership in the majority in that regard.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

Stat inflation mayu make characters seem more competent, but when applied to all characters, it doesn't actually change competence. If DEX of a super typically ranged from 8 for a typical "slow brick" (rather than the 18-20 which is currently the norm), to 11 - 14 for a "typical" energy projector (rather than the present norm of 23 - 26), up to 20 - 23 for a "quick and agile" martial artist or speedster (down from the current 32 - 35 range), all CV's would be lower and the odds of hitting would be unchanged.

 

And we'd have more CP to spend on other things.

[zornwil]

Re: Do characteristics break the Hero way of doing things?

 

To JAGN's point - good enough point, and to Hugh's earlier post I don't question there are some ways we could recast the way the game is presented and GMed to help roll back some of the inflation, though I think, to Hugh's more recent post...

 

Hugh, again, to some degree I don't disagree BUT to another degree, I think that when it comes to being competitive in gameplay I SUSPECT (don't have/not taking the time to go through a real model, so could be wrong) that there are many minimum thresholds of competency the stats/skills/powers "require" to not be entirely disadvantaged and this is a strong push and is the degree to where I say this is both inevitable and desirable.