Does Champions encourgage conformity?

[Tim]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

I agree with Vorsch; Hero incourages conformity thru the dex-spd-def limits.

 

If a GM sets a limit, almost all characters will be at or near those limits.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

Yeah, but the problem is, if you take too little defense, you stand a distinct chance of getting killed, or at least knocked out of combat the first time someone hits you. Sure, you can do a high DEX high DCV speedster/dodger, but all it takes is one AoE attack.

 

As for disads, the way I look at it is, the 150 points of disads is not truely optional, because a character built on 200 points no disads is both far weaker and far less interesting than somebody with the 150 of disads, considering most disads are related to background, personality, and plot hooks.

[Kirby]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

If a GM sets a limit' date=' almost all characters will be at or near those limits.[/quote']

Could be, but I had a GM where we didn't have these problems. He gave us a list of starting maxes and campaign maxes. Each catagory (SPD, DEX, STR, DEF, OCV/DCV, attacks, etc) had variances depending on type. Bricks were allowed the highest STR, DEF & Attacks, Speedsters SPD, DEC, DCV, Martial Artists & 'Weaponeers' highest OCV, Energy Blasters usually were allowed 2nd highest in most, or tied for highest in something (but were allowed advantages to compensate). After these were given, we didn't have problems of everyone being the same, even when we had three martial artists. My martial artist had the highest Dex (29) while another MA had the highest speed (7) and the third had more skill levels. When I had asked the GM if I could spend my points to buy up my speed from 6-7, he told me that the 7 SPD player wanted his PC to stand out that way and so I didn't increase it.

 

Having stated this, I think it takes a group effort to make sure people don't overcrowd in one area. It does take some time. We had been gaming for about a year before the GM brought that issue up (they did all have 12d6 attacks phys & energy attacks at that time; I was at 10d6 being my 2nd character in that game - the mentalists were close also).

[tesuji]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

Yeah, but the problem is, if you take too little defense, you stand a distinct chance of getting killed, or at least knocked out of combat the first time someone hits you. Sure, you can do a high DEX high DCV speedster/dodger, but all it takes is one AoE attack.

 

 

adding to this, the system does leave a rather narrow band of range between safely playable" and unstoppable.

 

Take a given attack you figure to be your super-villain enemy attack, maybe the high end of "normal" super villains as opposed to say the low end of Dr.D.

 

look for the following five benchmarks...

 

1. defense level where it will one shot KO on average yout typical energy blaster (has maybe 35-40 stun.)

2. defense level where it will con stun on average your typical character

3. defense level where it will "hurt" (notional criteria three-four hits will KO.)

4. defense level where it will only scratch (seven-ten hits to KO)

5. defense level where it will rarely scratch (defense exceeds avg damage)

 

Most players will never want to build a character who will typically be playing in benchmarks 1 and 2, because they want to be playing and not watching their character sit around stunned or KOed on average.

 

Most GMs wont want and will typically deny players designed for benchmarks 4 and five because most combats wont last that long and the sense of threat doesn't rise up from those levels of immunity.

 

So arguably the level that fits the joint needs of Gm and player is benchmark 3.

 

That itself produces a rather narrow range of which you cah choose values from.

 

One answer to create more widely diverse might be to change how con stun is figured or eliminate it entirely. this would enable the second benchmark as a viable option for the players. For example, just off the top of my head, if CON STUN were based off making a CON ROLL when you take damage with -1 per 5 pt of stun damage thru defense, there would be a very gradual increase in threat of it across the board, and not a solid "if 1 pt more it automatically happens" and so that would open a wider gap of "playable". there is a huge bit of difference in incentive between wanting to pay for 5 more defense to avoid "12.5% more chance of getting con stunned on a hit" than there is to avoid " a typical hit will con stun me automatically."

[Chimpira]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

Yeah, but the problem is, if you take too little defense, you stand a distinct chance of getting killed, or at least knocked out of combat the first time someone hits you. Sure, you can do a high DEX high DCV speedster/dodger, but all it takes is one AoE attack.

 

 

adding to this, the system does leave a rather narrow band of range between safely playable" and unstoppable.

 

Take a given attack you figure to be your super-villain enemy attack, maybe the high end of "normal" super villains as opposed to say the low end of Dr.D.

 

look for the following five benchmarks...

 

1. defense level where it will one shot KO on average yout typical energy blaster (has maybe 35-40 stun.)

2. defense level where it will con stun on average your typical character

3. defense level where it will "hurt" (notional criteria three-four hits will KO.)

4. defense level where it will only scratch (seven-ten hits to KO)

5. defense level where it will rarely scratch (defense exceeds avg damage)

 

Most players will never want to build a character who will typically be playing in benchmarks 1 and 2, because they want to be playing and not watching their character sit around stunned or KOed on average.

 

Most GMs wont want and will typically deny players designed for benchmarks 4 and five because most combats wont last that long and the sense of threat doesn't rise up from those levels of immunity.

 

So arguably the level that fits the joint needs of Gm and player is benchmark 3.

 

That itself produces a rather narrow range of which you cah choose values from.

 

One answer to create more widely diverse might be to change how con stun is figured or eliminate it entirely. this would enable the second benchmark as a viable option for the players. For example, just off the top of my head, if CON STUN were based off making a CON ROLL when you take damage with -1 per 5 pt of stun damage thru defense, there would be a very gradual increase in threat of it across the board, and not a solid "if 1 pt more it automatically happens" and so that would open a wider gap of "playable". there is a huge bit of difference in incentive between wanting to pay for 5 more defense to avoid "12.5% more chance of getting con stunned on a hit" than there is to avoid " a typical hit will con stun me automatically."

Actually I kind of dig that, but then you run into the problem of villians with high con. If my players combined attacks and was able to do enough to just barely stun him, they would look pretty upset if I took out the dice and said,"Hmm. Doctor Apocalypse has a 30 con so minus the damage you did I need to make a 14 or less roll." I am generally going to make that roll. I have been lucky in that most of my players will jump to help out another when they get stunned. Jumping in the way of EB's, trying to block physical attacks coming his way and what not. I use the rule of X in my game and this is the first time that I have not had the usual degree of sameness. I have 6 players, their dex's range from 15 to 30 and not a single one acts on the same dex. The same is true for their attacks which range from 50 active to 75 active.

[tesuji]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

A 30 con means a base con roll of 15-.

so a 14- con roll to avoid stun would be required when he took 3-7 pts of damage?

 

your heroes would be upset when you routinely made con rolls for big villains so they were not con stunned by 3-7 pts of damage?

 

In the current game, said doc would be stunned automatically when he took 30 pts of damage thru defenses. in the proposed system he would get a con roll of 15- at -6, or 9-... around a 30% "not stunned" but even when he took 20 damage he still had a chance of con stunning... 11- to avoid so about 38% chance of getting stunned.

 

Specifically, i dont think this change makes bigger con villains HARDER to stun overall, unless your typical such villain has weak defenses.

 

 

Actually I kind of dig that' date=' but then you run into the problem of villians with high con. If my players combined attacks and was able to do enough to just barely stun him, they would look pretty upset if I took out the dice and said,"Hmm. Doctor Apocalypse has a 30 con so minus the damage you did I need to make a 14 or less roll." I am generally going to make that roll. I have been lucky in that most of my players will jump to help out another when they get stunned. Jumping in the way of EB's, trying to block physical attacks coming his way and what not. I use the rule of X in my game and this is the first time that I have not had the usual degree of sameness. I have 6 players, their dex's range from 15 to 30 and not a single one acts on the same dex. The same is true for their attacks which range from 50 active to 75 active.[/quote']

[Enforcer84]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

I hear this from time to time within my group, when people complain about power levels being too close.

 

Here's what I do. I suggest that THEY be the ones to play Mockingbird, Bouncing Boy, etc. If they want varied power levels, then bring in someone of LOWER power level than prevails in the group. Taa-dah, varied power levels.

 

Never happens. The ones who complain about not seeing Thor and Mockingbird on the same team are the ones who want to play Thor. Suggest that course of action to your friend and see what his reaction is.

 

Another thing I'm experimenting with is contributions leading to varied point totals. Start with base pts + disads then award extra points for pre-game contributions - making up villains, organizations, etc. If someone wants to have a big, expensive, powerful character, they're going to have to do some work for it, and make less work for me. Sounds fair to me.

you know I never thought about it that way...

sneaky bastards those players...

[Rene]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

What he really hates are point totals. He think its forces all character into a false equality that you just don't see in comics. To an extent' date=' I think he has a point. [/quote']

 

Holy sh*t!!!

 

But Aberrant IS a point-based system too! Just like HERO. Maybe worse, because the characters all have the same points to expend in Attributes, Skills, Powers... It would be as if in HERO a 500-pt character were forced to expend 300 pts in powers, 100 in Attributes, 100 in Skills. That would result in characters MORE like each other.

 

The thing that makes Aberrant characters sometimes more diverse in power level is that the power costs are seriously unbalanced. Homunculus costs a lot of points and is pretty useless, while some Mega-Attributes are a must buy, because they're cheap and potent.

 

It would be kinda funny if your friend enjoyed Aberrant for what really isn't an intentional design decision from the creators. I bet they tried (though maybe not too hard) to make the powers balanced. I doubt they thought "Well, let's make the costs all wrong just so characters with similar points have wildly different capabilities." If they wanted this effect, they'd probably institute random rolls.

[Rene]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

When the gave me characters in systems where they were not awarded points for these things' date=' where it was not expected for everyone to add in the same amount of disads, where "character powers" was not hinged on these disads... i got MORE detail, richer detail, better backstory and a whole lot more people mentioned in the backgrounds. The characters were more diverse and frankly had more plot hooks and richer plot hooks.[/quote']

 

You're refering to GOOD D&D players. I'm playing at a D&D PbEM right now, and we have very well-realized characters, mostly because the GM don't overemphasize combat, there are no dungeons, and the world's society is more like a fantasy novel and less like a fantasy video game.

 

But I've played in plenty of D&D games where the lack of in-built hooks in the rules resulted in characters that lived in a vaccuum and were little more than the sum of their classes, alignment, and race. Don't tell me you never met such D&D players? Maybe you're very lucky, or smart and have set the bar high for admission in your games.

[Chimpira]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

No, my heroes would be upset if they worked their butts off to coordinate attacks and the villian laughed at them showing how futile teamwork really is. I didn't say that it was a bad system (in fact I think I complemented you on it) but truth be told a con of 30 is not all that impressive especially if they have what 35 in PD and ED. So my players would have to do 65 points of damage to them in the wild hope that he would be stunned. That is about 19d6 on the average. Now to make the roll 11- I need to do 20 more points of damage. Which means about 24d6 on the average. Which could work for my guys if they have 60 active attacks except that stun damage is handled separately per character against defense before adding for combined stun. So to have an even chance at stunning the baddy, they would need to do a combined total of 130 points of damage or about 38d6 on the average. I was not even talking about those people with good defenses that use damage reduction. Sometimes it is that 3-7 points that win the day. But overall I agree that it is a shame for people to get stunned and put out of the action and if this works for you I say good going. For years I just simply disregarded the stun rule. Plus I just do not want to add more rolls to combat. If my math is off then I sincerely apologize and will take my head out of my butt.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

A 30 con means a base con roll of 15-.

so a 14- con roll to avoid stun would be required when he took 3-7 pts of damage?

 

your heroes would be upset when you routinely made con rolls for big villains so they were not con stunned by 3-7 pts of damage?

 

In the current game, said doc would be stunned automatically when he took 30 pts of damage thru defenses. in the proposed system he would get a con roll of 15- at -6, or 9-... around a 30% "not stunned" but even when he took 20 damage he still had a chance of con stunning... 11- to avoid so about 38% chance of getting stunned.

 

Specifically, i dont think this change makes bigger con villains HARDER to stun overall, unless your typical such villain has weak defenses.

 

If he has 30 DEF and 50 CON, he's already hard to STUN. Giving him a 21- base roll, he has a 38% chance to get stunned if he took 100 STUN this phase (and he must be a master villain because he's still conscious ). So I can see an argument such a character is harder to Stun.

 

However, the heroes are ALSO harder to Stun. Let's assume said master villain's opposition has average 20 DEF and 25 CON. When he hits them for 45+ STUN (on most hits with his 15d6 EB), they have only a 38% chance of being stunned, where it was automatic under the usual rules.

 

While I disagree that tesuji's proposal does not make it harder to STUN, I think players whining about it need to consider that they get the same benefit. It's a house rule I would discuss with my players, because it is a significant change. But if they wanted it (most likely so their characters would get another option to avoid being Stunned), they'd better be prepared to live with the bad guys getting the same advantage.

 

Chimpira's group may well say "no, we value the ability of teamwork to Stun an opponent, or to Stun one of us. Leave it as it is." Then don't whine when your character is stunned by VIPER agents working in concert. If they agree to the change that makes them harder to Stun, they have no right to complain that their opponents are also harder to STUN.

 

If nothing else, tesuji's proposal might make CON no figured worth something!

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

On another note, while I agree that ranges result in some uniformity, I find it a bit strange to see a complaint about Speed uniformity when most other game systems have a "round" structure that gives everyone the same number of actions all the time. Maybe Aberrant has a different actions structure? I'm not familiar with the system.

[Vorsch]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

if everone has the same spd then the spd chart is unnecessary.

 

There is not enough spd 3/4 published characters to encourage a larger spread of abilities.

 

Hero set the standards way back and its unlikly to change.

 

i mean grond dex 20 spd 4, is there anything in his write up that suggests he is equal to olympic athletes in reflexes.

[Katherine]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

On another note' date=' while I agree that ranges result in some uniformity, I find it a bit strange to see a complaint about Speed uniformity when most other game systems have a "round" structure that gives everyone the same number of actions all the time. Maybe Aberrant has a different actions structure? I'm not familiar with the system.[/quote']

 

Most Aberrant characters have one "free" action per round. Attacking, Defending yourself, moving more than a certain distance, etc. You can try to make multiple action but its more difficult (You lose dice from your pool) and there is an enhancment on Mega Wits called Quickness that gives you more actions per turn.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

if everone has the same spd then the spd chart is unnecessary.

 

There is not enough spd 3/4 published characters to encourage a larger spread of abilities.

 

Hero set the standards way back and its unlikly to change.

 

i mean grond dex 20 spd 4, is there anything in his write up that suggests he is equal to olympic athletes in reflexes.

 

OTOH, he's derived from the Hulk, and one of Hulk's schticks since the beginning has been "How can anything that big be so fast??"

[GamePhil]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

It would be kinda funny if your friend enjoyed Aberrant for what really isn't an intentional design decision from the creators. I bet they tried (though maybe not too hard) to make the powers balanced. I doubt they thought "Well' date=' let's make the costs all wrong just so characters with similar points have wildly different capabilities." [/quote']

 

Actually, the old White Wolf crew is on public record as saying things that indicate, "bad rules make good games". Things like ignoring game balance forces the characters to THINK and ROLE-PLAY RATHER THAN ROLL-PLAY. A friend of mine was in a conversation with one of them, and it went something like this:

 

WW Guy: "If you people got a box of Legos, you'd want it already put together out of the box rather than doing it yourself."

 

Friend: "If White Wolf were putting out Legos, the bumps would be square and they'd provide a file with the instructions, 'fix it yourself'".

 

And he liked Mage.

 

So, it wouldn't surprise me if they did exactly that, even if they are all new people.

[Hermit]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

There's the funny bit, I LOVE the Hero system, but when playing Champions, I do not always use dice. When a 350 point plus hero is taking on some punk goons, the result can be a foregone conclusion. We still roleplay the scene, have a bit of fun with it, and wait for those later moments where dice will be needed. There are many options for bypassing rules if wanted even in the official books, and the HERO system has the universal "It's YOUR Game" comments in it. Some folks seem to assume that in order to play champions, you have to roll 36dice just to have them cross the street. I find those that think this haven't got a clue

 

Role vs Roll playing is nothing new, and how much is too much has been the subject of discussion boards older than this one. Just because a dice system can account for nearly anything doesn't mean you can't RP with it, far from it. Sometimes it gives you confidence to roleplay away for a long time because you know when the dice finally do fly, everything is covered.

 

No offfense to them, but WW didn't invent Storytelling, they just trademarked the word.

[Rene]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

So' date=' it wouldn't surprise me if they did exactly that, even if they are all new people.[/quote']

 

I'm not sure that the Aberrant designers are the same guys who do the World of Darkness. If I am not mistaken, a guy named Steve Long helped to design the powers.

[caris]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

I'm not sure that the Aberrant designers are the same guys who do the World of Darkness. If I am not mistaken' date=' a guy named Steve Long helped to design the powers. [/quote']

Your point is? Steve also has writer credits for WOD:Combat. Doesn't mean that the rest of WOD had any sense of balance.

[Rene]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

Your point is? Steve also has writer credits for WOD:Combat. Doesn't mean that the rest of WOD had any sense of balance.

 

Yeah, but Aberrant isn't World of Darkness, it's a much smaller line. And I've read that Steve worked specifically on the powers part. I'm not sure if he worked alone at it, though.

[GamePhil]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

Well, I expect he meant WW rather than WoD.

 

Steve working on it could actually also explain things. the Megastrength is something that seems to be complained about frequently, which is also true in HERO (not that it's broken, that it is complained about), so maybe it's part of a Grand Master Plan to move people in our direction.

 

That Steve, always thinking

[Agent X]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

if everone has the same spd then the spd chart is unnecessary.

 

There is not enough spd 3/4 published characters to encourage a larger spread of abilities.

 

Hero set the standards way back and its unlikly to change.

 

i mean grond dex 20 spd 4, is there anything in his write up that suggests he is equal to olympic athletes in reflexes.

Yep, he has exceedingly high muscular power which usually coincides with very quick reactive movements. So, yeah, someone who can lift buildings can probably move pretty quickly.

[Maelstrom]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

For a long time I thought Disad-like rules were an invitation to be a munchkin. But now sometimes when I have a basic Char concept in mind' date=' I start with the disads and it [i']inspires[/i] me to flesh out the characters personality and to make him more than a stat block. My opinion now is that this helps creativity and role play. Most players that ive met that dont like disads are usually afraid of having faults with their character, possibly due to a murderous gm in their past.

 

This is a great approach. I don't normally do it this way, but the one time I did I loved the result.

[caris]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

No, I meant WoD, because I was referencing a specific product for the game.

 

To follow through, Steve was only one person working on the product, and probably did not have final decision on anything in Aberrant. Also the reference is that Steve worked on the power section with nothing saying that he worked on anything else. You can not produce game balance in a vacuum. Just as Steve adding a “Heroesque†martial art system to the rest of the StoryTeller system did not suddenly fix any and all other balancing issues with the rest of the game, or make them balanced with the other elements. So while Steve may have theoretically been able to produce a situation where all the powers are balanced in relation to each other, but the whole thing could still have been out of balance with the rest of the game.

[tesuji]

Re: Does Champions encourgage conformity?

 

You're refering to GOOD D&D players. I'm playing at a D&D PbEM right now, and we have very well-realized characters, mostly because the GM don't overemphasize combat, there are no dungeons, and the world's society is more like a fantasy novel and less like a fantasy video game.

 

But I've played in plenty of D&D games where the lack of in-built hooks in the rules resulted in characters that lived in a vaccuum and were little more than the sum of their classes, alignment, and race. Don't tell me you never met such D&D players? Maybe you're very lucky, or smart and have set the bar high for admission in your games.

 

of course i have met people who did not want to build story and plot into their characters. I met them playing DnD, i met them playing four different versions of traveller, i met them playing vampire, i met them playing HERO4, i met them playing HERO5, i met them playing fantasy hero, i met them playing of all things AMBER.

 

When the mechanics of "getting as powerful as possible" made them jot some things about background on their character sheet, they did everything they could to be as unaffected by it as possible. This never turned out to be a positive thing. They did not decide "hey, lets build an interesting character" because it gave them more points. They decided to figure out how to get the points for "the least pain." The "forced on them" disadvantages were not a tool sparking their interest. They were a math puzzle to be solved.

 

It really biols down to the difference between something they "have to do" as opposed to something they did for fun.

 

Making a player who doesn't want to do something do it and '"endure" the consequences of it does not help them enjoy the game more, nor does it help anyone else enjoy their game either. At least in my experience.

 

YMMV.

 

In practice, the best (ie most likely to change behavior, encourage participation, and enhance enjoyment) is to simply show in play how much fun the guys who do try and develop a character and plot hooks actually have. Show, in play, the difference between "an adventure against bad guys" and "a personal story line".

 

That has produced better results for me.