New commer OCV/DCV question

[bjbrown]

I've been playing Hero System games for something like ten or twelve years now. And I still don't have a handle on all of the rules. So don't worry about taking forever to learn them. It's still my favorite game system, though.

 

I don't have Star Hero, but I'm guessing that your problem with weapons and armor are based on the following confusions:

 

Make sure, when calculating damage, you're keeping track of what damage is BODY damage and what damage is STUN damage. When looking at the armor, make sure that you are keeping track of normal defenses and resistant defenses.

 

Let's say the attacker has a 2d6 RKA. He attacks a character with 6 PD (Physical Defense) and body armor of 3 rPD (resistant Physical Defense). Thus, the defender has a total of 9 Physical Defense, of which only 3 are resistant.

 

The amount rolled on a killing attack is body damage. So say the attacker rolls 7 on that 2d6. That's 7 Killing Damage, against which only resistant defenses apply. Since only the armor provides rPD, and the armor is only giving 3 rPD, 4 Killing Damage goes through the armor. The character loses 4 BODY. That's a big ouch.

 

A killing attack also does STUN damage, based on hit location. If the hit was in the chest, for example, the amount of STUN damage is equal to x3 the Killing Damage. So 7x3=21 STUN damage. However, against STUN damage, the character gets his full defenses, both resistant and normal. He's got 6 PD plus 3 rPD, 9 total. 21-9=12 STUN taken from the attack.

 

Whenever you get to a point where something happens in the game that doesn't make sense to you, re-read the rules. That happens to me every game. You probably need to go over the combat section several times again.

 

Mental attacks work very similar to other attacks. The biggest difference is that ECV takes the place of OCV for the attacker, and ECV also takes the place of DCV for the defender. Also, mental attacks generally can be used at range but take no range penalties, and the attacker needs only line of sight to the defender. Finally, the damage of an attack like Ego Attack is not reduced by regular armor (PD or ED), but only by Mental Defense. Finally, mental attacks almost never do BODY damage, only STUN. (With the caveat that all these things are usually the case- in Hero, there's always a way to modify the way a power works. But that's an advanced topic.)

 

Originally posted by Glabutz

Hi all.

 

I've ran my first Hero Game yesterday, and should ay that I'm quite happy with it, even if my feeling is "I must read all again and again".

 

...

 

2. The armor surprised me a lot, and I think I didn't understand it. Well, in a Space Hero campaign, fire arms or lasers are useless. The 2D6 Ka are not enough to get trough the 12 or 15 DP/EP that normal armor hace. But, on the other hand, armors are quite useless against beam weapons that does 6d6 RKA... I must read again FREd and the armor rules

 

...

 

4. When you use a mental power, or an Ego attack, you have always to make a ECV roll, and then you roll the dice to see if you overthrow your opponent's Ego. Right ?

Then , should you do as if Ego was a kind of body points (then you can do several mind attacks to beat your opponant) ?

 

But it was a good game, and the rules are quite fine, once I'll have understood all the things I need.

[Glabutz]

don’t own Star Hero, yet, but I’m looking at my roommate’s copy. They are showing a lot of different styles of armor and weapons, and not every combination is going to work well together. The 6D6 RKA beam weapon is meant for vehicle combat, and not as an anti-personnel weapon. The armor you used is supposed to be full body armor like Bobba Fet wore, it shouldn't stop a ship's gun. Part of the discrepancy is to keep PCs from dying or being maimed too quickly. You might consider moving from the laser weapons to the blaster

 

If I'm not wrong, on Space Hero page 154-155, there a multi fonctions gun that does 6D6 RKA (ultimate option, disintegrates what it touch).

 

But I can understand that this is a quite rare weapon...

 

So, when you use a blaster (for, let's say 6D6 normal damage), and you wear a 15 PD/ED armor, you can take stun damages, but never take Body damages ? (max body damages are 12 in this case, so 12-15 = nothing got through, even if 21 stun damages do... right ?)

[Jhamin]

Originally posted by Glabutz

If I'm not wrong, on Space Hero page 154-155, there a multi fonctions gun that does 6D6 RKA (ultimate option, disintegrates what it touch).

 

But I can understand that this is a quite rare weapon...

 

That writeup is pretty much an old-school Star Trek (Kirk & Spock) phaser with the serial numbers filed off. It isn't so much that it is rare as it is one end of the equipment spectrum.

 

Just a clarification: Star Hero is a genre book. It covers the entire Sci-Fi Genre. Alot of the weapons are not meant to work together, they are intended as examples of what you might find in a Sci-Fi game. You are supposed to pick and choose what gear appears in your game. If you are playing a game that works alot like the Alien movies, a Star Trek Phaser is not avalible anywhere at any price. They just don't exist. And if you are in a Star Trek like universe then every starship officer carries one. They are very common. If you have a world like that then other things change. Phasers are so powerful most people don't bother with armor since if you get hit it won't help you anyway.

(notice the 6d6RKA is bought as a No Normal Defence vs. force fields. If you have a force field it bounces off, if you don't you take full damage with no protection, pretty much how it used to work on the old Star Trek)

 

So, when you use a blaster (for, let's say 6D6 normal damage), and you wear a 15 PD/ED armor, you can take stun damages, but never take Body damages ? (max body damages are 12 in this case, so 12-15 = nothing got through, even if 21 stun damages do... right ?)

 

Correct. If it is a "normal attack" blaster. Weapons like these don't pack much of a punch. For a point of comparason, a normal martial artist using a powerful attack maneuver can do 6d6 without much trouble even without enhancement.

 

The 15PD/15ED armor is really meant to protect you from kiling attack damage. You can only apply your resistant defenses against the body damage from a killing attack. If you have resistant defenses, you can apply the total of your normal and resistant defense against the stun, if you don't, you have no protection at all.

 

A 2d6 RKA is the same point cost as a 6d6 EB blaster, and does a similar amount of damage on average. The difference is that if an unarmored opponent gets hit with the EB his ED will help protect him from both the body and the stun. If he gets hit with the 2d6 RKA he has no protection from either one.

 

You may be thinking "but the 15 PD/15 Ed armor protects me from both pretty effectivly". You are correct. A 6d6 Eb and a 2d6 RKA both weigh in at 30 active points, that is pretty mediocre. 15PD/15Ed armor weighs in at 45 active points, that is pretty strong. One of the basic rules of thumb in Hero is that your attack powers should cost alot more than your defences. In most superhero games the rule of thumb is that defences should have about half the active points of attacks, and just think how much damage bounces off most superheroes. If you want your games to be lethal then your defences need to have less than half the active points of your attacks.

That 15/15 armor is meant to be military grade heavy armor. Military grade heavy weapons in star hero inflict damage in the range of a 3d6 armor piercing autofire attack.

[Blue]

All I can suggest is that in order to balance your campaign, simply compare the ACTIVE COST of an attack versus that of a defense. They should be approximate. A 6D6K attack is 90 Active Points. 15PD/ED Resistant Defense Armor is only about 45 Points. Your attack is TWICE as powerful as the armor.

 

And even at that, 90 Active Point armor would yield 30PD/ED, which works out to about 30 STUN getting through the armor, so it's likely to STUN just about anyone wearing such heavy-duty armor. Of course, a Ship's guns should sting the best armored character (at least in a non-superheroic game).

 

This comparison works better on lower levels. A 6D6 EB would do 6 BODY/ 21 STUN on the average, and be about 30 Active Points. Equivalent Defense would be 15PD/ED (Non-resistant). You'd do about 6 Stun on a hit, which would sting but would not disable the guy. A really good hit might have more impact, a low damage roll being all but ignored as a glancing wound.

[Killer Shrike]

RE: Combat Levels

 

If it helps, think about it this way:

 

2 normal people with a 2 Speed and an 8 in all thier Primary Characteristics including DEX both have an OCV and a DCV of 3 each; we will call them A-Man and B-Man.

 

Since an attack roll is 11 + OCV - opponents DCV, basically whenever 2 opponents are evenly matched they both have an 11 or less (11-) chance to hit each other which isnt really 50% (its 62.5% actually), but in HEROs serves as a proxy for roughly half the time. Because of the 12.5% difference inherent in this, characters have a tendency to succeed when all else is equal in the HERO System, which you must admit is rather heroic.

 

As a total aside, here is a decent dice method site that a Google search turned up that might help you visualize the probabilities more as you mention some d20 experience:

http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/rpg/systemdesign/dice-methods.html

 

Back to the point, since equivalently skilled opponents are always at an 11- to hit one another with a basic Strike or basic Power attack, you can see why some way to add a little variation to this needs to exist.

 

If A-Man wants to increase his ability to hit B-Man, he is in luck; the HERO System offers a wide variety of ways to do this. His options include (but are not necessarily limited to) the following:

 

1) Increase his Dexterity. This has many many beneficial side effects: every 3 character points increases what in other games is called "initiative", allowing him to act before B-Man; every 9 character points raises both his OCV & DCV by 1 each making him both more able to connect and less likely to be connected with in combat; and every 30 character points also increases his SPEED by 1, allowing him to take more actions than B-Man AND staggering his Actions across the Speed chart which enables him to act sooner in a Turn as well.

 

If A-Man put 15 character points into DEX (+5 DEX), he would have 13 DEX, and a base OCV/DCV of 4, 1 better than previously. Further, his SPEED will figure as 2.3 rather than 1.8, so the 2 points he applied to SPEED to bump it to a 2 make that a 2.5 figured; for 5 more character points he can have a 3 SPEED. Lets go ahead and spend those 5 points. A-Man is a 3 SPEED 13 DEX 4OCV/4DCV character now. Fighting B-Man, he would get an extra action, hit 74% of the time, and get hit 50% of the time. By holding his Segment 4 action he could Dodge B-Man's segment 6 action, getting hit only 16% of the time, attack in 8, and dodge again in 12. He has a significant advantage over B-Man even with just a +1/+1 difference in OCV/DCV and an extra action. Of course, B-Man may have put 20 points into Defenses, canceling out some of the advantage, but you get the idea.

 

 

2) Buy Martial Arts Manuevers. This isnt a sure thing, but many Martial Manuevers have positive OCV and/or DCV bonuses. By being discriminating, A-Man could increase both his chance to hit B-Man and the amount of Damage he does, and even widen the range of his abilities for not very many points. The minimum buy-in for Martial Manuevers is 10 character points, but this is easy to acheive. Fast Strike (+2/+0, STR+2d6 damage; from the Ultimate Martial Artist {a highly recommended product by the way}), Martial Dodge, and Martial Block are 3 excellent choices, giving very efficient OCV/DCV bonuses for thier cost; add on a Knowledge Skill: Martial Art of Choice for 3 points and you have a nice compact little Martial Artist who is fairly decent (for a normal). Martial Manuevers are what you can think of as "point efficient", meaning you can often get a little bit more effect for your points by taking a Martial Manuever than you could by building the same effect seperately.

 

 

I dont have my book handy, but IIRC Martial Block, Martial Dodge, and Fast Strike are all 4 point Manuevers, so with a 3 point KS: Martial Artist skill thats 15 character points. If A-Man bought that and put 5 points into STR, when fighting B-Man he could Martial Block on Phase 6 with a +2/+2 IIRC, blocking B-Man 83% of the time, and then strike 1st (a feature of Block) in Phase 12 with Fast Strike (+2/+0), again hitting 83% of the time, or 50% if B-Man Dodges, and doing 4.5d6 damage for an average of around 15 or 16 points of normal damage (which will knock B-Man out after 2 average hits or 1 good hit, and will stun him each hit). If B-Man does manages to hit him with his 8 STR, inflicting 5 normal damage on average with 1.5d6, A-Mans increased Strength also translates into +1 PD, +3 Stun, and +1 REC so he is somewhat more able to absorb that damage. Alternately, instead of +5 STR, A-Man could have bought +1 DEX for 3 character points and +2 PD for example, which would probably allow him to sucker punch B-Man in segement 6, stunning him on an average roll, and then drop him in 12.

 

 

3) Buy Combat Skill Levels (CSLs). Combat Skill Levels reflect a general competence with fighting and as you know come in many varieties. The more expensive CSLs are efficient in a direct proportion to how overall effective and well rounded a character is. It does little good for a dedicated ranged character with low HtH attacks and low defenses to by All Combat levels for example; its a waste of points usually. Similarly, a dedicated ground pounder who lacks ranged attacks might chuck a car or two occasionally depending on the genre, but generally All Combat Levels are less efficient than buying more 5 point HtH or 3 point tight group levels. Generally speaking and in my opinion, characters for whom 8 point CSLs are the most efficient levels are rare; usually a character that has enough HtH and Ranged abilities to want the flexibility of CSLs also has enough other skills and/or abilities to pay 2 more points (10 total) and get the all-mighty OVERALL levels (listed under Skill Levels not Combat Skill Levels) which are just like All Combat levels except that for 2 points more they apply to all skills AND Find Weakness for those fortunate enough to have it (according to the FAQ). Personally, I'm a big fan of dedicated DCV levels, but your mileage might vary; afterall 10 character points will buy +2 DCV, 9 character points will buy +3 Dex which give +1 OCV +1 DCV 1/3 of another point of SPEED and the ability to act sooner in a segment. Typically, if I have Normal Characteristic Maxima on a character I go for DCV levels; else I go for more DEX. If you dont have a lot of attack powers or Martial Manuevers, 2 point +1 OCV with Strike is usually good enough, mixed with maybe a few 3 point levels here and there.

 

So if A-Man took +1 DCV for 5 character points, and +5 with (Block, Strike, Disarm) for 15 character points for 20 character points total and went off to fight B-Man, he would hit with a Strike 98% (!) of the time if B-Man does not Dodge, or 83% of the time if he does. By contrast, he will be struck 50 % of the time if he does not Block or Dodge.

 

4) Get an area of effect attack. Normally not an option in a Heroic campaign (aside from grenades), this allows a person to strike at a hex (a roughly 6.5 foot or 3 meter diameter area essentially) rather than at a person; this is vs DCV 3 at range and vs DCV 0 adjacent. This cancels an opponent's CSLs, and Martial Manuevers outright. To a certain extent it also cancels an opponents DEX, but using the Dive for Cover manuever, an opponent who is able to Abort to Dive for Cover uses thier DEX to resolve whether they get out of the way or not and thus a high DEX will still play a roll vs AoE attacks.

 

If A-Man bought a +4d6 Hand Attack AoE: 1 hex (+1/2) 0 END (+1/2) HA (-1/2) OIF (Universal): Fighting Staff (-1/2) for 20 Base Cost x ((+1/2) + (+1/2)) = 40 Active Points / ((+1/2) + (+1/2)) = 20 Real Cost {SFX= he swings the staff in wide horizontal swaths, bisecting a hex}, he would hit B-Man (DCV 0 vs an Adjacent Hex) 90% of the time and do enough damage to stagger him on average each hit.

 

 

The general idea Im trying to get across is that you shouldnt get too hung up on CSLs in and of themselves; rather understand the basic concept of OCV and DCV modifiers in general, and also understand how OCV and DCV relate to each other.

 

 

Basically, if my OCV is 3 more levels than your DCV, Ill hit you 90% of the time; if your DCV is 5 higher than my OCV Ill miss 90% of the time. Thus, the to hit favors the attacker, but to balance that out the Defender has the active options of Abort to a Dodge, Block, Dive for Cover, or a Roll with the Punch to minimize my chance to hit, avoid damage outright by either effectively contesting a roll with me, or by moving out of the way, or by minimizing the damage inflicted by a successful hit, or the passive option of increasing thier Defenses so that attacks do little or no damage.

 

 

Because of this a person with a 8 OCV/5 DCV in HtH is slightly better off than a person with a 5 OCV/8 DCV in HtH. They will hit each other the same percentage of times normally, but if the 8/5 dodges to become an 8/8 the 5/8 will connect only 25% of the time, while if the 5/8 dodges to become a 5/11 the 8/5 will connect the same 25% of the time BUT if the 8/5 person aborts to a Block, he will Block the 5/8 persons attacks 90% of the time preventing all damage while the 5/8 person will only block successfully 25% of the time.

 

 

In Heroic level games, I find that a decent Dex of around 15-18, with a couple of 2pt +1 OCV levels with my most common attack, an Overall Skill Level if I can squeeze it, about 15-20 points of well-chosen Martial Arts, 2 Range Penalty levels, and a 4 Speed is usually comes in under 75 points and forms a very capable core functionality. If I have points left over, season with Characteristics and background skills; Ill often buy a few 1 point Familiararities for an 8- roll and then pay the 2pts per to buy them out with the first few nights experience points; that way usually by the time I need to use the skill I am actually proficient with it and can then apply my Overall Skill level. If the GM is nit picky and wants a rationale, i can usually play it off as 'all the action we've been going through have emphasized practical application and has catalyzed years of accumulated knowledge into a cohesive whole' or spin it off of some in-game effect. Most GMs are just happy to see a character with off-beat skills and dont make a big fuss over it.

 

What Im getting at, is that the most effective way to improve a characters overall combat capability vis-a-vis the OCV/DCV scale is to mix and match elements such as Martial Arts, DEX, CSLs and occasionally AoE attacks rather than focus on any one of them overly much.

 

YMMV. Welcome to HEROs!

[Glabutz]

What Im getting at, is that the most effective way to improve a characters overall combat capability vis-a-vis the OCV/DCV scale is to mix and match elements such as Martial Arts, DEX, CSLs and occasionally AoE attacks rather than focus on any one of them overly much.

 

Thanks, Killer Shrike. That helps a lot.

 

But, if I can, I'd like to ask a few more question about this : what can I do when there is no martial manoeuvers ?

 

Example : In a few weeks, we'll start a Deadlands campaign. The deadlands system is horrible, and there is no way I can play with it. So I have to choose if I switch to Gurps (bof) or to Hero (I find it cooler).

 

But then, the OCV/DCV thing shows up again.

 

Let's say that PCs will have a base OCV/DCV of 5 or 6. No martial art will be available, but for the chinese or european PCs (savate is described in UMA).

 

Gunfight will be quite frequent.

 

So, I think that each of the should have some +5 CSL with their favorite gun, +3 HTH CSL (or the opposite if they feel more "manual").

 

They might trade some points to get range modifier or loc modifiers.

 

Will they be Munchkins ?

[Killer Shrike]

Martial Arts: well the important thing to keep in mind is that 'Martial Arts' is a broad category and represents more than just Oriental arts such as Karate and Kung Fu. It also represents Boxing, Wrestling, and also just plain Scrapping {er--thats an American slang term for down and dirty bare-knuckled fighting; a "scrapper" is some one who may not have any formalized training in a fighting style, but still knows how to get into a fight and mix it up; its synonymous with Brawling).

 

You can also use Ranged Martial Arts to represent Lasso's and whips which are fairly common in the Old West setting.

 

So it would not be unusual to see a character with a 'Barfighting' style for example, with a few manuevers like Martial Block (Ain't Happening), Martial Strike (Jab), Offensive Strike (Roundhouse), Martial Throw (Get out of here!), Takedown (Dog-pile), Martial Grab (Let's Dance), and a Club Weapon Element (for barstools and bottles).

 

I highly recommend you get the Ultimate Martial Artist, which contains a plethora of rules and examples on the subject.

 

The important point to remember is that in HEROs Martial Arts <> Asian fighting styles. Its much much bigger than that.

 

 

Munchkin: Well, it really depends on the point level of the campaign and how good the PCs are compared to the opposition.

 

Remember, Equal OCV and Equal DCV cancel out; they scale together in other words. So if the PCs have an average OCV of 8 and the villains have an average DCV of 8 then its not really much different than if the PCs had and OCV of 3 and the villains had a DCV of 3. The percentage to hit with a basic attack is the same.

 

 

So, all you have to do as the GM is eyeball the average OCV/DCV of the PCs and then for each villain decide: is this guy hard to hit, easy to hit, or average to hit; should he be able to hit often, average, or rarely and then arrange thier OCV and DCV levels accordingly using any of the methods available to so.

 

 

 

As an aside, a character with a 20 DEX has spent 30 character points, gaining +4/+4 OCV/DCV and also gaining a point of SPEED which normally costs 10 points. To seperate the side effect of SPEED out, subtract the 10 points it would take to buy the SPEED seperately from the 30 character points; so we are dealing with 20 character points for and OCV DCV of 7/7.

 

A character with a 10 DEX that spends 20 points on Combat Levels cant get close to a global +4/+4 OCV/DCV. Even spending 30 points they cant get it. However, if the character only needed to be good with 1 attack, he could buy +2 DCV levels for 10 pts and +5 OCV w/ 1 Attack for 10 pts or +10 OCV w/ 1 Attack for 20 pts.

 

Combat Levels have other uses, but for raising OCV/DCV across the board DEX is far more efficient than CSLs until you hit Normal Characteristic Maxima. Another main consideration is that if a character has better defenses, DCV doesnt matter as much and they will do better with CSLs, if they dont have good defenses then DCV is much more important and DEX will be better. CSLs are more immediate so impatient players might end up with lots of them where as the more patient will buy thier DEX and see slightly longer term pay offs. At an average of 3 Exp per session, it takes 3 sessions to see the +1/+1 gain from DEX, where as a person buying 3 point tight group levels will see an immediate +1 CV gain each week, but only for his tight group.

 

 

 

If in your example the characters have an average DEX of 18, it will always be more efficient for a character to spend 6 points to bump that up to a 20 than to buy CSLs. This unfortunately leads to characters in a shooty campaign that all tend to have stats that more or less look like 15 STR, 20 DEX, 18 CON, 15 BODY, 10 INT, 10 EGO, 15 PRE, 14 COM, 8 PD, 4 ED, 4 SPD, 7 REC, 36 END, 40 STUN.

 

To counter that out however, another character might buy +3 OCV with Pistol or +2 OCV with Called shots to the Head (5 pt Ranged, -1/2 Lim) for the same 6 points.

 

 

 

Basically, for starting players, I might recommend that you keep things simple. DEX is much easier to calculate because it is static. Therefore, you may want to encourage players to only take a couple of CSLs to start with. If the group then encounters villains that they cant hit, they will actively try to raise thier OCV levels with experience. If they themselves always get hit, they will actively try to raise thier DCV or defenses. This gives an opportunity for growth. They can put the rest of the points saved into some background skills, which are a little harder to explain away in-game than combat levels because its an assumption of the genre that early experience in battle leads to greater capability in battle fairly quickly; the baptism of fire concept is built into the RPG paradigm.

 

 

Another tip to help you and your new play group learn to deal with CSLs is to get index cards for each player (we usually call them 3"x5" cards in America but I have no idea what you would call them in a country on the metric sytem ), or slips of paper will do in a pinch. With a bold marker write down 1 CSL per Character per Card. Thus if a character had 3 All Combat levels, you would end up with 3 cards with +1 All Combat written on them.

 

Now, take two other cards for each player and turn them 90 degrees on edge so that the short side is up and write across the top of 1 OCV: {Base OCV} and across the top of the other DCV: {Base DCV}. Each player puts the OCV and DCV cards in front of them on the playing table. Each Phase they may allocate their CSLs as they see fit and as appropriate to the action taken between OCV and DCV, physically stacking the cards on their base OCV or base DCV card to represent how they are assigning these levels.

 

Characters with Martial Manuevers or which frequently use one of the Basic Manuevers which has modifiers should take 2 cards for each Manuever and write down the Manuever across the top and the OCV and DCV modifiers of the manuever each to a seperate card; if they have 2 pt OCV levels that only apply to a single Manuever they shoul sum them together on the Manuever's OCV card rather than have them on seperate cards to simplify things.

 

Finally, the GM takes a pile of cards and just writes down a few modifiers, several cards each for the most common such as +1, -1, +2,-2,1/2 DCV,0 OCV. In play, whenever the GM assesses a modifier for circumstances or a PC tries to do a Move By at Non Combat Speed or is Grabbed, etc, the GM can toss the appropriate cards onto the pile appropriate to the character.

 

 

 

This method takes a few minutes of arts-and-crafts time and a little bit of paper shuffling in game, but makes it very easy to count OCV and DCV and not get confused about what levels are assigned where. Ive found it to be both a great teaching tool and even a game speeder in the past. Once the players get used to sorting it all out, they become very proficient at dialing in thier CSLs and Manuevers. Some people have found it to be a decision making aid even; by framing thier modifiers in such a visual fashion, they realize which courses of action are more likely to succeed or fail statistically and act accordingly.

[Jhamin]

Originally posted by Glabutz

Thanks, Killer Shrike. That helps a lot.

 

But, if I can, I'd like to ask a few more question about this : what can I do when there is no martial manoeuvers ?

 

You can run entirely off of combat skill levels and the basic maneuvers from FREd.

There are also a couple of martial styles like boxing and dirty infighting/fisticuffs from the UMA that would appear in the weird west.

 

So I have to choose if I switch to Gurps (bof) or to Hero (I find it cooler).

 

And another convert is born.......

 

But then, the OCV/DCV thing shows up again.

 

What exactly do you mean by OCV/DCV "thing"?

 

Gunfight will be quite frequent.

 

So, I think that each of the should have some +5 CSL with their favorite gun, +3 HTH CSL (or the opposite if they feel more "manual").

 

They might trade some points to get range modifier or loc modifiers.

 

Will they be Munchkins ?

 

If the bad enemies that are supposed to be challanging have similar numbers it will all work out.

 

I suspect that you are clinging overly much to lots and lots of skill levels. The total OCV and DCV of the combatants after all the modifiers are accounted for is all that matters, how you get there is unimportant. There isn't much of a difference between everyone having +10 to OCV and DC or +1 to OCV and DCV. As long and everyone has about the same scores Relative to eachother it all balances out.

 

Heck, if somebody's dex is so high that their base OCV/DCV is equal to everyone else's including levels, that person doesn't even really need levels at all.

 

I personally run a Superhero game where the average OCV/DCV is around 6-8 (be warned, that is about 2 points lower than the "official" average, I chose to do that intentionally)

Out of my PCs:

-One has a base OCV/DCV of 6 and uses lots of martial arts maneuvers.

-One has a base OCV/DCV of 6 and one "all combat" skill level

-One has a base OCV/DCV of 3 and 5 "all combat" skill levels

-One has a base OCV/DCV of 9 and gets by on that (she ends up always hitting and being really hard to hit back, and has lower defences than average to keep it fair)

 

Enemies are built similarly.

[Glabutz]

I suspect that you are clinging overly much to lots and lots of skill levels. The total OCV and DCV of the combatants after all the modifiers are accounted for is all that matters, how you get there is unimportant. There isn't much of a difference between everyone having +10 to OCV and DC or +1 to OCV and DCV. As long and everyone has about the same scores Relative to eachother it all balances out.

 

I must disagree with that.

 

But so do you.

 

In fact, the way your OCV/ DCV is calculate is very important to me, because it describes your character.

 

So,if little John is a Winchester pro but doesn't know how to keep on his feet whil ehe is running, he should have a low dex (and so low OCV/DCV) but a high CSL for winchester range attacks (3 or 5 points par level ?)

 

On the other hand, if Big Bill is a natural born killer, he should have high dex, and so far, not necessary a lot of CSL.

 

It looks like munchking is quite easy, since for 15 points, you gain a +1/+1. Well, it is true that you could gain the same advantage with 11 or 13 points (8 for general, and then 3 points for defense options)

 

French players are not really used to high power games. When I first read FREd, I was surpized by the Super Hero feeling (but I understand it) and that you all seem t play it in supeheroic levels. Well, at first, I'd rather have Heroic characters, than super heroic. But things may change after all our discussion.

 

Why not, if they don't wear 4 colors pyjamas ?

 

It looks like we, french players, need maximum levels, that no one can have, and get them after a few gaming sessions.

 

But my original point was to say that I feel the need to have different characters (that is the first and main reason I decided to leave Gurps, because I am fed up of STR 9, DX 15, IQ 15, H 9 characters). That is why I dropped L5R.

 

So I wondered how not to have the same problem here. But with a 20 Dex max, I think I'm quite ok. And you showed that you can have the same efficency with different ways.

 

Kewl

[Jhamin]

Originally posted by Glabutz

 

It looks like munchking is quite easy, since for 15 points, you gain a +1/+1. Well, it is true that you could gain the same advantage with 11 or 13 points (8 for general, and then 3 points for defense options)

 

Hero system is VERY easy to munchkin.

 

Steve Long has stated that his design philosopy in 5th edition was to provide rules that allowed you to do as much as possible without telling you what you can and can't do. That is wonderful when you need to do something outlandish, but causes real problems if your players are trying to create a combat machine rather than a character. There is nothing in the system to stop them, they have to stop themselves. This isn't meant to be an accusation, it is very common for people to take a while to adjust to the idea that Hero allows them to make the character they want. Most systems ask you to make the best character you can, and I for one didn't even realize I had been trained into that mode of thinking.

 

French players are not really used to high power games. When I first read FREd, I was surpized by the Super Hero feeling (but I understand it) and that you all seem t play it in supeheroic levels. Well, at first, I'd rather have Heroic characters, than super heroic. But things may change after all our discussion.

 

I think this has to do with Hero's roots. The first book to actually be called "Hero System" was a 4th Edition product. Champions was the 1st game in the series and was all about superheroes. It did it very well and later products were released with similar rules that covered other genres. They were all alot alike but weren't realy compatable. 4th Edition worked very hard to establish a common set of rules that worked for any genre. The consensus was that it succeeded, but the rules were released with a picture of a superbattle on the front and 1/5 of the book was devoted to superhero gaming. Given the popularity of the various genres in 3rd edition it only made sense to package it that way but it didn't help the perception that Hero was only for supers.

 

Most of the old timers on these boards got into Hero by playing Superheroes. Many of us still primarily play heroes because it is the most familiar.

 

Many fans were happy to see that FREd still featured supers in the art, but not overly so. It makes it alot easier to convince new players that you can do other things.

 

20+ years after the game was introduced, many people still believe that Hero=Champions=Superheroes.