Balance Rating

[Dust Raven]

The Rating System

 

This is a system to assist in determining balance when evaluating Champions characters. It separates several aspects of character design for individual evaluation, and then compares the overall of the character to see if these aspects are balanced with each other. In the end, it gives a character a type of “power x†rating, but one that can be broken down into the various areas that make up a balanced character.

 

It should be noted that this balancing tool only takes into account a character’s primary powers and abilities. It does not, nor should, take into account special maneuvers, special tricks or other powers unless used very frequently by the character. It also tends to leave out maximums, and sticks to averages. Also, this method is intended to balance the combat aspects of a character, not the overall character. Only the GM, not a chart, can determine whether a character’s skills, or lack of them, balance the character overall.

 

When determining what the balance is of a particular character, you need to look into three general areas: Offensive Capability, Defensive Capability and Mobility. While other aspects of a character (such as skills) are just as important, only these three areas factor in.

 

 

Offensive Capability Rating

 

Check the Effective Active Points (or EAP) in the character’s primary attack. If this is an EB or a punch from STR, this is easy. For Martial Arts, assume the EAP is equal to 5 points per DC in the maneuver (i.e. a 10d6 Martial Strike as an EAP of 50). Next, check the character average OCV with this maneuver, taking into account all applicable levels. If the character has no levels, this is equal to the character’s base OCV. If the character has any levels that apply to this attack, but which cannot be used for DCV, add them in full and do not average them. If the levels can apply to DCV (even if for only a certain type of combat, such on a HTH level), then average the character’s OCV with and without the levels. If a character’s primary attack is a Mental Power (or other attack based on ECV), use the character’s ECV in place of OCV.

 

Example: Black Diamond has a base OCV of 7 and 2 HTH levels. Her average OCV with her punch (her primary attack) is 8. Hummingbird has a base ECV of 6, and 2 levels that apply only to her attacks. Her average ECV with her primary attack is 8.

 

Once you have the average OCV, multiply it by 5, and average the result with the EAP of the attack. You now have the character’s Offensive Capability Rating.

 

 

Defensive Capability Rating

 

The things you need to look at are the character’s total PD and ED, their average DCV and the EAP of their STUN and END. First, average the character’s PD and ED. Multiply this total by 2. Next figure the average DCV similar to how you determined the average OCV above. Typically, this is just the average of the character’s base DCV and its DCV while Dodging (applying any applicable levels). Any levels that apply only to one type of combat only apply at half value. As with OCV, multiply this result by 5.

 

Example: Taking a look at Black Diamond again, only one of her HTH levels would count toward her average DCV).

 

Finally add the EAP of the character’s STUN and REC together. After figuring all three figures, average them. You now have the character’s Defensive Capability Rating.

 

 

Mobility Rating

 

Mobility is simple. Take the character’s primary movement power’s EAP. Average this with the EAP of the character’s speed and you have the character’s Mobility Rating.

 

 

Balance Rating

 

After arriving at all of these ratings, average them again. This final number is the characters Balance Rating.

 

Now you might be wondering what this number means. All by itself, it means nothing. Only when you compare it to the ratings of other character can you determine if it is balanced. Typically though, the individual ratings (Offensive, Defensive & Mobility) should be close to the final rating. Naturally there will be some variance, as one character might be a slow powerhouse, or another might be quick but not strong.

 

 

How to use these numbers

 

GMs can use these numbers to set character creation parameters without setting absolute limits. It’s possible to have a requirement of character with a Balance Rating of 50 or less, but have a character with an Offensive Capability Rating of 75 and a Mobility Rating of only 25. Such a character will be very powerful, but very slow. Also, a character may have an Offensive Capability Rating of 50, but have a powerful, but inaccurate primary attack, or a weak but highly accurate primary attack.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Um...okay. I hope the formatting of that doesn't mess anyone up. I pasted it from my website instead of the original text document and I found I couldn't format it beyond changing some of the font sizes. Oh well... it's there at least.

 

So basically I'm looking for as much critiquing as possible. Comments, suggestion, or even "gawd Dust Raven, that really sucks!" are completely welcome.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Balance Rating

 

It seems like a good way of comparing very different types of characters such as energy casters and bricks. Some people might be put off by the amount of math involved in truly examining each character. I personaly like the method touted by Trebuchet of limiting characters to (CV + DC) < 20. This still requires looking at averages in some cases so your method is far more spelled out in that regard.

 

HM

 

edit: (DC + SPD) < 20 !! doh!! sorry for the misquote Treb.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Balance Rating

 

It seems like a good way of comparing very different types of characters such as energy casters and bricks. Some people might be put off by the amount of math involved in truly examining each character. I personaly like the method touted by Trebuchet of limiting characters to (CV + DC) < 20. This still requires looking at averages in some cases so your method is far more spelled out in that regard.

While I certainly appreciate that you like my idea' date=' in the interest of accuracy I feel compelled to point out that my actual formula is [b'](Damage Class + Speed) =< 20[/b]. (And of course this number can be adjusted up or down depending on the campaign. In our campaign we'll probably raise the number to 22 in the not too distant future as our PCs get more XP.)

 

However, your formula certainly bears further examination.

[BNakagawa]

Re: Balance Rating

 

for one thing, averaging PD and ED then multiplying by two is a little redundant and can be replaced by "add PD and ED together".

[Trebuchet]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Dust Raven, I guess I'm a bit unclear on exactly you're trying to accomplish with this Balance Rating formula? Combat Effectiveness? A simpified "Rule of X" formula?

 

Have you tested this formula against characters in your own campaign and against official CU characters to see if it accurately represents what you're trying to rate?

[zornwil]

Re: Balance Rating

 

It seems okay for what it is, Dust Raven. I think one would have to really go through and apply it to characters in a campaign and see if it fits their conception of how they think the characters and study any discrepancy to see if the numbers reveal something meaningful and if the differences are either acceptable in that variances are due to special powers or flexibility or such that few such systems can really relate or not acceptable in that the differences aren't explainable by such.

 

I would ask what's been your experience in applying it? Has it helped ni matching up NPCs/villains against the PCs?

[Dust Raven]

Re: Balance Rating

 

for one thing' date=' averaging PD and ED then multiplying by two is a little redundant and can be replaced by "add PD and ED together".[/quote']

Uh... duh. Thanks.

 

Dust Raven, I guess I'm a bit unclear on exactly you're trying to accomplish with this Balance Rating formula? Combat Effectiveness? A simpified "Rule of X" formula?

 

Have you tested this formula against characters in your own campaign and against official CU characters to see if it accurately represents what you're trying to rate?

Yes, it's a kind of "rule of x" formula. I have tested it against my own characters and characters in the CU and arrived at what I expected (CU character are typically more powerful, but also tend to have fewer skills and fewer flavor powers).

 

It seems okay for what it is, Dust Raven. I think one would have to really go through and apply it to characters in a campaign and see if it fits their conception of how they think the characters and study any discrepancy to see if the numbers reveal something meaningful and if the differences are either acceptable in that variances are due to special powers or flexibility or such that few such systems can really relate or not acceptable in that the differences aren't explainable by such.

 

I would ask what's been your experience in applying it? Has it helped ni matching up NPCs/villains against the PCs?

I haven't actually used it for balancing purposes yet. I've been testing it against characters that have already been made and I've okayed for a campaign. I'm thinking of using it in an upcomming campaign I'm running and see how it flies, and wanted to know if it was too skewed one way or another.

 

One thing I haven't done is test it against extreme characters and then test those extreme characters in game or a playtest combat.

 

 

Thanks for all the input guys! Keep it up!

[Trebuchet]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Yes' date=' it's a kind of "rule of x" formula. I have tested it against my own characters and characters in the CU and arrived at what I expected (CU character are typically more powerful, but also tend to have fewer skills and fewer flavor powers).[/quote']Gotcha.

 

My character Zl'f ends up with a Balance Rating of 67.73. Is that good, bad, or about average compared to most you've rated?

[Alric]

Re: Balance Rating

 

One of the old Champions Books (Champions 3?) or Adventurers Club issues had a very simmilar system. If you haven't already you might want to try and dig that up.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Rule of X ideas are all essentially benchmarks, and thus I try to keep in mind the words of the sage, Mark Twain:

 

"There are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks"

 

This system generates numbers that are essentially flawed, and the reason is it fails to take into account a few key things. One of the main things that will directly throw off this rating are Power Modifiers -- limited Powers will throw this off, and so will Powers with powerful advantage combos. The skew of Adjustment Powers are also not accurately tracked by flat AP comparisons. Also, Area of Effect and Sense Affecting & Control Powers are not accurately weighted either; AoE powers have the ability to affect many (though at lower DC) and are targeted vs a lower DCV, while Sense Affecting and Control powers (like Entangle, Mind Control, some uses of TK, Offensive FW, etc) can shut opponents down fast, having a larger impact than their AP might indicate.

 

Also, another direct flaw is you are not tracking SPD against offense -- you apparantly are averaging that in as part of movement and then averaging it again with Offense and Defense to arrive at a final composite average -- this seriously dillutes the synergy of offense and actions.

 

You also arent tracking repeatability and execution. END costs, charges, propensity towards being staggered prior to initiative all fall thru the cracks via this method.

 

Essentially, while this might provide some metrics that are useful in an abstract sense, overall it is a flawed comparison model, IMO, as are all Rule of X models -- the game is too complicated and extensible for any single formulae to statistically represent the "power" of individual characters in an accurate fashion that a simple review of the character by an experienced GM/Player couldnt yeild just as easily.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Balance Rating

 

As an aside, since I dont like to criticize without providing some alternative, personally the method I use to determine character effectiveness is more holistic; rather than trying to rate specific subsets of the character and/or do statistical modeling comparisons and so forth, I consider a character's relevance and reliability.

 

For their reliability I posit the purpose of the character -- what are they designed to do? Fight, solve problems, interact with the setting, disrupt, etc etc -- what is their focus? Once I have determined that, I consider how reliable they are at accomplishing their purpose. This is a judgement call; if they are designed to fight, can they do that reliably. If they are designed to handle skill resolutions, can they do that reliably? If the are designed to be infiltrators, can they do that reliably? And so forth.

 

Next I determine their relevance to the campaign. A character that is designed to fight can be completely reliable in that regard, but if the campaign is 90% roleplaying the character is a poor fit. Similarly if the character is designed for interaction and the campaign has a lot of combat, then their relevance is low, and so forth.

 

(A third consideration is the player behind the character, but that is a subject for another discussion )

 

The combination of relevance and reliability will invariably indicate the characters that do well in a campaign. Characters that are highly relevant and even only somewhat reliable will have more of an impact and be a better fit than characters that are extremely reliable but only somewhat relevant.

 

Characters that are very well designed and "cool", but have a low relevance to a campaign will seem flawed or inadequate in that campaign, while characters that are merely so so but very relevant will seem powerful or well designed in that campaign.

 

 

As an exercise, if you look at your campaign in progress and consider each PC's relevance to your campaign and reliability at their roles you'll find that problem characters that seem to be behind the power curve probably suffer from either a lack of one or the other or both. You'll also typically find that characters that are ahead of the power curve are both very relevant to the campaign and are very reliable at their roles.

 

You can use this insight in several ways.

 

By switching the campaign focus up a bit you can curb the relevance of the character's ahead of the curve and increase the relevance of the characters that are lagging behind the curve -- as their relevance goes up, their perceived usefulness will to.

 

By reducing the reliability of those in front of the curve (either by enhancing the capabilities of the opposition, or by managing events so that the characters have to try options other than their usual well-honed abilities), you will flatten the power curve down again.

 

By refocusing lagging characters to increase their relevance to the campaign you increase their usability.

 

By increasing the reliability of unstable characters you magnify their relevance -- if they are already relevant to the campaign the character will get an immediate boost in acceptance to the group; if they are not very relevant I would recommend tweaking their relevance first, but tweaking both can turn a character around from weak-link to valued member of the group with a quickness.

 

 

This method is much more loose and requires a GM to understand the nature of their own campaign at the meta level, but if applied as a corrective measure is a very effective conceptual model for ensuring that characters are balanced against each other within the confines of the campaign in general terms. It's highly abstract, but allow a GM to make his own decisions about what the minutia of power builds, vagaries of action resolution, nature of typical opposition, habits of the players, and so forth translates into in terms of general effectiveness.

[zornwil]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Yeah, but KS, how do you put that into numbers?

 

 

 

 

 

As a side note, even the Character Points are just an approximation. I'm curious if there's a demonstrable break-point where a character can be said to be truly "better" than another, if a 50 point swing is a clear break versus, say, a 5 point swing. I mean, I think we can all say that a 355 point character isn't demonstrably better than a 350 character, but we can all say a 1000 point one is better than a 200 point one, assuming of course no great disparity in whoever built the two characters and that they are following the same precise rules.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Yeah' date=' but KS, how do you put that into numbers?[/quote']

 

If you really felt the need you could express relevance and reliability as percentages, working from 0% to 100%, but personally I think that's missing the point.

[zornwil]

Re: Balance Rating

 

If you really felt the need you could express relevance and reliability as percentages' date=' working from 0% to 100%, but personally I think that's missing the point. [/quote']

Uh, KS, it was a joke, hence the emoticon.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Uh' date=' KS, it was a joke, hence the emoticon.[/quote']

But was it either relevant or reliable? I would say somewhat relevant, but not very reliable.

[zornwil]

Re: Balance Rating

 

But was it either relevant or reliable? I would say somewhat relevant' date=' but not very reliable. [/quote']

Uh...shall I respond with ?

 

Seriously, good response.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Balance Rating

 

As an aside' date=' since I dont like to criticize without providing some alternative, personally the method I use to determine character effectiveness is more holistic; [/quote']

Wise words.

 

In practice I'm already find several flaws in my system. I should have known. I've always hated benchmark system like a Rule of X because all of them tend to leave out several important factors. I tried to make one that didn't leave too many out.

 

I fixed it though! Now it just looks at the overall point cost of a character in Real Points. So basically, if you build a character on a 200 base with 150 in Disads, you have a character that's worth about 350 points, with 150 points worth if Disads.

 

I have found, however, there is already a rating system like this in common use so I don't think I can publish it. It's called the Hero System.

 

[zornwil]

Re: Balance Rating

 

(snip)

 

I have found, however, there is already a rating system like this in common use so I don't think I can publish it. It's called the Hero System.

 

 

I was just about to say more or less the same thing.

 

A long time ago I did a rating system, each power could have points in Offense, Defense, and/or Movement, and so on. This was back in Champions 2 rules, though. I haven't picked it up since, though, it was a lot like the Effectiveness Rating in terms of being very laborious.

 

I'm surprised there's still no Effectiveness Rating plug-in for Hero Designer.

 

PS - though this one would be an easy one to do in an export, Dust Raven, that would be interesting. Could even make it do multiples so you can see many characters at a glance. Hmmmm, if you have it fixed DR, I can do a quick thing to spin through my characters.

[Agent X]

Re: Balance Rating

 

My sneaky way of figuring out where a character stands in combat is to run the character through a combat with a "generic hero" using mid-range stats from the guidelines in Fred. Basically, how many phases will it take the player character to take out the generic and how much punishment does the player character take in the process?

 

If I see a big disparity between player characters then I have to address the problem with the players.

 

Plot-busters are easy to spot without any exercise in number-crunching.

[Christougher]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Let's see if I can remember or recreate the one I came up with..

 

OCV + DCs + SPD = Offense

DCV + DEF/2 + Stun/5 = Defense

 

I think I had something for movement/flexibility, but that covers the basics. DEF is average of PD and ED, while Damage Reduction multiplied the Stun number. Gives a HERO normal(all 10s) a rating of 15, and for our games, every 50 XP usually amounted to +5 to the rating.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Let's see if I can remember or recreate the one I came up with..

 

OCV + DCs + SPD = Offense

DCV + DEF/2 + Stun/5 = Defense

 

I think I had something for movement/flexibility, but that covers the basics. DEF is average of PD and ED, while Damage Reduction multiplied the Stun number. Gives a HERO normal(all 10s) a rating of 15, and for our games, every 50 XP usually amounted to +5 to the rating.

The trouble with all of these ratings (and I'm not picking on Christougher... most of these ratings make the same mistake, including ones I used to tinker with) is that they measure unequal things as though they were equal.

 

For example, a 10 DC attack in a typical supers game is nothing special, perhaps even a bit low. A 10 SPD is astronomical. But the formula weights them the same.

 

You could get around the worst of that problem by just changing the formula to OCV + DCs + (SPD*2). That would at least get the numeric values of the elements in the same ballpark. But then the question becomes, what's more valuable, really? +2 OCV, +2 DC, or +1 SPD?

 

The answer is, it all depends. If you have a high DC attack, but a low OCV, adding OCV is probably more valuable. If you already have a good OCV, but your attack is kinda weak, adding DCs might be better. And it's highly debateable whether any of these things are as good as adding a point of SPD.

 

I'm not saying that formulas can never provide interesting or useful info. I'm just saying that they should be taken with a grain of salt, and comparisons that seem clear and logical on the surface may not hold up under closer scrutiny.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Balance Rating

 

The trouble with all of these ratings (and I'm not picking on Christougher... most of these ratings make the same mistake, including ones I used to tinker with) is that they measure unequal things as though they were equal.

 

For example, a 10 DC attack in a typical supers game is nothing special, perhaps even a bit low. A 10 SPD is astronomical. But the formula weights them the same.

That depends though. If your average character has an OCV of 9, DC of 12 and a SPD of 5, would a character of OCV 9, DC of 7 and SPD of 10 be roughly equal. Sure, he attacks twice as often with the same accuracy, but he's doing significently less damage.

[BNakagawa]

Re: Balance Rating

 

There is one and only one rating system that holds any water in my book.

 

All you have to do is figure out what the vanilla combatant looks like in your campaign. 12 d6 EB, 10 OCV, 10 DCV, 5 SPD, 30 PD, 30 ED, 40 STUN. is a good starting place for the average game.

 

Then take your PC and throw attacks until the 'vanilla gorilla' gets knocked out.

 

Count the segments.

 

Then, let the vanilla gorilla beat on your PC until the pc gets knocked out.

 

Count the segments.

 

This rating scheme takes into account your OCV, DCV, levels, damage clases, SPD, defenses and stun. It also handles damage reduction which almost nobody's rating schemes take into account...Find weakness...same deal.

 

And you can scale the 'vanilla gorilla' to handle just about any genre or power level imaginable.

 

The advantage to this scheme is that it does not attach a fixed value on one damage class, or one level or one pip of stun or one speed point.

 

It values overall effectiveness in delivering damage to an average target and surviving the return fire from an average opponent.

[zornwil]

Re: Balance Rating

 

All you have to do is figure out what the vanilla combatant looks like in your campaign. (snip)

 

"Vanilla combatant"?? Sputter, choke, gasp, huh, I know not what this is!

 

(I do tend to allow lots of unusual sorts, the compliment I'm still most fond of is lemming's that I run the "most balanced unbalanced game")