Balance Rating

[Agent X]

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.

That's pretty much what I do and what I posted earlier.

[Agent X]

Re: Balance Rating

 

"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")

Okay, throw them against a generic brick then a generic blaster then a generic mentalist.

[zornwil]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Okay' date=' throw them against a generic brick then a generic blaster then a generic mentalist.[/quote']

Just kidding around, pretty much. Yeah, all valid approaches.

[Cardinal]

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.

 

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.

 

One scheme that I toyed with to address the issue Derek discusses above incorporated some of the "plain vanilla" concepts suggested by Agent X and others. If I remember correctly it went something like this:

 

Offensive Capability = SPD * [% change to Hit Average DCV] * [Average Damage per Roll - Average Defense]. This basically provides the Expected Value of All damage dished out in a Turn. The key idea being that DCs have no value unless you have a sufficient number to overcome the defenses you expect to face.

 

For example, if a character is 10 spd, 15 ocv and 7 DC they will be able to attack a huge number of times and will likely hit most of the time, however, unless the average Def is less than 24 (7 DC *3.5), the character will rarely be doing any damage and therefore not tremendously effective. By alternative, if the chracter is 4 spd 10 OCV 16 DC, if that character is able to hit 50% of the time they will be able to do 32 stun each time they hit (which he would twice a turn for a total of 64).

 

I had a similar formula for DEF.

 

However, I gave them up because they were not tremendously useful and it seemed easier to use my equivalent of the "plain vanilla" pound test.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Balance Rating

 

I wonder if Vanilla Gorilla is related to Grape Ape?

HM

[BNakagawa]

Re: Balance Rating

 

That's pretty much what I do and what I posted earlier.

 

True, and I never said I thought of it, I only said that it was the only scheme that I had any faith in.

[BNakagawa]

Re: Balance Rating

 

I wonder if Vanilla Gorilla is related to Grape Ape?

HM

and a teammate of Furious George...

[JohnOSpencer]

Re: Balance Rating

 

and a teammate of Furious George...

 

And teammates with the Orango-Tank and Battlechimp Potemkin.

 

John

[Christougher]

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.

 

< snippage >

 

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.

 

Agreed, it's not perfect (no rating ever is), but it was intended to cover the major points of variance, and be fast and simple to compute. In the group where the formula was written, SPD really was equal /if CV and DCs are lowered to compensate/: A speed 10 speedster doing 6d6 with a 10 OCV was roughly equal to the spd 4 blaster who throws 14 DCs with an 8 OCV.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Agreed' date=' it's not perfect (no rating ever is), but it was intended to cover the major points of variance, and be fast and simple to compute. In the group where the formula was written, SPD really was equal /if CV and DCs are lowered to compensate/: A speed 10 speedster doing 6d6 with a 10 OCV was roughly equal to the spd 4 blaster who throws 14 DCs with an 8 OCV.[/quote']My (SPD + DC) <= 20 formula is based on the same basic concept, and has proven to be a fairly decent predictor of combat effectiveness in our campaign. Plus it has the merit of simplicity.

[Guest Keneton]

Re: Balance Rating

 

Although there is no HOLY GRAIL of effectiveness ratings, I worked on one for several years along with my freind in Tennesee and Pennsylvania. The present version is the result of 17+ years of playtesting and hardwork. It is by far the most advanced I have seen and relatively accurate. I invite those interested to visit DH #3: The effectiveness rating and also check the free stuff for an axcell spreadsheet for your use.

 

I will not waste time elaborating on all of th reasons a rating system is good/bad as the points have been made on these boards time and time again. I have no problem with the balance rating, but it takes too little into consideration to be completely accurate.

 

I do applaud the novel approach to the formula and may take the ideas into consideration should I ever revise the ER along with my group.

[BNakagawa]

Re: Balance Rating

 

I don't particularly care for any rating system that equates a damage class with a number, and especially when that number is equivalent to a SPD point or an OCV level.

 

The fundamental reason is that the first 6-8 DC a character throws just don't matter. The average combatant has enough defenses to ignore anything below that threshhold. 12 SPD, 8d6 vs 30/30 defenses will leak some damage through on a good roll, but it's doubtfull whether or not you'd ever do enough to matter.

 

On the other hand, if you're throwing 16d6 4 times a turn against the same 30/30 defenses, you're stunning people all the time and a good roll equals a one shot KO.

 

If I'm getting peppered by a pesky gnat that attacks every segment and does no damage on an average roll, I have plenty of time to adjust my tactics to avoid getting knocked out. If I get stunned on the first attack, I had better have more SPD than you or I won't even have an opportunity to abort to anything before your next attack wipes me out.

 

It's been true ever since The Fantasy Trip (first game I encountered where armor subtracted from incoming damage) attacking twice for N damage is not as good as attacking once for 2N damage.

 

Assuming you attack targets that have defenses >0, that is.

 

I rarely find my PCs attacking things with 0 defenses.

 

$0.02

[Trebuchet]

Re: Balance Rating

 

I don't particularly care for any rating system that equates a damage class with a number, and especially when that number is equivalent to a SPD point or an OCV level.

 

The fundamental reason is that the first 6-8 DC a character throws just don't matter. The average combatant has enough defenses to ignore anything below that threshhold. 12 SPD, 8d6 vs 30/30 defenses will leak some damage through on a good roll, but it's doubtfull whether or not you'd ever do enough to matter.

 

On the other hand, if you're throwing 16d6 4 times a turn against the same 30/30 defenses, you're stunning people all the time and a good roll equals a one shot KO.

 

If I'm getting peppered by a pesky gnat that attacks every segment and does no damage on an average roll, I have plenty of time to adjust my tactics to avoid getting knocked out. If I get stunned on the first attack, I had better have more SPD than you or I won't even have an opportunity to abort to anything before your next attack wipes me out.

 

It's been true ever since The Fantasy Trip (first game I encountered where armor subtracted from incoming damage) attacking twice for N damage is not as good as attacking once for 2N damage.

 

Assuming you attack targets that have defenses >0, that is.

 

I rarely find my PCs attacking things with 0 defenses.

 

$0.02

You make some good points. However, the formula we use in our campaign (which I related above: Speed + Damage Classes are less than or equal to 20) was never intended as a "Combat Effectiveness Rating" in the first place. It is a) Only a guideline and not a hard rule, and Used only to roughly balance player characters. My formula is intended only to keep the PCs within shouting distance of one another, which is ultimately all any formula can accomplish. Keneton has developed and posted an excellent Effectiveness Rating spreadsheet which is probably as accurate a combat evaluation as is humanly possible, yet even he concedes it is only a rough gauge at best. There are simply too many factors that can never be assigned numerical values, such as campaign setting and the skill and inventivesness of the player. I am well aware of the "threshold" aspects of Hero System combat (A term I myself have used); indeed that's the fundamental basis of the formula. As you correctly observed the first 6d6 to 8d6 are generally ignored, that does not render my formula useless.

 

First of all, just because a fast character can only leak a few points each hit through an opponent's defenses does not render that character useless in a team vs. team fight, or even in most cases a team vs. megavillain fight. Those leaked points are cumulative with other teammates' damage. Using our formula even a SPD 12 character could dish out 8d6 each hit; more than enough damage to directly effect agents and most martial artists and mentalists. It is of course reasonable (and wise) to adjust the formula so a low damage character can deliver at least some damage to an opponent with average campaign defenses. It may indeed be the case that the opposing team's brick can pretty much ignore the attacks of a lower damage character, at least without Pushing or using other means such as the environment. But since the vast majority of combats, at least in my 22+ years of experience with Champions, are team fights and not mano a mano that's much less important than it would seem at first glance.

 

Secondly, one need not actually damage an opponent to have a significant effect on group combat. Faster but lower damage characters can still play a critical role in fights. They can engage agents; they can Throw or otherwise hamper the bad guy's Combat Values; they can Block to protect a teammate who is unable to Abort or avoid a blow because they've already acted; they can assist or protect Stunned, KO'd, Concentrating or injured comrades; they can break the Ãœbermachine while the rest of the team engages the bad guy(s); they can distract the bad guy while another teammate sets up an attack; they can leak just enough Stun points through to prevent an opponent from taking a Recovery. My character Zl'f, our team's lightweight, has done all of these things. Damage dice and defenses are far from the whole picture.

 

Thirdly, Hero System is a rock-scissors-paper type of game engine. A well balanced team becomes much more than simply the sum of its parts. A quick but low damage character has just as much of a place on a team as a brick, mentalist, or high-powered energy projector. The ultimate purpose of a hero team is to stop the bad guy; that does not mean any given character on that team can beat any given opponent to-to-toe. As long as the low damage character can positively effect the final result of the combat, he or she need not be useless, and indeed can be absolutely critical to the team's success. And being critical to your team's success does not count as ineffectiveness in my book.

 

That's my 2¢ worth.

[Christougher]

Re: Balance Rating

 

My (SPD + DC) <= 20 formula is based on the same basic concept' date=' and has proven to be a fairly decent predictor of combat effectiveness in our campaign. Plus it has the merit of simplicity. [/quote']

 

It fills those goals, I won't argue that. I just can't bypass the thought that CV ought to be included. Setting aside the "but good players won't..." argument, since it theoretically overrides the need for any kind of rating, there's a world of difference between two PCs with the same value, if one has a max OCV of 6, and the other 14.

 

The one session I sat in on, there was discussion about Sidestep needing another OCV or two. A really, really detailed benchmark might have showed that, but one that detailed is probably too cumbersome to use. The only real use for these types of ratings is to show when a character is too far out of line with the rest, either high or low.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Balance Rating

 

It fills those goals, I won't argue that. I just can't bypass the thought that CV ought to be included. Setting aside the "but good players won't..." argument, since it theoretically overrides the need for any kind of rating, there's a world of difference between two PCs with the same value, if one has a max OCV of 6, and the other 14.

 

The one session I sat in on, there was discussion about Sidestep needing another OCV or two. A really, really detailed benchmark might have showed that, but one that detailed is probably too cumbersome to use. The only real use for these types of ratings is to show when a character is too far out of line with the rest, either high or low.

I won't argue that. But we reached that conclusion only after a fair amount of playing with the character in question, and I'm not certain a more detailed formula would have done much better. I'm certainly not going to claim my formula is the Holy Grail of character balance. It's primary virtue is simplicity. But if no formula can be truly accurate as a a predictor, then a simple formula may be just as useful as a complicated one. As I said above, the main function of my formula is to make the PCs be within shouting distance of one another so far as combat goes.

 

Sidestep's biggest weakness is that he is run by a hesitant and relatively inexperienced player. A more experienced and/or aggressive player could probably do considerably better with the character as originally designed. IIRC the character has been updated somewhat with XP since you sat in, but the change focused far more on giving him a higher PD and ED than it did on a higher CV. I think his CV went up one with a combat skill level, but it turned out his real weakness was that he's too easily stunned for his selected playstyle and role as a martial demi-brick so the upgrade he actually went with was raising his defenses by 25% (from 20 PD/ED to 25 PD/ED). With his Boxing martial arts package he is now potentially a much more formidable character.

[zornwil]

Re: Balance Rating

 

From what I can see, these effectiveness/balance/Rule of X type ratings all accomplish two things: one, they give a clue, and two, they're fun.

 

That's about it (no offense to anyone). The rest is SO much up to NOT the number of points but to the ROLE-PLAYING that really it's a crap-shoot. I can tell you I have seen in my game now and every game I've ever run people play their characters to such varying degrees of "effectiveness" that it's really hard to say. Just as an example, our group's mentalist, played by lemming, is generally played realistically, and since she's a shy sort who isn't entirely into combat, she isn't nearly as effective as she COULD be. But playing her any other way wouldn't be fair, or wouldn't be the same character. Because he's ROLE-PLAYING which is what we're all supposed to be doing.

 

Whoops, that was a rant. End rant!

[Sean Waters]

Re: Balance Rating

 

The only really accurate rating system I've come across is called The Character Sheet. What you do is take TCS to a GM and some other players and use it to complete a couple of camaigns. It should emerge as to how effective the character is at some point during this procedure.

 

The Balance Rating system is interesting, but I tend to use dead reckoning and trust to luck mainly. I think a little imbalance can be healthy. I mean look at me. Oh no, that's unbalanced, isn't it....?