Other values for standard effect

[Toadmaster]

Over in the Starhero section in the weapon damage thread Champsguy had an idea for using Standard Effect for the damage of really big weapons which I think has some potential and it gave me another idea based on Standard Effect.

 

So I got to thinking, if the basic Standard Effect provides average damage and is a -/+0 lim/ adv, then it makes sense that you should be able to buy it higher or lower than average for an additional cost or savings.

For example Standard effect -1 so every KA die would only do 2 points of body, or as an advantage Standard Effect +1, +2, +3 so each die would do 4,5 or 6 (max damage) instead of rolling.

 

So how much do you think this should be worth, or should it even be allowed?

 

I was thinking perhaps 1/2 per level up or down, this would make SE+3 (max damage) more than 2x the cost so at equal cost the regular KA would have more potential damage, to offset the value of alway getting max damage.

 

Any thoughts on this?

[Zaratustra]

Well, the first question is 'Why'. Just increase the dice instead of changing the standard value.

 

Also, -1 for 2 points per dice is a bit sharp. 2 points per dice reduces power effectiveness in 1/3, which with a few calculations amounts to a -1/2 limitation. I'd use +1/2 and -1/2 for each extra pip. Also, why stop at 6?

[Toadmaster]

Sorry I meant + or - 1/2 but I can see it also looks like -1 for 2. I figured 1/2 would add or subtract about 5 points per point of body gained or lost just like buying a 1 pip KA.

 

Well the idea from the other discussion is that a tank gun that does 6d6 could do 6 to 36 points of damage, by using standard effect on part of the damage it would increase the minimum damage so that tank shells don't plink off body armor. It provides another way to have variation in weapon damage without pushing the overall damage higher (to avoid DC proliferation).

 

I was thinking that allowing variations in se could also help reach that goal, by upping average damage without buying additional levels of KA. There is no reason the same could not be done by buying 2d6 of KA with SE as opposed to buying 1d6 KA with a +3 SE, both would do an average of 6 pts, but the second is slightly more expensive and is only DC3. I'm not concerned with economics of it since I'm looking at heroic games so point cost isn't an issue, its the overall effect I'm considering.

 

It's possible that I'm only making it more difficult by including this as part of SE, would + / - pips of body on a KA make more sense (each pip per die is a 1/2 lim or adv but max damage cannot not exceed 6 per die).

[Captain Obvious]

I would say that for killing attacks, which break down into X, X+1, and X.5, etc, where X is any integer of dice, that for the X+1 level, standard effect is already in place. For X.5, I'd say that SE would yield 2 points of BODY, and obviously a full die yields 3 points. There's really no reason to apply any other modifiers to get a set amount of damage for KAs.

 

As far as other attacks go, FREd says that a power that loses about a third of its effectiveness should be -1/2, so we'll assign that to a 2 pt standard die. Same source for 1 pt standard dice at -1 1/2. Now we have 1, 2, and 3 point dice for normal-type attacks. While I suppose you could build 4, 5, and 6 point dice as well, the math doesn't work out so well for adding 1/3 of a power's effectiveness (unless you're willing to add a +1/3 and +2/3 advantage...and of course doubling a power's effectiveness obviously is a +1 advantage). If you want four points, then either buy two 2 pt dice or a 3 point die and a 1 point die.

 

Now, throw a further limitation on there (oh say -1/2 in my estimation) so that the additional die or dice are only there to penetrate defenses and can't do damage themselves, and you've just recreated Piercing from 3rd Ed. I'm actually glad this topic was brought up, because Piercing is useful for converting some effects from other game systems....

[CrosshairCollie]

Me, I just wondered why Standard Effect is 3 points a die instead of 3.5, which would be the actual mathematical average. Obviously, 3 per die is easier to compute without a calculator, but c'mon, we make Champions characters, of COURSE we have calculators!