Balance issues

[Sean Waters]

Struck me today that the increase in the points total of a 'standard' hero from 250 in 4th to 350 in 5th may have subtly effected balance issues in the game.

 

I'm pretty much assuming that attacks are now around the 12d6 mark most of the time: I used to think of 10d6 as the 'average superhero attack'.

 

This means that powers with fixed costs have effectively become cheaper in terms of the percentage of points that you spend on them.

 

The particular item that made me think of this was a Find Weakness example: if you cost Find Weakness against Armour piercing with an 11- Burnout Activation Roll, Find Weakness comes out as a bargain: it is cheaper and can reduce defences multiple times. Mind you it is only cheaper for bigger powers because the cost of Find Weakness does not increase with the cost of the power we apply it to.

 

If you are throwing 8d6 EBs the cost is similar: the more powerful the attack, though, the more relatively cheap Find Weakness becomes.

 

Similarly you'll find more characters with fixed cost powers. OK not everyone is going to buy desolidification - it is a chunk of points even if you have 350, but, Life Support and Talents are cropping up a lot more.

 

As a partial fix to the specific problem with Find Weakness, include the cost of the FW in the cost of the attack when comparing Active Point levels - assuming you use them.

 

There's no way I can think of scaling FW (other than building it as AP with an activation roll) nor should we necessarily do so, and I know a lot of experienced players probably had characters on 350 points plus by the dawn of FRED, but it strikes me that isn't a great reason to increase the base power level. I also appreciate it is a bit late to start on about a change in FRED, but it is something to be alive to when designing characters or checking them for balance.

 

Any thoughts?

[Silbeg]

Re: Balance issues

 

When my game converted to FRED, we went through the same discussions.

 

It is definately true that the average attack snuck up a little, but interestingly in my game the characters defenses haven't increased to match. In fact, we now have characters with lower average DEF than before (though still high, in general, based on the 5E guidelines).

 

What I have seen has been more rounded characters. Some more exotic powers, and a wider variety of powers. In addition, they are taking a few more non-combat skills... though still not as many as I would like.

 

Surprisingly, it seems that superheroes have become a bit more perceptive, as almost all of them in my game have an INT of at least 13! Other chars have also gotten higher, though there is also a lot less of the DEX and SPD wars that we used to have. Actually, in the current game, out of 7 characters, we have 29/7, 29/6, 24/4, 20/5, 20/3, 18/5, 18/5. The 3 SPD is a little more interesting, as this is the character with perhaps the most options (including a 75 CON, and a HUGE MP (130 pt reserve, with no power currently greater than 65 pts).

[Dust Raven]

Re: Balance issues

 

I've always gone with the "average" attack being around 8d6, not 10 or 12. 12 is typically a campaign max in most of my starting campaigns. Going from 250 to 350 hasn't changed this, but has allowed almost every concept my players can come up with the be playable, and each character can buy a few "extra" that makes their characters much more personalized and unique.

[lemming]

Re: Balance issues

 

I've always gone for the 15d6 average, but that's just my games (and I tend to hover around 500 anyway...)

[Trebuchet]

Re: Balance issues

 

Our campaign averaged around 11 or 12d6 when we jumped from 250 to 350, and didn't increase. (We actually jumped to 300 points first and then up to 350 with the release of FREd.), What we mostly got instead was characters with a broader range of Skills and Talents and buying down some Limitations. Even now with most of our characters around 400 points the average attack is still pretty close to 12d6.

 

Right now we have only one PC, an MA, with FW, and I can't honestly remember if he's ever actually used it in combat in over two years of play so it's obviously not much of a problem. We're certainly not seeing the additional points as creating any balance problem, what we've seen instead with the extra 100 points is more well rounded characters.

[John Desmarais]

Re: Balance issues

 

My games haven't really seen a power increase - 60 active is still the normal top end. What they have seen is a lot less jumping through hoops to make the powers fit into 250 points. Fewer "questionable" limitations, less reliance on frameworks. Also, a general increase in non-combat abilities (skills, perks, talents, etc, etc).

[BNakagawa]

Re: Balance issues

 

Almost all of the Champions I have played has gravitated to the 12d6 level. There have been exceptions, but they are rare.

 

I don't particularly like the mechanics of the current build of Find Weakness. (then again, I've never particularly liked the mechanics of any version of Find weakness and think it would be more appropriately described as Cause Weakness) It's an ugly, orphan mechanic.

[pinecone]

Re: Balance issues

 

Back in the day, most attacks were 10 to 12D6 and that hasn't yet changed...though I expect 14D6 to become the new 12 as time goes by. I have a lot of mystery solving and roleplaying going on so big bunches of dice kind of take a back seat to KS: Nospheratu, and the like I don't have a problem with FW it's self but I do dislike the way lack of w interacts with it, but I have not yet tried to do anything about it....I'm considering using PSL vs lack of w instead of having people buy FW up to cosmic levels as a way to avoid ballence issues. I don't like to see FW on a character unless they specialize in it (say base attacks in the 8-9 D6 range) so being able to get past lack of weakness is more important for someone like that.....I've always treated FW as part of the "size" of a attack though.....

[zornwil]

Re: Balance issues

 

There's two ways which this plays out and they are rather different, IMHO...

 

1 - Those familiar with HERO pre-5th will tend to decide whether to up their general abilities, augment their abilities, and/or make no changes. This will vary of course by campaign and players and preference and all that. Many of the discussion about the 250=>350 change have centered around this, since, obviously, only those familiar with the system have to deal with this. Whatever the case, one whole set of impacts and way this plays out is re legacy games/players. In that situation, there's no "one size fits all" and I daren't even suggest whether the change is good or bad or even matters, at least I don't dare make a suggestion anymore having seen it play out - it's a done deal.

 

2 - For those unfamiliar, we are forced to speculate on the impact. Speaking generally, will newbies build bigger, badder characters, more prone towards combat monsters? Or will they create more interesting, varied, and "deep" characters? Or is any trend likely? I was concerned that the higher points value would encourage bloated executions and unbalanced play for newbies relative to the earlier approach. At one point I thought people would tend to not learn the finer points of the system and that this was a bad thing; now I think that's not a bad thing at all, as with 350 points people are more likely to create inefficient builds which is probably a good thing for an early HERO character. It allows you to have a satisfactory character without going through rules gymnastics and lawyering.

 

I'm unsure about how this is playing out otherwise, though my sense is that newbies are doing what we used to do and trying to build starting characters that are more powerful than the points initially allow, so I tend to think that there's a bloat rather than a deepening at least for those who are more prone to finding efficiencies. But then does that matter? The 250 bar was always considered more of a starting hero I believe; the 350 bar gets people closer to the comic book versions (which are most often experienced). If the result of the change is less efficient characters but with a great ability to quickly build a satisfactory character, that's good. If these characters tend to be more powerful than "the good old days", I don't suppose in the end that matters at all actually as really that's just a personal play preference anyway, and GMs will scale games as they desire anyhow. The only real concern I have comes in where you have min-maxers and inefficient builders in the same game; 350 allows the min-maxer the room to create a bigger gap against the inefficient builders. But I don't know and don't even suspect that this is such a serious issue.