Does Body, bypassing defences

[OddHat]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

I'd like to ask: how much of all this do you think is "about right"?

 

I'll give some of it a shot.

 

I speak as a repentant sinner on the topic of setting up lots of blood-spurting, soul-reaving scenarios. (It comes of starting with a game that combined supers with Call of Cthulu.) For me, after much bloody experimentation, "about right" is when your players want to buy a few points of extra BODY if it fits their character's conception, because they know they are likely to need it. (It everyone has BODY 10 because they know they won't need more, the game is not violent enough.) "Go Back, Wrong Way" is when your players want Regeneration. (Or Healing, and/or Automaton powers.)

 

Seems OK for a standard Comic Book setting.

 

I go back and forth on this. Generally, I like Body to be balanced at least a bit against CON and STR. Then you get into the whole "what is body" debate.

 

I don't currently allow Regen to players without a concept that merits it, but there have been phases in my gaming life when every character had Regen and Regrowth (GURPS) to simulate a certain world setting.

 

And it matters dramatically how people take BODY. For me, really intense violence was the right way. (Though Killing Attacks not really, if only because of the STUN lottery.) It didn't seem to work right, for me or my players, to be bypassing defences. (If the villains get to be gee-wow effective by bypassing defences to do deadly damage, the implication is obvious.) Of course, everyone's mileage would vary on that.

 

If I can get a good description out of it, it's a good way to inflict body. I dislike vague special effects.

 

If you want "gasses" (toxic dispersants), Satan Bug scenarios and so on, your priorities need to be different, even reversed. It may even be good to encourage your players to develop some technical skills. And - maybe you need these attacks to be cheap enough that your evil masterminds can easily manage them in your tool kits and the players can fight back?

 

Again, sounds about right. I fully stat out my masterminds (though many don't), and I like to know exactly how many points they paid for their nerve gas and weird occult attacks. It helps me get an idea of their relative power (as much as point totals can), and lets me keep track of ways that the players can counter them from a mechanics point of view.

 

I never liked drains and Power Defence (or Absorption) the way they work in Champions, still don't. I used them to build killer powers in Superworld, then lost all interest in them. Everyone's fascinated with PD and to some extent ED "invulnerability", but how can you be fascinated and awed by whatever it is that Power Defence simulates? The whole field feels like deadly rules-mongering to me.

 

I've said many time that I'd like to see Power Defense done away with, and Drains, Transforms, etc applied against a defense appropriate to the special effect.

Arm Breaking Transform goes against Hard PD.

Magic Drain Spell goes against Mental Defense.

Transformation Ray goes against Hard ED.

Draing Gas is purchased as an NND vs Need Not Breath or Holds Breath

Etc.

I've done this in campaigns and it worked well enough, and felt more conceptually solid. Only change I noticed was that more people were sinking points into hardening their defenses, but I did not feel that to be unbalancing.

[David Blue]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

I go back and forth on this. Generally' date=' I like Body to be balanced at least a bit against CON and STR. [snip'] I don't currently allow Regen to players without a concept that merits it, but there have been phases in my gaming life when every character had Regen and Regrowth (GURPS) to simulate a certain world setting.

Would Regeneration be a more attractive purchase than spending the same points on a high BODY score if you didn't bar purchasing Regeneration in some cases?

 

And if so, what would you do if you wanted BODY to be a better buy? (I mean in terms of scenario, villain and attack powers design, and how the action would go, ideally not by just doubling the cost of Healing powers.)

 

How would you see attacks that do BODY, bypassing defences, in this context?

 

"I've said many time that I'd like to see Power Defense done away with, and Drains, Transforms, etc applied against a defense appropriate to the special effect.

Arm Breaking Transform goes against Hard PD.

Magic Drain Spell goes against Mental Defense.

Transformation Ray goes against Hard ED.

 

Draing Gas is purchased as an NND vs Need Not Breath or Holds Breath

Etc.

I've done this in campaigns and it worked well enough, and felt more conceptually solid. Only change I noticed was that more people were sinking points into hardening their defenses, but I did not feel that to be unbalancing.

That looks good to me.

 

Sidetracking my own thread again, hopefully not too much, what do you see as appropriate special effects for hardened defences? For multiply hardened defences? And in some cases for resistant defences?

 

In the context of attacks that can easily and cheaply pour rivers of Autofire Killing BODY into your BODY score through any defence (eg. Mental Defence), rationalising the appropriate (and numerous, and desperately needed) defences becomes a hot topic. Admittedly, it's easier if you take out adding these advantages to Power Defence, but it's still an issue.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

Hero is a very' date=' very difficult game. I'm trying to introduce some new players to it now, and they've gone into shock, which upset me - I don't like my players, including one who I know from Amber to be a red-hot roleplayer, to be shocked like that, and lobbying me to pick a simpler system.[/quote']

Roleplaying games in general are very difficult games. Compare any one of them to chess. Chess is world renowned for its challenging nature and being difficult to master, but when you compare the rules of chess to the rules for even the simplest RPG, chess if child's play. If I had spent as much time mastering chess as I had mastering RPGs, I could probably play professionally. It's just that I feel RPGs are more fun .

 

Champions is extraordinarily difficult to balance. Extraordinarily difficult. I have seen new-budding games die in one session. I saw one, to be run my a highly intelligent player expert in several systems, ended with the very first attack (a massive gliding area effect move-through that he hadn't realised was possible).

If the players are already opposed to the Hero System, its bound to happen. Of course, I don't see how a single attack could end a session/campaign, no matter how funked up it might have been.

 

The first thing I do when something like that happens is to simply adjucate whether or not such an action is possible. Not given the rules, but looking only at the character in question, that character's concept and the ideas I have about the campaign's physical laws. If it doesn't make sense, it doesn't happen or happens in a way that makes sense. After the game I then look over the character and the rules, preferably with the player, and look to see if we are understanding the rules correctly. More times that not, something that off is likely to be "user error", a misinterpretation of a rule or the accidental ommission of some overlooked factor (such as the OCV penalty based on total movement for a Move Through... such a massive attack is likely to simply miss resulting in the character splatting against the nearet solid surface).

 

Gamemasters disregard the rules all the time. If not, they get into terrible trouble. If they do they get into trouble in other ways, but still, for example, disregard for the essential restrictions on Elemental Controls seems normal, even among the most expert players.

 

Players who don't avail themselves of this weakness often lose out, because the system is too hard to expect gamemasters to run it fairly and reliably. And they often don't. "On balance...when no one else follows it." was a very pointed and totally valid thread recently. That's how it is.

I won't play with a GM that violates or disregards the rules, or follow different house rules than the players. There's always the factor that the GM is allowed to build NPCs that are more powerful than the PCs, but that's not a rule violation... it's part of the game. There are also certain things that NPCs can have that PCs can't. For one, it's typically assumed that the PCs are good guys and the villains are bad guys. The GM wouldn't allow a player to play a bad guy, but can play bad guys himself. This doesn't violate any rules, and neither does allowing a villain to have a certain attack a PC isn't allowed to have.

 

Now, saying that the villain's EB works differently than the PCs identically purchased EB is different. Letting the villain take a REC while at full DCV as a half phase action but PCs still have to be 0 DCV and use an entire phase is also different. These are just wrong, but I don't know of any GM that does such things.

 

Given that the gamemasters are on the whole very far from being able just to say "No." always and only when they should, I don't think "Just say no!" covers everything. I don't think it's all the justification the present rules need.

 

Knowing whether or not to allow something, for PC or NPC, is a matter of experience. My best advice is to only allow (!) items on a case by case basis. If you aren't sure, don't allow it... at least right away. This goes doubly for (STOP) items, which should not only be looked at closely but "play tested" on paper and simulation before they are allowed. Knowing what is and isn't balanced isn't that hard, it just takes time and experience to recognize such things quickly.

[Warp9]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

AVLD and NND exist at all because the basic defense system treats all attacks as being external threats attempting to get through some form of "skin" to damage something. The basic system does not address attacks that bypass a "skin" so AVLD and NND were invented as band-aids. Over ~20 years the issue has remained problematic. What we need is to make less assumptions in the defense system and free ourselves from the idea that all atacks are against "skin". Then we would not need AVLD nor NND.

 

 

ALVDs and NNDs that Do Body exist because the basic defense system is not flexible enough and too heavily weighted towards causing easy to defend against and easy to recover from damage. A more flexible basic damage system that allows the base lethality of an attack to be more tunable fixes that and allows us to get rid of these hacks that have been the cornerstone of many play balance problems.

 

IMHO, we need could better simulate a wider variety of damage causing phenomena more cleanly and safely if we a) allowed STUN and Body causing potential to be defined independantly of each other and extended the non resistant and resistant defense concepts beyond simply "skin". I'm not yet sure what the best way is to this, but it's clear to me that it needs doing.

There are probably always better ways of doing things. If you can come up with one, more power to you.

 

However, until then, NNDs are a pretty good way of doing some kind of attacks.

 

 

One thing this thread has convinced me of so far is that Does Body _is_ too cheap. The munchkin constructs have convinced me that NND should not be allowed to do Body. It should only be allowed on AVLD. AVLD should be a (+2) Ad and Does Body should be a (+2) modifier to AVLD. That's a band-aid not a fix, but it makes these munchkin constructs expensive enough to help slow down their adoption.

So how do you suggest that one should do attacks which are basically attacks vs life support?

 

(I know that this speaks to your point about defenses that go beyond skin, but given the current system doesn't really get into that, how do you handle it in the current setup?)

 

Are you contending that these things should not have anything to do with life support, and that other defenses should be used?

 

Or are you saying that poisen gas, caustic chemicals, radiation, and vacuume, should be able to do STUN damage, but never actually do any real physical harm (BODY) to a character?

 

Or are you saying that PCs should be banned from having attacks like: poisen gas, caustic chemicals, radiation, or vacuume?

[Dust Raven]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

One thing this thread has convinced me of so far is that Does Body _is_ too cheap. The munchkin constructs have convinced me that NND should not be allowed to do Body. It should only be allowed on AVLD. AVLD should be a (+2) Ad and Does Body should be a (+2) modifier to AVLD. That's a band-aid not a fix' date=' but it makes these munchkin constructs expensive enough to help slow down their adoption.[/quote']

 

Are you absolutely certain of that? What about munchkin constructs not involving NND or Does BODY? Most are worse. Drain STUN & BODY 1d6 (+1/2), AF5 (+1 1/2), 1/2 END (+1/2), AE One Hex (+1/2): Total Cost 40 points. An average attack from a character with a DEX of 20 will yeild an effect of 3d6, averaging 10 STUN and 5 BODY unless the target has Power Defense. The closest aproximation using NND and Does BODY is an EB 3d6 NND Does BODY which would cost 45 and do half as much BODY, recover more quickly and cost more. There's nothing wrong with Does BODY, but like everything it can cause problems if missused. And I mean everything.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

So how do you suggest that one should do attacks which are basically attacks vs life support?

 

(I know that this speaks to your point about defenses that go beyond skin, but given the current system doesn't really get into that, how do you handle it in the current setup?)

 

Are you contending that these things should not have anything to do with life support, and that other defenses should be used?

 

Or are you saying that poisen gas, caustic chemicals, radiation, and vacuume, should be able to do STUN damage, but never actually do any real physical harm (BODY) to a character?

 

Or are you saying that PCs should be banned from having attacks like: poisen gas, caustic chemicals, radiation, or vacuume?

 

[devil's advocate]

 

Well, no rule says those SFX must be built using the NND/Does BODY mechanic. They could easily be Drains or Suppresses, Link AVLDs or even normal or killing damage with a Does Work If Target Has Life Support Limitation.

 

[/devil's advocate]

 

I do agree with you though, the NND/Does BODY mechanic is a perfect tool for such things.

[David Blue]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

Warp9: "So how do you suggest that one should do attacks which are basically attacks vs life support?"

 

With a little less of an either-or effect for very extreme characters, like superheroes, if there turns out to be a convenient way to do that.

 

Warp9: (I know that this speaks to your point about defenses that go beyond skin, but given the current system doesn't really get into that, how do you handle it in the current setup?)

 

I agree with Ki-rin that the model assumes you have essentially defenceless flesh behind armoured skin or the equivalent, and that damage is outside trying to get through that skin, and that attacks that buy the right to ignore the skin and do damage directly are a problem. Particularly when you are doing damage to the expensive and slow-healing component, BODY, which keeps you alive.

 

Warp9: "Are you contending that these things should not have anything to do with life support, and that other defenses should be used?"

 

No, and yes. These things should have to do with Life Support; and for very extreme characters life support need not be the whole story. A superhero can have BODY 30 and CON 40. (He often won't, because as things stand they are inefficient. But he could.) I think this should be potentially relevant, more than it already is.

 

As things stand, only Regeneration (or Healing) and Damage Reduction really work. I think they are too good, and a hassle I would rather do without. If we can find nicer, simpler ways for the battle inside the skin to be fought, I'd like that.

 

Maybe armour for inside your body? Or roll CON or or perhaps better BODY for some kind of benefit? Something simple like that is what I'd like. It's far out of reach at the moment though.

 

Warp9: "Or are you saying that PCs should be banned from having attacks like: poisen gas, caustic chemicals, radiation, or vacuume?"

 

I'd like them not to be weapons that should be restricted by gamemaster fiat to cover for the fact that between super-heroes and super-villains, they are overly good buys.

 

In a Satan Bug adventure, you have to look at the deadly attacks in the context of the cost to kill the same characters by other means. For normal human beings, that should not be much. True, a vial of botulinus toxin can kill everybody present in large room quickly. But so could David Callan with a pistol.

 

The cost of doing equivalent BODY damage to a superhero or a supervillain by means that don't disregard the resistant skin that the game assumes is different. So I think doing the same BODY to them for the same cost is a problem. It may not be a problem with an easy solution. But it is worth discussing.

 

Also, there is a game mechanic problem. I don't see why caustic chemicals need to be anything but killing attacks without knockback. (And maybe armour piercing.) Armour, including super-skin, should work fine on them. (Unless you want the Alien's famous "molecular acid" blood, but then life support will fail too.) But they might not be built that way, because you can get more bang for your buck building them to ignore defences that, against a superhero or a supervillain, are likely to be high.

 

Afterthought: Physical/chemical corrosives could be built with reduced penetration, continuous, and versus physical defence, because an energy defence force field wouldn't stop them splashing on you. Energy attacks with equivalent effects could go against energy defence.

 

Here's a relevant thread:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3418

 

And another one:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3270

 

Another afterthought. This was slightly wrong: "As things stand, only Regeneration (or Healing) and Damage Reduction really work." Well, yes, but with Penetration you want Hardened Damage Reduction.

 

(Which makes no particular sense and just seems to be the system favouring the defence-bypassing killer over the target again, but since I hate Damage Reduction as a high-powered time-waster, fine.)

[Gary]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

I like my idea in the other thread to fix Autofire. AF costs normally with no additional surcharge for nonstandard attacks. However, Autofire merely adds +2 DC per additional hit after the first, with a maximum damage of double the base attack no matter how many times you hit. So a 1d6 autofire attack with lots of Advantages would still only do 2d6 damage even if you hit 1 trillion times.

 

This should fix any balance problems with AF quite nicely while leaving it still a useful advantage.

[David Blue]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

I like my idea in the other thread to fix Autofire. AF costs normally with no additional surcharge for nonstandard attacks. However, Autofire merely adds +2 DC per additional hit after the first, with a maximum damage of double the base attack no matter how many times you hit. So a 1d6 autofire attack with lots of Advantages would still only do 2d6 damage even if you hit 1 trillion times.

 

This should fix any balance problems with AF quite nicely while leaving it still a useful advantage.

Thank you Gary. I'd have to test it, but that looks like it might be useful.

 

Autofire is a menace in the context of attacks that do BODY, bypassing defences.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

I like my idea in the other thread to fix Autofire. AF costs normally with no additional surcharge for nonstandard attacks. However, Autofire merely adds +2 DC per additional hit after the first, with a maximum damage of double the base attack no matter how many times you hit. So a 1d6 autofire attack with lots of Advantages would still only do 2d6 damage even if you hit 1 trillion times.

 

This should fix any balance problems with AF quite nicely while leaving it still a useful advantage.

 

hmmm...so I can have a 12d6 EB (60 points), or a 9d6 Autofire EB (3 shots; 56 points) which will do 11d6 if I hit twice and 13d6 if I hit three times (I'll spend the 4 points on +2 OCV with this attack). Seems OK.

 

What if I take an 8d6 attack AF +1/2 (so 4 shots) and buy up my OCV? Now I do 16d6 for 72 points (60 for the blast, 12 for +6 OCV with it), and even if I "miss" (don't hit with all shots), some damage still gets through. Spending a lot of END, though. It might balance out.

[Warp9]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

Warp9: (I know that this speaks to your point about defenses that go beyond skin, but given the current system doesn't really get into that, how do you handle it in the current setup?)

 

I agree with Ki-rin that the model assumes you have essentially defenceless flesh behind armoured skin or the equivalent, and that damage is outside trying to get through that skin, and that attacks that buy the right to ignore the skin and do damage directly are a problem. Particularly when you are doing damage to the expensive and slow-healing component, BODY, which keeps you alive.

It seems to me that, if you don't have normal flesh behind the armor, you'll probably get Life Support anyway.

 

A man with metal plate armor may not have Life Support, but an Iron Golem would definitely have Life Support. And I can't see an Earth Elemental as needing to breath.

 

Characters that are non-human on the inside generally show it by having Life Support.

 

And characters who are "normal humans" on the inside should be hurt by these kinds of attacks.

 

I just don't see the problem here.

[OddHat]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

It seems to me that, if you don't have normal flesh behind the armor, you'll probably get Life Support anyway.

 

A man with metal plate armor may not have Life Support, but an Iron Golem would definitely have Life Support. And I can't see an Earth Elemental as needing to breath.

 

Characters that are non-human on the inside generally show it by having Life Support.

 

And characters who are "normal humans" on the inside should be hurt by these kinds of attacks.

 

I just don't see the problem here.

 

Agreed. LS and Damage Reduction are exactly the defenses that best represent a charater whose defenses go beyond a straight barrier between themselves and the outside world.

[OddHat]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

Would Regeneration be a more attractive purchase than spending the same points on a high BODY score if you didn't bar purchasing Regeneration in some cases?

 

I don't follow your question here. Regeneration by itself is most attractive compared to Body in campaigns where characters can expect to take a few Body per turn of combat. In campaigns where characters take more Body in a shorter period of time, a higher Body score is more attractive, as it is in campaigns where Regeneration is banned. High defenses are what make Body unatractive. If you have 25 hardened PD/ED in a Standard Supers campaign, you can expect to go through most of your adventuring career without ever taking a single point of body from any normal attack.

 

And if so, what would you do if you wanted BODY to be a better buy? (I mean in terms of scenario, villain and attack powers design, and how the action would go, ideally not by just doubling the cost of Healing powers.)

The lower you set the cap on defenses, the more attractive Body becomes. The more you restrict Healing (especially Regeneration) the more attractive Body becomes. I don't think the pricing needs to be changed to achieve the desired effect.

 

How would you see attacks that do BODY, bypassing defences, in this context?

The same way I see them now. Those attacks are there to simulate real and cinematic dangers that may exist in a given scenario. I don't run Hero as an arena combat game. As to the question of Player Charaters purchasing such attacks, I personally have never permitted it outside of a Splatterpunk or Rusty Iron campaign. The ultra-muchkin examples in this thread are fun from a numbers crunching point of view, and as examples of what coud be done within the rules; that does not mean that any GM has to permit them.

 

Sidetracking my own thread again, hopefully not too much, what do you see as appropriate special effects for hardened defences?

 

Super-alloys / Force Fields / whatever that are not going to transfer more force to whatever they're protecting even if hit by a very concentrated attack, constructs like Combat Luck based on the idea that the attack didn't hit a vital area, armor that is re-enforced in key areas and where for the sake of ease-of-play Hardened is used instead of going into more detail, etc.

For multiply hardened defences?

I don't use them past Double Hardened, and that is rare. If I did use them, I'd use the above SFX.

And in some cases for resistant defences?

Anything that reasonably prevents damage to vital organs or bones, depending on how cinematic the game is intended to be. In a B Action Movie campaign, you can shoot Stephen Segal in the shoulder without causing him to take any body; in a hard- Sci Fi "realistic" campaign, you might not allow resistant defenses at all unless the charater is wearing body armor.

 

In the context of attacks that can easily and cheaply pour rivers of Autofire Killing BODY into your BODY score through any defence (eg. Mental Defence), rationalising the appropriate (and numerous, and desperately needed) defences becomes a hot topic. Admittedly, it's easier if you take out adding these advantages to Power Defence, but it's still an issue.

 

Only if the GM allows it to become an issue.

[David Blue]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

We have a new and brilliant contribution from another thread:

Post #109:

Thought of another one which seems to be strictly rules-legal:

 

AVLD vs Radar Flash DEF

 

How many people buy Flash DEF for the Radar Sense Group? Most don't even have a Radar Sense at all.

Bravo! Rep for PhilFleischmann!

[Southern Cross]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

Such an attack might be rules-legal,but I'd rule that such an attack would have no effect on a character without Radar Sense,anymore than an AVLD vs. Sight Sense Flash Defense should affect a blind character.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

Such an attack might be rules-legal' date='but I'd rule that such an attack would have no effect on a character without Radar Sense,anymore than an AVLD vs. Sight Sense Flash Defense should affect a blind character.[/quote']

Good point! A character without a sense could in some ways be regarded as having infinite Flash Defense for that sense, since any arbitrary sized Flash would still have no affect on that character. (Then again, you could say that the Flash was effective, but since the character is blind in that sense anyway, it simply doesn't impair them any. Hmm....) Anyway, I like that solution balance-wise.

 

EDIT: P.S. - I think I'm going to post a question to Steve Long about this. I think it merits consideration for the system generally.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

It seems to me that, if you don't have normal flesh behind the armor, you'll probably get Life Support anyway.

 

A man with metal plate armor may not have Life Support, but an Iron Golem would definitely have Life Support. And I can't see an Earth Elemental as needing to breath.

 

Characters that are non-human on the inside generally show it by having Life Support.

 

And characters who are "normal humans" on the inside should be hurt by these kinds of attacks.

 

I just don't see the problem here.

 

1) There's a lot of non-life support based attacks that bypass defenses.

 

2) There's "still organic" and there's "human on the inside". A lot of bricks shouldn't have life support, but should still be hard to kill (and an NND that bypasses their defenses doesn't care what their BODY is, because even 40 or 50 BODY only multiples how long it takes by a little).

 

3) Life Support has no "partial resistance" setting. Resistance =/= Immunity.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences

 

We have the technology to build nuclear weapons: should we?

 

Well, the realistic answer would be, 'Unfortunately, yes'

 

We have nuclear weapons: should we use them?

 

Well, the sane answer would be 'No'.

 

We have powers that can simulate certain effects but may be campaign unbalancing: should we have them in the system?

 

Well, the completist answer is 'Why not?'

 

I have built and unbalanced power, can I use it in your campaign?

 

Well, my answer is deleted to protect the innocent.