What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

[Outsider]

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

 

A 20 INT is NOTHING, neh? Except that is super genius. Its MAX human norm. You should be pretty able at that point. SuperHeroes are super for a reason.

 

Ah, here is where I have a difference of opinion with a lot of people, it seems. The way I see it, the NCM is how far up the average person can get without being abnormally smart, strong, quick, or whatever. Normal Characteristic Maxima on base stats is 20, but that isnt an absolute cap. Its just a break point after which normals become significantly and unusually above average, and have to pay double points to get more pips. And 20 isnt even the highest break point for normals... aged normals have base 'maxima' of 30 for some stats.

 

So 20 isnt MAX human norm... its just the high end of the average range. Super geniuses are well outside the average range.

 

 

Equating IQs to Hero INT :

 

Under 90 : ~1/4th of population : Int 1-7

_90-110 : ~1/2 of population : 8-12 INT

111-120 : ~1/6 of population : 13-17 INT

121-140 : ~1/12 of population : 18-22 INT

141-160 : ~1/250 of population : Int 23-27 (Near genius or genius level)

161-180 : ~1/40,000 of population : INT 28-32 (Genius or super genius Level)

Over 180 : ~1/30,000,000 of population : INT 33+ (super genius)

[Trebuchet]

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

 

However' date=' I do agree with you that Hero does lack some granularity on skills. The problem is the fact that Hero is a generic system. A 20 INT will give you a base 13- on skill rolls (Doctorate levels). A 20 INT is NOTHING, neh? Except that is super genius. Its MAX human norm. You should be pretty able at that point. SuperHeroes are super for a reason.[/quote']I must disagree. Even were I to accept that anything above 20 is by definition "super" (and in 5th Edition max human norms is 30, not 20), most supers in the source material are not superhumanly intelligent (or superhumanly strong for that matter). A 20 INT may just represent a person on the extreme high side of the average range. Given that INT doesn't even rate IQ but a much more ephemeral "ability to process data quickly" we can't even assume that Albert Einstein would have possessed an INT score in the 20's. Einstein was slow and methodical in his analysis; he might well have rated only a 10 or 13 INT in Hero. (In our Champions campaign only two PC's have any Primary Characteristics above 30; both of them martial artists, and those are both DEX. And only our two übergeeks have INT scores higher than 20.)

 

Most heroes in the comics are brighter than average, but we expect heroes to be a cut above Joe Average. It's genre. I've never seen a Champions character use base numbers of 10 in any Primary Characteristic except COM. We like our heroes to shine a bit. They're typically stronger, more agile, faster, tougher, possess more strength of will, and better looking than average. Even all 10's is better than average, because the base normal in Hero has all 8's as Primary Characteristics.

 

Also keep in mind that just because you have a 20 INT does not mean you can perform brain surgery or repair rocketships on a 13-.

It does if you bought PS: Surgeon or KS: Rocketship Maintenance.

[zornwil]

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

 

I don't have any preconceived top end. Superhuman can range as far as it goes, and is useful, at least, for character-vs-character determinations even as it far outpaces what we even can consider as humans.

 

That being said, physical impossibilities/realities should still be valid. Since my philosophy in supers games is to let abiltiies get pretty much as extreme as players want, with limits set more against plot-busting or having any one PC overall better than others, I have had to point out that while your PER roll might technically be 40 or less (no, I'm not kidding), that doesn't actually override the fact that your eyes and ears have their own limits to actually see/hear something before you can even interpret the data more.

 

But I fundamentally don't have a problem with a 40- magic skill, for example.

 

Just had to speak up for the skill-monster play...

[Markdoc]

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

 

-10 task : Simple Surgury (I consider Cutting someone open and messing with their innards to be at least "sheer folly", personally.)

-15 task : Difficult Surgury.

 

Wow! I didn't realise I was such an amazing surgeon! I've done scores of surgeries (including organ transplants) and hardly any of the animals I worked on died. (2, I think, out of a bit less than a hundred). Who knew you could get a 29- roll in surgery with only a couple of weeks training?

 

Seriously, I think this is way, way over the top. I've managed just fine for years with 16- being considered an awesome level of skill.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

 

IMO a 13- or 14- is just too easy to get to have it be considered really expert' date=' as opposed to just competent. People of normal (not to say average) intelligence can get to that range just by buying the basic skill based on INT. [/quote']

 

Assuming of course their intelligence falls into the region listed as "normal human maximum".

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

 

One bit of food for thought with regard to age and expertise: Albert Einstein was only 26 years old in 1905 when he wrote his two papers on relativity. While his brilliant insight into the true nature of matter and energy (that they are aspects of the same thing; matter is basically frozen energy) revolutionized humanity's view of the universe' date=' he never accepted the newfangled quantum theory which developed in the 1930's and still reigns today, and so essentially was a "has been" in physics by the time he was 40. He never produced another major breakthrough.[/quote']

 

Depressingly common, unfortunately - a significant number of great minds did all their best work in their early life. The world is full of Nobel-winners who did their best work as graduate students - later got the prize for it and have done bugger-all since (in fact, though I'd hate him to see this, 'cos he's a nice guy, I had dinner in Croatia recently with someone who precisely fits that description).

 

cheers, Mark

[zornwil]

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

 

Wow! I didn't realise I was such an amazing surgeon! I've done scores of surgeries (including organ transplants) and hardly any of the animals I worked on died. (2, I think, out of a bit less than a hundred). Who knew you could get a 29- roll in surgery with only a couple of weeks training?

 

Seriously, I think this is way, way over the top. I've managed just fine for years with 16- being considered an awesome level of skill.

 

cheers, Mark

I think this all proceeds from having such different starting grounds and meanings. If this -10 and -15 are being applied to "right here on the battlefield with a ballpoint pen," then sure. If that's the NET effect of being in a hospital with modern assistants and tools, then indeed that would be a scary world!

[Gummibear]

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

 

Wow! I didn't realise I was such an amazing surgeon! I've done scores of surgeries (including organ transplants) and hardly any of the animals I worked on died. (2, I think, out of a bit less than a hundred). Who knew you could get a 29- roll in surgery with only a couple of weeks training?

 

Seriously, I think this is way, way over the top. I've managed just fine for years with 16- being considered an awesome level of skill.

 

cheers, Mark

 

However, lets look at the modifiers you have.

1. +5 (at least) ideal setting

2. +5 assistant

3. +5 preparation

4. +5 relaxed situation

 

So you may have a -15 for heart surgery (or Heary surgury as Ghost put it ) but you have a +5 cumulative. Even without that +5 you can't tell me that you have a 100% chance to perform the surgery successfully can you? There is always the random factor though it is highly minimized in the "real world."

In response to the "scary world" concept. In the Hero universe everyone has a 1 in 18 chance of having the surgeon "fumble" or catestrophically (sp?) fail. So thats a pretty scary world in many cases. But its not completely outrageous considering the reported events of surgery disaster. Keeping in mind there are probably several times that "unreported" that the doctors fix and either don't explain or explain to the patient. Doctors are not gods, they are humans and subject to human ego and frailties.

 

Don't we all just love to pick on doctors and lawyers?

[zornwil]

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

 

However, lets look at the modifiers you have.

1. +5 (at least) ideal setting

2. +5 assistant

3. +5 preparation

4. +5 relaxed situation

 

So you may have a -15 for heart surgery (or Heary surgury as Ghost put it ) but you have a +5 cumulative. Even without that +5 you can't tell me that you have a 100% chance to perform the surgery successfully can you? There is always the random factor though it is highly minimized in the "real world."

In response to the "scary world" concept. In the Hero universe everyone has a 1 in 18 chance of having the surgeon "fumble" or catestrophically (sp?) fail. So thats a pretty scary world in many cases. But its not completely outrageous considering the reported events of surgery disaster. Keeping in mind there are probably several times that "unreported" that the doctors fix and either don't explain or explain to the patient. Doctors are not gods, they are humans and subject to human ego and frailties.

 

Don't we all just love to pick on doctors and lawyers?

Our group's dimensional traveller has noted "it seems that in our universe everything has a 1 in 216 chance of failure..."

 

(PS - which it is, it's not 1 in 18, thank goodness!)