"Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

[zornwil]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

I dislike those guidelines' date=' but I do conceed that they exist.[/quote']

 

A good point. I can imagine, but why don't you like them?

 

HERO does have suggestions for mook rules in the core book; 5thER, p.382, sidebar. Other options show up in other books.

 

Thanks, that's why I thought I had recalled some mention earlier, appreciate the check.

 

I know you're trying to get folks to repeat your own take on the issue, but really, dude, what do you want?

 

I know this is kidding (at least halfway anyway which is fine), but I found it an interesting comment from the user, and I wondered what people would think.

 

As an aside, naturally we should assume it is indeed proper to be able to lay waste to the common man like fodder... Seriously, though, I expected a lot more criticism of the very proposition itself, I was surprised not to see serious condemnation of the basic notion. I could see that it might even be antithetical to a game which does a lot to rationalize fiction (e.g., even though GURPS does have some ways in which to do this as well, it also isn't well made to do some of the sillier Rambo-style mook slayings, and I'm not sure that it's proper for HERO or GURPS, among others, to do so to this extreme at all, though it's clearly a requirement of some RPGers).

 

PS - just as a brief but relevant point, SW does handle it differently than HERO, embedding it more in the core system - but again for different reasons

[OddHat]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

A good point. I can imagine' date=' but why don't you like them?[/quote']

 

Multiple reasons, but the core of it is that they do not represent the actual range or force of abilities demonstrate by Comic Book or even Fantasy characters at each suggested level. Everything from total number of points to movement rates to suggested DCs ends up being paired down for reasons of playability (that, to be fair, may sometimes be valid with some groups). I always end up scrapping them and doing what makes sense in my games, which is the approach taken (ime) by any even moderately experienced GM.

 

 

 

I know this is kidding (at least halfway anyway which is fine), but I found it an interesting comment from the user, and I wondered what people would think.

 

I deleted it. It read more harshly than I'd intended it. Sorry if it caused any offense.

 

As an aside, naturally we should assume it is indeed proper to be able to lay waste to the common man like fodder... Seriously, though, I expected a lot more criticism of the very proposition itself, I was surprised not to see serious condemnation of the basic notion. I could see that it might even be antithetical to a game which does a lot to rationalize fiction (e.g., even though GURPS does have some ways in which to do this as well, it also isn't well made to do some of the sillier Rambo-style mook slayings, and I'm not sure that it's proper for HERO or GURPS, among others, to do so to this extreme at all, though it's clearly a requirement of some RPGers).

 

It's part of Cinematic Heroic fiction, and I have no objection to seeing the idea in a game that is meant to simulate that genre. If I were going for a much more "realistic" game, I wouldn't often have the characters facing mooks.

[zornwil]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Multiple reasns' date=' but the core of it is that they do not represent the actual range or force of abilities demonstrate by Comic Book or even Fantasy characters at each suggested level. Everything from total number of points to movement rates to suggested DCs ends up being paired down for reasons of playability (that, to be fair, may sometimes be valid with some groups). I always end up scrapping them and doing what makes sense in my games, which is the approach taken (ime) by any even moderately experienced GM.[/quote']

 

I would agree with that. I tended to think this was where you were going. It's a really good point, though, and I think it speaks well to how we should remove points-obsession in this system. It is really almost a disease at times.

 

I deleted it. It read more harshly than I'd intended it. Sorry if it caused any offense.

 

Piffle, no problem at all, don't even think about it.

 

It's part of Cinematic Heroic fiction, and I have no objection to seeing the idea in a game that is meant to simulate that genre. If I were going for a much more "realistic" game, I wouldn't often have the characters facing mooks.

 

Yeah, but I also think there are some limits from a preference and simulation level. The former is of course entirely personal - I just think it's stupid when a "war story" has a guy shooting horde after horde of enemy soldier and remains virtually untouched (if he's pretty banged up I'm happy though!). The latter, though, has systemic implications. If you are creating a game that supports "realistic" action (even if on the cinematic side still) it's going to be harder to integrate such wild things.

[OddHat]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Yeah' date=' but I also think there are some limits from a preference and simulation level. The former is of course entirely personal - I just think it's stupid when a "war story" has a guy shooting horde after horde of enemy soldier and remains virtually untouched (if he's pretty banged up I'm happy though!). The latter, though, has systemic implications. If you are creating a game that supports "realistic" action (even if on the cinematic side still) it's going to be harder to integrate such wild things.[/quote']

 

Actually, my write ups of Ann Darrow et al kind of reflect this from the other direction. The punishment she took should have killed her; instead, thanks to the magic of Hollywood, she was barely bruised. The only way that made sense was to make her tough enough to bounce bullets.

 

So yes, cinematic stories where the hero mows down endless armies of faceless foes do sometimes bug me, especially if the rest of the story tries for realism. Other times, I like that one man against thousands effect. Hero is fairly good at approaching both ends of the spectrum, so long as we as GMs keep the effect we're going for in mind.

[Blue Jogger]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

I have found that it is easy to increase the body count by having only two house rules.

• All non-important characters will die when they take 5 BODY damage or 15 STUN damage through (internal bleeding) from a killing attack. Armor does not protect non-important people and has no campaign effect on them. (Heroes may choose not to use this rule.)
  
• Performing a sweep manuever does not impose any DCV penalities if perform on a group of non-important people. If accidently performed on an important character, there is still no DCV penalities but is it rendered ineffectual on that target and the sweep ends.
  

[TaxiMan]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

I don't think Hero simulates "mook massacre" well. Other than the sidebar on pg 382 (something like "let non-important NPCs go down with one shot"), it just doesn't work well.

 

Let's look at one-shot kills. At 60ap limit (standard superhero level), you can't do 20 BODY damage to a single normal person (i.e. an NPC with 10 BODY and 2 DEF). OK, you might if the dice god blesses you on a killing attack. IF you're using Hit Locations, you've got to call shots at -8 OCV to try, and just why are mooks so hard to kill for a superpowered person?

 

Galactic Champions is the extreme - something I feel should represent a threat to entire cities or even worlds, not mooks. It's suggested they have 120 AP limits to Powers. An 8d6 KA is representative - doing 28 BODY average, with large swings up and down. So a Galactic level super still stands a chance of not killing a Normal with a single blow? I think it ought to be an auto-kill for LARGE numbers of normals at that level.

 

IMO, the problem is how tough normals are. 10 BODY (or 8, whatever) is too much. It shouldn't be harder to kill a person than it is to

 

blow a hole in a safe door (10 DEF, 9 BODY)

crack a boulder (5 / 13)

break a telephone pole (5/5)

bring down a mature tree (5/11)

break through an armored wall (13/7)

 

I don't think HERO is set up well for casual mook killing. If you want it, redefine a Normal downward a LOT - it's easier than scaling power levels up. That's essentially what pg 382 recommends.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Well, as I mentioned in a previous post to this thread, IMO "casual mook killing" isn't necessary in most cases. As long as said mooks are incapacitated and no longer a threat for the duration of the fight - including being knocked unconscious - the effect on the outcome of an encounter is the same for practical purposes.

 

However, as long as the subject has come up, I might as well reiterate the House Rule I devised for when my groups agree that greater lethality is appropriate to the genre. I think it's germaine to this discussion because I extrapolated it from existing HERO mechanics:

 

If a character takes BODY Damage after Defenses equal to his starting BODY, including modifiers for Hit Location, from a single attack (including Coordinated attacks), then that character has to make a CON Characteristic Roll or die immediately from shock - a not-unrealistic outcome IMHO. In the case of mooks or unimportant bystanders that we want slaughtered I usually just rule that those characters automatically fail their CON Roll.

 

As with Death in HERO, the starting BODY is a determining factor; like Stunning, matching or exceeding a stat total on the damage dice has an additional result; and a Characteristic Roll to avoid negative consequences is an established part of the system. Fudging the CON roll is the only GM "handwaving" needed to turn this into a full mook rule.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

I don't think Hero simulates "mook massacre" well. Other than the sidebar on pg 382 (something like "let non-important NPCs go down with one shot"), it just doesn't work well.

 

Let's look at one-shot kills. At 60ap limit (standard superhero level), you can't do 20 BODY damage to a single normal person (i.e. an NPC with 10 BODY and 2 DEF). OK, you might if the dice god blesses you on a killing attack. IF you're using Hit Locations, you've got to call shots at -8 OCV to try, and just why are mooks so hard to kill for a superpowered person?

 

 

Galactic Champions is the extreme - something I feel should represent a threat to entire cities or even worlds, not mooks. It's suggested they have 120 AP limits to Powers. An 8d6 KA is representative - doing 28 BODY average, with large swings up and down. So a Galactic level super still stands a chance of not killing a Normal with a single blow? I think it ought to be an auto-kill for LARGE numbers of normals at that level.

 

IMO, the problem is how tough normals are. 10 BODY (or 8, whatever) is too much. It shouldn't be harder to kill a person than it is to

 

blow a hole in a safe door (10 DEF, 9 BODY)

crack a boulder (5 / 13)

break a telephone pole (5/5)

bring down a mature tree (5/11)

break through an armored wall (13/7)

 

I don't think HERO is set up well for casual mook killing. If you want it, redefine a Normal downward a LOT - it's easier than scaling power levels up. That's essentially what pg 382 recommends.

 

Well, Champions as a Superhero game was built to simulate 4-color Comic book action as represented in the Silver and Iron age of comics where villians and heroes are very rarely, if ever, killed.

 

For genres (Heroic and otherwise) where death is more common (like Fantasy or Cyberpunk) then the addition of such optional rules as Impairing and Disabling make death far more common.

 

If you have a problem with normals surviving attacks that should normally kill them, apply the Impairing and Disabling rules to them. They'll die by the droves if you do that...

[Markdoc]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Does Hero do it well? In the standard rules' date=' no. If you add house rules (in other words, ignore Hero's existing rules) then it can -- but you can add house rules to any system to mow down mooks. .[/quote']

 

Put me down for "strongly disagree". I've had mook types in my games for years without need for any house rules. In a "heroic level" game, where a character is between 100-200 points and a "town guard" or "generic gangster" is 10 points, it's not unusual for a 3-4 players to go up against 50+ mooks and triumph with only minor flesh wounds.

 

It doesn't always happen - if it did, it would become Feng Shui-style boring - but it can and does happen.

 

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

I gotta say that it doesn't work for "Mowing Down Mooks." I saw a 8th - 9th level D&D character (IMO = to 150 point Hero) activate Combat Reflexes and Greater Cleave while he was surrounded by orcs and ogres. You just can't drop 7 mooks with one action in HERO like you can with D&D and some other systems. There are just too many methods of garnering extra attacks in other systems that don't play at all in Hero.

 

Again, "you can't drop 7 mooks with one action" is not really true. It certainly happens in my games. Even a heroic level fighter with "feats" ie: an area effect selective attack defined as "whirling blades of doom" or "2 fisted handguns o' doom" can easily do this (and more - I've had a heroic level 2-gun fighter gun down 28 mooks in a single action when I ran a Feng-Shui inspired HK action game).

 

As I take it, people's complaints on the state of Hero mookdom seem to be basically either:

 

"I set the base level of normal/mook too high and now they won't fall over!"

(Hint: if you build your mooks on 75-100 points, don't be surprised if they prove ... resilient: which is to say, non-mook like)

 

or

 

"It's too hard for even supers to totally destroy a person's body in one shot!"

(Remember 11 BOD is enough to kill a person, not 20 (or 9 BOD, if you use real mooky-level mooks). At -1 they are bleeding to death and without medical help will die in a very, very short period of time: far too short for them to get an ambulance to hospital, or to make it to the next scene. In real life terms, that counts as a quick kill)

 

Bottom line: if, as a GM you want mooks, then BUILD mooks.

 

cheers, Mark

[Susano]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Put me down for "strongly disagree". I've had mook types in my games for years without need for any house rules. In a "heroic level" game' date=' where a character is between 100-200 points and a "town guard" or "generic gangster" is 10 points, it's not unusual for a 3-4 players to go up against 50+ mooks and triumph with only minor flesh wounds.[/quote']

 

I'll second this, as I saw it happen. Mark's mooks have either all 8s or all 10s, with maybe a point or two of DEX and +1 with weapon of choice. They were barely one-step above the unwashed masses and went down in droves to our swords, spears, and arrows.

[OddHat]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

I don't think Hero simulates "mook massacre" well. Other than the sidebar on pg 382 (something like "let non-important NPCs go down with one shot"), it just doesn't work well.

 

Let's look at one-shot kills. At 60ap limit (standard superhero level), you can't do 20 BODY damage to a single normal person (i.e. an NPC with 10 BODY and 2 DEF). OK, you might if the dice god blesses you on a killing attack. IF you're using Hit Locations, you've got to call shots at -8 OCV to try, and just why are mooks so hard to kill for a superpowered person?

 

Galactic Champions is the extreme - something I feel should represent a threat to entire cities or even worlds, not mooks. It's suggested they have 120 AP limits to Powers. An 8d6 KA is representative - doing 28 BODY average, with large swings up and down. So a Galactic level super still stands a chance of not killing a Normal with a single blow? I think it ought to be an auto-kill for LARGE numbers of normals at that level.

 

IMO, the problem is how tough normals are. 10 BODY (or 8, whatever) is too much. It shouldn't be harder to kill a person than it is to

 

blow a hole in a safe door (10 DEF, 9 BODY)

crack a boulder (5 / 13)

break a telephone pole (5/5)

bring down a mature tree (5/11)

break through an armored wall (13/7)

 

I don't think HERO is set up well for casual mook killing. If you want it, redefine a Normal downward a LOT - it's easier than scaling power levels up. That's essentially what pg 382 recommends.

 

Looking at your examples:

 

You don't have to stick with a 60 active point limit. The game designers don't. It's a recomendation for a certain style of campaign, not a wall.

 

You don't need to do 20 Body to kill a normal person if you are following Standard Supers guidelines. A normal has 8 Body under those same recomendations. You need to do 9 Body after their defenses, at which point they're bleeding to death (so long as the GM chooses to use those rules). 10 Body is a somewhat exceptional character, and probably not a mook.

 

I do agree that designing your mooks as mooks, keeping their PD, ED, Stun and Body low, is the best way to handle this issue in Hero.

[TaxiMan]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Thanks all, for the reminder that -1 BODY is very nearly death. With 8 BODY normals and 2 DEF, a normal 12d6 attack is truly lethal.

 

As far as '60 AP limits', that's Hero canon but can be adjusted of course. However, increasing this changes everything in the environment, and it seems that the environment is reasonably scaled to 60 AP Powers. Disabling and Impairing options - god, with 10 players I'm looking for faster, simpler combat! So now I'm claiming that adding additional, optional rules by itself makes the case Hero doesn't handle this well (since it increases bookkeeping).

 

But that's water under the bridge. It isn't necessary for mook-slaughter since -1 BODY = near certain death. And as I've said, this is speculation since I don't play Hero for high body counts. Bottom line, Hero can have the killing fields of mookdom if the mook stats are kept down and AP limits are around 60.

[zornwil]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Thanks all, for the reminder that -1 BODY is very nearly death. With 8 BODY normals and 2 DEF, a normal 12d6 attack is truly lethal.

 

As far as '60 AP limits', that's Hero canon but can be adjusted of course. However, increasing this changes everything in the environment, and it seems that the environment is reasonably scaled to 60 AP Powers. Disabling and Impairing options - god, with 10 players I'm looking for faster, simpler combat! So now I'm claiming that adding additional, optional rules by itself makes the case Hero doesn't handle this well (since it increases bookkeeping).

 

But that's water under the bridge. It isn't necessary for mook-slaughter since -1 BODY = near certain death. And as I've said, this is speculation since I don't play Hero for high body counts. Bottom line, Hero can have the killing fields of mookdom if the mook stats are kept down and AP limits are around 60.

I don't agree that 60 AP limits are HERO canon whatsoever. I've certainly never used it and I know many who have not. Nor have I seen anything that really assumes this as a general condition.

[OddHat]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Well, the game doesn't break if you go up to 14DC attacks and 35 PD/ED Defenses. It just means normals are that much less of a match for Supers, which is the whole point of Mook Rules.

 

Higher power play (when compared to the standard guidelines) isn't needed for a good Supers game, but it works fine, and is much closer to the vast majority of American Superhero comics.

[OddHat]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

I don't agree that 60 AP limits are HERO canon whatsoever. I've certainly never used it and I know many who have not. Nor have I seen anything that really assumes this as a general condition.

 

Certainly CKC and similar books feature numerous enemies that far exceed those limits. The idea that the Villains must always be more powerful than the heroes is not one I feel any obligation to follow.

 

I would add that the Champions Universe is not the be all and end all of HERO.

[Susano]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Certainly CKC and similar books feature numerous enemies that far exceed those limits. The idea that the Villains must always be more powerful than the heroes is not one I feel any obligation to follow.

 

I would add that the Champions Universe is not the be all and end all of HERO.

 

CKC also features some really, really tough agents.

[OddHat]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

CKC also features some really' date=' really tough agents.[/quote']

 

Yup. And those guys are anything but mooks in 350 point games with 60 active point limits.

[Susano]

Re: "Finally a game where you can kill the fodder, just like in the movies."

 

Yup. And those guys are anything but mooks in 350 point games with 60 active point limits.

 

Very true. They are, to be honest, low-end supers, and should be treated as such.