A variant of standard effect damage

[Kari]

Hi,

 

My first post here. I have recently discovered Hero and the system seems to be pretty much what i´ve been looking for. However the amount of dice one rolls for determining damage can get quite staggering, especially in superheroic and highpowered heroic games.

 

The Combat Handbook suggests using standard effect damage, however the method suggested does minimum of standard effect. There are a couple of threads on these boards that discuss other methods of diceless damage but the methods suggested did not seem very simple.

 

So I thought of a couple of variant methods of determining damage/effect.

 

1. Use standard effect but when you roll 3 you get maximum damage/effect, and when you roll maximum needed to hit you get minimum damage. When the roll is between 3 and max needed to hit you do standard effect.

 

For example you need to roll 10 to hit and have a 10d6normal attack:

-roll is 10 you do 0 body and 10 stun

-roll is 9-4 you do 10 body and 30 stun

-roll is 3 you do 20 body and 60 stun

 

2. Partial standard effect, so that you only roll the last 3 dice.

 

For example you need 10 to hit and have a 10d6normal attack:

-roll is 10 you do 0 body and 10 stun

-roll is 9-4 you roll 3d6 and add standard effect for 7d6 ie 7bod/21stun+3d6

counted normally

-roll is 3 you do 20 body and 60 stun

 

Method 1 would eliminate the need to roll for damage and yet gives three levels of possible damage.

 

Method 2 does not seem offer any benefit over the common method other than reducing the amount of dice needed.

 

What do you think?

[Robyn]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

1. Use standard effect but when you roll 3 you get maximum damage/effect' date=' and when you roll maximum needed to hit you get minimum damage. When the roll is between 3 and max needed to hit you do standard effect.[/quote']

 

I like the Pendragon approach; you get rewarded for rolling in the middle. If you just make your attack, barely, then you get maximum damage.

 

But this wouldn't work the same with HERO's bell curve; 3d6 gets 10 a lot more often than 1d20.

 

Of course, if you want players to do extra damage more often . . .

[ghost-angel]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

For example you need to roll 10 to hit and have a 10d6normal attack:

-roll is 10 you do 0 body and 10 stun

-roll is 9-4 you do 10 body and 30 stun

-roll is 3 you do 20 body and 60 stun

 

2. Partial standard effect, so that you only roll the last 3 dice.

 

For example you need 10 to hit and have a 10d6normal attack:

-roll is 10 you do 0 body and 10 stun

-roll is 9-4 you roll 3d6 and add standard effect for 7d6 ie 7bod/21stun+3d6

counted normally

-roll is 3 you do 20 body and 60 stun

 

Method 1 would eliminate the need to roll for damage and yet gives three levels of possible damage.

 

Method 2 does not seem offer any benefit over the common method other than reducing the amount of dice needed.

 

What do you think?

 

What happens if your attack roll is a 12 and still hits? Or any number above 10?

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

I've already figured that if I ever run a game where attacks can be expected to exceed 15d6 on a regular basis (Galactic Champions, Star HERO seem most likely), I'll use the 'standard damage base + a few dice' method, probably a 2/3 split. So, a 15d6 attack would be 10 Body, 30 Stun + 5d6, 18d6 would be 12 Body, 36 Stun, +6d6, etc.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

The second approach you describe seems perfectly reasonable to me, although there are those that would argue that rolling massive quantities of dice is part of the fun. To each their own.

 

The first method you describe, in which if you roll exactly what you need to hit you do minimum damage, does have a drawback. That is most of the time you will need somewhere in the range of 10 to 12 to hit. Statistically speaking it is much easier to roll a middling number than an extreme, like the 3 you would need to get maximum damage (darn that bell curve). Consequently you will have lots of minimum damage rolls compared to the number of maximum damage rolls under this system. If you like that, great. Otherwise, I would go with the second method to reduce the number of dice.

 

______________________________________________________________

"Some people spread joy wherever they go. Others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

[Kari]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

What happens if your attack roll is a 12 and still hits? Or any number above 10?

Well if I understand your question correctly it does not matter what the number required to hit actually is could be anything from 17 to 4.

Ie you need to roll 17 to hit and you get 17=minimum damage for the attack, you roll any number between 16 and 4 you get standard effect and 3 you get maximum damage. 18 of course automatically misses. Or otherwise if you need to roll 4 to hit your target when you roll four you get minimum damage and 3 you get max damage. (speaking of the attack 3d6 roll) These numbers presume all modifiers ect. are accounted for.

[Kari]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

The second approach you describe seems perfectly reasonable to me, although there are those that would argue that rolling massive quantities of dice is part of the fun. To each their own.

 

The first method you describe, in which if you roll exactly what you need to hit you do minimum damage, does have a drawback. That is most of the time you will need somewhere in the range of 10 to 12 to hit. Statistically speaking it is much easier to roll a middling number than an extreme, like the 3 you would need to get maximum damage (darn that bell curve). Consequently you will have lots of minimum damage rolls compared to the number of maximum damage rolls under this system. If you like that, great. Otherwise, I would go with the second method to reduce the number of dice.

 

 

So would it be better to use the system so that rolling exactly the number needed to hit results in say 3d6+standard effect for the rest of the dice plus max damage for critical hit ie.3? Or how would you get minimum damage for the attack?

 

The original idea was to allow for the attack roll to provide a method to gain the full range of possible damage for the attack ie.min and max with most commonly average damage, without having to roll a lot of dice.

 

Or if going for diceless damage should I just discard the minimum damage and accept that any roll that hits does standard effect and 3 does maximum effect?

[Kari]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

To continue with my rambling on possible methods of reducing dice rolling:

 

How about a house rule that allows the player to switch between standard effect and normal damage/effect rolling at will?

 

So that when fighting "mooks" you just do standard effect but when fighting "named" opponents you either use method 2 in my first post or roll the bucketload of dice per the rules in the book?

(concepts of mook and named borrowed from Feng Shuei)

[Shaft]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Added in to the debate is that an average dice rolls 3.5 on average, so it can argued that standard effect shortchanges the result, a little.

 

MLG

[Kari]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

I've already figured that if I ever run a game where attacks can be expected to exceed 15d6 on a regular basis (Galactic Champions' date=' Star HERO seem most likely), I'll use the 'standard damage base + a few dice' method, probably a 2/3 split. So, a 15d6 attack would be 10 Body, 30 Stun + 5d6, 18d6 would be 12 Body, 36 Stun, +6d6, etc.[/quote']

 

So you don´t like too many dice either?

 

I wonder if it would be possible to have a system that allows for the full range of damage ie. minimum and maximum and in between with out extra rolling? Ie. to hit roll determines damage but whithout the danger of producing the min or max damage out of proportion to each other. Maybe if you just roll 1d6 for damage and multiply by dc?

[Kari]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Actually I just hit an epiphany.

 

A normal attack roll that hits either does standard damage or roll 1d6Xdc to get variable damage at the players discretion.

 

This approach would seem to combine the best of both worlds ie you get the certainty of standard effect or the possibility to roll minimum to maximum damage if the situation requires it. What do you think?

 

I must say you are quite a helpfull bunch. Thank you

[Robyn]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

What happens if your attack roll is a 12 and still hits?

 

Then you're cheating, or the GM is applying "hidden modifiers"; if the former, expect your GM to notice

 

A normal attack roll that hits either does standard damage or roll 1d6Xdc to get variable damage at the players discretion.

 

Too much like a very powerful attack that has Limitations piled on it to reduce the cost. Past discussions on this board have covered the difference in efficiency; for comparison, imagine a 10d6 EB for 50 points, and another Energy Blast at 30 dice with "Activation Roll: 8-" for a -2 Limitation, also costing 50 points. If defenses are sufficient that only a little damage gets through each time with the average 10d6 roll, it may not add up enough to balance out the 30d6 roll - which most of the time does no damage, but occasionally pays off and does a lot of damage.

 

Your multiplier idea makes it all too easy for characters to roll too high or too low; too low is essentially a "no damage" attack (Activation Roll failed), whereas too high is the critical that does not obey a bell curve.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

So you don´t like too many dice either?

 

I wonder if it would be possible to have a system that allows for the full range of damage ie. minimum and maximum and in between with out extra rolling? Ie. to hit roll determines damage but whithout the danger of producing the min or max damage out of proportion to each other. Maybe if you just roll 1d6 for damage and multiply by dc?

 

Primarily due to the long time it can take to add up ... if it didn't take so infernally long to count up, say, 30d6, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

[Kari]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

 

Too much like a very powerful attack that has Limitations piled on it to reduce the cost. Past discussions on this board have covered the difference in efficiency; for comparison, imagine a 10d6 EB for 50 points, and another Energy Blast at 30 dice with "Activation Roll: 8-" for a -2 Limitation, also costing 50 points. If defenses are sufficient that only a little damage gets through each time with the average 10d6 roll, it may not add up enough to balance out the 30d6 roll - which most of the time does no damage, but occasionally pays off and does a lot of damage.

 

Your multiplier idea makes it all too easy for characters to roll too high or too low; too low is essentially a "no damage" attack (Activation Roll failed), whereas too high is the critical that does not obey a bell curve.

 

Ok, what would the effect be in just allowing players to swich between standard effect and rolling a truckload of dice at will? This is not a restriction that I understand. It states in 5ER that you must choose one or the other. Why?

[Robyn]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Ok' date=' what would the effect be in just allowing players to swich between standard effect and rolling a truckload of dice at will?[/quote']

 

Very little. I'll use a 2d6 bell curve to demonstrate the distribution, though the effect becomes more pronounced (and is therefore more visible) when dealing with more dice:

 

1,1: 0 Body, 2 Stun

1,2: 1 Body, 3 Stun

1,3: 1 Body, 4 Stun

1,4: 1 Body, 5 Stun

1,5: 1 Body, 6 Stun

1,6: 2 Body, 7 Stun

2,1: 1 Body, 3 Stun

2,2: 2 Body, 4 Stun

2,3: 2 Body, 5 Stun

2,4: 2 Body, 6 Stun

2,5: 2 Body, 7 Stun

2,6: 3 Body, 8 Stun

3,1: 1 Body, 4 Stun

3,2: 2 Body, 5 Stun

3,3: 2 Body, 6 Stun

3,4: 2 Body, 7 Stun

3,5: 2 Body, 8 Stun

3,6: 3 Body, 9 Stun

4,1: 1 Body, 5 Stun

4,2: 2 Body, 6 Stun

4,3: 2 Body, 7 Stun

4,4: 2 Body, 8 Stun

4,5: 2 Body, 9 Stun

4,6: 3 Body, 10 Stun

5,1: 1 Body, 6 Stun

5,2: 2 Body, 7 Stun

5,3: 2 Body, 8 Stun

5,4: 2 Body, 9 Stun

5,5: 2 Body, 10 Stun

5,6: 3 Body, 11 Stun

6,1: 2 Body, 7 Stun

6,2: 3 Body, 8 Stun

6,3: 3 Body, 9 Stun

6,4: 3 Body, 10 Stun

6,5: 3 Body, 11 Stun

6,6: 4 Body, 12 Stun

 

Standard effect is much simpler; 2 Body, 6 Stun. But there's no chance of doing more or less damage.

 

Rolling the dice will tend to hover around the center (notice how 2 Body was an extremely common result in the table above?), and only very rarely will all dice be low or all high.

 

Past threads have discussed similar ideas to what you suggested. Here are a few:

 

3d6 chart

Using d20 instead of 3d6 (DON'T KILL ME!)

3d6 Dice Roll Probabilities

Set Distribution by Rolling 3d6 (or 1d6, 2d6, 4d6, etc.) for All Damage/Effect Rolls

Equalizing Probability Distributions of Different Attacks

[ghost-angel]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Ok' date=' what would the effect be in just allowing players to swich between standard effect and rolling a truckload of dice at will? This is not a restriction that I understand. It states in 5ER that you must choose one or the other. Why?[/quote']

 

I never figured that out. So I ignore that rule in any game I run. The player can choose which to use. It may have something to do with always knowing how mcuh you'll do vs that chance you'll do extraordinarily well.

 

Some times you feel like adding, sometimes you don't.

[Trebuchet]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Ok' date=' what would the effect be in just allowing players to switch between standard effect and rolling a truckload of dice at will? This is not a restriction that I understand. It states in 5ER that you must choose one or the other. Why?[/quote']There's no real reason except making keeping track more difficult in what is already a pretty complicated combat system. I would think the optimal compromise would be for heroes to use Standard Effect for mooks and other normal; and roll the dice normally for the nastier villains. (In a big enough fight, I might just have heroes roll to see if they hit the mooks and simply assume any hit takes one out.)

 

Standard Effect sacrifices 0.5d6 of damage on average for more predictability of results. Personally I like rolling dice, but when I'm GMing I usually use a die-rolling program on my PDA to speed things up since I'm usually running multiple opponents at once.

[Sean Waters]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

First off standard effect is OK if you want to beuild a power that always drains a certain number of points for conceptual reasons, but it is utterly useless as an alternative to standard damage in combat unless everyone is using it: Hero uses thresholds - defence values - and so a small reduction in avarage damage makes a huge difference in practice.

 

Here's what I'd do if you don't like rolling all those damage dice, and I'm assumin it is a superheroic game - or you wouldn't have all those damage dice:

 

Use standard damage for N-3 of your damage dice, for an Nd6 attack, then add the roll you made to hit.

 

You still get a bit of variation - quite a lot in fact as you are rolling a relatively small number of dice - and it allows more skillful opponnents to score slightly higher on damage without always doing so - but requires no damage roll at all.

 

So, for a 10d6 attack (30 stun, 10 body standard effect normally), you do (10-3)x3=21 stun and 7 body as BASE DAMAGE, and, say you roll and hit with 3,3,6, you do an additional 12 stun and 4 body damage, for a total of 33 stun and 11 body. Still not worth it unless everyone is doing it though and characters are designed appropriately - i.e. with slightly lower defences.

 

Alternatively you could use average damage for the 'base damage' i.e. 3.5x(N-3). Personally I would be happy to allow a player to do that if I were GMing.

[Kari]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Ok,

 

Thank you for your input. I think I´m going to test the following method:

A player can choose between rolling normally or just using standard effect or if they feel like gambling they can just roll 1d6 times dc which allthough loses the bell curve in this case is meant to do exactly that.

 

I think I will prefer using standard effect against mooks and minions and use the rolling methods against the major baddies.

[Kari]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Set Distribution by Rolling 3d6 (or 1d6' date=' 2d6, 4d6, etc.) for All Damage/Effect Rolls[/color']

Equalizing Probability Distributions of Different Attacks

 

Ok I missed these when searching the forums and I will denifinitely have to try the methods esp. the 3d6 one.

 

Thank you!!! (now how do I give rep?)

[Kari]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Um, yesterday I also tried to post a reply Robyn`s post on last page where he linked a variety of threads that had relevance to this discussion but those posts never seemed to appear?

 

Anyway in one of those threads there was Prestiditators method of 3d6 rolling that appeared to be very interesting. I will have to test that one as well.

[DavidToomey]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Use standard damage for N-3 of your damage dice, for an Nd6 attack, then add the roll you made to hit.

 

So, for a 10d6 attack (30 stun, 10 body standard effect normally), you do (10-3)x3=21 stun and 7 body as BASE DAMAGE, and, say you roll and hit with 3,3,6, you do an additional 12 stun and 4 body damage, for a total of 33 stun and 11 body. Still not worth it unless everyone is doing it though and characters are designed appropriately - i.e. with slightly lower defences.

 

So, the better your roll to hit, the less damage you do?

 

If I read this right, if you can hit on a 15- and you roll 15, you do 10 pts *more* damage than if you roll a 5....

[Sean Waters]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

So, the better your roll to hit, the less damage you do?

 

If I read this right, if you can hit on a 15- and you roll 15, you do 10 pts *more* damage than if you roll a 5....

 

Absolutely right, but you have to stop thinking of rolling a '3' as the best you can get - it always hits - but not necessarily hard.

 

The point is that only someone who is very skillful, compared to their opponent, COULD hit on a roll of 15, and it seems logical to me that the more skillful opponent should be the one to do more damage - at least potentially. Almost anyone can hit if they roll a 5, and the fact that you landed a blow is probably reward enough, if you NEEDED a 5 to hit.

[DavidToomey]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

Absolutely right, but you have to stop thinking of rolling a '3' as the best you can get - it always hits - but not necessarily hard.

 

The point is that only someone who is very skillful, compared to their opponent, COULD hit on a roll of 15, and it seems logical to me that the more skillful opponent should be the one to do more damage - at least potentially. Almost anyone can hit if they roll a 5, and the fact that you landed a blow is probably reward enough, if you NEEDED a 5 to hit.

 

 

How about using margin of success?

 

Add one or two points of damage per point you made your to hit by...thus that 15- who rolled a 5 does 10 or 20 extra damage, where if he rolled 15 exactly, he just barely hit, thus no bonus damage...

[Robyn]

Re: A variant of standard effect damage

 

How about using margin of success?

 

Add one or two points of damage per point you made your to hit by...thus that 15- who rolled a 5 does 10 or 20 extra damage, where if he rolled 15 exactly, he just barely hit, thus no bonus damage...

 

Involves an extra step of math, where you subtract the roll from the "number needed to hit"; also, it means telling the players what DCV their opponent had, which may be undesirable