DEX levels in your campaign.

[Balabanto]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

The thing about DEX levels is that they're easily adjusted, it's controlling the escalation that's the problem. I have a number of ways of controlling this problem. The first of these is by having an absolute cap. The second...which I really shouldn't be showing you yet, is a reliance on running limited sessions per year per hero group to simulate comic book issues, and a staggered experience point system to make sure the world functions as a whole unit. So if someone joins the game late, they get more XP b/c their character is weaker. If a character is too powerful for the story, they get less XP. My players are VERY happy with it.

[novi]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

The PCs in my game run from 18 to 29 DEX, but that's not quite accurate. Three of them have 18 DEX, while the fourth has 29. As for the villains, it's a similar range. I'd put in some villains slower than the PCs, but it's really hard to justify a DEX lower than 18 on a character who's going to be in combat.

 

I think the other issue is that DEX inflation serves mostly to seperate supers from agents from normals. Normals have DEX from 6 to 12. Agents and henchmen should be able to react faster and fight better than normals, so they get DEXs from 12-18. And Supers should be able to take on a few agents all by themselves, so they need even more DEX than agents. And then you end up with Bulldozer having the DEX of an olympic gymnast. That is unrealistic, but so is being able to lift 25 tons, or thinking that all olympic gymnasts, and only olympic gymnasts, have high DEX.

 

My point? It's a game, and you're going to get strange artifacts in making it run smoothly. I think there's a mathematical proof of that somewhere...

[OddHat]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

When it comes to Superhuman NPCs, everywhere from 8 at the very lowest to 44 for a single Uber-speedster who has never seen play. PCs have run from 17 to 29, but the center is 23 right now. I have a house rule that CSLs may not exceed your base CV, so a Dex 8 character (as an example) never purchases more than 3 CSLs. I've been more liberal about PSLs, but am thinking about tightening up on it.

[wylodmayer]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

It's funny, but I've never really had a DEX inflation issue. The key, I think, is strict GM control over concept and expenditures on one hand, and a very clear concept of the DEX scaling in my world on the other.

 

For instance -

 

I ran a Marvel game in HERO. Now, while DEX is quite subjective, I had a decent system worked out for determining how many combat skill levels people could be said to have. So I could get a really good idea of how much a boost people could get from CSLs, to a first approximation, at least. Thus, knowing that a cop (for instance) could get a total of +x from his skill levels and equipment, and knowing that the average cop had - stipulated - an average (10) DEX, I could easily derive the chances of that cop hitting any given DCV.

 

From there it was just a matter of saying to myself, "how often would this concept get hit by someone like this," both on full defense (assuming a Dodge and maximization of his CSLs for defense) and on "balanced" CSL distribution. And that's not too hard, even when you're trying to match characters from comics - it's even easier when you're dealing with your own world.

 

After that, it was easy. I had charts that players could look at, both to compare their own characters to NPCs as well as to see if they were over- or under-rating the effectiveness of the DEX levels they wanted to purchase. On their end, they could see exactly what DEX level they would need to have (x) chance of not getting hit in certain situations (I did up charts for cops, thugs, agents, soldiers, etc). On my end, I could say, "No, sorry, you can't have a 23 DEX on that concept. It's just not appropriate. You'll have to settle for a 20, at best."

 

This also required control over CSLs. Because I had charts which laid out the expertise associated with having (x) number of CSLs available for use with any given attack(s), I likewise had to say on a number of occasions, "No, sorry, that's too many CSLs for that concept." The number of times I had to do this was reduced by the fact that the players had the charts available in advance of character creation and were advised to be realistic in character design.

 

There's simply no substitute for GM preparedness. Ad hoc formulas and rules that are promulgated without real statisical understanding at back of them will wind up producing unintuitive, frustrating results for GMs and players alike. The simple fact of the matter is that HERO is open enough that GMs need to take responsibility and control expenditures. I mean, really. The rules allow me to build a device with a magic special effect... even if the world has no magic. There's no rule for the "no magic" thing. The GM has to enforce allowable special effects.

 

It's not anything different with DEX. Know how much DEX your world's "agile" characters have. Don't let people who don't have the requisite backstory buy DEX in that range. Know how many CSLs an expert combatant in your world has. Don't let characters without the requisite backstory buy that many CSLs.

 

Control all experience expenditure. Players do not have carte blanche to buy anything they want. This is no different than if the player said he wanted to use his xp to buy a contact with the President. The GM would say, "You've never even MET the President. You have NO reason to have that." Yet GMs will let players buy CSLs willy nilly, without ever stopping to say, "No, you may have been in a few fights, but you don't go from Stanley the Accountant to Bruce Lee because you managed to not die in four different fistfights. Doesn't happen."

 

Players can only buy what you let them buy. "DEX Inflation" means the GM is not exercising sufficient control over, and possibly doesn't have a thorough enough understanding of, his campaign world.

 

{I have my design documents for that game, still. If anyone wants to see them, just email me.}

[Trebuchet]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

"DEX Inflation" means the GM is not exercising sufficient control over' date=' and possibly doesn't have a thorough enough understanding of, his campaign world.[/quote']This is the crux of the solution - AISI far too many GMs come up with point and damage caps and strict house rules because they're unwilling to say "No" to a player directly so they do it indirectly. Rules cannot substitute for a GM putting his foot down when appropriate. If a GM can't maintain control on this issue, even if his house rules work he'll lose control at some other point.

 

Our campaign is very fortunate in that out of 8 players we have 6 who also GM (although not all in our campaign) so we can have good discussions to hammer out issues of this nature. So far we've found that "schtick" protection works a lot better than restrictions on Characteristics or Skills Levels. These are superheroes; they SHOULD be better than normal humans. The only thing that's really relevant is how the heroes are relative to each other and to the villains. That they'll be better than 99.99% of normals is a given.

[Doc Samson]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

We have this same inflation in our games as well. Here are some steps we took to keep it from getting out of hand. We play with a roughly 60 AP max (350 pt. campaign), which applies to characteristics as well (i.e. max EGO is 30, max STR is 60, ect.). Dex and SPD are the only exceptions to this rule. For these stats the maximums do not include the Base Skill (i.e. the first 10 DEX and 2 SPD). Our DEX and SPD campaign caps are therefore 30 DEX and 7 SPD.

 

Our averages look like this: DEX/ SPD

Speedsters, Martial Artists 26-30/ 6-7

Energy Projectors, Gadgeteers, Mentalists 23-26/ 5-6

Bricks 17-23/ 4-5

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

I generally consider the CU dexs to be a sore point for me. There's too many people with 20s and not enough with dexs over 30. The CU states that a 30 dex is the human pinnacle but then doesn't give us any character examples with super-human dexs. Why have a benchmark system if you're not going to use it in your universe? You might as well of made 25 dex the human pinnacle. Then you could, at least, say there are some characters in the CU with superhuman dexs.

 

Yeah even in Ultimate Speedster Kinetic has a 30 and Vector has a 36.

 

For reference my characters run:

29 - Speedster

23 - Supermage/Martial Artist

18 - Big glob of alien

32 - Martial artist (played for 15 years and is on 950 or so points)

26 - Energy Projector

[MitchellS]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

I was originally thinking about Autour but' date=' on a second viewing, he looks to be closer to Hawkman. El Dorado is a better example. I hope I'm at least selling some books for Hero here. These are pretty good write-ups.[/quote']

While there are some similarities El Dorado's a rich kid who has martial arts training and uses a utility belt to help the poor and needy. Sort of like what would happen if you gave a 22 year old Richie Rich a utility belt. El Dorado doesn't have Batman's intensity and desire for justice/vengeance. That intensity's what pushes Batman past the 20 dex and why you can't really call El Dorado a Batman homage from a physical standpoint, IMO.

[MitchellS]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

Yeah even in Ultimate Speedster Kinetic has a 30 and Vector has a 36.

My memory could be wrong but I think Vector and the Living Sphinx are the only two characters in the mainstream CU with a dex higher then 30. That's not very many out of some 350 published characters.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

Someone referred to the "character tax", and I think that's very true. This all depends on the norm for your game. The game milieu essentially sets 23 as the "average Super" bar. It's been that way, more or less, since 1e.

 

If the very first character examples had set a slow Brick at DEX 5, SPD 1, a typical Brick at DEX 8, SPD 2, a standard Energy Projector at 14 DEX, 3 SPD, a faster, experienced Super at 17 DEX, 3 SPD, a quick and agile Martial Artist at 20 DEX, 4 SPD, and speedsters and superhuman martial articts at 23 DEX, 5 SPD, a 6 segment turn would probably work quite well.

 

What we have now is more like a slow Brick at DEX 18, SPD 4, a typical Brick at DEX 20, SPD 4, a standard Energy Projector at 23 DEX, 5 SPD, a faster, experienced Super at 26 DEX, 5 SPD, a quick and agile Martial Artist at 30 DEX, 6 SPD, and speedsters and superhuman martial articts at 33+ DEX, 7+ SPD. A 6 segment turn doesn't do it.

 

Keeping "standard" DEX and SPD at human levels would have reduced the effective cost of characters. The OCV/DCV spread doesn't change much between the two examples, but every character pays an extra 30 - 40 points on Dex and SPD to match the fact that everyone else paid that extra 30 or 40.

 

There have been a few comments on "tight GM control", and I agree to a point. I would add "solid GM restraint". Having set the standards, the GM must abide by them. If you tell the players that the DEX levels my first example apply, but they then find they can never hit what they're aiming at because your villains are always 3 - 6 DEX higher than they should be under that structure, and they get an extra phase or two, the players will get frustrated (understandably) and wish to buy up their stats to be competetive against the campaign norm. If the 15 DEX EP can hit as often as the player envisions, likely comparing to his 23 DEX EP in a game played at the "default" levels, he has no reason to be unhapppy and will be motivated to buy cool EP stuff, not more DX and SPD, as he becomes more experienced.

[mattingly]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

In my campaign, over half PCs are between 20 and 24. Of the rest, most are under that range. SPD averages 5.

[Catacomb]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

We had to tone our dex and speed down because it doesn't scale like any of the other stats. You get to a point where you are getting a massive return on it and it doesn't seem to diminish. Since we were playing in an altered Marvel Universe we still had Nightcrawler and Spider-Man as the torchbearers for the stat but there were plenty of people who were closing in, we even had some bricks in the upper mid-20s.

 

One of the few stats you really have to keep an eye on, especially in a long campaign.

[Weldun]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

I also agree to DEX over 30 being extremely rare. The only time The Specter has DEX 33 is for up to 1 minute, once per day. And then, for a like amount of time following his DEX 30/SPD 7 hyper boost, he's a DEX 18/SPD 4 martial artist, who's probably very low on END to boot.

 

I have seen a character with a DEX of 36, but then his special effect was that he operated in a slightly different time frame when that effect was going, so it made sense. I think that it's simply a case of remembering the first rule of HERO. The game effect must be justified by the special effect. You can't just throw some abilities together and hope to play through.

[MitchellS]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

One of the things I find amusing is that there were more characters in the 4e Eurostar with over 30 dexs then there are in the entire 5e CU.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

One of the things I find amusing is that there were more characters in the 4e Eurostar with over 30 dexs then there are in the entire 5e CU.

 

Yeah, but Eurostar is still a very good benchmark team for the heroes to take on.

 

I remember the first appearance of the new Legion of Doom on the animated Justice League Unlimited. They won the first encounter because they knew how to fight as a team vs. another team and the JL had not really had that situation come up before. The usually had deakt with a single uber-villain or endless hordes up till that point. That group forced them to fight as a true team relying on tactics as opposed to just the best individual one-on-one matchups.

[Trebuchet]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

Yeah' date=' but Eurostar is still a very good benchmark team for the heroes to take on.[/quote']Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

 

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6990

[Jhamin]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

When our group switched to 5th, I instituted a campaign-wide Dex reduction.

 

Everybody with powers lost an average of 6 points of dex. New characters since then have even gone lower.

My current Dex range in my game is 12-18.

 

When they fight published villians I drop their Dex's by 6 and therefore there OCV/DCV by 2. The only exception to this was the agent level characters like UNTIL and Viper. I did this intentionally to make these guys somewhat of a threat, and to avoid bricks with NCM level Dex scores.

[lapsedgamer]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

When our group switched to 5th, I instituted a campaign-wide Dex reduction.

 

Everybody with powers lost an average of 6 points of dex. New characters since then have even gone lower.

My current Dex range in my game is 12-18.

 

When they fight published villians I drop their Dex's by 6 and therefore there OCV/DCV by 2. The only exception to this was the agent level characters like UNTIL and Viper. I did this intentionally to make these guys somewhat of a threat, and to avoid bricks with NCM level Dex scores.

 

Did you end up dropping the DEX scores, but allow them to keep the SPD stats higher than your average normal or agent to help them stand out?

[input.jack]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

I was reading Champions Around the World, and I noticed that the characters had slighty lower than normal DEXs. What I mean is that they had DEX stats that were about 2-5 points lower than I would have expected based on my experience with previous published characters created using the same archetypes.

 

I actually liked most of the write-ups, but I wondered how they would fit in with other official Champs universe material, or in a pre-existing home made campaign.

 

For those of you who have not read the book, they have a Batman anologue with a 20 DEX, and a version of Green Arrow with a 22 DEX. Most of the characters have a value of between 18-23 for DEX.

 

This would work really well if everyone was using the same scale, but I don't think everyone does. So I'm curious. What scale do you use? Am I an unwitting victim of the dreaded DEX inflation?

 

 

In our games, supers whose concepts dont include agility usually have 15-18 DEX. Batman would have 20-21 or so, and a 5 Speed, as would Wolverine. Nightcrawler would have a 22-23 DEX and a 6 Speed. Spiderman would have about a 24-26 DEX and a 6-7 Speed. Superman would have about a 15-16 DEX and a 4 Speed. Quicksilver would have about a 22 DEX and a 10 Speed. The Flash tops the charts at 30 DEX and 12 Speed at the height of his Powers.

 

That way, "normal humans" like Batman can be statted on scale with the Doubling Points, but still be competitive with other supers.

[Rapier]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

Everyone is a SPD 4 and has a DEX between 18 and 22.

 

If you've never had it happen, I would definately recommend to all GMs giving a try with SPD synchronisation on your teams. It's interesting. So much more teamwork is possible because you don't run into the "I grab the villain and wait until phase 5 to throw him up in the air so Gunner can shoot him when he gets his action on 5."

[Hyper-Man]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

Everyone is a SPD 4 and has a DEX between 18 and 22.

 

If you've never had it happen, I would definately recommend to all GMs giving a try with SPD synchronisation on your teams. It's interesting. So much more teamwork is possible because you don't run into the "I grab the villain and wait until phase 5 to throw him up in the air so Gunner can shoot him when he gets his action on 5."

 

 

That's just forcing the issue.

 

The beauty of HERO is that the higher DEX & SPD characters can always choose to act at the same DEX & Phases as their slower teamates.

 

That's teamwork.

[Rapier]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

That's just forcing the issue.

 

The beauty of HERO is that the higher DEX & SPD characters can always choose to act at the same DEX & Phases as their slower teamates.

 

That's teamwork.

 

Actually, wasn't even my idea. That's the nice part about it.

[Weldun]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

Hmm, now that I think about it, DEX 23/SPD 5 tends to be so common, that I now go out of my way to design DEX 24/SPD 5, just so I'm not rolling off to see if I can get my action in before somebody complete screws it up because they're not paying attention. I am, unfortunately, surrounded by egocentrics.

[lapsedgamer]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

It seems like DEX 23, SPD 5 is the average for supers. That would probably be the DEX and SPD for almost every character that wasn't meant to be particularly slow or particularly quick.

[Trebuchet]

Re: DEX levels in your campaign.

 

It seems like DEX 23' date=' SPD 5 is the average for supers. That would probably be the DEX and SPD for almost every character that wasn't mean to be particularly slow or particularly quick.[/quote']That's our average. I think 4 out of the 7 active characters on our team are 23/5.

 

We also have a 23/4, a 33/6, and a 43/9.