[Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

As the raging debate between Normal vs. Killing dice goes on, I would like to suggest a heretical little mechanic of my own: Get rid of killing dice altogether.

 

I don’t say this flippantly, either. My thinking: A long time ago I started ruminating on the ubiquity of resistant defenses.* It’s so necessary in game terms, but in genre fiction it isn’t always the case. So many characters never don armor in the books, but doing that in the game will get you splattered. To address this, a new power, Combat Luck, was created specifically with the intent of giving non-resistant characters resistant defense. Now, in theory, you can play Spider-Man, or Daredevil, or Blue Beetle, or any number of tights donning toons. The practical effect of this is that so-called killing attacks are no longer a serious threat. They’re just another way of rolling damage, one with fewer dice.

 

So I asked myself, should the killing attack be renamed? Or, more drastically, is it still relevant? Sure it’s still lethal to a normal, but then so is a high d6 normal attack. To Reporter Jane with 2 DEF, it doesn’t matter if she gets hit with 4d6 KA or 12d6 N; either way she is The Late Reporter Jane. So, perhaps the killing attack is redundant? What does it truly represent?

 

The answer lies in the defenses. Why don’t humans have resistant defenses when nearly everything else in the world does? The answer is that we’re soft. Our flesh offers no resistance at all to blades (for the sake of surgery, thank god!). A chair, however, does have a modicum of resistance. Yes, there should be a mechanic to reflect this. Therefore, a killing attack is something that wades through soft defenses. In effect, because characters are often a mix of hard and soft defenses, a killing attack is supposed to be an attack against weaker, more limited defenses.

 

In practice, killing attacks still need advantages, Armor Piercing and/or Penetrating, to actually do BODY damage to many supers. THIS, to me, is redundant. It’s a bit like saying “I have a killing attack. No, really, it actually is lethal now.” Unless the defenses are hardened.

 

Hey, waitaminnit… we already have these mechanics in place without killing dice! Armor Piercing makes an attack affected only by reduced or limited defenses. Penetrating makes an attack bypass defenses completely. As for soft defenses, just harden them up—Hardened is already the natural defense for AP and Penetrating! Want real lethality? Get AP & Penetrating, while the bricks will likely be fully (or doubly) hardened.

 

I think, reasoning from effect, that Killing Attacks are unnecessary and redundant. It’s similar to the suggestion that Killing be an advantage, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Using advantages already in place we can accomplish pretty much the same effects.

 

It’s a game philosophy argument, not a numbers argument. I would really like to give this a shot someday and see how it feels in practice.

 

* (Disclaimer: I play Champions, and I know genre means a lot in these arguments. I think the mechanics will bear out through most, if not all, genres, though.)

[Comic]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Someday I'll catalogue all the 'fixes' for KA's I've seen and their pros and cons.

 

Armor Piercing normal attacks, Penetrating, Piercing, Normal attacks with 'Reduced Stun' limitations, fixed Stun Multipliers, NND does Body, buying extra body for normal attacks, buying 'death pips', Power Destruction: Body, Transform, cumulative: to Dead, treating death as a special effect or a GM-fiat-only effect...

 

All of them come down to one thing. There's a mechanic in the game that works and works well, despite Lottophobia and Trauma-denial. Then there's all of these also-rans that are more complicated or less balanced or simply needless ways of doing the same thing.

 

I go with the general rule that if there's already a power that works for a game effect, use that power.

 

As bad as the KA-munchkins may be, the patches I've seen or heard of invariably end up with more unbalanced or less widely-accepted.

 

Not that I object to games without KA's. If that's the campaign you want, go for it. I recommend using TFOS rules.

[tesuji]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

As the raging debate between Normal vs. Killing dice goes on, I would like to suggest a heretical little mechanic of my own: Get rid of killing dice altogether.

[/size]

 

my thought is some CAMPAIGNS dont need killing attacks.

 

if your super world has supers who are functional without any resistant defense, then dont buy killing attacks so frequently for their adversaries that that becomes impossible.

 

simply put for such a game use normal damage for guns and knives as the source you are trying to emulate doesn't make the knife and gun especially deadly to your heroes, so your mechanics shouldn't either.

 

just say no and you let your players know and all should be happy.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Agreed that only Normal damage, no Killing damage works for some campaigns, supers chief among them.

 

 

The real key is that Killing damage is not the mechanic that makes the HERO System lethal, its the various Optional damage rules that do. People that talk about the HERO System not being lethal enough usually turn out to be coming from a supers background, and lack experience at the heroic end of the spectrum where quite the opposite is true.

[Enforcer84]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Sure, we need Killing attacks. Where would all the Wolverine & Punisher clones be?

[Spence]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

I don't think that KA as a mechanic or a rule has any problems at all. In some games I run it is allowed. In some it isn't. To me KA has the little Stop sign and I treat it accordingly. The ability for KA to deliver a high body with no stun makes it simulate real life damage where someone can take serious injury and not realize they were hit.

 

Can KA be abused? Yes. But then so can practically anything else if munchkined too far. It is the GM's job to maintain campaign cohesion and balance. This means they must also regulate PC point spending limits. IMO, and it is just an opinion, any time an RPG (any RPG) has players get out of control in rampant munchkinism, it is because the GM has failed to set and enforce reasonable limits.

 

I don't think KA is broken. I do think it must be carefully controlled.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Sure' date=' we need Killing attacks. Where would all the Wolverine & Punisher clones be?[/quote']

 

SFX-land?

[Markdoc]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

This approach breaks down once you move away from higher-end supers. To take an example, sure, a high d6 normal attack and a killing attack are equally lethal to Jane Normal. What do you do however about a mugger with a knife? If it's a +2d6 HA, it's going to require a prolonged period of stabbing to put Jane in any real danger, and plenty of normal humans will be essentially immune to knives. For handguns, that goes double: a 1+1 KA is not lethal in most games, but a pack of hoods with guns is an excuse for a spidey-type to show off his dexterity. Remove killing attacks and those 4 DC guns might as well be shooting nerf balls, even to a non-armoured "normal" hero.

 

You can make weapons lethal by greatly increasing the DC they do - which means greatly increasing defences to provide for Bricks/power armour types who can usually take ordinary small-arms fire, but to make that workable, you'll need to rebalance how ordinary damage works, otherwise such types will dominate combat....

 

It's not so simple as "just remove KA" - unless you are already playing a 4 colour game where KAs are rare - in which case, what's the issue?

 

cheers, Mark

[GAZZA]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

All of them come down to one thing. There's a mechanic in the game that works and works well' date=' despite Lottophobia and Trauma-denial.[/quote']

Unfortunately that's the core of the disagreement - not everyone agrees that this mechanic does work well. (IMHO - at least not for the supers genre; I confess I'm too lazy to work out how it works out with Hit Locations, because I never play Hero as anything other than Champions).

 

Then there's all of these also-rans that are more complicated or less balanced or simply needless ways of doing the same thing.

But that's a fair enough comment. Obviously everyone will defend their pet replacement, but the evidence for this position is easy to see in that not all of the "KAs are broken" crowd agree on a suitable replacement.

 

As bad as the KA-munchkins may be, the patches I've seen or heard of invariably end up with more unbalanced or less widely-accepted.

Well I'd argue that unless and until a different version of KA appears in a published rulebook - ideally 6th edition - it's never going to be widely accepted. That's the nature of a house rule, is it not?

 

But HAs were changed, Aid was changed, Multiform was changed, Duplication was changed... I wouldn't like to bet the farm that a hypothetical 6th edition wouldn't take a closer look at KAs and at least offer some variants if not completely change it. I wonder what odds Lloyd's would give me?

[bwdemon]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

As the raging debate between Normal vs. Killing dice goes on' date=' I would like to suggest a heretical little mechanic of my own: Get rid of killing dice altogether.[/quote']

 

I've argued this for a while now. Penetrating doesn't really solve the issue, because it applies to STUN on normal attacks - you'd have to rework the mechanic. AP does work well, though. I've also considered a "killing" advantage (effectively AVLD resistant defenses + Does BODY for +1/2 advantage, due to how common resistant defenses are), but after reading this I like the idea of getting rid of resistant defense altogether. So the killing advantage would be moot. Like Schir1964, I've thought about using a BODY multiplier (e.g. +x0.5 BODY for +1/2 advantage), but multipliers can get out of hand.

 

Instead, in order to make an attack more lethal, I'd consider extra dice bought as "BODY only" to increase that aspect of damage, as appropriate to the attack type. It's cheap, effective, and allows players and GMs to tailor lethality in tiny steps along a broad scale.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Someday I'll catalogue all the 'fixes' for KA's I've seen and their pros and cons.

Actually, I'm not really arguing a 'fix' here. I just see it as a bit redundant. When we jumped from 4th to 5th, Regeneration was eliminated as an independent power because it was really just a modification of an existing power. Killing attacks strike me the same way, that's all I'm saying. (Of course, I know that there are those that still decry that Regeneration decision. )

I've argued this for a while now. Penetrating doesn't really solve the issue' date=' because it applies to STUN on normal attacks - you'd have to rework the mechanic...[/quote']

Ah, I forgot that part. It's been a long time since I saw someone penetrated. Err, umm...You know what I mean.. Ok, so a slight reworking of Penetrating would be in order. Still not that bad.

 

As a further alternative, I see some guns and knives being modeled with NNDs that Do Body, defense is having Hardened Defenses. This would also solve the problem of the brick that needs to wade through gunfire unscathed... but that's another thread.

[Lucius]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

As the raging debate between Normal vs. Killing dice goes on, I would like to suggest a heretical little mechanic of my own: Get rid of killing dice altogether.

 

Unfortunately, I can’t rep you.

 

All of them come down to one thing. There's a mechanic in the game that works and works well,

 

If this were the case, all these threads and all this discussion would not exist.

 

People are putting thought and effort into solving a problem because there’s a problem to be solved.

 

As bad as the KA-munchkins may be, the patches I've seen or heard of invariably end up with more unbalanced or less widely-accepted.

.

 

Not necessarily. Two patches that are part of the Rules as Written – the limitation on Hand Attacks, and the way Martial Arts damage classes work – are widely accepted.

 

This approach breaks down once you move away from higher-end supers. To take an example, sure, a high d6 normal attack and a killing attack are equally lethal to Jane Normal. What do you do however about a mugger with a knife? If it's a +2d6 HA, it's going to require a prolonged period of stabbing to put Jane in any real danger, and plenty of normal humans will be essentially immune to knives. For handguns, that goes double: a 1+1 KA is not lethal in most games, but a pack of hoods with guns is an excuse for a spidey-type to show off his dexterity. Remove killing attacks and those 4 DC guns might as well be shooting nerf balls, even to a non-armoured "normal" hero.

 

You can make weapons lethal by greatly increasing the DC they do - which means greatly increasing defences to provide for Bricks/power armour types who can usually take ordinary small-arms fire, but to make that workable, you'll need to rebalance how ordinary damage works, otherwise such types will dominate combat....

 

Not necessarily. If you notice, Log was suggesting that existing Advantage mechanics like Penetrating and/or Armor Piercing could be used to simulate lethal things like knives and guns. In that case, making a brick bulletproof would be a matter of one or two levels of hardening, which wouldn’t have the same unbalancing effects you note for just raising their defenses to unhealthy levels.

 

Instead, in order to make an attack more lethal, I'd consider extra dice bought as "BODY only" to increase that aspect of damage, as appropriate to the attack type. It's cheap, effective, and allows players and GMs to tailor lethality in tiny steps along a broad scale.

 

An idea I’d seen before and forgotten – but I think it has merit. Thanks for reminding me of it.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Asking the palindromedary to make a note of it.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

My first thought at reading this was to roll my eyes; then I stopped and thought about it. I'm still thinking about. I really don't know which way I'll end up feeling about it, though I do think it's actually a good subject for discussion and debate.

 

I do have one thing that is setting off my "Caution!!" sense, though; while we may be able to effectively do the same thing as a KA with the non-KA attacks and Advantages and such (that is, building a KA using other bits), should we? I keep thinking about Healing and Regeneration and what a kludge Regen became just to shoehorn it into Healing and build it out of other bits instead of just leaving it on its own...

[Comic]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

People are putting thought and effort into solving a problem because there’s a problem to be solved.

 

I can respect thought, and effort (and sometimes, even people).

 

Still, a lot of 'problems' have been the center of vigorous debate for much longer than this "fixing" KA's discussion. The 'problem' of phlogiston lasted hundreds of years before measurement, experiment, reason and education led most of the world to conclude there was no such thing as phlogiston.

 

When I roleplay, I really do prefer to just play a game than to learn new house rules, hear someone self-flatteringly extol the many virtues of his fixes of the flaws in the system, or endure the numbingly dull and inevitable situation of them and their players -- myself included -- coming face to face with the brokenness of their ill-conceived fixes.

 

Sure, the KA and its mechanic has evolved and grown more sophisticated, with the refinement of MA DC rules and so on, over time.

 

It may evolve more in the future. I have no issue with the game growing and changing. I hope it thrives and expands.

 

I just don't see wasting a lot of time turning inward and 'fixing' working core mechanics when the world outside the game is growing and expanding with or without us, and looking outward and forward can be so much more rewarding.

 

Not that I'll stand in your way if you want to navel-gaze. It's your navel. Enjoy.

 

Me, I'll be over here with the people who've moved on to the next topic.

[Metaphysician]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Agreed that only Normal damage, no Killing damage works for some campaigns, supers chief among them.

 

 

The real key is that Killing damage is not the mechanic that makes the HERO System lethal, its the various Optional damage rules that do. People that talk about the HERO System not being lethal enough usually turn out to be coming from a supers background, and lack experience at the heroic end of the spectrum where quite the opposite is true.

 

Or they are comparing it to GURPS 3e.

[Spence]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Thinking about it. It really isn't a question about the mechanics at all. I mean it really isn't a question if KA is or isn't "broken".

 

The question really is "is KA appropriate to the game and world you are running".

 

With the way the hero system is designed nothing is fixed in place or required.

 

If I don't like a certain power I can simply disallow it, and it is simply not missed.

[GAZZA]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Well, speaking solely for myself, I think there is a niche for a mechanic that separates SharpThings from BluntThings. I just don't happen to think KAs are a particularly good fit - but YMMV. I've no data or experience to evaluate them in a Hit Location context (I could run the numbers, but it wouldn't help me, and nobody else is asking me to ).

 

The issue for me is that I don't think SharpThings should be inherently better than BluntThings - I just think they should be different. For the comic book reality I want, ideally I want SharpThings to do more BODY and BluntThings to do more STUN (not, IMHO, an unreasonable request, since if you ignore DEF and just look at the raw damage averages this is even what the RAW deliver - it's just that once you do factor DEF into the equation KAs sometimes become much better STUN delivery vehicles than NAs - and to me, that is undesirable and deserving of repair. YMMV).

[Vondy]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Yes.

 

This is a genre issue, not a system issue. For some genres you don't need killing attacks, or need them only rarely, but for others you do need them. If you play games set in genres other than supers (esp. silver age) or highly romantic heroic level games it makes sense. The theory won't play out in many genres for the reasons markdoc noted.

[Spence]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Well, speaking solely for myself, I think there is a niche for a mechanic that separates SharpThings from BluntThings. I just don't happen to think KAs are a particularly good fit - but YMMV. I've no data or experience to evaluate them in a Hit Location context (I could run the numbers, but it wouldn't help me, and nobody else is asking me to ).

 

The issue for me is that I don't think SharpThings should be inherently better than BluntThings - I just think they should be different. For the comic book reality I want, ideally I want SharpThings to do more BODY and BluntThings to do more STUN (not, IMHO, an unreasonable request, since if you ignore DEF and just look at the raw damage averages this is even what the RAW deliver - it's just that once you do factor DEF into the equation KAs sometimes become much better STUN delivery vehicles than NAs - and to me, that is undesirable and deserving of repair. YMMV).

 

OK, I understand the point better now. It works for me as is. But I am always open to refinements. I just don't see a way to change things that would "make it better". But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[Vondy]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Well, speaking solely for myself, I think there is a niche for a mechanic that separates SharpThings from BluntThings. I just don't happen to think KAs are a particularly good fit - but YMMV. I've no data or experience to evaluate them in a Hit Location context (I could run the numbers, but it wouldn't help me, and nobody else is asking me to ).

 

The issue for me is that I don't think SharpThings should be inherently better than BluntThings - I just think they should be different. For the comic book reality I want, ideally I want SharpThings to do more BODY and BluntThings to do more STUN (not, IMHO, an unreasonable request, since if you ignore DEF and just look at the raw damage averages this is even what the RAW deliver - it's just that once you do factor DEF into the equation KAs sometimes become much better STUN delivery vehicles than NAs - and to me, that is undesirable and deserving of repair. YMMV).

 

Just for theory purposes (and I don't stand by the idea):

 

If you remove KAs (and with them resistant defenses), you could try to use Penetrating/Piercing for "sharp or piercing things" and Hardened for "stops sharp or piercing things." It might make FX convoluted in some genres (supers rushes immediately to mind), and it might require additional adjudication based on FX, but it follows the same basic paradigm as killing attacks and resistant defenses - and doesn't require you to re-cost anything. NND/AVLD might be other options.

[GAZZA]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Yes, in theory that would work (you might need to tinker with Penetrating a bit, but that's a detail), and it does have a certain elegance to it.

 

You have to be a bit careful, though - many of the "use an advantage" or "use an adder" ideas suffer from a flaw that Normal Attacks end up doing more BODY per Active Point than the advantaged "Killing Attack" does (simply because there are more dice being rolled). You can handwave this away for the supers genre, though (if it really bothers you that normal people aren't getting splattered efficiently enough by a 12DC Normal Attack With A Killing Advantage, then I'm not sure that 4-colour supers is really your game... ).

[Lucius]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

I can respect thought, and effort (and sometimes, even people).

 

Sure, the KA and its mechanic has evolved and grown more sophisticated, with the refinement of MA DC rules and so on, over time.

 

It may evolve more in the future. I have no issue with the game growing and changing. I hope it thrives and expands.

 

Games don't grow and evolve on their own. They improve because people see the flaws and imperfections and try to think of ways to fix them.

 

Me, I'll be over here with the people who've moved on to the next topic.

 

If you have nothing useful to contribute, please do.

 

If I have something useful to contribute to the next topic, you'll see me there.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary asks, what is the use of a mountain? For that matter, what is the use of Lucius Alexander? Uh oh. I think my palindromedary ate my copy of Wizard of Earthsea...

[Markdoc]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Not necessarily. If you notice' date=' Log was suggesting that existing Advantage mechanics like Penetrating and/or Armor Piercing could be used to simulate lethal things like knives and guns. In that case, making a brick bulletproof would be a matter of one or two levels of hardening, which wouldn’t have the same unbalancing effects you note for just raising their defenses to unhealthy levels.[/quote']

 

It still falls down at the lower levels - since as already pointed out, penetrating gives you extra stun (not BOD) off regular dice so it doesn't make things more lethal, and armour-piercing halves defences - which would still render a tough (but non-super) normal human near-immune to knives and many handguns - human PD tops out at 8 before NCM, remember. You still end up with the problem that ordinary weapons become relatively non-lethal to ordinary humans. And to kill a moderately tough (PD4) human with a 4d6 AP attack means unloading two whole clips into his chest and then waiting until he bleeds to death. It seems .... counterintuitive.

 

Now for a supers game (especially a 4 colour one) that may not be a big deal. For a pulp game where settling matters with your fists is infinitely more manly than shooting someone, it might be ideal. But for a dark champions, fantasy hero, western or cyberpunk game, it's a huge deal.

 

You could get around that problem by using AVLD and does BOD or NND and Does BOD and defining the defence as resistant defences. The former works better but raises the cost of killing attacks marginally, and although I don't see that as a problem, it will change game dynamics - in most cases, you'd be better off with more d6 instead of AVLD and does BOD if you wanted to physically damage things.

 

cheers, Mark

[McCoy]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

Look at the dice.

 

The mechanics for Hero are, for the most part, the 3d6 attack/skill roll and xd6 damage, STUN & BODY.

 

The killing attack adds another mechanic, and IMHO a clumsy one, in the d6-1 STUN multiplier, and two additional figured characteristics in rPD and rED. More complication than the game needs.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

 

I do have one thing that is setting off my "Caution!!" sense' date=' though; while we may be able to effectively do the same thing as a KA with the non-KA attacks and Advantages and such (that is, building a KA using other bits), [u']should[/u] we? I keep thinking about Healing and Regeneration and what a kludge Regen became just to shoehorn it into Healing and build it out of other bits instead of just leaving it on its own...

 

A good point - we could remove a lot of items from the current system and build them with other abilities (do we really need Transfer when it just combines healing and aid, or Absorbtion which is just Aid with a limitation, or Force Field and Armor when they're just modified defenses and Damage resistance, or Healing when it's just Aid with a long fade rate, only to restore to starting level, or...)? You could boil the system down to a very few powers ("move", "attack", "defend", "perceive") and a ton of modifers, but would the end result be superior to the present system?