Another kind of balance

[Sean Waters]

Points, points points.

 

Sometimes we forget that they are just a tool, or at least assume that the tool can do a lot more than it was ever designed to.

 

Points are, of course, at the heart of Hero character design and so at the heart of Hero, but, to be honest, I'm wondering if they should be.

 

Points are a useful way to balance characters against each other, but that makes some assumptions: that all powers are going to have th esame relative value in all games, that all characters are built as efficiently as all the others, that the players themselves are equally familiar with the rules and game tactics...

 

So, what is the alternative? Good question. I noticed something when I got Hero Designer - it is easy to get carried away and wind up with a really expensive character without necessarily making a more powerful character. Sure you wind up with something that is powerful in certain ways, although the power is not necessarily raw, and a character with a broad range of abilities, but not someone who is necessarily going to win a fight, even against an 'efficiently designed' character with half their points.

 

That got me thinking - are we restricting out options with points? Might we not be better throwing all that out the window, and building to concept, trusting that the concept is not always going to be 'the most powerful being in the multiverse'?

 

I'm going to try and attach the characters that got me thinking like this. The heroine is 495 points, and the villain hunting her is well over 500, and they are bothe pretty sparky BUT not really powerful in a convential sense. They wouldn't last long against a 350 pointer built to more conventional lines BUT they are interesting and should be fun to play.

 

What do people think? Is the fact that Hero trades in points throughout the rules limiting our options?

 

http://www.herodesigner.com/viewCharacter.htm?id=227265

http://www.herodesigner.com/viewCharacter.htm?id=227264

 

[Diamond Spear]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Points, points points.

 

Sometimes we forget that they are just a tool, or at least assume that the tool can do a lot more than it was ever designed to.

 

Points are, of course, at the heart of Hero character design and so at the heart of Hero, but, to be honest, I'm wondering if they should be.

 

Points are a useful way to balance characters against each other, but that makes some assumptions: that all powers are going to have th esame relative value in all games, that all characters are built as efficiently as all the others, that the players themselves are equally familiar with the rules and game tactics...

 

So, what is the alternative? Good question. I noticed something when I got Hero Designer - it is easy to get carried away and wind up with a really expensive character without necessarily making a more powerful character. Sure you wind up with something that is powerful in certain ways, although the power is not necessarily raw, and a character with a broad range of abilities, but not someone who is necessarily going to win a fight, even against an 'efficiently designed' character with half their points.

 

That got me thinking - are we restricting out options with points? Might we not be better throwing all that out the window, and building to concept, trusting that the concept is not always going to be 'the most powerful being in the multiverse'?

 

I'm going to try and attach the characters that got me thinking like this. The heroine is 495 points, and the villain hunting her is well over 500, and they are bothe pretty sparky BUT not really powerful in a convential sense. They wouldn't last long against a 350 pointer built to more conventional lines BUT they are interesting and should be fun to play.

 

What do people think? Is the fact that Hero trades in points throughout the rules limiting our options?

 

http://www.herodesigner.com/viewCharacter.htm?id=227265

http://www.herodesigner.com/viewCharacter.htm?id=227264

 

[ hd=227265]Farslayer[/hd ]

[ hd=227264]Undine[/hd ]

 

I think it might be closer to say that point limits are the limiting factor. I have played in games where the GM gave us limits on damage classes, combat values, max skill levels, and defenses as well as a base for disadvantages and let us build whatever character, on however many points, we wanted as long as we were willing to pay for the disadvantages. It worked out suprisignly well.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

That is what I'm getting at, although I'm not even that bothered by the disadvantages balancing - so long as the character is true to the concept, and interesting and balanced in play.

 

At present, hero does not really encourage this sort fo approach but the system is robust enough to make it work, and work well, IMO.

[OddHat]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Fun characters, repped.

 

As to the points issue, the Pointless Champions DH article does a good job with this.

 

Personally, I build villains and NPCs to concept, keeping in mind campaign benchmarks as far as stats, CVs, DCs, active points, etc are concerned. Often I have to trim them a bit to give the players a better chance, or buff them a bit to give the players more of a challenge, but I don't worry about their point totals. They get what they need for the roles they're to play.

 

Point totals are there to tell players when to stop, and to assure them that the other players aren't getting an easier ride.

 

And they don't do either job perfectly.

[Alibear]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Points are a nice rule of thumb but I've always preferred to design the characters to the players specification, openly, and in front of the other players so we all get a rough idea of relative strength as we design them.

 

Obviously, if the GM has ultimate control he can design a group of characters that are 'roughly' equal in effectiveness.

 

There is not much fun for anyone if Bloke A has a 15dg attack and Bloke B has only a 9d attack, GM especially.

 

So......what am I trying to say? GM's job is to be the arbiter, not the points total, and that isnae easy until the GM has some XP under his utility belt. So until then, we need points as a very rough rule of thumb to gauge effectiveness.

 

Does that make any sense?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Points are a nice rule of thumb but I've always preferred to design the characters to the players specification, openly, and in front of the other players so we all get a rough idea of relative strength as we design them.

 

Obviously, if the GM has ultimate control he can design a group of characters that are 'roughly' equal in effectiveness.

 

There is not much fun for anyone if Bloke A has a 15dg attack and Bloke B has only a 9d attack, GM especially.

 

So......what am I trying to say? GM's job is to be the arbiter, not the points total, and that isnae easy until the GM has some XP under his utility belt. So until then, we need points as a very rough rule of thumb to gauge effectiveness.

 

Does that make any sense?

 

Perfect sense! It may well be that this is an insight that everyone else acheived some time ago, but I'm finding the idea of letting go of the points in favour of other balancing factors (largely an XP driven eyeball) quite exhilarating

[Sean Waters]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Fun characters, repped.

 

As to the points issue, the Pointless Champions DH article does a good job with this.

 

Personally, I build villains and NPCs to concept, keeping in mind campaign benchmarks as far as stats, CVs, DCs, active points, etc are concerned. Often I have to trim them a bit to give the players a better chance, or buff them a bit to give the players more of a challenge, but I don't worry about their point totals. They get what they need for the roles they're to play.

 

Point totals are there to tell players when to stop, and to assure them that the other players aren't getting an easier ride.

 

And they don't do either job perfectly.

 

Thank you. As I said in my reply to Alibear, I may well be behind the curve here, but the journey is suddenly getting very interesting

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Sean, you use Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt for a reason?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Sean' date=' you use Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt for a reason?[/quote']

 

No.

 

Why?

 

Anyway, don't you mean Jennifer Anderson and Bradley Abyss?

 

What?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Points, in my opinion, are fine.

 

It's Active Point Caps.

 

I prefer GMs who use DC limits and other softer guidelines

[Alibear]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

All characters will start on the same points but me as a GM, and us as a group work out balance issues. We are also not shy about going back and changing something which doesn't work as well as we thought.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

I think it might be closer to say that point limits are the limiting factor. I have played in games where the GM gave us limits on damage classes' date=' combat values, max skill levels, and defenses as well as a base for disadvantages and let us build whatever character, on however many points, we wanted as long as we were willing to pay for the disadvantages. It worked out suprisignly well.[/quote']

 

 

That's how I do it pretty much. Although we use soft caps. Its worked great for us. The Players build till they feel the character is completed then stop. We don't have any munchins etc though so that helps.

[Warp9]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Points, points points.

 

Sometimes we forget that they are just a tool, or at least assume that the tool can do a lot more than it was ever designed to.

 

Points are, of course, at the heart of Hero character design and so at the heart of Hero, but, to be honest, I'm wondering if they should be.

 

Points are a useful way to balance characters against each other, but that makes some assumptions: that all powers are going to have th esame relative value in all games, that all characters are built as efficiently as all the others, that the players themselves are equally familiar with the rules and game tactics...

Like you say, it depends on some basic assumptions behind the game.

 

If I want to get together with some friends and tell a cool story, and if everybody is willing to cooperate, then I don't really need points. If everybody is willing to work together with a mutual vision, then we don't really need all that many rules either---we can just sort of "wing it."

 

Or if I am interested in simulating some sort of specific game reality, then the points may also get in the way. For example, it may be that in my game, a Jedi simply will not balance with the other characters in terms of points (although I'm not saying that it has to be that way in everybody's games).

 

However, if we assume that the game is not always going to be a cooperative venture, suddenly points become very useful. In that case, points become some objective measure of whether or not a character is allowable. This may not mean that a character is of equal power to the other characters, but at least it is a way of saying whether a character is "legal" in the game.

[Warp9]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

I think it might be closer to say that point limits are the limiting factor. I have played in games where the GM gave us limits on damage classes' date=' combat values, max skill levels, and defenses as well as a base for disadvantages and let us build whatever character, on however many points, we wanted as long as we were willing to pay for the disadvantages. It worked out suprisignly well.[/quote']

Of course limits on CVs and DCs still sort of moves away from the idea that "you have X points to spend as you wish."

 

It seems to me that, ideally anyway, you shouldn't need to limit where the Players can spend points for their characters. The reason why you can't have more DCs in your EB should be because you've already spent the points else where and you don't have any more left, not because there is an arbitrary MAX limit of XX DCs

[Warp9]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Points are a useful way to balance characters against each other' date=' but that makes some assumptions: that all powers are going to have th esame relative value in all games,[/quote']

I wanted to specifically come back to this idea about relative point value.

 

IMO one of the BIG problems that Hero, as a "Universal" game system has, is in regard assigning standard point values to abilities.

 

The point value of being able to "see into the past" is going to be much different in a detective game than in totally combat oriented game.

 

For the point system to really work, you either need to change the point costs based upon each style of game, or keep in mind what style of game you are going to play based upon the costs of the abilities (of course, that is not going to be a "universal" system).

[Bloodstone]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

In some situations, a characters worth is determined by how much ass he can kick in combat. In this case, point balance tends to be very important, though still not an easy act to balance. It gives the GM something to look at to determine how to build the opponents. And it theoretically should help prevent one player from completely overshadowing the others if they've spent roughly the same number of points on abilities they can use in your typical fight. But of course, the individual skills and preferences of the players can change the effectiveness of a character dramatically.

 

In other situations a characters worth is measured by how useful the character is outside of combat, which in my experience makes up the majority of most games. Now, some of this does come down to the points on the sheet. An exceptional PER roll, a boat load of skill, versatile powers or just a ton of useful Contacts can make a really big impact on a a game.

 

But in many cases it's also just plain roleplaying and there is no way you can directly apply points to that. This is not even factoring in group dynamics. Because what is worth X points in one game may never even be used in another game.

 

That's one of the problems with balancing things by points as a core mechanic. Points are only equal on a situational basis.

[Mike W]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

I've toyed with this idea in the past. But one of my biggest concerns was what would happen to the need for experience points. If I get to build the character exactly as I envision it at the start, what do I need XP for? Players will still expect to get them and still want to spend them, so how do I make sure they have things for them to spend XP on while making sure that the new things A. Fit the character and B. Are in some sense necessary and not just "I'm buying 5 more STR, STUN, whatever because I have 5 points and need to spend them on SOMETHING".

[Bloodstone]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

But one of my biggest concerns was what would happen to the need for experience points.

 

I design multiple versions of almost all my characters. I start with a high power version, the "I'd like to be here one day" kind of character. This is the character I could see belonging with the Avengers or the JLA. Then I make a version I can actually play given the points and limits set forth by the game. A lot of times, that just means I end up playing a younger, less experienced version of the character. The other sheet gives me something to aim for and, when I get xp, a source to pull new powers from.

 

That said, no character design ever survives contact with the campaign. Something unexpected always comes up...

[Sean Waters]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

I've toyed with this idea in the past. But one of my biggest concerns was what would happen to the need for experience points. If I get to build the character exactly as I envision it at the start' date=' what do I need XP for? Players will still expect to get them and still want to spend them, so how do I make sure they have things for them to spend XP on while making sure that the new things A. Fit the character and B. Are in some sense necessary and not just "I'm buying 5 more STR, STUN, whatever because I have 5 points and need to spend them on SOMETHING".[/quote']

 

 

This is a good point, but IME, a lot of characters in the source material don't seem to change much for a long time and then have sudden, and often quite major changes. An example might be SpiderMan. SpiderMan SpiderMan SpiderMan Venom. Maybe it would encourage people to save XP.

 

Actually, arguably XP is a bit of a weird concept anyway - if you start a character as an inexperienced type then it makes sense, but, after a point, most people's rate of improvement slows to a crawl - it is difficult to work out where James Bond spends his XP, for example - he's as good in one film as another. indeed in much of the literature the ability/power levels of a character fluctuate down as well as up.

 

I think roleplayers are used to getting XP 'goodies', but in much the same way as it is perhaps not necessary to balance characters with points, perhaps we need not count coup that way either...

[Sean Waters]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Hmm. XP is actually a part of the TYPE of game you are playing: if it is a kung fu movie, then you will improve through the time you are playing, but this will probably be as a result of some enlightenment, or battle you win (or lose) - basically you get a specific reward. If you are lpaying a long term character - Sherlock Holmes, for example, you probably don't improve much at all - it is not 'in character'. Of course in a traditional RPG you WOULD have point based XP.

 

Have to think about that...

[Bloodstone]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Sherlock Holmes' date=' for example, you probably don't improve much at all - it is not 'in character'. Of course in a traditional RPG you WOULD have point based XP.[/quote']

 

Sherlock Holmes and Bond spend XP. It's just written as "I've known this all along, I simply had no need to mention it prior to this very moment," as opposed to "Oh wow! I learned something new!"

[Tonio]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

Sherlock Holmes and Bond spend XP. It's just written as "I've known this all along' date=' I simply had no need to mention it prior to this very moment," as opposed to "Oh wow! I learned something new!"[/quote']

 

That, plus new Contacts, Favors, gear, etc.

[Mike W]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

That' date=' plus new Contacts, Favors, gear, etc.[/quote']

 

I tend to give Contacts and Favors as roleplaying rewards. You don't spend points on them, you roleplay it out and I give you the contact straight out. You can put points in it to improve it later though.

 

But this is the crux of the problem. Yes, in a lot of source material people don't seem to progress much for long stretches at a time. Characters go years without appearing to change. And yes, many of us build characters by starting with the "ideal version" and then scaling it back to what we can afford based on 350(or however many) points. But what if there is no point limit. What if you can build the 600 point version TO START? As gamers, it's bred into us that you adventure, you get XP and then you either go up a level or spend the XP to get more powerful. So how do we combine the two? How do we handle a game where XP is essentially unnecessary because the character starts with no need for it? Or very limited need for it? The game will almost certainly reach a point - rather quickly - where the GM is giving out XP because it's habit and it's expected but the players have nothing good to spend it on. They've already created the "ideal version" of the character and there is nothing sensible left to buy. Sure, the campaign may expose a weakness or an oversight. But well built characters won't have many - and some may be built right into the character concept so that it doesn't make sense to "buy off" the problem. Can you really see Spiderman buying off Doc Ock as a hunted? Or Superman buying off his Susceptibility to Kryptonite?

[Jaxom]

Re: Another kind of balance

 

I think that the fundamental issue here comes down to what you want in the campaign and how much you trust the people you game with.

 

Depending on who you're gaming with and what you want, you may or may not feel the pain of active point caps or DC caps or other limits. We all know people that we have gamed with who don't have a concept other than "the strongest person in the universe". Others would be great candidates for a totally open campaign allowing concepts to be pursued. And then there're the folks who have campaign limits for DCs and defenses...

 

The main reason that the game has (and should continue to have) such limits is because for players who tend to push those limits they need to be written in the system. Then a wise GM can remove them at his option instead of having to enforce them on players who don't deal well with limits in the first place.

 

That is to say... There is nothing wrong with not having limits and allowing people to build to concept if they are good at it and it's what you want in the campign. But that needs to be the choice of the GM based on the universe he's running and the players, not the default of the system.