Characteristic inflation

[Sean Waters]

I just got Monsters, Marauders and Minions, a FH races and monster book.

 

It's good, but I have a quibble.

 

Of the 80 or more monsters and races in there, only ONE has a DEX lower than 10 and only 3 have DEX of 10 - everyone else is higher - sometimes significantly so.

 

Giants are more dextrous than humans. Almost everything is. Most giants are more dextrous than elves. What's that all about?

 

This means, when designing characters, you need to compete, and you need to do this by buying up your DEX. Sure a lot of heroes would want to anyway, but it is practically compulsory if you want to last any time at all.

 

One of the problems I see is this: it is psychologically more difficult to reduce a character's ability than to increase it. I think if we started characteristics at 0 we'd be more inclined to be realistic about where to pitch their abilities.

 

Thoughts?

[Vondy]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I think the characteristics at zero is a good idea, but constitutes too significant a change to tradition for the people to accept it. At the same time, I do agree there is a problem with the characteristics in published books: players look at them to see what they are up against and note the average foe is well above the games theoretical baseline. As a result the perception is that the theoretical baseline isn't average. Oh no, the theoretical baseline sucks hard and to get the edge you have to build characters who weigh in at the top of the scale. This is esp. true of DEX and SPD. I don't think the issue is whether the base number is 0, 8, or 10, but the actual published builds. The game has a baseline for average, but they ignore it. Sometimes this is good, but as a trend it creates an implicit arms race.

[Susano]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I just got Monsters, Marauders and Minions, a FH races and monster book.

 

It's good, but I have a quibble.

 

Of the 80 or more monsters and races in there, only ONE has a DEX lower than 10 and only 3 have DEX of 10 - everyone else is higher - sometimes significantly so.

 

Giants are more dextrous than humans. Almost everything is. Most giants are more dextrous than elves. What's that all about?

 

This means, when designing characters, you need to compete, and you need to do this by buying up your DEX. Sure a lot of heroes would want to anyway, but it is practically compulsory if you want to last any time at all.

 

One of the problems I see is this: it is psychologically more difficult to reduce a character's ability than to increase it. I think if we started characteristics at 0 we'd be more inclined to be realistic about where to pitch their abilities.

 

Thoughts?

 

I'd like to point out that the creatures in the monsters books aren't supposed to be Joe average specimens, but instead are written to challenge PC parties. They are meant to be combat capable examples, not the Giant or Orc examples of Johann the Baker.

[nexus]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I see Susano's point but there does seem to be some characteristic inflation. The human norm was 8 originally in 5th ed. That seems to have been abandoned. Another instance are the mutant races in PA Hero like the deer men with 10 or higher and stats and it's mentioned in the text these are "roughly average" adult specimens, non combatants will be weaker, tough member will be higher. I can see that for physical attributes like Strength and Constitution but they're also smarter than normal humans and have more willpower?

 

On the Dexterity issue, yeah, it does seem odd Giants are innately more agile than humans. If they are good at combat, CSLs could help but that isn't "point efficient", of course. The Dexterity/combat effectiveness link in one sore spot in Hero for a few genres, IMO.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

Personally, I think the idea of average stats is often misconstrued in Hero. The way I interpret it, a reasonably active, reasonably intelligent individual will have 10s in everything, without being anything special. The "average" of 8 comes in when you look at the disabled, the elderly, and young children...people you wouldn't reasonably expect to be an opponent in any sort of competitive situation. These people will quite often have stats below 8, bringing the average down from the in-your-prime 10. The idea that, for any given stat, a guy off the street will have an 8 only works if you take an exceptionally wide portion of the population.

 

That's the way I see it anyway. And given that, opponents with 10s as defaults isn't really out of line, since they aren't sending their feeblest members out into the world to oppose the PCs.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

Some good points:

 

Von D-Man, I might adopt your text for the original post. That is what I meant only more clearly stated

 

Susano, I agree with what you say: the monsters are not Johann the Baker (well I'll be using an orc called Johann the Baker VERY soon...) but then again MMM sprinkles examples of 'special' versions of the monsters through the text, which are better than the 'averages' presented, so it does tend to give the imporession they are not exceptional for their type.

 

Nexus, I picked the giant example because it is a reasonably obvious one to me; it does seem a giant should be scary because of the damage they will do if you don't get out ofthe way rather than because they are likely to hit you.

 

Captain Obvious, again I agree that the creatures presented are probably the 'combat versions' but if you look in the back there is a section on humanoid templates that suggests a fighter shoudl get +1 DEX (the highest template DEX bomus is +2 for a barbarian) and that means that even 'exceptional humans' lag far behind almost every creature in there in terms of DEX.

 

My concern here is that such books set the 'ground rules' or 'base state' you use to inform your character building choices. It assumes that you need a reasonably substantially inflated DEX to be competative at all, and whilst I'd expect heroes to be above average in a lot of characteristics this has two effects: first it means that you proabbly need 14 DEx to be at all competitive and second the character who really splashes out with 18-20 dex just doesn't feel that exceptional with so many others nipping at his heels.

[Vondy]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I'd like to point out that the creatures in the monsters books aren't supposed to be Joe average specimens' date=' but instead are written to challenge PC parties. They are meant to be combat capable examples, not the Giant or Orc examples of Johann the Baker.[/quote']

 

This puts us in a viscous loop, though. Which PC parties? Often the players will look in the book and then design their characters to have an edge on what they see. I had this issue with the 4th ed. Eurostar. My players looked at them, decided their very well designed characters sucked, and started looking to up the ante in terms of DEX-SPD. And to be frank, you can challenge a PC party without going hog-wild in th DEX-SPD department. A giant can be designed to absorb damange and deal out major whallops and still scare them without big DEX-SPD scores. Once my players realized I had reworked most of the published villians to fit with the campaign they backed off. The books do set a "competitive baseline" and often set it significantly higher than need be. Its not hard to rework the builds, but it can be a trial getting players to relax and go with the campaign flow once they've seen them.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

Personally, I think the idea of average stats is often misconstrued in Hero. The way I interpret it, a reasonably active, reasonably intelligent individual will have 10s in everything, without being anything special. The "average" of 8 comes in when you look at the disabled, the elderly, and young children...people you wouldn't reasonably expect to be an opponent in any sort of competitive situation. These people will quite often have stats below 8, bringing the average down from the in-your-prime 10. The idea that, for any given stat, a guy off the street will have an 8 only works if you take an exceptionally wide portion of the population.

 

That's the way I see it anyway. And given that, opponents with 10s as defaults isn't really out of line, since they aren't sending their feeblest members out into the world to oppose the PCs.

 

 

In my FRED, there's an example that actually says "average person" and his Stats are all 8. The small child has a STR and CON , Body of 5 and an IN of 7. A "noteworthy normal" has 10s. skilled and competent runs higher so the competent has a DEX of 14 and few others at 13. thats pretty much the scale I use and its worked well so far. Probably some notation somewhere should say that the example is not average or at least mention something about it.

[nexus]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

In my FRED' date=' there's an example that actually says "average person" and his Stats are all 8. The small child has a STR and CON , Body of 5 and an IN of 7. A "noteworthy normal" has 10s. skilled and competent runs higher so the competent has a DEX of 14 and few others at 13. thats pretty much the scale I use and its worked well so far. Probably some notation somewhere should say that the example is not average or at least mention something about it.[/quote']

 

And in Valdorian Age, even PCs start off with all 8s because the setting is less heroic not because humanity overall has degenerated to less than normal levels.

[pinecone]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I think the characteristics at zero is a good idea' date=' but constitutes too significant a change to tradition for the people to accept it. At the same time, I do agree there is a problem with the characteristics in published books: players look at them to see what they are up against and note the [i']average[/i] foe is well above the games theoretical baseline. As a result the perception is that the theoretical baseline isn't average. Oh no, the theoretical baseline sucks hard and to get the edge you have to build characters who weigh in at the top of the scale. This is esp. true of DEX and SPD. I don't think the issue is whether the base number is 0, 8, or 10, but the actual published builds. The game has a baseline for average, but they ignore it. Sometimes this is good, but as a trend it creates an implicit arms race.

 

Yeah, Its the same issue as VIPER agents being as tough as Cyberline enhanced Primus agents..."WTF? That is some workout program they have in prison!"

[BNakagawa]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

this is one of the reasons I like the concept behind using a delta-notation for character descriptions.

 

Briefly, in general it doesn't matter if your dex is 10, 20 or 30, what really matters is what your dex is when compared to your campaign averages.

 

Is 20 dex enough for my martial artist? You can't answer that question until you've figured out the campaign benchmarks.

 

A delta notation character definition system avoids that quandry by just pegging your character as some number of points below or above the campaign average. So if your martial artist is Average+10 Dex, then if the campaign average is 20 Dex, you've got a 30.

 

This allows you to move from setting to setting, campaign to campaign and always maintain about the same feel.

 

This of course, does not take levels into account, you'll have to keep track of those separately.

 

This also makes it a lot easier to spot check characters for balance. If someone hands you a sheet with nothing but + numbers, then you're probably going to need to do some editing...

[Silbeg]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

Yeah' date=' Its the same issue as VIPER agents being as tough as Cyberline enhanced Primus agents..."WTF? That is some workout program they have in prison!"[/quote']

 

Well, remember, while the agents that don't qualify for Cyberline enhancements just go back to their original Service, the VIPER agents that don't succeed in VIPER's training/enhancement program get sent to the trash heap... or river... or...

[proditor]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

Yeah' date=' Its the same issue as VIPER agents being as tough as Cyberline enhanced Primus agents..."WTF? That is some workout program they have in prison!"[/quote']

 

Minor thread necro, PRIMUS agents aren't Cyberline enhanced in 5e. In CU, it states that only the Avengers get the treatments now.

[Tech]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I see Susano's point but there does seem to be some characteristic inflation. The human norm was 8 originally in 5th ed. That seems to have been abandoned. Another instance are the mutant races in PA Hero like the deer men with 10 or higher and stats and it's mentioned in the text these are "roughly average" adult specimens, non combatants will be weaker, tough member will be higher. I can see that for physical attributes like Strength and Constitution but they're also smarter than normal humans and have more willpower?

 

On the Dexterity issue, yeah, it does seem odd Giants are innately more agile than humans. If they are good at combat, CSLs could help but that isn't "point efficient", of course. The Dexterity/combat effectiveness link in one sore spot in Hero for a few genres, IMO.

 

Quite right.

[CUnknown]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I completely agree, and I think the only way to solve this problem is to make your own monsters. Hero is the best game system out there, imo. It is what it says it is: "The Ultimate Gamer's Toolkit." But, that's all it is. It gives you the tools, and it's up to you to do a ton of work before you can actually play. The system is great, the source books are mostly useless, imo. I wouldn't use any monster that came out of a book.

 

Edit: For giants, the best thing to do is make them DEX 8 or lower, and give them a ton of combat levels, like 6-10 (like, +8 OCV with all attacks, 40 points). It doesn't matter if it's "point effective" or not, it's an NPC.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I don't have Monsters, Marauders and Minions but i do have the HERO system Bestiary and I think its is a great source and seems to mostly avoid the inflation problem with some notable exceptions ( Godzilla has an 18 DEX??!!!!) a little tailoring to the individual campaign is always necessary but the sourcebooks can save you lots of work.

Giants should definitely be less dexterous than humans I agree with that. I notice the Minotaur has a 17, I'll probably lower that and add a few combat levels myself

[pinecone]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I don't have Monsters, Marauders and Minions but i do have the HERO system Bestiary and I think its is a great source and seems to mostly avoid the inflation problem with some notable exceptions ( Godzilla has an 18 DEX??!!!!) a little tailoring to the individual campaign is always necessary but the sourcebooks can save you lots of work.

Giants should definitely be less dexterous than humans I agree with that. I notice the Minotaur has a 17, I'll probably lower that and add a few combat levels myself

 

Well...Godzilla is a giant monster Martial artist so he needs an 18 to out shine other giant monsters who have Dex 12...

[SteveZilla]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I don't have Monsters' date=' Marauders and Minions but i do have the HERO system Bestiary and I think its is a great source and seems to mostly avoid the inflation problem with some notable exceptions ( Godzilla has an 18 DEX??!!!!) a little tailoring to the individual campaign is always necessary but the sourcebooks can save you lots of work.[/quote']

 

Hey, give The 'Zilla some credit! It takes a lot of coordination to do this:

[Outsider]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I completely agree, and I think the only way to solve this problem is to make your own monsters. Hero is the best game system out there, imo. It is what it says it is: "The Ultimate Gamer's Toolkit." But, that's all it is. It gives you the tools, and it's up to you to do a ton of work before you can actually play. The system is great, the source books are mostly useless, imo. I wouldn't use any monster that came out of a book.

 

Edit: For giants, the best thing to do is make them DEX 8 or lower, and give them a ton of combat levels, like 6-10 (like, +8 OCV with all attacks, 40 points). It doesn't matter if it's "point effective" or not, it's an NPC.

 

 

Or, if they are big enough, declare that their attacks are AoE.

[JmOz]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

I notice that no one has mentioned that giants take a physical limitation giving them a -DCV, I think it should be noted that they are still relativly easy to hit, even if they can hit and attack quickly

[Tech]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

Edit: For giants' date=' the best thing to do is make them DEX 8 or lower, and give them a ton of combat levels, like 6-10 (like, +8 OCV with all attacks, 40 points). It doesn't matter if it's "point effective" or not, it's an NPC.[/quote']

 

I highly disagree with giving them lots of levels. Giants should not be hitting people like they're prime knights that are trained. Giants, in general, are not known for hitting; that's not what they are feared for or in other words, they are not known for their accuracy. What they are feared for is what happens if they hit - you get your bones crushed by the force behind the blow. I'd begrudgingly give a 1 hex AE to a giant but would rather let the fear of being hit and crushed be the reason giants are feared. Armor or not, if you get hit by a giant, you're going to remember that - assuming you live through it.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

IMO, and it is ever so humble, we will always have two problems:

 

1. Getting general agreement on what characteristics different races should have, and

2. Well, there is no 2., but 1. is such a big problem that it is going to fill at least a couple of bullet points.

 

Having said that, my preferred approach would be to have all races and creatures start at 10 across the board, assuming an exceptional specimen, and then ONLY increase or decrease the characteristics that need it.

 

Giants need to be strong and tough, so increased STR and CON. They will have more BODY and PRE.

 

That should be it, basically, as far as characteristics go. You might reduce the DEX, perhaps as low as 8 to reflect that a giant is no batter at hitting but probably a little slower than smaller races. Probably do not need to go near figured characteristics at all (except to make up the SPD to 2, if you do reduce DEX).

 

If the particular character is meant as a warrior, apply a warrior template (probably increased STR and DEX and, maybe, an extra point of SPEED).

 

On the question of giants and levels, well, we have to look at sfx. You might want to give them 5 point OCV levels, but limit them so that they can only be used for OCV or damage increase: they are not carefully placing blows but they do hit quite a lot because their attacks cover a lot of area.

 

Making attacks AoE brings in a set of new considerations, and probably requires a custom lim on the attack allowing it to be blocked by someone who at least has STR = the casual strength of the giant.

 

Ultimately we probably need to decide what sort of threat a giant is, or we want it to be, and build backwards from there, rather than building from scratch and hoping.

[Kdansky]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

Obviously a DCV comes from DEX problem. If you can either have +1 DCV for 5 points, or +1DCV and +1 OCV and +2/3 to Dex rolls and +3 initiative for 6 points, why bother?

 

Due to how figureds work, nearly all characters carry around way too much STR/CON and DEX.

 

6th will rectify this.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

Obviously a DCV comes from DEX problem. If you can either have +1 DCV for 5 points, or +1DCV and +1 OCV and +2/3 to Dex rolls and +3 initiative for 6 points, why bother?

 

Due to how figureds work, nearly all characters carry around way too much STR/CON and DEX.

 

6th will rectify this.

 

I'd say that when you are coming up with builds like Monsters and such you should be far less 'point efficient' than you ever would be with a character.

 

For many years I thought of the original Ogre in Champions as pretty much the Ultimate Brick (for 250 points) but then I realised that if you ditched his 3 levels with all combat (24 points) you could buy another 8 points of DEX, ramping his DEX up to 26. You also saved 8 points on SPD, so you could in fact buy to DEX up to 30, if you ditched the combat skill levels, giving him +4 OCV and +4 DCV.

 

Something died in me that day.

 

I think it is still there, because I'm pretty stinky sometimes.

[Kdansky]

Re: Characteristic inflation

 

Levels with all combat are particularily pointless.

 

8 points: +1 OCV or DCV (or ECV)

6 points: 3 dex: +1 OCV plus + 1 DCV. By selling back speed, which you *always* can do, since you never have a character who does not buy speed.

 

The levels that make sense:

+1 to OCV for a single Attack for 2 points is decent.

 

+1 to OCV for a MP for 3 points is ok at best. You could also spend 6 points and instead of getting +2, you get +1/+1 and other stuff. But it has it's uses.

 

+1 DCV for 5 points is useless. You can also have +1 DCV for 6 points, which comes with a ludicrous amount of free stuff. I use 3 cp levels as "all DCV" to prevent DEX inflation for defensive purposes.

 

8 point levels are horrible for anyone except possibly mentalists. But then, they are usually better off buying EGO directly, since that only costs 6 points per +1 ECV and gives bonuses to ego rolls, skills (not many) and Mental Def.

 

10 points levels are again quite good, because they have got so many other uses. Still, you could buy (dex) +1OCV and +1DCV and have got 4 points left. Enough for a Skill Level, but not a really broad one. Or a slightly limited broad one.

 

 

And don't get me started on "+1 to all int skills" for 5 points...

 

 

Characteristics are too cheap due to figureds. I'm putting my faith in 6th. Actually, there was a great article on that in one of the last Digital Heros.