Balancing Armour and Damage

[Odraude]

So I am beginning to run a superhero campaign that puts the heroes in the Gaza Strip. It is 350 points with 75 Active point limit. This is my first time GMing and I was wondering how one balances the amount of armour the characters have with damage dealt to them?

[Pariah]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

I use the numbers to try to balance it out. Compare the STUN an average attack will do to the defenses your character will have. As a rule of thumb, a character should be able to take 3-4 average attacks before running out of STUN.

 

For example, let's say that in your campaign attacks average 65 Active Points with a maximum of 75. For a normal attack, that means 13d6. A 13d6 attack will do, on average, around 45 STUN (13 x 3.5 = 4.5). If your players' characters have 40 STUN on average, their defenses need to be high enough that they only take 10-13 STUN from each attack. In other words, their defenses need to be around 35, on average.

 

If the average attack is actually 15d6 (doing ~53 STUN on average), then their defenses need to be in the 40-45 range.

 

I hope that makes sense.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

Typically, defenses vary from around 1.5x to 2.5x the Damage Class Cap. So, with a 15 DC Cap, 22-37 defenses are good. Martial Artists (or other high DEX/avoidance type characters) should be towards the lower end of the scale, energy projectors in the middle, and bricks towards the high end.

[Vondy]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

The recommended ratio back in 4E was 3:2. However, you really need to decide how long you want combat to last, and how many hits you want a character to take before going down and extrapolate from there.

[Doc Samson]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

We usually put defense caps at roughly half the value of the AP cap (not including resiatance). So for a 75 AP game we would allow defenses to go upto 37. This means an avaerage 15d6 (52 to 53) attack would do about (37 - 52 to 53) 15-16 STUN.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

Defenses? Don't allow them.

[Odraude]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

Thank you all. Now out of Defenses, how high should Resistence Damage allowed to be?

[BNakagawa]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

Thank you all. Now out of Defenses' date=' how high should Resistence Damage allowed to be?[/quote']

 

Depends on how lethal you want your game to be.

 

If there are lots of combatants around with killing attack weapons (which is entirely dependent on the GM's call) then players are going to have to design accordingly.

 

If killing attacks are unusual and noteworthy, then PCs might be able to get away with lower resistant defenses.

 

different character types have different needs. The guy who makes his living not getting hit needs less resistant defense than the guy who stands in front of the innocent normals while thugs blaze away with assault weapons.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

Thank you all. Now out of Defenses' date=' how high should Resistence Damage allowed to be?[/quote']

 

As high as the PC wants it/can justify, IMHO. I don't really consider Resistant defenses to be 'higher' than nonresistant, ie if I have a cap of 30 defenses, it doesn't matter how much of it is resistant as far as the cap goes.

[Pariah]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

I'm with Crosshair Collie on this one. If the character wants to spend the points to make their defenses fully Resistant, I'm okay with that.

[Odraude]

Re: Balancing Armour and Damage

 

Too true too true. Alright thanks everyone for the advice it has definitely helped