6E Rules changes confirmed so far

[Beast]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

everything else has been broken away from strength

in essence strength is a power that just sits with the rest of the characteristics(like run,swim, leap in how they are presented in HD)

strength is something a base character can do

a normal can punch another normal

 

if you are proposing that lifting and damage due to strength be seperate things then you are really nerfing bricks

Steve never said anything like that

 

 

In essence hundred RPGs use some kind of figured stats or derived values.

IMHO the "you pay for what you get" principle is the very real identity of Hero, the one which protects him from the need to be physicaly accurate. (see for instance Leaping which will no longer be figured from STR. So there is no more need to wonder if it's realistic or nor to be able to leap x meters with STR y. You pay for x meters so you get it, whatever your STR. If you want realism so pay for it. I like this simple idea)

 

Thus figured stats and CVs are only artifact of the past, the last who break this principle and it seems logical to get rid of them.

 

Then the last artifact will be damage added from STR....

[Guest steamteck]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

Thus figured stats and CVs are only artifact of the past, the last who break this principle and it seems logical to get rid of them.

 

Then the last artifact will be damage added from STR....

 

Seems like I'm an artifact of the past myself then. I've personally found a slavish devotion to a purity of principle often gets in the way of fun and playability. This sort of thing may not for you but it does for me. I do note you seem to have enormous problems with the current system where I've experienced none so for you it may well be spot on. For me not so much.

[Crypt]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

Steve never said anything like that

 

i know, that's just my perception of it.

 

I will make a thread about that.

[megaplayboy]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

Hmm...since there's no figureds, would the following be considered legit now?

 

STR 60

CON 30

BODY 10

PD 40

ED 30

STUN 20

 

(basically, a brick who takes little to no damage from an average physical attack, can be dropped by a pushed EB, and can be knocked out by a pushed haymaker punch)

[ghost-angel]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

I don't see why not.

[prestidigitator]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

Hmm...since there's no figureds, would the following be considered legit now?

 

STR 60

CON 30

BODY 10

PD 40

ED 30

STUN 20

 

(basically, a brick who takes little to no damage from an average physical attack, can be dropped by a pushed EB, and can be knocked out by a pushed haymaker punch)

 

That would be legitimate now, actually. Sell back Stun only.

[incrdbil]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

Hmm...since there's no figureds, would the following be considered legit now?

 

STR 60

CON 30

BODY 10

PD 40

ED 30

STUN 20

 

(basically, a brick who takes little to no damage from an average physical attack, can be dropped by a pushed EB, and can be knocked out by a pushed haymaker punch)

 

Legitimate indeed. In fact, it could be the working for an entire game if quick, all or nothing contests are the norm, where defenses hold, or you get overwhelmed, or just don't get hit. (A really tough Brick might have an unheard of 30 stun!!)

 

Dice fluctuations could really play havok..unless you when with all Standard effect rules (or as an option, standard effect on 3/4's of the dice, and then you roll)--reduces the number of dice you roll, still allows some variety...eh, its something to play around with anyway.

[nexus]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

Hmm...since there's no figureds, would the following be considered legit now?

 

STR 60

CON 30

BODY 10

PD 40

ED 30

STUN 20

 

(basically, a brick who takes little to no damage from an average physical attack, can be dropped by a pushed EB, and can be knocked out by a pushed haymaker punch)

 

I can't see why not. Though its legitimate in 5th too.

[Beast]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

here is a novel idea

why not just recost all primary stats so there is no difference with figureds vs buying them seperatly

yes there will be character point inflation

but then that happened with 5th ed

in that way you can do away with the only selling back of 1 figured stat

the one tweaking would be strength to pull all figureds from it and place them on body

[casualplayer]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

here is a novel idea

why not just recost all primary stats so there is no difference with figureds vs buying them seperatly

yes there will be character point inflation

but then that happened with 5th ed

in that way you can do away with the only selling back of 1 figured stat

the one tweaking would be strength to pull all figureds from it and place them on body

 

You would have to put a point value to all the ephemeral aspects of characteristics, and that would be a nightmare and impossible to guage accurately from genre to genre and game environ to game environ. How much is CON's ability to resist Stunning worth? STR's ability to Throw or Lift? It is a nice thought to please all of the people some of the time.

 

The sellback rule was a patch for a flaw in the system, and making a new edition and retaining a known flaw is just sloppy game design. This has to have bothered a craftsman like Long and I'm sure he savored the chance to eliminate it.

 

I do wish people weren't so insistent upon points having any intrinsic worth; they are a fiat system for measuring relative power and not the gold standard. It costs what it costs and, if a 4th Ed character that cost 324 pts cost 362 pts in 5th Ed and will cost 451 pts in Sex Ed, if the game is still fun and everybody is happy then game on! Life's too short to do bookkeeping for fun.

[nexus]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

I do wish people weren't so insistent upon points having any intrinsic worth; they are a fiat system for measuring relative power and not the gold standard. It costs what it costs and, if a 4th Ed character that cost 324 pts cost 362 pts in 5th Ed and will cost 451 pts in Sex Ed, if the game is still fun and everybody is happy then game on! Life's too short to do bookkeeping for fun.

 

The issue for me isn't that point have intrinsic value but that I don't like juggling with lots of points to create a character. A higher base to get the same results is a turn off for me. It has nothing to do with high points=automatically bad but it is another reason I prefer low point games.

[Beast]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

in a word yes

 

the one basic thing is 1 dc is 5 points

be it str or eb

if you pull the figureds from str and add them to body

the big cost monster is going to be dex

con is only going to be worth for just that at what level stun done in 1 attack(or coordinated attacks)to daze a target in 6th ed

 

ranged attacks are just that they get

range

spread for ocv

bounce

set and brace to mod attack

and damage

 

Str gets

lift

throw(limited damage to objects found if any, limited range compared to same level eb

and damage

 

there is no need to gauge from 1 genre to an other

points for the genre do that

 

the cost difference of figureds vs buying each seperatly has been pointed out by others too many times to be counted here on this forum

and have been broken down for all to see

 

 

 

You would have to put a point value to all the ephemeral aspects of characteristics, and that would be a nightmare and impossible to guage accurately from genre to genre and game environ to game environ. How much is CON's ability to resist Stunning worth? STR's ability to Throw or Lift? It is a nice thought to please all of the people some of the time.

 

The sellback rule was a patch for a flaw in the system, and making a new edition and retaining a known flaw is just sloppy game design. This has to have bothered a craftsman like Long and I'm sure he savored the chance to eliminate it.

 

I do wish people weren't so insistent upon points having any intrinsic worth; they are a fiat system for measuring relative power and not the gold standard. It costs what it costs and, if a 4th Ed character that cost 324 pts cost 362 pts in 5th Ed and will cost 451 pts in Sex Ed, if the game is still fun and everybody is happy then game on! Life's too short to do bookkeeping for fun.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

The alternative approach would be to take the 6e costs, and work Figured's back into the price of primary characteristics. For example, let's assume CON costs 1 point and only resists being Stunned, and the 5e prices for the other stats are unchanged. If we want to keep the 5e Figured's then 10 points of CON generates:

 

+10 STUN Resistance - 10 points

+2 ED - 2 points

+2 REC - 4 points

+5 STUN - 5 points

+20 END - 10 points

 

Grand total: 31 points.

 

So set the price of CON at 3 points, and the value of No Figured on CON at -2.

 

Of course, the actual 6e prices need to be known before this can be implemented accurately. My hope is that REC, END and STUN will cost less, so if we assume some reductions, maybe we get:

 

+10 STUN Resistance - 10 points

+2 ED - 2 points

+2 REC at 1 point each - 2 points

+5 STUN at 2:1 - 2.5 points

+20 END at 3:1 - 6 2/3 points

 

Grand total: 23 1/6 points.

 

Maybe we then set CON at 2 points per (I'd be OK with that - I don't think resisting STUN needs to cost a full point anyway, and that drops it back to a bit under 3:2 CP). Maybe No Figured becomes -1 3/4, so +10 CON, No Figured costs 7.27 points (whole package weighs in at about 20.44 points - close as we're likely to get).

 

Having done this, coupling Figured's becomes a choice of aesthetics, not a point saving mechanism.

[Klaus Mogensen]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

The issue for me isn't that point have intrinsic value but that I don't like juggling with lots of points to create a character. A higher base to get the same results is a turn off for me. It has nothing to do with high points=automatically bad but it is another reason I prefer low point games.

I don't see that characters necessarily will have to be built on more points in 6e.

 

True, you don't get all the 'free' stuff from STR that you used to, but all the other characteristics that used to give figureds will mlst likely have their costs reduced (I assume all primary characteristics will cost 1 each).

 

If STUN is reduced to ½, there's also points saved. And there have been serious suggestions towards reducing the cost of skill levels from 2/3/5/8 to 1/2/3/5, which again will reduce costs.

 

Bricks relying heavily on STR will likely become more expensive, but other character types may become cheaper. If the price reductions outlined above do come through, I expect a typical selection of adventurers or superheroes, with a little tweaking, will have about the same total cost as now.

 

- Klaus

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

I don't see that characters necessarily will have to be built on more points in 6e.

 

True, you don't get all the 'free' stuff from STR that you used to, but all the other characteristics that used to give figureds will mlst likely have their costs reduced (I assume all primary characteristics will cost 1 each).

 

My guess is that the cost of high DEX characters will increase as much or more than high STR characters. With SPD, DCV and OCV broken out from DEX, what does it cost to buy the equivalent of, say, +15 DEX?

 

Assuming DEX costs 1 point, that's 15 for DEX. Another 15 gets spent for +1.5 Speed. Now we need to buy +5 OCV and +5 DCV. I'm guessing these will not be priced at, say, 2 points for DCV and 1 for OCV such that the remaining 15 points will generate +5 OCV and +5 DCV. If they are 3 points each (which seems cheap), we need 60 points to buy the +15 DEX 45 points used to pay for. If they are 4, 5 or 6 points each, that cost goes up to 70, 80 or 90. And pretty much every character bought DEX up.

 

Ideally, in my view, the cost of every character will rise similarly across the board. I didn't find the game unbalanced in favour of high STR characters in the first place. Although I think STR with all its figured was bargain priced, doubling its cost would have made it too expensive, in my view. I think DEX provided far more value for its cost, but this was obscured by its provision of the "non-Figured figured" of OCV and DCV which had no independent price to facilitate comparison. The vast overpricing of Lightning Reflexes also created a false sense that DEX itself was not really bargain priced.

[archermoo]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

Hmm...since there's no figureds, would the following be considered legit now?

 

STR 60

CON 30

BODY 10

PD 40

ED 30

STUN 20

 

(basically, a brick who takes little to no damage from an average physical attack, can be dropped by a pushed EB, and can be knocked out by a pushed haymaker punch)

 

Sure, but as others have noted it would be legit under 5e. What wouldn't be legit under 5e (at least not as a straightforward purchase) but would be under 6e would be something like:

 

STR 60

CON 30

BODY 10

PD 40

ED 30

STUN 20

END 50

[Klaus Mogensen]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

My guess is that the cost of high DEX characters will increase as much or more than high STR characters. With SPD, DCV and OCV broken out from DEX, what does it cost to buy the equivalent of, say, +15 DEX?

 

Assuming DEX costs 1 point, that's 15 for DEX. Another 15 gets spent for +1.5 Speed. Now we need to buy +5 OCV and +5 DCV. I'm guessing these will not be priced at, say, 2 points for DCV and 1 for OCV such that the remaining 15 points will generate +5 OCV and +5 DCV. If they are 3 points each (which seems cheap), we need 60 points to buy the +15 DEX 45 points used to pay for. If they are 4, 5 or 6 points each, that cost goes up to 70, 80 or 90. And pretty much every character bought DEX up.

We don't know yet if SPD will still be 10 points per +1, though I concede that it likely won't drop below 8, which doesn't change your result much. However, if skill prices are reduced (which I hope and think), buying up skills will be a better bargain than before, so what used to be a DEX-based character may become a skill-based character at a similar cost. Also consider the greater flexibility: Before, if you bought up DEX to improve OCV, you also got improved DCV, initiative and DEX skills, which you might not need. Now you can buy each to the level you need.

 

I didn't find the game unbalanced in favour of high STR characters in the first place. Although I think STR with all its figured was bargain priced, doubling its cost would have made it too expensive, in my view.

YMMV. I have played in campaigns where the cost of STR was set to 2 (with END cost of 1 per 5 STR), and the high-STR character builds still seemed very effective.

 

- Klaus

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

YMMV. I have played in campaigns where the cost of STR was set to 2 (with END cost of 1 per 5 STR)' date=' and the high-STR character builds still seemed very effective.[/quote']

 

I think this is an issue in games where STR can enhance the damage of weaponry the characters pay no points for, while anyone using a non-STR mechanic has to pay full points for everything. Fantasy games, in particular, have this issue.

[ajackson]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

I don't see that characters necessarily will have to be built on more points in 6e.

I believe that it's been stated that they're somewhat more expensive, though I think it's in the vicinity of 50 points for supers, which is not enormous.

[Klaus Mogensen]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

I think this is an issue in games where STR can enhance the damage of weaponry the characters pay no points for' date=' while anyone using a non-STR mechanic has to pay full points for everything. Fantasy games, in particular, have this issue.[/quote']

Actually, most of these games were superheroic, though there was one fantasy game.

 

- Klaus

[Lucius]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

I composed this some time ago and don't seem to have gotten around to posting it....

 

I don't think my conclusions have changed in the meantime, so here it is now.

 

 

 

 

 

The solution to the Killing conundrum is not the one I supported, but it

DOES address the problem. This was the closest thing to a "deal breaker"

I had - as I put it, if this problem isn't tackled, what was the point

of a new edition? I have quibbles, but it's not hard to see it as an

improvement on what we had before.

 

I always thought the "STUN Lotto" was "a feature, not a bug" in so far

as it made this kind of attack more realistic - people with more

intimate acquaintance with violence than I would ever wish to have, have

described the unpredictability of the body's response to these kinds of

wounds. What I did NOT like was the fact that there were two kinds of

attack available with similar costs despite one being indisputably more

effective. "Nerfing" the more powerful Power is certainly one way to

solve that, and is an elegantly simple approach. If it hasn't erased the

effectiveness gap, it has certainly reduced it.

 

But it seems kind of piecemeal. It's as if the issue was considered

totally in isolation from the Adding Damage spaghetti monster, the 50%

discrepency in cost between Non- and Resistant Defense (which if

anything is exacerbated by this solution because it makes Non-Resistant

Defense more effective,) or the question of how to reconcile the cost of

STR, Telekinesis, Hand to Hand vs Ranged Normal Attacks, and Hand to

Hand vs Ranged Killing Attacks, in such a way that they all make sense.

 

 

The solution to the Figured problem is one I am more ambivalent about,

but again, it IS an improvement (marginally) on what we had. What we had

was a Great Idea and a lousy (as in, unbalanced) implementation. Mr.

Long has dealt with the lousy implementation by flushing the Great Idea.

 

 

I would predict that the next dispensation (whenever it comes) will

either restore Figured Characteristics in a more balanced and flexible

form, or will complete the eradication of the (in my opinion) Great Idea

by divorcing Perception from Intelligence and eliminating Characteristic

bonuses to Skills. That would at least have the virtue of consistency.

There are certainly some who prefer that approach, and perhaps in its

way it's a Great Idea too. It's just a question of two radically

different visions of how the chargen system should work.

 

Disconnecting DEX and CV is the only thing I see as arguably a step

backwards. Otherwise, there may be a giant step sideways, or a small

step forward when I would have preferred a great leap, but I don't think

anything here is a step off a cliff. We're looking at the greatest

change in Hero ever, not counting Fuzion (which WAS a step off a cliff)

but I think it is still recognizably Hero.

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Opinions expressed by Lucius Alexander are not necessarily those of Palindromedary Enterprises, its employees or management, or the palindromedaries.

[rjcurrie]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

We're looking at the greatest

change in Hero ever, not counting Fuzion (which WAS a step off a cliff)

but I think it is still recognizably Hero.

 

I'm still undecided about whether 6e is the greatest change in Hero ever. 4e from 3e was a pretty big change and it's hard to decide which is a bigger change.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

I'm still undecided about whether 6e is the greatest change in Hero ever. 4e from 3e was a pretty big change and it's hard to decide which is a bigger change.

While I haven't seen the final product yet obviously, and while 6e does have a couple of "higher profile" changes than the 3rd-to-4th move did, I still think it's going to turn out that 3rd-to-4th was a bigger change overall than 5th-to-6th is going to be.

 

Not that I think a substantial overhaul is a bad thing. (I'm not trying to "defend" 6E by saying I think it will be a smaller paradigm change than 3-4 was... that's just my take on it.) 4th-to-5th was really a pretty mild change -- mostly just new options and very minor tweaks. You probably could have called 5th edition "4.5" instead, and been just as accurate.

 

So from a certain perspective, the last "major release" sort of change (in software parlance) was the 3rd-to-4th change. That was twenty years ago now... That's a long time for a game system to go without a truly comprehensive face-lift...

[Lucius]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

I'm still undecided about whether 6e is the greatest change in Hero ever. 4e from 3e was a pretty big change and it's hard to decide which is a bigger change.

 

You have a point. It may be a matter of perspective, and of course we haven't seen the finished product yet.

 

But when I consider that we're dropping a Framework, dropping and adding Characteristics, redefining some Characteristics pretty fundamentally....I still think this has to count as a bigger change than the change to 4th edition.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Riding a palindromedary up and down a cliff.

[Tasha]

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

 

I'm still undecided about whether 6e is the greatest change in Hero ever. 4e from 3e was a pretty big change and it's hard to decide which is a bigger change.

 

I know that this goes against the conventional wisdom on the boards, but Fuzion was a good ruleset. They did a ton of things right with the rules. I think that it gets a bum rap because it was 1) too large of a change 2) and the superpowers rules were totally incomplete.

 

From what I have seen so far, I think that folks are getting all riled up about nothing. I believe that people will see a TON of positive changes in the rules that really make sense, and address issues people have been bringing up for years (ie Primaries being too cheap for their benefits). So lets first get the rules before we start griping about stuff we only know about from Chat logs and 4 preview posts.

 

Me, Yeah I have worries about KA's and stun multipliers, but have faith that Steve does write good consistent rules and the the totality of the rules will be better than the one of two things that I would have done differently.

 

Tasha