The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

[ghost-angel]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

I have what Steve asked of SETAC. I have the forty-odd-billion emails revolving around Killing Attacks. I know the end result. To me... it's all good. There's not a lot to explain beyond "a lot of math went into it from a lot of people before Steve made his decision. A lot of math."

 

 

I like a Flat 3 StunX, but I hope to get into a game and check out the 1D3 StunX soon enough.

[input.jack]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

So....if you want to KO someone (cause most of what youre doing is Stun), use a normal attack.

 

If you want to KILL someone (cause most of what youre doing is Body), use a Killing Attack.

 

....I think I can handle that concept

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Knowing someone is lying and knowing what the truth is are not the same thing. Just because you know minion X is lying about the location of the Evil Overlord's planned ritual doesn't suddenly mean the PCs know where that ritual is. Also' date=' the minion can be telling the truth and be simply misinformed. As per my earlier example, the Evil Overlord could be deliberately planting erroneous and conflicting information among his minions in order to get the heroes to run around in circles or walk into a trap. It's simply one more obstacle to overcome and hardly counts as "railroading". There's always more than distance and travel time that can potentially make PCs late to the party.[/quote']

 

All well said, and repped.

 

Another consideration: do *all* of the PCs have Megascale movement? In my campaign, two of the five heroes do. One has Teleport but can't take anyone else with him. The other can only move Megascale along rails, electric lines, and the like. Sure, he has a bit higher than normal STR, so he can carry two others with him. But that still leaves one teammate who has to make his way under his own power.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

If someone has three different Vulnerabilities that can overlap, he should be expecting to take a major hit if he strays into a Perfect Storm of SFX. My namesake character, Bolo, was Vulnerable to Fire attacks and Explosions. I got KO'd by an agent of Firewing. One. Shot. One. Agent.

 

Your VPP worries also assume the character's Vulnerability is known. If it's an uncommon attack, at the 1.5x level, that may not be readily apparent. If they're common attacks, well, that's the risk the character takes to get the extra points.

 

And frankly, someone running around with a lot of Vulnerabilities, even a bunch of 1.5x Uncommon ones, is probably being a bit of a Munchkin and deserves to be in GM-La-La-Land once in a while.

 

I agree. Especially when we consider that 6e suggests a significant reduction in Complication points. Surely there are other ways for the character to reach 75 points of complications. If he's really that vulnerable, he should be an eggshell when hit by attacks that combine his vulnerabilities.

 

Any plot like that would require that the PC know the specific time and location of the event. And since the GM has control of when PCs get both of those pieces of info' date=' I don't see this as a problem. In fact, I'd argue it only creates better scenarios for the PCs, because the drama of learning the specific time and place, and then actually intervening, can be pushed off much closer to the event itself.[/quote']

 

Where I come from' date=' sbarron, that's called "Railroading." My players don't like being Railroaded.[/quote']

 

How is it any more "Railroading" to have the characters who have access to Megascale movement find out about the time and location of the event just in time to get there in a single phase of movement, than to have the characters whose movement is more restricted find out about the event just in time to get there after traveling for three days?

[torchwolf]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Knowing someone is lying and knowing what the truth is are not the same thing. Just because you know minion X is lying about the location of the Evil Overlord's planned ritual doesn't suddenly mean the PCs know where that ritual is. Also' date=' the minion can be telling the truth and be simply misinformed. As per my earlier example, the Evil Overlord could be deliberately planting erroneous and conflicting information among his minions in order to get the heroes to run around in circles or walk into a trap. It's simply one more obstacle to overcome and hardly counts as "railroading". There's always more than distance and travel time that can potentially make PCs late to the party.[/quote']

 

Exactly.

 

There is no reason to make a roll to detect a lie. If my NPC wants to lie convincingly, she might make a Conversation or Persuasion roll, depending on the circumstances. I would then play the NPC as shifty if the roll was really bad. If it's important, I might make a secret PER roll for a PC, but probably only if the NPC's original roll failed (barring special circumstances). I think that's what roleplaying is about, but YMMV. OTOH, if it's vital to the plot, it should be reasonably obvious that an NPC is lying - that's not railroading, that's dropping a clue.

 

Personally, I loathe "Detect Lie" as a concept, unless there is at least some semi-rational definition of how it works, and even then, as a GM I would rule Daredevil occasionally erronous because of a) perceivability and deniability. A character who can usually detect a lie should never be 100% certain that he is right - Daredevil could've missed a heartbeat; the speaker could be erronous; possess a pacemaker; be able to fool lie detectors (3% chance); be a psychopath who doesn't care what's the truth; etc.

 

My favorite spells are Detect Evil, Detect Enemy and Detect Lie - neither of which I usually take because they make play boring (Charm, on the other hand...).

[Fedifensor]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Okay. I'm a bit late to the party, and I see valid arguments on both sides, but there are a few things I wanted to address...particularly the first thing I quoted below.

 

You can easily adapt costs for your own game. Many groups do not have a problem with it.

HERO may be advertised as a toolkit, but I really don't like the pat answer of "if it doesn't work for you, change it". HERO character creation is pretty complex compared to other game systems, and one of the few things that keeps it from being too much work is HERO Designer. Start changing the system in major ways, and you're back to pulling out the calculator and doing things by hand (or spending hours trying to customize the program). The core components should be balanced and not require tinkering.

 

 

But Blast is just one power, and you'd have to buy PD and ED separately to defend against each type. How is Flash different?

First, Flash is an unusual attack. Everyone has PD and ED - few people have Flash Defense.

 

Second, PD and ED are two defenses. Flash Defense versus Sight, Hearing, Smell/Taste, Touch, Radar...well, that's a lot more than two, for an attack that is rare compared to physical and energy attacks.

 

I'm a big believer in the concept that the defense should be cheaper than the attack, to prevent a drift into a gunslinger style of playing where only two things matter - who goes first, and how accurate they are.

 

 

Only if you can attack through the Barrier, right? Which is an Advantage either on the Barrier (Transparent) or your attack (Indirect). So instead of 43 BODY for your 20m Barrier, you end up with 23 for a One-Way Transparent Barrier to a single type of attack.

If a character is built to take advantage of this, there are ways to build powers where the cost to attack through the barrier is minimal due to advantage stacking.

 

 

Now, going back to the OP...

 

3) Megascale isn't More Expensive: I really thought this was too cheap for what it did' date=' and it still is. Megascale can turn carefully orchestrated time limit plots into hamburger with the blink of an eye. Yes, there's a reason there's a stop sign next to it, but for Price vs. Result, you are getting way more than what you pay for. The problem isn't the COMBAT usage of megascale. It's the NONCOMBAT usage of Megascale. Travel Times are cut to virtually nothing, which means that any plot the GM has that involves a ritual at time X or a specific action at time Y not only can, but will be interrupted long before it ever gets a chance to start. [/quote']

Er, don't let the characters build Megascale movement powers without restrictions, if your plots depend on the characters taking time to get to locations. Megascale is in there because many genres have world-spanning powers. Examples include wizards that can teleport across a continent, shuttles with warp drive, and all of the many ways superheroes get from Point A to Point B.

 

I'm far less concerned about putting restrictions on an option offered to players, than actually changing the rules to make that option cost differently. My question is - what is a good cost for noncombat movement, that doesn't make it impossible to reflect an important part of many genres (especially for superheroes).

[bigbywolfe]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Okay. I'm a bit late to the party, and I see valid arguments on both sides, but there are a few things I wanted to address...particularly the first thing I quoted below.

 

 

HERO may be advertised as a toolkit, but I really don't like the pat answer of "if it doesn't work for you, change it". HERO character creation is pretty complex compared to other game systems, and one of the few things that keeps it from being too much work is HERO Designer. Start changing the system in major ways, and you're back to pulling out the calculator and doing things by hand (or spending hours trying to customize the program). The core components should be balanced and not require tinkering.

Okay, I like the Hero Designer software, but “it’s hard to do with the software” is, in no conceivable way, an excuse for something to be changed in the rules. Many people on these boards still do not use HD. We should limit our “Universal Toolkit” because you don’t like math and/or are lazy? I don’t think so.

 

 

First, Flash is an unusual attack. Everyone has PD and ED - few people have Flash Defense.

 

Second, PD and ED are two defenses. Flash Defense versus Sight, Hearing, Smell/Taste, Touch, Radar...well, that's a lot more than two, for an attack that is rare compared to physical and energy attacks.

First, my smell/taste gets flashed in combat…who cares? Granted you can reply with “who would buy that flash in the first place, Flash Defense for Sight and Hearing still cost more than Flashing both”, which may be a legitimate argument, but is not the end-all of the discussion. And Flash Defense for Radar? Is that an issue for you a lot? Do a lot of your characters have Radar? Unless you assume that everyone (or at least a majority) of PCs have some form of Radar, how is that even part of the debate?

 

If a character is built to take advantage of this' date=' there are ways to build powers where the cost to attack through the barrier is minimal due to advantage stacking.[/quote']

And that’s completely the system’s fault, of course (note the sarcasm). I’m not saying Barrier isn’t wonky or priced too low (I really wouldn’t know) but to point to Advantage Stacking on other powers as evidence for why that Power is broken? No. That’s simply ridiculous. Guarding against munchkinism and Advantage Stacking is the GMs job. As someone else on the boards is so fond of saying, “The System is not your babysitter”.

 

 

Er' date=' don't let the characters build Megascale movement powers without restrictions, if your plots depend on the characters taking time to get to locations. Megascale is in there because many genres have world-spanning powers. Examples include wizards that can teleport across a continent, shuttles with warp drive, and all of the many ways superheroes get from Point A to Point B.[/quote']

On this we actually agree. Megascale may be broken in many individual settings, but I don’t think it is system breaking and it most definitely has its uses.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

P.S. Shouldn't this be in the Hero System Discussion thread, not the genre specific Champions thread?

[Fedifensor]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Okay' date=' I like the Hero Designer software, but “it’s hard to do with the software” is, in no conceivable way, an excuse for something to be changed in the rules. Many people on these boards still do not use HD. We should limit our “Universal [i']Toolkit[/i]” because you don’t like math and/or are lazy? I don’t think so.

You know, I've been whipping up Champions characters by hand since the mid-80's (and still do work by hand when I'm away from the computer). However, electronic tools are vastly better, because without them character creation takes far too long in HERO. I work full-time and have a child...it's not like college when I had countless hours to write up characters.

 

Plus, there's a difference between using tools in a toolkit, and having to create new tools. Armor Piercing is a core advantage - redoing the advantage cost is basically redesigning one of the tools in the toolkit. While it's not hard to work around that one thing (and personally, I don't think AP at +1/4th is out of line), it adds up if you start changing the core rules. How many tools would you redesign in a toolkit before you just dump the thing and buy something else?

 

First, my smell/taste gets flashed in combat…who cares?

Attack Versus Alternate Defense.

 

And Flash Defense for Radar? Is that an issue for you a lot? Do a lot of your characters have Radar? Unless you assume that everyone (or at least a majority) of PCs have some form of Radar, how is that even part of the debate?

Radar is actually pretty common on my powersuit villains.

 

And that’s completely the system’s fault, of course (note the sarcasm). I’m not saying Barrier isn’t wonky or priced too low (I really wouldn’t know) but to point to Advantage Stacking on other powers as evidence for why that Power is broken? No. That’s simply ridiculous. Guarding against munchkinism and Advantage Stacking is the GMs job. As someone else on the boards is so fond of saying, “The System is not your babysitter”.

It doesn't have to be my babysitter, but the system should have some safeguards. Advantage Stacking is one way to take advantage of Barrier. Mind Scan is another, as was already mentioned.

 

I'm not saying Barrier is broken...but at the same time there's a lot of hostility directed at Balabanto, and not all of it is justified. He does have some valid concerns.

 

On this we actually agree. Megascale may be broken in many individual settings, but I don’t think it is system breaking and it most definitely has its uses.

Nice to see we have one area of agreement.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

You know, I've been whipping up Champions characters by hand since the mid-80's (and still do work by hand when I'm away from the computer). However, electronic tools are vastly better, because without them character creation takes far too long in HERO. I work full-time and have a child...it's not like college when I had countless hours to write up characters.

 

 

Hmm. I'm so old school. Hero designer jut slows me down.

 

Anyway I agree on your point . The system should not be limited by the software. The software should accommodate the system not the other way around. it a great tool for most folks but it shouldn't constrain the system or force it to conform to it.

[bubba smith]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

P.S. Shouldn't this be in the Hero System Discussion thread' date=' not the genre specific Champions thread?[/quote']

you may have a point bygby

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

You know' date=' I've been whipping up Champions characters by hand since the mid-80's (and still do work by hand when I'm away from the computer). However, electronic tools are vastly better, because without them character creation takes far too long in HERO. I work full-time and have a child...it's not like college when I had countless hours to write up characters.[/quote']

 

I don't use Hero Designer either, but the fact is a lot of people do, so it can't be ignored. Even ignoring Hero Designer, though, I also have limited time for gaming. I'm not enamored of spending a lot of it re-learning the game for each GM's 40+ pages of house rules. When I was younger, I tried lots of systems, because I had the time to invest in learning a new rules set. Now, not so much.

 

re Flash Defense:

 

Attack vs Alternate Defense

 

This has improved in 6e, as the value of the advantage is set based on the frequency with which the defense exists. Almost no one has Smell/Taste Flash Defense? Then an AVAD vs Smell/Taste flash defense is more expensive. You want it to target Resistant Smell/Taste Flash Defense? Then that will be even more expensive.

 

Radar is actually pretty common on my powersuit villains.

 

Many people buy Radar because it's a defense against being flashed. How many Flash vs Radar powers do you see to deal with this common ability of your powersuit villains?

 

Although these are micro issues, I do agree with the overall premise that we don't need all these multiple types of Flash Defense. Sure, general Flash Defense that protects sight, smell, hearing and radar seems hard to envision. Tell me a bit more about the protective material that protects you against cold, heat, fire, acid, electricity, sound and all the many other ED SFX in the Hero system. Remember that it doesn't protect you against heatstroke or frostbite since we bought those as NND's, and won't in any way blunt the damage from a thrown rock.

 

We accept compromises in the interests of playability. Flash Defense merits such a compromise, in my view, at least as much as ED does.

 

I'm not saying Barrier is broken

 

I'm not sure we're viewing Barrier correctly. Maybe a 60 AP Barrier is overpowered. In the same context, how many of us would be comfortable with a character spending 60 points to buy +30 PD and +30 ED? Would you be OK with a player spending 60 points on +120 STUN? Using 60 AP as your benchmark for attacks doesn't mean it's a good benchmark universally. Maybe we have to rethink our perception of Barrier and not treat it as an attack power.

[ghost-angel]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

I dislike active point caps. . . .

[IKerensky]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Exactly how high could be this barrier ?

 

Also, excuse me being a noob and asking noob question but :

 

Isn't Hero/Champion a design for effect game ? what you describe doesnt sound like a barrier to me but more like a restraining field, perhaps by adding avantage and tweaking it you are in fact using the wrong Power and should switch to another power denominator ?

 

For me a Barrier is something that block/shield an area make passing through it hard/difficult/time consuming. Separating the battlefield in two by setting up a barrier in the middle is fair game. Surrounding 1 opponent by your barrier switched to a bubble doesn't exactly look like the same effect... Should be at last very costly, entirely another effect or a Multipower...

[tarragon]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

A character shouldn't be vulnerable to Technology and Oatmeal and take both. Granted, a character being vulnerable to Oatmeal is STUPID, but why is magically created grain and water any different from technologically crafted grain and water. Oatmeal is oatmeal. Fire is Fire.

 

This is genre specific. Depending on your interpretation of the fae a faerie may very well take damage from oatmeal that was processed technologically and survive quite well on manually processed oatmeal.

 

During the time when they were really working Superman's vulnerability to magic he may very well have been burned by magic fire and not a burning building.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Exactly how high could be this barrier ?

 

Also, excuse me being a noob and asking noob question but :

 

Isn't Hero/Champion a design for effect game ? what you describe doesnt sound like a barrier to me but more like a restraining field, perhaps by adding avantage and tweaking it you are in fact using the wrong Power and should switch to another power denominator ?

 

For me a Barrier is something that block/shield an area make passing through it hard/difficult/time consuming. Separating the battlefield in two by setting up a barrier in the middle is fair game. Surrounding 1 opponent by your barrier switched to a bubble doesn't exactly look like the same effect... Should be at last very costly, entirely another effect or a Multipower...

 

Well, it was allowed with Force Wall in 5E and since Barrier basically took the place of FW (and part of Entangle) in 6E it would arguably be not only allowable, but the right way to do it. Yes I know, there is no “right way” in Hero, you could probably come up with other ways to do it as well, but why go through all that effort when the rules actually lay out how to englobe people and what ways you may attack through a Barrier?

[megaplayboy]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

hmm. Megascale not more expensive? It costs +1 for the first level, and even if you specify it's not scalable, it's still a +3/4 for the first level. That's definitely pricier than before. Sure, you can buy 10m of movement for 10 points, then take a +1 and now you can move 10m/phase or 10km/phase, but you're not getting any cost breaks on senses or mega-ranged attacks. Basically it just makes getting from point A to point B easier and cheaper. Otherwise it is actually more expensive than it used to be. If you want to mitigate that, you can always require that any movement power bought with megascale be initially purchased at a level sufficient for the character to be moving 10m/segment, based on their Speed. That would mean 30 points worth for SPD 4 characters, and 20 points worth for SPD 6 characters. +1 advantage applied to those amounts costs a pretty penny.

[ghost-angel]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Megascale is absolutely more epxensive in 6E than 5E. I have no idea what Balabanto is going on about there to be honest.

[Balabanto]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Not enough. The most megascale you ever need to buy has a base of 5 meters and everything else is advantages. It's cheaper to go up the advantage chart than to buy more distance.

[ghost-angel]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Depends entirely on the campaign model and how you're making things work.

 

but whatever.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

That was true with 5e Megascale movement as well.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Not enough. The most megascale you ever need to buy has a base of 5 meters and everything else is advantages. It's cheaper to go up the advantage chart than to buy more distance.

 

It's *always* going to be cheaper to go up the advantage chart rather than buying more distance, since the distance on the chart goes up by a factor of 10 per level. You'd have to make each level of Megascale a completely ridiculous Advantage to make it cheaper to buy more Flight distance.

 

Hmmm... maybe that's why it's a Stop Sign power.

 

5m Flight = 5 points

Megascale (50km; +1 1/4) = 11 points

 

50m Flight = 50 points

Megascale (50km; +1) = 100 points.

 

As long as the base flight is just 5 points worth, it wouldn't make that much of a difference even if they had made each level of Megascale a +1 Advantage. But let's say they did, just for fun:

 

5m Flight = 5 points

Megascale (50km; +2) = 15 points.

 

Not a huge cost increase. Hey, let's make each level after the first a +10 Advantage!

 

5m Flight = 5 points

Megascale (50km; +11) = 60 points.

 

50m Flight = 50 points

Megascale (50km; +1) = 100 points.

 

It's still cheaper to buy up Megascale than buying up the base Flight distance. It's just the nature of the beast.

[Fedifensor]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Not enough. The most megascale you ever need to buy has a base of 5 meters and everything else is advantages. It's cheaper to go up the advantage chart than to buy more distance.

One thing that I felt should have been in 6E is a recommended minimum cost for powers. I don't know if you'd do this by power, by campaign type, or something else, but minimum costs really help stop advantage stacking. If you have to spend a minimum of 10 points on a power (before advantages), then adding a +1 advantage guarantees a minimum cost of 20 points.

 

A more radical solution would have been adding a frontloaded base cost, but that would have been more complicated and broken the tradition of 5 pts = 1 DC.

 

Balabanto, my suggestion would be to institute a minimum cost for powers in your game, before any advantages are added. That way you won't have people buying 5 points of a movement power and stacking on lots of MegaScale. Hope that helps!

[ghost-angel]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Minimum cost is good for a Campaign.

 

Worst thing in existence for a system.

[Fedifensor]

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e

 

Minimum cost is good for a Campaign.

 

Worst thing in existence for a system.

Which is why one option listed in my previous post was a recommended minimum cost by campaign type...