Rules intention question

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Rules intention question

 

Please enlighten me as to what we are arguing about.

 

This discussion started with the presumption that Killing Attacks, as a mechanic, meant the character was "not a hero" because "heroes don't kill". In the classic Supers game, I think we start with the presumption that Heroes don't kill, so that's a given. But I don't think they avoid killing in the source material by choice of mechanics. I think the source material routinely shows the Supers demonstrating restraint. They don't open up full power against unknown opponents because that risks lethal harm.

 

Cyclops is the poster child in this regard. His EB seems a classic EB, not a killing attack. He never uses his full power against most opponents. Against the most powerful of foes, we often see him deciding he need not hold back. Does that mean he changes from EB to Killing Attack? I don't think so. I think it means he uses the full DC's in his normal attack. In the comics, characters wasting several attacks with lower powered shots that have no effect is pretty common. How often do you see it in a game? I see it rarely. If he has a costume, he must be able to take a full power blast. And most games support and reward that assumption - waste a turn's worth of attacks, and you can be pretty confident you're going to lose the combat, not look heroic for using restraint until you are certain the target can take a full power blast.

 

Some of what we are talking about doesn't make as much sense when there isn't a campaign framework to hang it off of. The assumptions that I have for my version of the Superhero universe might well be different than yours.

 

Honestly I like my games flavored like the early Iron age. Middle to late 80's Marvel Comics. Post X-men graphic novel God Loves/Man Kills. I like my Supers to be heroic, not barely contained psychotic killing machines. Heroes don't kill, they do their best to prevent innocents getting injured and allow the bad guys to live in prison.

 

I don't think the mechanic makes the power a killing attack in game. Iron age psychos use punches and blasts as much as KA's. But they use them at a level that kills their targets. I think Iron/Rust Age gets a big boost out of Damage Negation, since that power allows BOD to be done without so totally overwhelming the target's defenses that they are instantly KO'd.

 

A psycho killer might have a high powered normal attack used indiscriminately. A Killing Attack is not the only lethal attack in the game. And a Hero might have a Killing Attack which he uses judiciously, like Batman's Batarangs sticking out of some gunman's gun hand. It isn't the mechanic that makes a power lethal in game, and it isn't the mechanic that makes a character heroic or villainous.

 

The presumption in most Supers games (as opposed to the source material) is that guys in costume can take a full power hit, and all full power hits are at pretty much the same level. Most games support the presumption - the villains don't fold when hit with a 12DC attack, they retaliate with their own. Most of us would consider it a "gotcha" if the gloating master villain is hit by a 12d6 EB in the hero's opening attack, flies back and hits a wall, and is killed instantly because he had 8 BOD and 2 defenses.

 

But it's no less a "gotcha" to give him 40 PD and Ed, and no resistant defenses, and then criticize the player who has the audacity to select a different mechanic because it better suits his character conception when he inflicts severe harm because our huge well defended villain has no resistant defenses. That's just as much a "gotcha" if not more - it singles out a specific character to penalize. Better to just say up front "I don't like the killing attack mechanic - it is prohibited in this game".

 

I can give a villain low defenses, 2x BOD from all attacks and "takes BOD from attacks that don't usually do BOD", and any Super striking full power will hospitalize or kill the target. But it's only fair game if the players know that, in this game, the villains are not guaranteed to have decent defenses, so use of full power could easily be lethal. And I have then changed the ground rules - my master villains, who have the defenses to soak up a full power hit, can't be designed to take the heroes out in a turn or so, while they are gradually ramping up power levels as they gradually realize this exceptional adversary can take a full power hit, and they are going to need to forego restraint.

[Chimera 12]

Re: Rules intention question

 

Well, the presumption that it should be okay to use full power all the time might owe something to two particular sources.

 

One, there's ye olde Fantasy/Wargamer Mindset. In a fair number of fantasy games (including, of course, the granddaddy of them all), hitting your enemies as hard and fast as you can is the way to win, and quite a few of them make killing said enemies the default solution -- after all, taking prisoners is a hassle and letting your foes run free after beating them is just begging for trouble in the future, right? Better just kill them so you can take their stuff with an untroubled conscience. (If you think you hear a faint sarcastic echo of the "STUN Damage In Heroic Campaigns" section on pages 6E2 119ff here...well, I won't say you're altogether wrong.)

 

Now, superhero combat does pretty clearly function somewhat differently. But players -- and GMs! -- used to a steady diet of "kill or be killed"-style games or obsessed with "realistic" (i.e. lethal) combat results won't necessarily find that an immediately obvious conclusion to jump to and may either deliberately or unconsciously stick to what they're familiar with instead. Which means that, to cope, NPCs that aren't supposed to just die or get hospitalized need defenses suited to handling the PCs' biggest attacks, which makes lesser attacks less effective, which in turn just reinforces these players' belief that they were right all along...and so the circle continues.

 

The second reason people might be tempted to go all-out at the drop of a hat is, I think, Hero's point-based character system itself. Character points are a limited resource, and after you've sunk a bunch of them into buying that lovely 12d6 Blast there's a distinct temptation to use that at full power as often as possible to get your points' worth out of your investment...after all, the argument might go, if I'm just using six or seven dice of it all the time, I might as well have spent the 'excess' points on something actually useful instead of extra damage that I'm always holding back anyway!

 

All in all, actually having NPCs whose powers and defenses range all over the map -- and letting the players know about it, of course! -- still looks to me like the best way to get players to "get with" the superhero genre and its particular (and, I won't deny, at times peculiar) combat tropes. If the villains' defenses are always conveniently scaled to handle the PCs' full-bore attacks safely, then the GM really is just teaching them that the only way to win is to use full power all the time all over again.

[lemming]

Re: Rules intention question

 

Ya know' date=' I really don't know what the heck your point is. It's starting to feel like we are arguing just to argue. Either that or we are talking past one another.[/quote']

 

Well, it is the internet...

 

 

 

someone had to say it, at least I didn't go all "this is sparta" nonsense...