GM conundrum - CSLs

[purple justice]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

The French part will be tough' date=' but you can try herocentral.com for play-by-post remote games.[/b']

 

I was under the impression that there are a lot of French RPGers - maybe there's a French site similar to Hero Central?

Hé ?

I understood the french hero system community was ridicoulous.

If we are so tough , why there is no translation ?

[GAZZA]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

Hé ?

I understood the french hero system community was ridicoulous.

If we are so tough , why there is no translation ?

It's a fair question; there's probably a board somewhere here that you can pose that directly to the publishers. I would have imagined that with the size of France and French-Canada alone, there'd be a reasonable market at least for a pdf translation.

[ghost-angel]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

I remember you Hugh Neilson's reply for justifying my position after:

I said it is not legal. My reasons ? The example on BR P14. Jason pick only 50's CP worth's complications. And BR says he only has 375 CP to create Defender. So he can't buy a blast for 400 CP.

Some people argue the missing 25 CP can be recuperated by selling Normal hearing or Normal sight. But - according to the BR - more Complications do not provide extra character points to spend on the character creation ( including power ).

Then , Gazza , ask me to read the p.46 because (s)he explains me no need to have many END points to use the huge blast. STUN points will be used instead of END.

Okay , but Huge Neilson's character has 20END and 20STUN (bases values only because all the character points were spent in the blast ).

I answer Gazza that on p.46 the only thing which looks like its description is CHARACTERISTICS; a power increasing END ( or any other characteristics like STUN ). And as it is a power , it costs some points to acquire it. And Huge Neilson's character haven't points anymore.

And to finish I said Huge Neilson's character probably would be stunned or knocked out before using its huge Blast. Because to make 19- with 10d6 is improbable.

 

Here's part of your problem - first Gazza was quoting p46 from a different book, not the one you have. We'll just move past that.

 

Second - the Example on p14; this is only an example of what happens when a Character does Not Have all 75 Complication Points; If you take less than 75 Points you get less than 400 Points for your Character. If you take all 75 Points then you get all 400 Points. In this case, the 'missing' 25 Points can be made up for by just taking another 25 Points of Complications.

 

If you have access to all 400 Points (by taking all 75 Matching Complications) then you are allowed by the rules to spend them however you want, all on one huge power, or more intelligently divided up amongst an array of abilities.

 

What the original point of using the 80D8 Blast Power for 400 Points as an example was this: Just because you CAN does not mean you SHOULD.

 

How that applies to the original question: Just because you CAN buy +8 Combat Skill Levels does not mean you SHOULD - game ruining things can happen.

[secretID]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

Hé ?

I understood the french hero system community was ridicoulous.

If we are so tough , why there is no translation ?

Sorry - I meant that it would be tough - difficult - to find a French/English translator on Hero Central.

 

I don't know about Hero in particular in France - I just thought that there was a lot of RPGers there. (And I did not have very good basis for that belief.)

 

You might want to post in the "HERO Games Product Line" forum.

[Bolon]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

This is a Terran Empire game. He has chosen rifle at a high level. He hits easily in very difficult situations. He therefore is the primary target in any ranged combat. Villains will adapt by using tech to find him after the first shot or targeting him. If he spends all on "to hit", what kind of defences will he have for concentrated firepower. He took rifle specific. The weapon is single fire and large. He will get ganged up on, easily spotted or forbidden to have a rifle in some situations especially on high-tech planets and peaceful planets. The character will be useless outside of combat with so much focused on CSL. Try to do a house clearing or close combat with a rifle and you will see the penalties that will quickly be added to movement and perception. How much of your campaign will be open ground fighting that he can use such an awkward weapon. The skills will not transfer to pistol or other weapons that would be needed in a building. I would allow it if it didn't break my base rules for the campaign as set by the level rules. Look at the suggested and then just think. It is not a rifle without the long barrel and stock to give it the qualities of a rifle. Personally, it sounds like the guy is screwing himself with a character that will become unplayable a lot of the time.

[Checkmate]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

But the question of whether it's arbitrary is all about whether it makes sfx sense. If you're playing a game of no superhumans, a STR limit isn't arbitrary.

 

That's my point. A limit applicable to a game mechanic - "effect" - is arbitrary, but a limit to STR, skills, etc. isn't necessarily so.

 

 

I think you know what I meant - total OCV, from base OCV, MAs, CSLs, etc.

This reminds me of an old 5th ed argument I had all the time. If you told people that anyone that if you had a STR over 25 you were a metahuman, for the most part, people were fine with that. But do the same thing with DEX and/or SPD and look out, you had some fights on your hand.

[GAZZA]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

This reminds me of an old 5th ed argument I had all the time. If you told people that anyone that if you had a STR over 25 you were a metahuman' date=' for the most part, people were fine with that. But do the same thing with DEX and/or SPD and look out, you had some fights on your hand.[/quote']

Well, in fairness, that's because there were some unfortunate precedents set in 4th edition. Rainbow Archer, anyone?

[Checkmate]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

Well' date=' in fairness, that's because there were some unfortunate precedents set in 4th edition. Rainbow Archer, anyone?[/quote']

I think there was a lot more too it than that, I mean people had no problems discounting the entire book European Enemies. I think it had more to do with cost and people's perception. Skill Levels were more expensive (and not as useful) than DEX. However you bring up STR being cheaper (and more useful) than Martial Arts and they didn't want to hear it. People just wouldn't accept that limiting DEX was the exact same as limiting STR.

[ghost-angel]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

This is a Terran Empire game. He has chosen rifle at a high level. He hits easily in very difficult situations. He therefore is the primary target in any ranged combat. Villains will adapt by using tech to find him after the first shot or targeting him. If he spends all on "to hit"' date=' what kind of defences will he have for concentrated firepower. He took rifle specific. The weapon is single fire and large. He will get ganged up on, easily spotted or forbidden to have a rifle in some situations especially on high-tech planets and peaceful planets. The character will be useless outside of combat with so much focused on CSL. Try to do a house clearing or close combat with a rifle and you will see the penalties that will quickly be added to movement and perception. How much of your campaign will be open ground fighting that he can use such an awkward weapon. The skills will not transfer to pistol or other weapons that would be needed in a building. I would allow it if it didn't break my base rules for the campaign as set by the level rules. Look at the suggested and then just think. It is not a rifle without the long barrel and stock to give it the qualities of a rifle. Personally, it sounds like the guy is screwing himself with a character that will become unplayable a lot of the time.[/quote']

 

The Rifles category can include Assault Rifles, Hunting Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and even bigger things called 'Rifles' ... it's not limited to the single type of rifle you've managed to pull out and specify. It's a broader category - especially at 3pts/CSLs. Rifle usually refers to 'two handed gun of some form'

[Tasha]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

Well' date=' in fairness, that's because there were some unfortunate precedents set in 4th edition. Rainbow Archer, anyone?[/quote']

 

That monstrosity was a huge dex and speed freak in 2nd edition in enemies III.

[Tasha]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

I think that the Dex's being higher for Supers really comes from D&D. In D&D people's max dex is 18 -20 (talking OD&D or AD&D here). So when they come to Champions and want to play a Super they want their Dex to be higher than their D&D character. The D&D character is seen as a "Normal" and to be super one wants to be higher than that. I think that is the reason that the calls to make Dex and Speed as low as heroic games fall on deaf ears. Also with Hero's Normal games having a dex range of 14-20 and a SPD range of 3-4, there is also a natural desire to want your superheroes to be better than those regular heroes.

 

Add on top of that how High Dex and High speed can allow a character to dominate a game and you have the recipe for Old School D&D min-maxers to start a DEX/Speed race.

 

I think that if Champions were released now as a new game, that within a year we would see Dex and SPD averages climb to the levels they are today. I believe this would happen even if the enemy books were filled with villians who had an average DEX of 14-20. It's what happened with 2nd edition, and it is just what most players seem to want.

[ghost-angel]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

The average DEX in a published character for Hero for 5th Edition was 20. I have done the math.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

I think that the Dex's being higher for Supers really comes from D&D. In D&D people's max dex is 18 -20 (talking OD&D or AD&D here). So when they come to Champions and want to play a Super they want their Dex to be higher than their D&D character. The D&D character is seen as a "Normal" and to be super one wants to be higher than that. I think that is the reason that the calls to make Dex and Speed as low as heroic games fall on deaf ears. Also with Hero's Normal games having a dex range of 14-20 and a SPD range of 3-4' date=' there is also a natural desire to want your superheroes to be better than those regular heroes. [/quote']

 

Perhaps. But I see lots of Supers with STR, INT, BOD and EGO in the 10 - 20 range because, while Super, they are not Super in respect of those stats. If DEX in the 1st Ed character examples had ranged from 5 for the slow Brick to 23 for the fast martial artist, I suspect we would see lower DEX scores across the board right up to today, with a vast proportion of Supers having non-Super DEX.

 

Where crossovers between Supers and Fantasy have occurred, the Fantasy characters have tended to be at the high range of Supers (eg. Conan holding his own against Captain America), not being slow compared to everyone but the Bricks.

 

Add on top of that how High Dex and High speed can allow a character to dominate a game and you have the recipe for Old School D&D min-maxers to start a DEX/Speed race.

 

The fact that there was no other means of obtaining CV at a reasonable cost certainly helped. However, I believe the initial sample characters set the tone. They established that a Super with under 23 DEX and under 5 SPD was pretty slow. If every character with a 23 DEX and 5 SPD had instead been published with a 10 DEX and a 3 SPD, and the other characters branched out from there, I think we would have lower DEX and SPD stats flowing through all editions.

[TheSouljourner]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

Not needing dex to gain CV is one of the main reasons I like 6th edition so much. You can have a slow brick who can still hit stuff. It's so much better.

 

So, I gave my players the following in-game examples of what some numbers of CSLs mean:

 

1: Trained Soldier

2: Elite Soldier

3: Captain/Master

4: Grand Master

 

Given the low resolution of heroic games and the 3d6 bell curve in general, I wanted to make it clear that you don't need +8 to hit to be good. +4 gives takes you from a 50% hit rate to a 90% hit rate. That's a huge jump.

 

Notably, I have still not given them a hard cap on CV. We'll see what they come up with.

[Tasha]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

Perhaps. But I see lots of Supers with STR, INT, BOD and EGO in the 10 - 20 range because, while Super, they are not Super in respect of those stats. If DEX in the 1st Ed character examples had ranged from 5 for the slow Brick to 23 for the fast martial artist, I suspect we would see lower DEX scores across the board right up to today, with a vast proportion of Supers having non-Super DEX.

 

Where crossovers between Supers and Fantasy have occurred, the Fantasy characters have tended to be at the high range of Supers (eg. Conan holding his own against Captain America), not being slow compared to everyone but the Bricks.

 

 

 

The fact that there was no other means of obtaining CV at a reasonable cost certainly helped. However, I believe the initial sample characters set the tone. They established that a Super with under 23 DEX and under 5 SPD was pretty slow. If every character with a 23 DEX and 5 SPD had instead been published with a 10 DEX and a 3 SPD, and the other characters branched out from there, I think we would have lower DEX and SPD stats flowing through all editions.

 

The funny thing is that ALL of the characters included in Both Champions 2nd edition and in the Included Adventure "Viper's nest" Not including agents or any Viper personnel had and average dex of 22.8 (just book characters + Book Villains = 23.1 avg dex). Enemies (I) had an average of 24.1 Dex including everyone in the book. So yes the game came with a bias toward 23 dex being average. This is obviously what Steve Peterson and George MacDonald had in mind for the Dex ranges of the game. I seem to remember hearing at more than one early Hero System that the game was designed around how they perceived comic heroes were different from Normal people. What I am getting at is that if you played in games with the Original people I believe your Dex and Speed ranges wouldn't be too different from the ranges you see today. In other words why else would the NPC Dex's be set so high? Why would they run at a lower dex and publish their new game and supplements at a high dex range. I don't believe that they would.

 

I am also not talking about Fantasy comic crossovers. What I am talking about is the biases that people bring into a game based on other gaming experiences. What I am saying is that for someone who was playing a 16-20 dex D&D character, a Superhero that had a similar dex range might not feel very super. I know that my group when we switched over from D&D and before we really had a handle on "proper" powerlevels all had 28+ dexes and 6-8 spds built on 500-600 points all paid for with disads (2nd ed style)

 

As I pointed out in several different threads, when 4e came out it was revealed that according to a poll they ran on the AOL Hero Message boards. The average campaign had a 23 Dex as campaign average. It really doesn't seem like anything has changed ex. that perhaps in 5er that the avg of all published character's Dex Dropped to 20.

[ghost-angel]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

Personally, what really kicks in the feel of a Superhero over my Fantasy Character is the Speed. They may both by DEX18, but one is going to be Speed 5-8, the other 3-4. Going first means less than going more often, IMO.

[Utech]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

To return to the first post, I'll just toss in a couple of yen: I don't think your player will get exceptional mileage out of all those CSLs. I'd recommend that you try it out and see what happens. If he does happen to hit everything he aims at . . . so what? Sounds very cinematic and exciting to me. He won't be great at everything so why not let him be a heck of a great shot?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs

 

Not needing dex to gain CV is one of the main reasons I like 6th edition so much. You can have a slow brick who can still hit stuff. It's so much better.

 

Add to that the fact you can have a high OCV and a poor DCV, or vice versa, and the decoupling is even better. I like the "campaign comparables". if everyone shows up with a Grand Master, it's time for a chat.

 

The funny thing is that ALL of the characters included in Both Champions 2nd edition and in the Included Adventure "Viper's nest" Not including agents or any Viper personnel had and average dex of 22.8 (just book characters + Book Villains = 23.1 avg dex). Enemies (I) had an average of 24.1 Dex including everyone in the book. So yes the game came with a bias toward 23 dex being average. This is obviously what Steve Peterson and George MacDonald had in mind for the Dex ranges of the game. I seem to remember hearing at more than one early Hero System that the game was designed around how they perceived comic heroes were different from Normal people. What I am getting at is that if you played in games with the Original people I believe your Dex and Speed ranges wouldn't be too different from the ranges you see today. In other words why else would the NPC Dex's be set so high? Why would they run at a lower dex and publish their new game and supplements at a high dex range. I don't believe that they would.

 

However, when Champions was released, it did not come with an indicator of "normal human", "cop", "elite soldier", etc. levels of DEX and SPD. It was only when the game branched into other genres (Espionage, Justice Inc. and Fantasy Hero) that they set a human baseline, rather than a starting character baseline. Joe Average was a 10 DEX, though, and even slow, dumb Ogre had an 18.

 

I am also not talking about Fantasy comic crossovers. What I am talking about is the biases that people bring into a game based on other gaming experiences. What I am saying is that for someone who was playing a 16-20 dex D&D character, a Superhero that had a similar dex range might not feel very super. I know that my group when we switched over from D&D and before we really had a handle on "proper" powerlevels all had 28+ dexes and 6-8 spds built on 500-600 points all paid for with disads (2nd ed style)

 

As I pointed out in several different threads, when 4e came out it was revealed that according to a poll they ran on the AOL Hero Message boards. The average campaign had a 23 Dex as campaign average. It really doesn't seem like anything has changed ex. that perhaps in 5er that the avg of all published character's Dex Dropped to 20.

 

The problem with a change is twofold, however. First, the characters don't "feel" as Super if you're used to average DEX and SPD of 23/5 and you drop that to 11/3. They'll probably start feeling Super again as you play at those levels, but the initial drop is a big issue.

 

Second, it makes the old published books less useful. If I were DoJ, that might tempt me to make just such a change - if the game were less reverse-compatible, they might sell more "Update the old material to 6e" books. But I credit DoJ with a high level of business ethics and fairness to their audience in making sure those old materials remain highly compatible with the new edition.