The Big Arguments

[Monolith]

Originally posted by D-Man

You will have to live with the fact that not all of us will adopt your crusaders zealous view that hero is perfect in every way.

And you will just have to live with the idea that we do not all except your antagonist view that everything is useless because it is not exactly how you wanted it.

[Snarf]

A friend of mine has been annoyed with the absorbtion power. Buying it twice for physical and energy absorbtion is awkward and the option that lets you switch between the two for twice the price is even more awkward. No other super hero RPG (that we've played) makes the absorbtion power this complicated and expensive and we can't figure why it's this way in hero.

[pinecone]

I don't know that I know THE answer but a medium to hefty dose of absorbsion is one way to model Invulnrability...and that should be fairly expensive.....it can also make hay of active/point limit campains which are fairly common....

[Mordacius]

Hrm...miscellaneous thoughts:

 

Change Environment bothers me because I figured out a good fix for it in about five minutes: I don't allow it to give bonuses, but I *do* allow it to reduce penalties. For instance, light is bought as a reduction to sight penalties from darkness. Could use heat to reduce DEX penalties from ice, etc.

 

Torn about the new Shape Shift. I understand the reasoning behind it, but I always end up paying more points than I feel are appropriate making an "authentic" change (covering the Radar group, for instance).

 

I love the new Instant Change. Making it a specialized Transform allows much greater flexibility with costuming.

 

I don't like the Healing cap or the new Regeneration rules much, but I don't really know what to do with them.

[Old Man]

Originally posted by Mordacius

I don't like the Healing cap or the new Regeneration rules much, but I don't really know what to do with them.

 

Go back to 4th ed, that's what I did. Not that 4th ed healing didn't have problems.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Originally posted by Bartman

10- Extreme breakdowns for disease and poison in life support. I would have liked to see both these cap at about 5pts each. But they are great for rounding out characters. I would have liked to see something more gradual as well. As it is you jump straight from no immunity to total immunity. What about characters who are resistant but not immune?

Couldn't you just take the LS in question with, say, an Activation Roll, or perhaps a Gradual Effect limitation? Activation Roll for "Yeah, I was able to fight it off the last 3 times with barely a sniffle, but I guess that wore me down because this time I caught Yungian Fever" and Gradual Effect for " 'Your fever broke after just 2 hours? But it takes two *days* to fight off Symballeen Blood-Burn!' 'I almost died from it as a child; these days, it just makes me feel really cruddy for a few hours or a day at most; I guess I'm mostly immune to it.' "

[Tom McCarthy]

I do believe the Hero System still makes it a bit too expensive for a character to do some things, like attacks that only do knockback, attacks that make characters waste a phase, etc.

 

Size scaling feels off or unrealistic, but all the coherent systems seem quite complex.

 

'Incomplete' characters are also a complicated issue when one delves into it; the author of the Digital Hero article did a good job keeping it clear.

 

Damage scales can be a problem; in Star Hero and Terran Empire, I find the space phenomena are just outrageously large and powerful.

 

Steve does a decent job of attacking some of these in Digital Hero (object creation, for example).

[JohnTaber]

HI Pattern Ghost and Bartman:

 

Re: Life Support. I agree that the cost breakdowns is too high for the poison/disease thing. The problem is compounded in low point Heroic games with the high cost. In my Star Hero game I dropped the costs like this...

1 point immune to single disease or poison.

3 points immune to related diseases or poisons.

5 points immune all poisons

5 points immune to all disease

 

Works fine.

[CorpCommander]

No Thinner

 

Originally posted by zornwil

Hey, just thought of a more general thing - how does everyone feel about the depth of 5th edition?

 

The core book is great - 4th edition was light, perhaps lighter than Sidekick is. Since I have a copy of Sidekick I will say it is a great start for those just learning the system but I would never say the core book is heavy. I don't think you could run a campaign using just Sidekick unless you were really interested in doing a lot of your own work. If anything, the core book is a little light in some of the end sections. I could write a few more pages on environments alone.

[Pattern Ghost]

Originally posted by JohnTaber

HI Pattern Ghost and Bartman:

 

Re: Life Support. I agree that the cost breakdowns is too high for the poison/disease thing. The problem is compounded in low point Heroic games with the high cost. In my Star Hero game I dropped the costs like this...

1 point immune to single disease or poison.

3 points immune to related diseases or poisons.

5 points immune all poisons

5 points immune to all disease

 

Works fine.

 

I like that.

[Tech]

Originally posted by JohnTaber

1 point immune to single disease or poison.

3 points immune to related diseases or poisons.

5 points immune all poisons

5 points immune to all disease

 

Works fine.

 

This is simple. I like it!

[Fedifensor]

I posted some of the things that bug me about 5E in another thread, but I'll restate them here:

 

Characteristics - STR and DEX are too efficient, CON is efficient but useless if bought with No Figured Characteristics.

 

Shape Shift - horrendously-expensive, way more complicated and less useful than the 4th edition version.

 

Healing-as-Regeneration - It would have taken less space to put Regeneration as a separate power (with Heal Limbs and Resurrection as adders). Much less complex, and more useful (4th edition Regeneration healed Drain damage, which fits characters like Wolverine).

 

Force Walls - I hate Force Walls with Power Defense that disintegrate if someone tries to speak with you telepathically or shines a bright light your way. Exotic defenses should be individual additions that are unrelated.

 

Damage Shield - only useful when people go on an "advantage-stacking" spree. A EB Damage Shield costs too much to do anything with, but an NND Autofire Damage Shield remains at least somewhat effective.

 

Noncombat movement - pay lots of points to travel at 100 MPH...but you can go supersonic speeds for less than 10 points (Flight 5", Megascale).

 

Additive and Multiplicative Scaling - Every 5 points of Strength *doubles* your lifting power, but only gives you an extra hex or two of throwing distance. Moving at Mach 1 will splat any character in existence, since velocity damage is additive instead of exponential.

 

EC Restrictions - The must cost END crusade bugs me. A lot. Flavor powers like +20 ED Armor, only versus fire fit certain concepts perfectly, but become far more expensive than they're worth when outside an EC. Champions used to reward tight character conceptions - now the rules actively discourage them.

 

Multiple-power attacks - This just bugs me. It also throws active point limits out the window, since characters can just buy several attacks at the active point limits and throw them all in one massive strike.

[CorpCommander]

Originally posted by Fedifensor

EC Restrictions - The must cost END crusade bugs me. A lot. Flavor powers like +20 ED Armor, only versus fire fit certain concepts perfectly, but become far more expensive than they're worth when outside an EC. Champions used to reward tight character conceptions - now the rules actively discourage them.

 

What is the thinking behind the must cost endurance requirement? It's been years since I played 3rd edition (didn't do much with 4th and have been playing 5th since June.) At least it is ignorable and not a hard rule.

[austenandrews]

I would second the mention of Multiple Power Attack. except that every HERO gamer I know thinks the rule is so stupid that it's as if it doesn't exist.

 

-AA

[zornwil]

Originally posted by austenandrews

I would second the mention of Multiple Power Attack. except that every HERO gamer I know thinks the rule is so stupid that it's as if it doesn't exist.

 

-AA

 

Although I don't want to see this thread become a series of actual big arguments, I do want to pause to mention that MPA is not nearly so bad as people think. It simulates well the genre situation of a character who throws two bolts at once, that sort of thing. It happens a lot in heroic fiction.

 

However, in the gaming context, yes, it is troublesome, particularly given some would argue HERO theoretically addressed this with various other capabilities. And even I don't allow it as given in the book, I have additional restrictions. The book does provide some notable restrictions built in. I wish I had the book, though, as I think it forbids MPAs from an Elemental, which actually makes less genre sense - usually the in-genre super-hero use is the sort of Iceman guy who can fire an ice blast that also entangles, but doesn't have them as intrinsically Linked.

 

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that I respect the reasons for the inclusion of MPA and I think HEROites would do well to not pooh-pooh that COMPLETELY, rather to consider it well before dismissing.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by CorpCommander

What is the thinking behind the must cost endurance requirement? It's been years since I played 3rd edition (didn't do much with 4th and have been playing 5th since June.) At least it is ignorable and not a hard rule.

 

I do not believe anyone has discovered a Long-stated rationale, nor has it been provided in 5th edition.

 

However, the rationale I've heard is that "EC powers are all manifestations of the expenditure of an elemental energy/release of some sort. Therefore, to be consistent, all powers must cost END."

 

I think this is hogwash, as ECs are less strictly defined (just look at the collection of HERO-provided villain ECs). I can understand the notion of limiting ECs, but this brute force method, declaring a new rule which has no apparent SFX relationship, is beneath HERO. For more depth, there's tons of thoughts buried in the recent thread on Elemental Controls, as tedious as that thread is in some parts.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Originally posted by zornwil

I do not believe anyone has discovered a Long-stated rationale, nor has it been provided in 5th edition.

 

However, the rationale I've heard is that "EC powers are all manifestations of the expenditure of an elemental energy/release of some sort. Therefore, to be consistent, all powers must cost END."

 

I've always figured it was there primarily to keep people from purchasing extremely cost-effective Defense powers (particularly Damage Reduction, but also Armor) too cheaply.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by JeffreyWKramer

I've always figured it was there primarily to keep people from purchasing extremely cost-effective Defense powers (particularly Damage Reduction, but also Armor) too cheaply.

 

Yeah, and thanks for clarifying that, but 0-END seems a poor way to do it. It would have been better to do a "defenses limited to 2x control cost" or some-such, a more strict and direct rule, and even if it's not SFX-related it's at least tied to a fairly self-evident construct.

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by JeffreyWKramer

I've always figured it was there primarily to keep people from purchasing extremely cost-effective Defense powers (particularly Damage Reduction, but also Armor) too cheaply.

 

As opposed to the attack powers?

 

If the point costs of offensive and defensive powers really are balanced, then it shouldn't matter what is put in a framework.

[Gary]

Originally posted by CorpCommander

What is the thinking behind the must cost endurance requirement? It's been years since I played 3rd edition (didn't do much with 4th and have been playing 5th since June.) At least it is ignorable and not a hard rule.

 

It's to keep EC's somewhat balanced. ECs were just too disgusting when you were allowed to place characteristics, armor, damage reduction, and absorption in the EC. The cost end part limits the number of powers you can keep active at the same time, and thus limits the number of powers you can efficiently place in the EC.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Originally posted by Kristopher

As opposed to the attack powers?

 

If the point costs of offensive and defensive powers really are balanced, then it shouldn't matter what is put in a framework.

 

I think it's hard to argue that the cost of any Attack power is balanced against the cost of Damage Reduction. This is particularly true in campaigns with high active point limits, at which point Damage Reduction becomes extremely cost-effective. There's a reason Damage Reduction is a < ! > Power.

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by JeffreyWKramer

I think it's hard to argue that the cost of any Attack power is balanced against the cost of Damage Reduction. This is particularly true in campaigns with high active point limits, at which point Damage Reduction becomes extremely cost-effective. There's a reason Damage Reduction is a < ! > Power.

 

I'd rather rely on the GM's discretion for these issues.

 

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with placing all that in an EC, since a character with all that relies on it as much as a a character with END-based powers relies on his END-based powers.

 

Of course, if you start out with the belief that characteristics are under-priced, then it might not seem fair to have them in frameworks. But I don't, so I don't.

[Fedifensor]

Originally posted by JeffreyWKramer

I've always figured it was there primarily to keep people from purchasing extremely cost-effective Defense powers (particularly Damage Reduction, but also Armor) too cheaply.

Of course, you can still take those powers by adding Costs END and 0 END...which isn't much of a hinderance.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Fedifensor

Of course, you can still take those powers by adding Costs END and 0 END...which isn't much of a hinderance.

Actually that is illegal, at least that is what it states in the FAQ.

[JmOz]

I think on EC's that Characteristics should have been somewhere between no and H*** NO, other wise all powers must have GM approval to be placed in an EC