Standard Effect and MoS

[Ndreare]

Messing with Standard Effect and MoS a little bit, I decided to try and implement a house rule.

 

All powers and effects automaticly have "Standard Effect" + Margin of success on the skill/attack roll To a maximum of making a roll by half which would follow the normal critical success rule inflicting maximum damage.

This would effectively speed up combat quite a bit. I have tested it in a war game like scenario were I ran a 4 on 4 with me controlling both sides, but was curious what other implications I would be missing out on.

 

This was brought about by frustration over rolling large dice pools and frustration over rolling a huge success making the roll by 4 or even 5 then rolling minimal damage. So far the players like the idea but we have not had a chance to try it as Game Night is Tuesday (tonight).

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

I can certainly see some appeal to this system, but there are two things you will want to consider. First, if "Standard Effect" is baseline for damage, then the minimum damage just changed significantly from what you might roll on the dice. This will shift the average damage done to a higher amount because you never roll poorly. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but be aware of it.

 

Second, for a 3d6 bell curve roll, if the combatants are equally matched, then then most damage will be close to the Standard Effect. Power gamers will then try to set their defenses to cover the Standard Effect damage so they rarely get hurt, and/or set their damage to make sure the Standard Effect is higher than average defenses. Yes I know that power gamers would do this sort of thing anyway, but the streamlining system you have outlined will make it easier to do. Depending on your group and damage caps and such this may be a nonissue, but it is something to consider before laying down the campaign rules.

[Ice9]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

Actually, depending on how much MoS you need, the average damage could be lower, because "Standard Effect" is lower than average. For example, on 12d6, Standard Effect is 36 points vs 42 points by rolling - which could be huge against a 30 DEF foe.

 

As for the OP, it seems like a viable idea; the specifics would depend on how much damage you added from the MoS.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

I always wonder whether this system motivates higher OCV (to hit by more, so hitting not only more often but also for more damage) and/or higher DCV (to be missed more often, and also to better manage the impact of a hit that does get past that huge DCV).

[Ndreare]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

The idea wuld be for every point of MOS the effect would increase by 1 DC to the normal maximum (2 Body & 6 Stun per Base DC)

 

I should have considered the "Arms Race" element. Really not sure how much it wil change. The players have always had an arms race mentality and the campaighn limits will not change.

[psyber624]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

You might also want to consider the effect this will have on Stunning. (Lower SER plus the lack of variation means that stunning will be much less common, unless an opponent rolls a really high success.) I believe the end sum of this will be to make DEF much less valuable, and DCV much more valuable. Bricks will be able to easily ignore most normal damage, but their lower DCV totals may actually result in them taking MORE damage than standard, while high DCV characters can get away with much lower defenses than normal, relying instead on rarely if ever getting hit with huge MoS's. This could result in Martial Arts type characters being more powerful than Bricks unless you modify costs/caps or something.

[Bolon]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

I am assuming your Standard effect would be the damage of a hit without rolling hit damage. Have you looked at 3.5 per die as standard for statistical purposes. Each +1 would add half the dice as damage so once you are at +5, you have maximum damage. Is this the idea you are trying to create?

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

I've done it that way for years and its worked out pretty well. Steven Long had it as asuggestion in the first version of 5th edition on a sidebar and we all jumped on it. We use the 105 rounded down he suggested. That not having to roll damage dice really speeds things up. It can make damage very dynamic and high CVs pretty devastating but slow moving bricks can be designed to stand up to them with a little adaptation.

[Ndreare]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

While insane damage lottery is the primary thing I am hoping to address, speeding up play would be a good benefit as well. One less roll after all.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

Well the damage lottery could easily be addressed by decreasing the amount of extra damage the MOS does. I use 10% per pip but it could be something completely different. That ones less roll especially when it could have been lots of dice does really speed things up.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

Some thoughts...12d6 attack would do 36/12 and for each point of 'success' in the attack roll, what do you add? 1 Stun and 1 Body? Something else?

 

If you are adding Body, the Body damage will stack up disproportionately quickly, which you need to watch, and if you are not then there is no way to roll well enough to break through certain Barriers and such.

 

You mentioned critical rules: are you using them, and if so, which one/ones? Critical rules will have an effect on average damage, but how much of an effect depends on which critical rules you are using. Max damage on a natural 3 will make little overall difference, whereas max on half what you needed can make a lot more.

 

Just looking at SE+MOS and only considering STUN, bear in mind that as DC goes up, the MOS you would need to get to average rolled damage increases. If you are rolling 2d6, you SE 6 and AR (Average Roll) 7, so you only need +1 MOS to get average damage. If you are rolling 12d6 you SE 36 and AR 42, so you need +6 MOS to get to AR. The effect of this is that, whilst superhero attack and damage rolls speed up, combats will be longer because people will be taking less damage through defences (DTD): assuming 24 PD in a 12d6 game, you are doing 18 DTD with an AR and 12+MOS with SE. If the opponents are reasonably matched in CV, that could mean you need 4 or 5 clean hits to take someone down rather than 3 - and REC will then play a more important roll as you are likely to get more PS 12 recoveries if the combat requires more hits to KO.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

Some thoughts...12d6 attack would do 36/12 and for each point of 'success' in the attack roll' date=' what do you add? 1 Stun and 1 Body? Something else?[/quote']

 

It seems to me that, for this to be functional, the MoS must scale with the size of the attack. That would suggest, for example, that a base hit does 3 STUN and 1 BOD per normal die. We could say that each point of success adds 1/2 STUN per d6 and 1/6 BOD per 1d6. This keeps BOD and STUN increases in proportion to base BOD and STUN, and the attack hits maximum damage (6 STUN and 2 BOD per die) with a MoS of 6. That would be pretty volatile - assuming equal OCV and DCV, a roll of 5 or less means maximum damage.

 

One approach to fixing this would be to start lower. Maybe a "just barely hit" attack does 1.5 STUN and 1/2 BOD per d6. Now you need to hit by 9 to maximize damage, and if your opponent's DCV matches your OCV, you can only hit by 8. Still, 66 STUN and 22 BOD is better than you'll likely roll on 1 in 216 rolls of 12d6. But now you need a pretty lucky roll just to score average damage (hit by 4 to get 42 STUN, 14 BOD). This seems pretty likely to prolong combats.

 

Another would be to increase the STUN/BOD for every 2 points' MOS. That's only four bumps to get from an 11 to a 3, so against an equal DCV target, you can bump up to 5 STUN, 1 2/3 BOD per d6 - again, how often would you roll 60 STUN and 20 BOD on 3d6. NOTE: For easier math, BOD will always be 1/3 of STUN. I suspect players would keep charts of damage at various MoS so they don't have to do math in game.

 

Low DCV targets need to be built to withstand maximum damage attacks. That 2 DCV Giant Brick in a game with 8 - 10 OCV averages can rely on routinely being hit with 6 - 8 MOS pretty routinely, and max damage if we assume base SE with +1/2 STUN per 2 MoS on a 6- hit from an OCV 9 opponent. That probably means 50 defenses and 23 CON to be proof from such a blow Stunning him (but still take some meaningful damage). Fair enough - what credible opponent will have difficulty hitting DCV 2? Of course, he may want an OCV of 15 due to his huge hands - meaning he'll also be giving out pretty high damage. Enough OCV to add 1 MoS equates to +2 d6 at SE in this model, and enough DCV to drop MoS by 1 place equates to +6 defenses against normal and killing attacks, as well as reducing all other attacks.

 

Damage overall becomes much more volatile unless the benefits of MoS are non-scaling and quite small, which practically defeats the purpose of the system - volatility probably comparable to the KA Stun Lotto. It would level the playing field between normal and killing attacks, though. That 4d6 KA would get 12 BOD, 24 STUN on standard effect. If we add 6 STUN and 2 BOD (same as the normal attack) per MoS, it hits maximum STUN of 72 with 8 MoS, and max BOD of 24 with 6 MoS. This assumes we're matching the normal and killing damage totals, which matches the maximums under 6e rules. Volatility is comparable between KA's and normal attacks under this model, so that's probably a positive.

 

How do AoE attacks work under this model? What about "1 hex accurate", which reduces the defender's DCV to 3? Does each Autofire hit count as successively less MoS? I suspect most characters are functionally immune to those agents with a few less DC and a few less OCV - if they don't have the DCV to avoid much more than an average damage attack, they have the defenses to soak a well above average attack at higher DC's. Entangles and Force Walls become an interesting challenge. What do they get for a high MoS? The entangle can get more BOD, but it's automatically hit from inside, so what's that MoS? The Barrier has no variables itself, but it's also easy to hit, so attacks should be doing at or near max damage, making a viable Barrier much higher AP than under the present model.

 

The dynamics would change quite a bit, so I'd anticipate a need for pretty extensive playtesting before seeing where it all settles.

[Ndreare]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

Some thoughts...12d6 attack would do 36/12 and for each point of 'success' in the attack roll, what do you add? 1 Stun and 1 Body? Something else?

 

If you are adding Body, the Body damage will stack up disproportionately quickly, which you need to watch, and if you are not then there is no way to roll well enough to break through certain Barriers and such.

 

You mentioned critical rules: are you using them, and if so, which one/ones? Critical rules will have an effect on average damage, but how much of an effect depends on which critical rules you are using. Max damage on a natural 3 will make little overall difference, whereas max on half what you needed can make a lot more.

 

Just looking at SE+MOS and only considering STUN, bear in mind that as DC goes up, the MOS you would need to get to average rolled damage increases. If you are rolling 2d6, you SE 6 and AR (Average Roll) 7, so you only need +1 MOS to get average damage. If you are rolling 12d6 you SE 36 and AR 42, so you need +6 MOS to get to AR. The effect of this is that, whilst superhero attack and damage rolls speed up, combats will be longer because people will be taking less damage through defences (DTD): assuming 24 PD in a 12d6 game, you are doing 18 DTD with an AR and 12+MOS with SE. If the opponents are reasonably matched in CV, that could mean you need 4 or 5 clean hits to take someone down rather than 3 - and REC will then play a more important roll as you are likely to get more PS 12 recoveries if the combat requires more hits to KO.

 

What we tried the first Tuesday was every MOS would add +1 Bod and +3 Stun, however after testing last Tuesday that was effectively broken.

This Tuesday (yesterday) we tried every MoS adds 1 Stun and every 3 stun adds 1 Bod (to the maximum that could have been rolled) and it worked great.

 

The critical rules we have always used was Roll a natural 3 or roll less than half the required roll and you inflict maximum effect.

 

We frequently use a D20 instead of 3D6 when we want fast and deadly combat, but it also make it were even a Viper agent can inflict real damage to a PC (8D6 maxed out will stun anyone but a tank after all). Combat speeds up a lot, even with dozens of characters on the table. I could literally roll for all 15 henchmen and tell the damage all at once. When using D20 we say make your roll by 10 or roll a natural 20 for maximum effect.

 

Since we also use Influence/Luck/HAP rules whatever you call it, players can burn through those for dive for covers and all out dodges.

[Vondy]

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

 

I've done it that way for years and its worked out pretty well. Steven Long had it as asuggestion in the first version of 5th edition on a sidebar and we all jumped on it. We use the 105 rounded down he suggested. That not having to roll damage dice really speeds things up. It can make damage very dynamic and high CVs pretty devastating but slow moving bricks can be designed to stand up to them with a little adaptation.

 

I use the Standard Effect (at 3.5 stun per die instead of 3) in heroic games.

 

I didn't modify based on MoS because I was using Hit Locations, which have their own multipliers attached.

 

Higher CVs meant you could make called shots more consistently.

 

It worked well.