Velocity in Move By/Move Through

[TheRealDeal]

I am going to run my son (11) and some of his friends through Hero and was tweaking my MapTool set up, when I noticed something odd to me. As I understand it, the v in the formula for calculating the OCV penalty (-v/10 for Move Through) and the DC increase (+v/10 Move By, +v/6 Move Through) is just the amount of movement you get per Phase, not the Velocity per Turn (like is used in the Velocity based DCV formula).

 

It seems to me that v should use the same formula as Velocity based DCV, or something close to it that scales with SPD, which factors in SPD with your Move per Phase to get a better value of how fast you are actually moving. Is there something I am missing? Before I use this I wanted to see if perhaps I am missing something here.

 

My take is that using Move per Phase does not really tell how fast you are actually moving, since a Phase has a variable time value, whereas a Turn is always 12 seconds. Thus Move per Turn is really how fast you move, not Move per Phase. Move per Phase is very nice for knowing how far I get to move in each of my Phases, so it is good to have, but for calculating my true speed, I think Move per Turn should be used, right?

 

My plan is to replace v with v = Move per Phase x SPD /2. I divide by 2 as I assume the game was designed around a SPD of 2 so that way the math will be identical to RAW for a SPD 2 character.

 

Anyone ever done something like this and found there were problems? My game will have SPD ranging from 2-4 for the most part, but eventually I may allow them to get into superheroic mode once they get the hang of the game, which will have higher SPDs.

[Hyper-Man]

5er had rules for Velocity Factor (basically the same number used for Velocity-Based DCV) to address the very situation you describe. (the VF number could be substituted in the Move By and Move Through damage calculations).  I just searched Champions Complete and 6e1 and 6e2 but I couldn't find the equivalent section.  It's also included in the 5e Ultimate Speedster.

 

See this old link to my namesake character for examples of Velocity Factor (check the notes sections of his various Movement and Hand To Hand Multipower Slots)

[Oruncrest]

In 6th ed., the Velocity Factor rules are in the Advanced Player's Guide. The basics are like this:

 

A Velocity Factor (VF) of 10 means that your maximum movement (multiply your meters of movement × your SPD) is at or under 1000 meters/turn. +1VF increases the max by ×1.5, +2 VF increases the max by ×2. Likewise, -1VF lowers the max by ×.75, -2 VF lowers the max by ×0.5. When using VF in combat, replace any instance of v/6 or v/10 with VF.

 

Example: Kinetic (in Champions Complete) has 40m flight, 7 SPD and a Passing Strike that does 5d6+ v/10 VFd6. Assuming Kinetic can get up to his full velocity, his maximum movement per turn will be 280 m/turn. Doing the math reveals that 280 is more than 250 (1000 × 1/2 × 1/2; VF6) and less than 375 (1000 × 1/2 × 3/4; VF 7) so Kinetic's VF is 7. If Kinetic performs a Passing Strike at full speed, then he'll do 12D6 damage instead of the 9D6 he would have done if he used v/10.

[Hyper-Man]

Man, I must have been pretty out of it. I didn't even consider the APG's (Which I also have PDF's of).

Thanks Oruncrest!

[psyber624]

I think you could easily wind up with balance issues if you tried to use a characters full cmxspd as the modifier for move through and such. While it might seem to make sense in a real world kind of way it makes high SPD even more powerful than it already is. The plan you propose for instance would allow high spd characters to do MUCH more damage far cheaper than any other method. At that point you need to come up with some other balancing factor or things can get out of hand.