Effective, but Simple Rule of X (is it possible)

[Ndreare]

Never played Fuzion. Read it, but never had a chance to test drive it. Also, my experience is that - given CV Caps, or more frequently Ranges - not everyone automatically pegs the top end. Rule Of X equations posted thus far also only account for removing a combatant via brute force. And given there are a number of ways to mitigate enemies that don't involve brute force - I once again contest that it will be a poor measurement comparative capabilities.

If you want a complex rule of X that includes everything, it is called total character points.

 

The point of a rule of X is to measure combat strength so you can generate suspense for the players with combat they can win or lose.

Just about everything non combat related is handled with narration and a single roll. So it makes sense that a rule of X would target combat strength alone.

[Tasha]

Let's mess with it...

 

OCV 2 and 20 DC's (and I'll Spread to hit most of the time, but anyone slow or stunned...)

DCV 4 and +39 PD and ED

 

I think you have to cap the tradeoffs to prevent abuse.

You definitely have to have a characteristic range to prevent abuse and gimping of characters. We already have ranges already detailed in the rules for the different powerlevels. Though IMHO a GM would be well served by tightening up those ranges a bit.

[Tasha]

Never played Fuzion. Read it, but never had a chance to test drive it.

 

Also, my experience is that - given CV Caps, or more frequently Ranges - not everyone automatically pegs the top end.

 

Rule Of X equations posted thus far also only account for removing a combatant via brute force. And given there are a number of ways to mitigate enemies that don't involve brute force - I once again contest that it will be a poor measurement comparative capabilities.

The system is fairly combat oriented. Yes there are other ways to deal with an encounter than with Violence. Those ways are handled well with the Skill and Characteristic Caps that many GM's already use.

 

There are many many encounters that are dealt with by combat. In fact we identify character Archetypes by their Combat Niche. The goal is to give people another tool to help them build the combat capabilities of their character. Because a range does nothing to help them. Some people will just max out everything, overpowering their team mates. Others will choose the minimums. I try to mitigate this problem by supplying and when I play I ask for Campaign Averages for everything. I really have enjoyed games where the high CV/High SPD Martial Artist did lower damage and had lower defenses than the Brick who hit harder but didn't hit as often. I think that it's a good simulation of the Genre. Certain Archetypes trading off damage vs defenses vs how often they hit. One way to do this is to offer a bunch of canned Archetypes, but I think that goes against the customizability of the system. So the best of both worlds would be to allow players to have a tool that would allow them within defined ranges to customize those combat parameters.

 

If you don't see the need for such a tool, great then don't participate. Anything I make here (and others hopefully help with) won't be official, so you won't have to use it. I guess what I am trying to say is that instead of saying it won't ever work. Try to see past your preconcieved notions and help. I knew that some people wouldn't like any Rule of X discussion. Which is why I asked for people for ideas. I really was hoping for constructive discussion and not post after post of (Rule of X always sucks, blah, blah). Perhaps try taking a really good look at what I am trying to do here and run some numbers though everyone's different equations. If we can isolate the shortcomings of various ways of approaching this. It may be possible to stay simple but still have something that's workable.

 

1. Rule of X cannot be something that stands on it's own. It requires support in the form of Characteristic Ranges.

2. It won't ever be perfect. The characters should still be reality checked by both Player and GM.

3. The Goal is diversity of Combat Characteristics within a party of characters. (ie It's perfectly safe for GM's to totally ignore it for creating NPCs and Villains).

4. It's probably a better tool for Superheroic play than Heroic play, but could possibly be used in heroic games as well.

[Ndreare]

I agree Tasha, I think a lot of people underestimate what a rule of X should do. No system perfectly that is why there are always patches in video games, try as they might even using the most complex algorithms players still find a way to play the system.

 

That is why is face to face games we always have  a DM, GM. Story Teller, Judge or Narrator. Whatever we call it their job includes periodically saying "No".

 

What the rule of X ideas do is communicate to the players what combat abilities will get them the effectiveess they want in combat and help the GM to design challenges for them.

[massey]

A Rule of X should really be just a Guideline of X.  It's way too easy to get around and construct a character that abuses it.  Area of Effect attacks, characters who can rapid fire or use specialty attacks, or people with a good speed advantage and combat options that let them take advantage of it, those all can result in a character who is way more effective in combat than his or her peers.  It also doesn't take into account powers like Desolidification or Invisibility.

 

Really it's just a guideline to cooperative players.  "I'm looking for people about this tough."  At that point it's helpful because it gives your players an idea of what to shoot for.  But even then you need to look it over to make sure people are within a good range.

 

At this point in my Champions career, I don't think it's something I can benefit from.  Just tell me what type of game we're playing and I'll hit that mark more closely without an artificial cap.

[Tasha]

You take your best Attack power (I usually count the ones that don't have an OCV or DCV Penalty), Best Defense (invisibility, Desolid, Damage Reduction) Also your best CV (Includes Shrinking, Martial Arts tend to increase CV by 2 on average). It is a Guideline of X, but Called the "Rule of X" because that was what it was named when first introduced.

Again it's so you can have caps, but still have a means to subvert the caps somewhat and in a way that is roughly balanced.

[Doc Samson]

Sorry for jumping into this one late. This is our rule of X. We now only use it to roughly determine how powerful a character is but for a few years is was enforced as a house rule and worked pretty well.

 

Offensive X =

the total Active Points in the character’s most powerful attack divided by 5 (including powers that stack with other attack powers such as HA or HKA)

+ the character’s highest possible OCV with his most powerful attack (including all Combat Skill Levels for OCV and bonuses from Martial Maneuvers)

+ the character’s SPD x 2

 

Defensive X =

the total Active Points in the character’s most powerful defense divided by 5 (including powers that stack with other defense powers such as Damage Reduction or Damage Negation but not incuding Resistance)

+ the character’s highest possible DCV (including all Combat Skill Levels for DCV and bonuses from Martial Maneuvers)

+ the character’s SPD x 2

+ the character’s STUN divided by 10

 

Each part of the equation was determined based on APs which is why SPD is multiplied by 2 and stun is divided by 10. Our combats typically lasted between 1 and 2 turns. In a non superheroic game where killing attacks are typical and BODY is more important than STUN, we would rework the Def. X to include Resistant Defenses and BODY.

 

Here is an example. We typically used an X of 30 for a 400 pt. (6e) game. A brick in one of our games might look like this.

Off. X = 60 STR (12) + 8 OCV and 2 CSLs (10) + 4 SPD (8) = 30

Def. X = 30 PD/ ED (6) + 8 DCV and 2 CSLs (10) + 4 SPD (8) + 60 STUN (6) = 30

[Doc Samson]

Now that I am caught up in the thread, here are a few random thoughts I hope will help. Like they did in Fuzion, I think you need separate values for Offense and Defense. Combing them into one equation will tell you that a character is weak or powerful pointwise but not necessarily tell you whether she is balanced against other characters. For example, she may have really high offense, low defense, and rely on other powers like invisibility to avoid damage.

 

As others have pointed out, SPD is a direct multiplier of how much damage a character can put out per Turn and it can also be used to avoid damage in the form of Blocks and Dodges. As such, we weighed it according to its AP value for both equations (1 SPD = 10 AP = 2X).

 

For a standard superhero game, we sometimes did not count certain advantages if they did not come into play regularly. This would usually be decided as a group discussion. For example, if we counted the Reduced END advantage when determining our X value, players would never take it and just buy more END. Our goal for the rule of Rule of X was to help us with balance but without limiting creativity.

 

Towards the end of our enforcement of the Rule of X, we noticed that characters starting becoming more and more similar, differing more in special effects than point values. In an attempt make characters feel unique again, we would allow characters to have one power which could violate the Rule of X by up to 30 pts. but it had to have at least -2 in Limitations which would limit how frequently the power could be used.

 

For example:

A radiation based Energy Projector might have the ability to "Meltdown"; a 90 AP Area Effect Blast with one Charge and a Side Effect that reduced the character is reduced to 0 END and STUN (think the Human Torch's Nova Flame).

A Brick might have the ability to go "Berserk"; adding 15 STR and 25% Damage Reduction, but with a single 1 Turn Continuing Charge and the Side Effect that the character becomes Enraged for the duration of the power (similar to the Hulk).

[Nolgroth]

I think that Doc Sampson has the best formula of all that I've seen posted. I also like the warnings about character similarity and the steps taken to bring variety to the sameness. If I were to try for a Rule of X, this is where I would start.

[rjcurrie]

Don't all these attempted balancing techniques just go out the window once characters come into play?  To be honest, I've usually found that the player's creativity, tactics, and roleplaying ability have far more impact than the character's stats. In the main Champions that I used to play in that lasted for many years, there was almost nothing resembling a rule of X.  I believe there was a total point limit and that was that. We had a character that had no stat higher than 20 and no attack bigger than about 8d6 being tremendously effective while a character with an 120 Cosmic Power Pool was dead within about 3 sessions. We had a STR 100, DEX 33 brick that was much more effective in combat than a lot of us, but combat was only one aspect of the game. We also split up frequently to deal with different plots or subplots and probably did many other thngs that "conventional HERO wisdom" tells you not to do.

[DasBroot]

Don't all these attempted balancing techniques just go out the window once characters come into play?  To be honest, I've usually found that the player's creativity, tactics, and roleplaying ability have far more impact than the character's stats. In the main Champions that I used to play in that lasted for many years, there was almost nothing resembling a rule of X.  I believe there was a total point limit and that was that. We had a character that had no stat higher than 20 and no attack bigger than about 8d6 being tremendously effective while a character with an 120 Cosmic Power Pool was dead within about 3 sessions. We had a STR 100, DEX 33 brick that was much more effective in combat than a lot of us, but combat was only one aspect of the game. We also split up frequently to deal with different plots or subplots and probably did many other thngs that "conventional HERO wisdom" tells you not to do.

 

This was my experience back when I last ran a game (back in ... about 88. Hence my newbie questions all over the place).  Even in my most current game with a 12 DC/80 ap cap there's a sizable difference in combat abilities.  The brick is tough and a single target heavy hitter, but the sonic blaster and mentalist are almost as tough and could lay waste to the field without her - and the infiltrator got so caught up in characteristics, skill levels, perks and such that he forgot to buy attack powers so punches things for 3d6 (15 str).

 

The team splits quite often to deal with multiple threats and I've taken to slapping the infiltrator's out of combat actions into the initiative order if a fight breaks out to both prevent the other players from sitting around as the sneaky guy infiltrates a Viper base and hacks some computer systems and to prevent the infiltrator from being bored (or worse, useless - it's not a lot of fun to punch a viper grunt for 3 stun) in a fight.

 

The GM in Hero is the ultimate rule of X, but I've been watching these ones with interest mostly to plug my own player's characters into them in order to design better encounters.

[Lucius]

This was my experience back when I last ran a game (back in ... about 88. Hence my newbie questions all over the place).  Even in my most current game with a 12 DC/80 ap cap there's a sizable difference in combat abilities.  The brick is tough and a single target heavy hitter, but the sonic blaster and mentalist are almost as tough and could lay waste to the field without her - and the infiltrator got so caught up in characteristics, skill levels, perks and such that he forgot to buy attack powers so punches things for 3d6 (15 str).

 

The team splits quite often to deal with multiple threats and I've taken to slapping the infiltrator's out of combat actions into the initiative order if a fight breaks out to both prevent the other players from sitting around as the sneaky guy infiltrates a Viper base and hacks some computer systems and to prevent the infiltrator from being bored (or worse, useless - it's not a lot of fun to punch a viper grunt for 3 stun) in a fight.

 

The GM in Hero is the ultimate rule of X, but I've been watching these ones with interest mostly to plug my own player's characters into them in order to design better encounters.

 

Assuming the infiltrator has decent combat values, why is he punching?

 

Ought to be trying trip, disarm, grab weapon, grab, etc.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

I tried a palindromedary and never regreted it

[BNakagawa]

My approach on these calculations is don't measure the stat, measure the effect.

 

So, to gauge a character's offensive potential, define a campaign-appropriate challenge. (or if you really want more precision, several - ranging from agent to approximate equal to master villain)

Then calculate how many segments of continuous attacking it will take to defeat said opponent.

 

Then for defense, run the numbers in the other direction.

[Sean Waters]

I don’t think a RoX is terribly useful, I don’t use one and don’t intend to start, but…

 

I would suggest, if the idea is to have a meaningful comparison in terms of combat, you need more than one result number.  Even then you are not going to get a truly meaningful comparison, but at least you will get closer.

 

At least you need a number to indicate your chance to be hit, and a number to indicate your chance to avoid being hit.

 

Then you need a number to indicate damage potential and another for defence. 

 

Then you need a way of indicating how often you can cause damage (damage over time, DoT, does not work in Hero because defences subtract from damage).

 

Of course this only really works for physical damage.  You’d need another set of numbers for energy defences and another for adjustment and mental attacks.

 

In other words, you don’t need a formula, you need a character sheet.

 

Hmm…

 

Hero has two RoX mechanisms already:

 

1. Character points

 

2. The GM's small Italian car

[Opale]

"Rule of X" is a way to diversify character's damage, Defenses and CV while still staying within a certain budget of resources. The idea is to allow someone who wants to play high CV characters to be able to balance vs High DC, High Def, low CV characters. I have seen some insane ways people try to calculate this. Complicated is something that we don't need. This is a way to still have caps, but not have everyone doing the exact damage/cv etc.

 

I am looking for something that gets people close enough, but is still fairly understandable to new players.

 

first try:

CV (Avg OCV and DCV) + Spd + DC + ((avg PD&ED)/5)  =  CV (Avg OCV and DCV) + Spd + DC + (PD+ED/10)

 

Am I missing something huge? Is there some SIMPLE other way that this can be approached.

 

Be Constructive, help me brainstorm here.

Aloha Tasha

 

Can you please explain to my blonde mind how to use this equation ? I mean, what am I supposed to do with it to use it properly when I create a character sheet ?

 

Just out fo curiosity

 

Tia  

 

Opale

[Christougher]

The second half of her equation (after the equals) is just a restatement of the left side; it can be ignored.

 

To use it, take the character you're going to rate (Randall Irons from 6E2 pg 436) and fill in the appropriate values from the character sheet.

We'll default to using his Boxiing Cross for now, but the values could be recomputed for the Hook or using a firearm.

 

Average(OCV 5 + DCV 7) is 6 + SPD 4 + DC 5 + Average(PD 6 + ED 6)/5 is 1.2 for a final answer of 16.2.

 

By itself, the 16.2 value doesn't mean a lot.  But if the GMs villains all score 20 or better, Randall is going to have a tough go of it.

 

It's useful to balance, though the number doesn't have to be an exact match.  If I wanted to find out the largest attack I could reasonably have, it would give me an idea what my other stats should be.  We'll say a straight 10's normal with a 4d6 RKA.

 

Average(OCV 3 + DCV 3) is 3 + SPD 2 + DC 12 + Average(PD 2 + ED 2)/5 gives a 17.4   So, probably tougher than Randall - he'll have to play smart to win.

 

Chris.

[Beast]

this one imho is the best as it covers the 3 main areas of combat

attack

defense

mobility

 

yeah it is 3 numbers, but then it easier  to see 1 area that might screw up an outcome

and this is from 1 of the first Adventures Club mags

 

http://www.trimira.com/hero_stuff/combat_rating.html

[Opale]

The second half of her equation (after the equals) is just a restatement of the left side; it can be ignored.

 

To use it, take the character you're going to rate (Randall Irons from 6E2 pg 436) and fill in the appropriate values from the character sheet.

We'll default to using his Boxiing Cross for now, but the values could be recomputed for the Hook or using a firearm.

 

Average(OCV 5 + DCV 7) is 6 + SPD 4 + DC 5 + Average(PD 6 + ED 6)/5 is 1.2 for a final answer of 16.2.

 

By itself, the 16.2 value doesn't mean a lot.  But if the GMs villains all score 20 or better, Randall is going to have a tough go of it.

 

It's useful to balance, though the number doesn't have to be an exact match.  If I wanted to find out the largest attack I could reasonably have, it would give me an idea what my other stats should be.  We'll say a straight 10's normal with a 4d6 RKA.

 

Average(OCV 3 + DCV 3) is 3 + SPD 2 + DC 12 + Average(PD 2 + ED 2)/5 gives a 17.4   So, probably tougher than Randall - he'll have to play smart to win.

 

Chris.

Thankee for the help Chris