Making SPD a fixed stat?

[Mr. R]

Sorry if this has been asked before.

 

Has anyone ever tried making SPD a fixed stat?  Like everyone has a SPD of 3.  Or 4.  

 

How did it affect the game?  What are some potential problems?  What could be some advantages?

[Lucius]

Yes. Works great in my experience. When I run Heroic games, I general set all player characters and most serious opposition at SPD 3.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wants to be SPD 13

[Old Man]

Works wonderfully in heroic-level games--in fact I would argue that SPD is actually unbalanced at lower ends of the spectrum.  SPD 4 is a huge advantage over SPD 3.

 

For supers it might be missed.  SPD is one of the things that helped to balance stat-heavy (but slow) bricks against, like, everyone else. 

[bigdamnhero]

I like the SPD Chart personally. But I've run a few one-shots without it and it works okay, especially if you're looking to simplify things for new players (or running a game for kids, for example).

 

One problem is that while it's one thing if all the heroes & major villains have the same SPD, it's weird when all the mooks, civilians and Elderly Aunt Mays have the same number of actions as the heroes. So you might want to consider having one SPD for "trained fighters" and another for "bystanders."

 

Another issue IMO is that since initiative order is fixed in Hero based on DEX, when everyone goes on the same Phase then literally every round of every combat flows in the exact same order, which can feel very repetitive. I think if I ever ran a campaign where everyone had the same SPD I'd consider implementing some sort of roll for initiative just to mix things up a bit.

[Christopher]

Many people here have good experience with limiting the SPD range (as opposed ot just making it fixed).

 

For Heroic level games, SPD 3 or 4 can be enough for the players. Mooks have usualyl around 2.

For superheroic settings, SPD should be in a spread of 3. 5 for Bricks and others that need no real SPD. 6 or so for Blasters and Martial Artists. 7 for Speedsters.

 

It is true that between Aborting and being Stunned, tracking who acts when next can quickly become a problem. It is indeed one of the biggest propblems for Play by Mail or Play by Post combat resolution.

 

Shadowrun 4E had the same problem to a slightly lesser degree (shorter SPD chart, so to speak).
But they did solve it in 5E. With such a success, I pointed out that porting this to Hero might be a good idea:
http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/92713-initiative-spd-and-shadowrun-5e-initiative/

[Badger]

Works wonderfully in heroic-level games--in fact I would argue that SPD is actually unbalanced at lower ends of the spectrum.  SPD 4 is a huge advantage over SPD 3.

 

For supers it might be missed.  SPD is one of the things that helped to balance stat-heavy (but slow) bricks against, like, everyone else. 

 

Yeah, being a speed freak, losing that would have killed 80 percent of my characters.

[JmOz]

Personal experience: Works ok in heroic, suck in Super.

 

My personal range in a super game is usualy 3-6 for characters, 2-8 for NPC's

[Nolgroth]

Last game I played on MapTool, I set everybody at Speed 2 and let Dex be the determining factor in how fast the characters were in relation to each other. It sped up combat a lot. 

[Doc Democracy]

I played a League of Extra-Ordinary Gentlemen style game - one major power for each character - where I presented the system as though everyone had SPD 2. 2 actions per round was standard.

 

I did however have characters with bonus actions. If someone had one bonus action they got to go one additional time after everyone else had their two actions. One henchman of the main villain (who was SPD 2) actually had 2 bonus actions - he went after everyone had one action and then again once everyone had their second action.

 

It seemed to work quite well - no misunderstandings among the players at all.

 

 

Doc

[bigdamnhero]

SPD 2 seems low to me tho. A free REC after every other action?

[Doc Democracy]

It worked - not many points spent on END or REC.  It is part of the design and is easy if players do not want to think about END etc too much.  In this game there was also a big emphasis on BODY rather than STUN...

 

I guess that it would work just as easy if the base was 3 with an extra action after the second action, then after the third and then after the first (if you want that six action villain to strike terror into the hearts of the heroes...)  :-)

[Nolgroth]

SPD 2 seems low to me tho. A free REC after every other action?

 

Body was more of a concern to my group that Stun or End. You could get knocked out or run out of End, but it was far more likely that a laser beam would bore through your head.

[concord]

The closest we ever had to a fixed SPD campaign was what the group called the 4/2 Speed campaign. They would joke about an opponent being Super or fodder depending on what SPD he had.

 

Supers had a SPD of 4

Agents, Combat Trained, Law Enforcement, etc had a SPD of 2

Normals had a SPD of 1 unless they were fleeing then they had a SPD of 2.

 

As the campaign went on, one player talked me into allowing a SPD of 4+2 for a speedster concept and I allowed it. He moved on every phase and twice on 2 and 4 with his first move coming on his DEX and his second on DEX/2.

 

A second player tried to talk me into a SPD 4+2 Martial Artist but I did not allow it. He maxed out on DEX and Skill Levels instead

 

We used a Rule of X (Offense) and Y (Defense) to sort of balance things

[Christopher R Taylor]

I've never fixed Speed, but I have been in games where all the heroes and bad guys tended to be within 1 point of each other, which is pretty much the same thing.  Combat goes somewhat more quickly and regimented, because everyone moves more or less at the same time, but you lose a lot of interesting interaction and flexibility.  Speed is a good representation of someone's combat training and overall ability fighting.  Someone with even 1 more point of speed can be much more effective in combat, and several points makes a huge difference.  Taking that away does reduce the interest in combat, and removes a lot of options and flexibility that might otherwise be possible.  I don't recommend it particularly as this will tend to remove one of Hero's key distinctives.

[Hugh Neilson]

SPD 2 seems low to me tho. A free REC after every other action?

I've often mused on how differently the game might have developed if 2 SPD had been the "slow Super" benchmark, rather than 4 SPD. Just deduct 2 from each published character. While we're at it, take off 9 or 10 DEX (so slow Supers have 8 DEX, 3 CV, average have 14, and 5 CV, agile PC's have 20 or 21 and 7 CV, and those hyper-fast characters have 26, and 9 CV).

 

Relative to other Supers, little has changed. Relative to agents and normals, the slower Supers bounce attacks off and the faster ones stay virtually impossible to hit, but every VIPER agent an Brick doesn't need to be an Olympic gymnast. END, STUN and REC become more valuable, as they recover way faster. I'm sure other ripple effects would arise - things that last fixed timeframes (eg. adjustment powers and Flash) would be reduced in effect, I suppose.

 

But that ship had sailed by the early 1980's.

 

Anyway, you could always consider the 2 action "turn" a 4 SPD, and have a REC every other turn. Now a bonus action is 6 SPD, and 2 are 8 SPD. But really, how many phases to the turn is less relevant in actual play than how the characters compare to one another and their adversaries. I don't like "an extra action at the end" much, and multiple actions even less, as the dynamic changes when you know an action, or a sequence, cannot be disrupted by the other characters on the field, but held actions can deal with that to some extent. If I know the Big Bad has four extra actions, maybe I will attack with my first action (perhaps an all-out attack - he can only target one of us on his first action), and turtle up with Dodge and levels to DCV in the second so it's hard for him to benefit from his 2, 3, or 5 actions before I move again and my extra DCV drops off.

[Christopher R Taylor]

If everyone's speed is the same then the only significance of the number is how often people get free recoveries.

[sinanju]

I'm playing in a traditional Champions game now (very strict adherence to the rules). But prior to that, I ran a Champions game for a while in which everyone had Speed 4. Everyone. And that only to judge when the "Post-segment 12 Recovery) happened. In practice, everyone got one phase every turn. Characters acted in order of DEX, or in the case of ties, alphabetically based on their hero/villain ID (though I didn't tell anyone that).

 

It worked very well.

[Hugh Neilson]

If everyone's speed is the same then the only significance of the number is how often people get free recoveries.

How rapidly Regenerate works, how quickly they recover from being adjustment powers, how painful it is to be KOd to "once a minute", how fast Flash wears off, how effective Damage over Time is, how debilitating Extra Time beyond one phase is...

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think DOT, flash attacks, and extra time would have to be reworked for a system that deleted speed as a stat.