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Hardened Defences


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The wording on that section makes no sense.  They seem to be saying you have to harden all of a particular defense, but contradict the rule in the next sentence.  There is no real difference between buying hardened on your first 3 pts of resistant defense and not the next three, and buying 3 points of hardened resistant defense, and 3 points of resistant defense without the advantage hardened. 

 

Since hero system has no rules that prevent defenses from stacking this rule makes absolutely no sense.  Let’s say I have a character that has combat luck, and also wears actual armor.  Combat luck is hardened, but the armor is not.  Does this rule mean that I have to purchase hardened for my armor?  The last sentence of the rule specifically states I can have some defenses that are different.

 

If the rule is because of a computer programing limitation it has no business being in the rules.  In all honesty I would simply ignore that section because it makes no sense. 

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6 hours ago, Lucius said:

Is it possible to get Combat Luck that's NOT Hardened?

 

I think being Hardened is part of the definition of Combat Luck.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary doesn't want to listen to any hard luck stories right now

 

The character might hear from copyright lawyers representing the first hero to identify an ability with that name. Now I am having visions of heroes with Nascar-esq patches on their uniforms.

 

Silly ideas...

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It's been around since 5E, I think there's some intent behind costs and things like Armor/Resistant Defense; or possibly that a single source of a Defense (SFX) needs to be either Hardened or Not.

 

Every once in a while I think of a reason for it to be that way, but most of the time it feels like a rule because someone, somewhere, went Full Munchkin.

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6 hours ago, Lucius said:

Is it possible to get Combat Luck that's NOT Hardened?

 

I think being Hardened is part of the definition of Combat Luck.

Yes, you can absolutely get Combat Luck that's NOT Hardened ... specifically by taking a -1/4 (most likely, but value would be a GM call) Limitation defined as: Not Hardened.

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I do think this is just a programming thing.  While I can't buy 10 resistant defenses and only harden 5 of it. I can buy 5 resistant defenses and harden it. Then but five MORE resistant defenses separately, and not harden it.

 

I think the rule was to stop someone from paying for only 1 point of hardened defenses, but effectively hardening all the rest of their defenses bought separately. Since I play AP as simply subtracting body from the defenses, then this isn't a problem, because only the 1 pt would defend and the other resistant defenses would still be reduced. In the "halving your defenses" concept, it was a very cheap way to essentially stop AP fully, by only paying the bare minimum amount for hardened. I still think it is very easy to rule that, in my example... the first five points of defense are NOT cut in half, but the second five points are. etc.

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18 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Its just tough to handle the mix of hard and non-hard.  OK that armor piercing attack halves your defenses.  Except that half which is whole.  Hang on I have a formula....

 

Unless the math-challenged fellow jots down "defenses vs AP attack" on the sheet, much like he has likely marked defenses against BOD of killing attacks.

 

I think this is a holdover from the days when Hardened also defended against Penetrating, which failed entirely if any part of the defense was Hardened.

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4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

I think this is a holdover from the days when Hardened also defended against Penetrating, which failed entirely if any part of the defense was Hardened.

 

I find this much more likely than "programming" as the rule predates the software development.

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Its also a cheap way to get most of hardened defenses for less cost.  Look at the numbers:

 

45 active points on Resistant Protection (15 PD/ED; 8/8 vs armor piercing)

Hardened = 56 pts (15/15 vs armor piercing)

 

Munchkin Lad buy half his defenses hardened!

30 active points (8 PD/ED hardened) + 21 points on Resistant Protection (7 PD/ED not hardened) for 51 total active points.  Armor piercing attack reduces this to 11/11; only down 4 points from the more expensive build.  Probably few times that 4 more points are going to make the difference in a fight.

 

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8 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Its also a cheap way to get most of hardened defenses for less cost.  Look at the numbers:

 

45 active points on Resistant Protection (15 PD/ED; 8/8 vs armor piercing)

Hardened = 56 pts (15/15 vs armor piercing)

 

Munchkin Lad buy half his defenses hardened!

30 active points (8 PD/ED hardened) + 21 points on Resistant Protection (7 PD/ED not hardened) for 51 total active points.  Armor piercing attack reduces this to 11/11; only down 4 points from the more expensive build.  Probably few times that 4 more points are going to make the difference in a fight.

 

Och, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me. 45 pts 8/8 vs AP, 51pts 11/11 vs AP, 56 pts 15/15 vs AP. I'm sure there is a breakpoint that is slightly more efficient, but ultimately you can pay an extra 6pts to get an extra 3 pts armour against AP, or an extra 11 to get 7 more?

As always it depends on the campaign (there are A LOT of 4d6-1 standard effect RKAs?), but otherwise this looks a lot less twinky than an awful lot of "legal" purchases.

YMMV, obviously, and added complexity is a perfectly reasonable reason to enforce the RAW.

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I've asked Steve this.  It just means a single power when bought with hardened denotes that all the power is hardened and not just part of it.  Its just worded funny and they have decided to keep the wording.

 

If you bought 5/5 resistant defenses and bought it with hardened, you could not say only the 5 PD portion was hardened.  The entire power is hardened.  The rule does not prevent you from buying resistant defenses twice, once for the hardened defenses and once for the non-hardened defenses.

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