Critical Hits in the Hero System

[Mister E]

The larger the number of dice, the more random.

[Lucius]

On ‎10‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 9:36 PM, Duke Bushido said:

If it's not too much trouble, can you enlighten me a bit on the "more effective?"

 

I ask because even though I _did_ make it through the Powers section of 6, I didn't pay much attention to Stun multiplier in 6 (or 5 either, for that matter) as I've used a house rule for about twenty years to avoid the whole "Stun Lotto" problem.

 

Then you'll be glad to know that under 6th edition, you roll only 1d3 for a stun multiplier, not 1d6. That's if you're not using Hit Locations.

 

46 minutes ago, Mister E said:

The larger the number of dice, the more random.

 

I'm surprised that you say this, given that it is the opposite of true. The larger the number of dice, the LESS random the results.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is also surprised that you say that

[Hugh Neilson]

2 hours ago, Mister E said:

The larger the number of dice, the more random.

 

Lucius beat me to it.

 

To compare between two rather vanilla choices, rolling 24 BOD and a 5x Multiple (5e) on a 4d6 KA happens 1 time in 7,776 rolls.

 

12 6s on a 12d6 Blast is a 1 in 2,176,782,336 chance.  The more dice, the more likely that the inherent variability of each die cancels out another one (so you roll a 1 offsetting a 6) and the closer to the average most rolls will be.

[Duke Bushido]

I suspect he means the wider the potential range of Stun. 

[Hugh Neilson]

Actually, that 4d6 KA can reach 120 STUN, and the 12d6 Blast is capped at 72. They both cap at 24 BOD, but the variance in BOD as we actually play will be much wider on the KA than the normal attack.

[Duke Bushido]

5 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Actually, that 4d6 KA can reach 120 STUN, and the 12d6 Blast is capped at 72. 

 

 

And that, my friend, is the crux of the issue that lead me (and I am sure many others)  to house rule the multiplier for Stunning Attack. 

 

Demilitarize the police.  Demilitarize Batman.  Refocus on the Kill in killing attack. 

 

[Lucius]

11 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Actually, that 4d6 KA can reach 120 STUN, and the 12d6 Blast is capped at 72. They both cap at 24 BOD, but the variance in BOD as we actually play will be much wider on the KA than the normal attack.

 

Not only that, but the 120 on 4d6 Killing is more likely than the 72 on 12d6 Normal.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And there is a very high probability of a palindromedary tagline about here

[Ninja-Bear]

On 10/22/2018 at 4:33 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

The issue is that, over the course of the campaign, the PCs are attacked in every combat, and the NPCs are attacked in only a few.

 

So 3 does max damage means 1 in 216 rolls inflicts max damage.  The PC will be attacked more than 216 times in a campaign.  NPCs will not, and they are easily replaced if one gets killed off with a lucky roll.

And? Even when the PCs get attacked more than 216 doesn’t mean that there is a guarantee that 3 ones will be rolled I’ve had characters come closer to death by book villains in regular combat more than any critical hits.Hugh I think you are being paranoid. 

[Hugh Neilson]

It's simple math.  Over the course of the campaign, the PCs will face far more attack rolls against them, and can rest assured they will suffer a critical hit eventually.  If criticals are crippling or deadly, then PCs either can expect to be crippled or killed by a critical eventually, or they must have enough defenses to weather a critical hit (in which case normal attacks become a negligible threat).

 

That doesn't mean criticals can't work, it means they need to be considered pretty carefully.  Double damage, or max damage, or even higher, works in D&D style games because PCs have a lot of hit points.  Double damage in Hero means that the full attack gets past the target's defenses, which is much more devastating to the character.  A lesser effect (perhaps one which occurs more often than 1 roll in 216 to compensate) will add less volatility to combat.  The Critical does not have to be crippling or deadly - it can simply have some added effect (whether a few more DCs of damage, an enhanced chance to stun or do knockback, or some other advantage). 

 

For me, a significant, but not likely combat-ending (much less character-ending) critical effect which happens more frequently is a better choice than a highly infrequent "game over" critical model.

 

In games with hit locations, I find the rare head shot quite critical enough.  Hero already has options for attacks which are critical, they just are not based on the to hit roll.

[Ninja-Bear]

No Hugh it isn’t simple math.  But then why even have dice rolls? I mean you can fail right? Why even bother?  Why roll for damage? You can not do any harm at all?

[Hugh Neilson]

On 11/3/2018 at 1:49 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

No Hugh it isn’t simple math.  But then why even have dice rolls? I mean you can fail right? Why even bother?  Why roll for damage? You can not do any harm at all?

 

It's all about the odds, and the impact.  If there is one chance in a thousand to roll a critical that instantly kills the target, eventually that roll comes up against the PC.  For some, part of the fun is that, no matter how well you play, one lucky shot could be instant death.  For others, that random chance reduces, rather than enhances, the game.

 

Sure, at one extreme, we can ask why even have dice rolls.  Let's go to the other extreme - every attack, toss a coin.  Heads, the target is killed.  Tails, the attack has no effect. That would certainly shorten combat.

 

There is a balance to be struck.  Critical hits alter that balance.

 

They work very differently in Hero than in D&D.  My Fighter in D&D gets hit with a typical Sword Strike and takes, say, 15 hit points.  Double it and he takes 30.  He has 75 hp - that was significant, but the fight is still on.  Maybe the opponent also gets a great damage roll, so he does 45 damage.  OUCH - I'm in trouble - but the battle is not ended.  Now, that can mean a lucky critical near the end of a battle means dead character instead of downed character.  But healing, and even resurrection, is pretty cheap and available in D&D.

 

My fighter in Hero may be trading 3d6 Sword Strokes.  On an average hit (10.5 BOD), 2.5 gets past my armor.  If a critical means double damage, that's 21 - 8 armor = 13 BOD.  If he got a great roll, say 15, which we double, that's 22 BOD past my armor.  That battle is definitely over.  If that strike came in the middle of hard-fought combat, that hit probably takes me from "bloodied" to "deceased".

 

Ultimately, the question simply comes down to the extent of volatility we want in combat.  Critical hits add to that volatility. 

 

Crossing systems makes it more challenging.  A mechanic like double damage that works well in one game can work very different in a game with different mechanics to interact with.  3d6 works differently from 1d20.  Hero's defenses and Stun/BOD work very different from D&D hit points.  Adding 3DC in my example above would more than double the damage getting past my armor.

 

Ultimately, I find the hit location tables replace critical hits.  The to hit roll is binary - you either succeeded or you did not.  The location roll takes over the critical hit for a great roll to hit - you could just barely hit and get a head shot, or you could roll a '3' and get a glancing arm hit.

[Scott Ruggels]

8 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Ultimately, I find the hit location tables replace critical hits.  The to hit roll is binary - you either succeeded or you did not.  The location roll takes over the critical hit for a great roll to hit - you could just barely hit and get a head shot, or you could roll a '3' and get a glancing arm hit.

 That's how I take it. the Hit Location table ARE the critical hits.

[Ninja-Bear]

Hugh I play Star Wars D6 2e and you have a greater chance of getting either a one on the wild die (bad/fumble) or exploding 6 and that has adding to the game but NEVER ruined the game as you suggest rolling 3’s can do. 

[Ninja-Bear]

14 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 That's how I take it. the Hit Location table ARE the critical hits.

I wouldn’t have but that’s an interesting approach!

[Doc Democracy]

30 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Hugh I play Star Wars D6 2e and you have a greater chance of getting either a one on the wild die (bad/fumble) or exploding 6 and that has adding to the game but NEVER ruined the game as you suggest rolling 3’s can do. 

 

Say you were rolling 4D6 blaster damage with one of the dice wild.  Your average roll is 14.  If one of those dice rolled 6, then the end average result is 17 or 18.  It is not a huge overpowered effect.  There is a small chance that the added dice is a six bringing and such events means the average damage goes up to 23.  If the wild dice rolls another six, the average damage goes up again, this time to about 29.

 

Given that the three sixes are about equal to the one in 216 chance of the 3 in HERO, this is worth looking at.  Damage has increased from 14 to about 29.  In SW you compare that against a strength roll.  If strength was 4D, then you have suddenly gone from, on average, getting a stunned result to 15 higher which is "Mortally wounded".  If strength was 3D then you are looking at going from"wounded" to "killed".

 

I would say that this is relatively equivalent switches - a critical roll that happens once in every 216 times changing a result from minor to possibly instant kill.  The big difference for me between the systems is that this is where I would, in Star Wars, use a force point to double my STR roll and keep me alive (punches the result back down to about 4 or 5 higher and merely wounded).  Vanilla HERO rules do not provide that potential for heroes to mitigate dice rolls of that nature.

 

Doc

[unclevlad]

Yeah, the mean value of an exploding die is actually not *that* much higher.  

 

Say we roll a single d6 36 times.  Then the theoretical result is 6 each of 1-5 (averaging to 3) and 6 6's.  The 6's get re-rolled...one of each.  For the sake of cutting things off, let's just assert that the last case here does NOT roll a 3rd 6.  Call it a 4 instead.

 

So, 30 of the rolls give a total of 90.  The other 6 give 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 16 (the double explosion).  That's another 61, so the total for all 36 rolls is 151.  Ergo, the average roll is now 4.2...rather than 3.5.

 

Exploding d6's adds 20% to the mean damage.  What it does do is massively increase the variance...because the distribution now is *sharply* non-normal.  

[Duke Bushido]

On November 4, 2018 at 11:00 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Ultimately, I find the hit location tables replace critical hits.

 

9 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I wouldn’t have but that’s an interesting approach!

 

 

Gonna be honest with both of you:

 

Until I saw Ninja-Bear's post, I thought that's how everyone took it, and all these home-brew alternatives were for people who either didn't want to use the HLC or simply wanted something akin to what is in use in "that other game."

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

Doc remember too that you can also fail on the wild die when rolling to soak damage. Now since I like Hero points, I could see them being used as character points/force points in SW. I’ve rolled 3 wild 6’s in a row just to blow the damage roll.

 

Hugh another thing that bothers about your analysis of 3 ones will definitely come up -as it won’t, is that when it does it’s not a guarantee that it will be from a super deadly attack. Unless you play with villains with EVERY ATTACK ALL THE TIME, it’s not statically going to happen. 

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Doc remember too that you can also fail on the wild die when rolling to soak damage. Now since I like Hero points, I could see them being used as character points/force points in SW. I’ve rolled 3 wild 6’s in a row just to blow the damage roll.

 

Hugh another thing that bothers about your analysis of 3 ones will definitely come up -as it won’t, is that when it does it’s not a guarantee that it will be from a super deadly attack. Unless you play with villains with EVERY ATTACK ALL THE TIME, it’s not statically going to happen. 

 

Failing to soak is irrelevant;  we're talking about the *potential* damage the attack can do, not the actual.  Soak's part of the defense, not part of the attack.

 

And yes, you can get a triple explosion...even on 1 die.  What we're talking about is the statistical analysis, what's gonna happen over the long term.  The AVERAGE damage on an exploding d6 is only 20% higher than on a straight d6.  On the flip side, the *variance* is enormous...it's over 10.  So with 3d exploding, it's 30...so the standard deviation is 5.5.  And this is an open-ended distribution;  there's no upper bound.  We're often a little below the mean...but we can go WAY above it from time to time.

Wrote up a quick and dirty Java program that generated 20,000 sets of exploding 3d6 rolls.  Here's a frequency chart:

 

 

The x axis is a little off, and I'm not that driven to fix it.  The left-most result is 3, and the 3 most likely rolls are 9, 10, and 11...which is actually what you'd expect.  The probability that the total will exceed 23 is less than 5%.  Contrast that with "crits doing double damage."  When a crit *does* happen, it's 50-50 to be 22 or higher.

 

Another point.  In exploding dice games, you always know the risk is there, so you change what's considered adequate defenses.  In Hero, if you want to basically bounce 3d6 killing, you go 12-14 resistant and call it good.  Or 8-10 perhaps, if you're bloody hard to hit and don't mind a potentially grittier tone.  If playing with 3d6 exploding using Hero's damage and defense concepts, you probably need about 15...and you're still looking at getting mauled for a lot of Body.  (And both damage negation and reduction become MASSIVELY more valuable.)  In regular-dice Hero with crits, the crits are uncommon...but you're not prepared for them.

[Doc Democracy]

4 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Doc remember too that you can also fail on the wild die when rolling to soak damage. Now since I like Hero points, I could see them being used as character points/force points in SW. I’ve rolled 3 wild 6’s in a row just to blow the damage roll.

 

Hugh another thing that bothers about your analysis of 3 ones will definitely come up -as it won’t, is that when it does it’s not a guarantee that it will be from a super deadly attack. Unless you play with villains with EVERY ATTACK ALL THE TIME, it’s not statically going to happen. 

 

I struggles with the concept of criticals are bad for players for a long time, I did not believe it for what seemed to be reasonable, rational reasons.  I am now convinced that, over the long run, criticals are bad for players (which does not mean they are not fun or that they stir the pot as far as combats go).

 

Criticals are even more bad for players if they tend to end combats - they are random, so you dont get to choose when there may be criticals, though TORG had rules that would mitigate that.

 

If you think of your average combat - 5 attacks a turn and it might last for 4 or five turns.  That is maybe 25 attacks per character.  If there are 4 on either side of the combat, then you have 200 attacks, which means there is likely to be one critical in every combat.

 

There are many villains, none of which the players have a visceral attachment to.  They do not care if one of them is taken out of a fight or potentially killed etc.  The GM can easily adjust and add in another villain if there is a need later in the session.  If it is the hero that is one-shotted or killed then they sit out the fight (boring), get captured (which they hate) or get killed (which makes them hate you!).  ?  The risks to each side are the same, the consequences are much higher on the player side.

 

The nature of an RPG is that the heroes participate in every contest, the villains rotate in a wide arc.  Each hero therefore suffers more critical hits than any individual villain just by the nature of things and the players are more concerned about detriment to their hero than to any protagonist villain.

 

I am not against critical hits, nor is Hugh, it is the impact of those things on the immediate game that is at issue.  If you have fight ending criticals you need some narrative method for players to avoid that, if you do not, then you need to make the criticals interesting to make them worth the bureaucracy.

 

Doc

[Ninja-Bear]

All I can say is that after 30 + years of actual play with critical I have NEVER came across the issues that many of you guys are griping about. (Except the GM when his villain is one-shoted!). 

[Doc Democracy]

18 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

All I can say is that after 30 + years of actual play with critical I have NEVER came across the issues that many of you guys are griping about. (Except the GM when his villain is one-shoted!). 

 

The vagaries of groups and experience.  If it is not an issue for you, ignore us! ? Everyone has to play the game in front of them, noone else's.

[archer]

On 11/4/2018 at 10:00 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

There is a balance to be struck.  Critical hits alter that balance...

 

Ultimately, the question simply comes down to the extent of volatility we want in combat.  Critical hits add to that volatility. 

 

 

Personally, I want a game with very low volatility where strategy and tactics win out over lucky die rolls...as fun as lucky die rolls may be when they turn out in my favor.

[unclevlad]

Plus, high-volatility rolls can dictate extreme tactics.  If you can one-shot an opponent that needs a lot of grinding down otherwise, then it makes sense to go for the constant head shot or whatever...so *your side* doesn't get smacked by one.  
 

Much of this is going to be group-style dependent, too.  And group-tactical.  How much negative impact would a PC death have?  What kinda guidelines are there for attacks and defenses...is the volatility being considered?  That sort of stuff.  Or, if the volatility is high...do PCs go for The Best Defense is a Good Offense, and push for fast drops with just a little luck on their side?  A major risk here can be an arms race, if you will, between the PCs and the GM.  It's generally not good GMing but it can easily happen.....

[Hugh Neilson]

21 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Hugh another thing that bothers about your analysis of 3 ones will definitely come up -as it won’t, is that when it does it’s not a guarantee that it will be from a super deadly attack. Unless you play with villains with EVERY ATTACK ALL THE TIME, it’s not statically going to happen. 

 

Emphasis added.  Statistically, EVERY POSSIBLE COMBINATION of die rolls will come up if you roll long enough.  The PCs continue to have rolls made against them, as Doc spelled out.  So it is only a matter of time before the absolutely worst case critical combination is rolled against them.  How much time depends on how unlikely the result is, but no matter how unlikely the result,, if it can be rolled,  it will be rolled, if we roll enough times.