HS 6e is mechanically the best version of the rules; dissenting views welcome

[Toxxus]

16 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

So, given two characters A and B, assuming both A and B are equally survivable to keep it simple, A has a MP with various attacks, B has one attack + other offensively enabling abilities. Then we look at the typical opposition characters A and B can be expected to face during actual play.

 

In this scenario A has 9 powers to work with and B has two.  Unless A chooses incredibly poorly they're going to be more useful than B in a wide array of scenarios.

 

Another, scenario.  Player B has Attack 1, Attack 2 and Defense 1.  Player A using a MP has Attacks 1-9 and Defense 1.  All of exactly the same points.  It is incredibly unlikely that Player B is going to be more effective more often.  Especially since Player A can take Player B's exact same powers and have 8 more attack options available.  These could be enumerated, but unless you're building very unlikely scenarios you're going to end up with things like....

 

Player B Powers:

1-  Fireball (AoE)

2-  Firebolt (AP single-target)

3-  Magic Armor spell

 

Player A Powers:

1- Fireball (AoE)

2- Firebolt (AP single_target)

3- Magic Armor

4- Teleport

5- Cone of Cold

6- Hypnotic Pattern (AoE Mental Paralysis)

7- Life Support (AoE, Usable by Others)

8- Healing Spell

9- Call Lightning (indirect, single hex AoE)

10- Suggestion (Mind Control)

 

These two players have spent exactly the same points only one player got 9 spells for the cost of 2 and other other player got 2.

 

The multipower discount scheme is too effective, imo and verges on mandatory.  It's not literally mandatory, but anyone trying to get the most bang for their buck will do this.

[Killer Shrike]

6 minutes ago, Toxxus said:

In this scenario...

 

<SNIP parameters>

 

The multipower discount scheme is too effective, imo and verges on mandatory.  It's not literally mandatory, but anyone trying to get the most bang for their buck will do this.

 

Would you start a "character build" challenge thread, put forth your campaign guidelines, magic system guidelines, etc?  I'm willing to participate, and I'm sure others would chime in as well. That kind of call to action is like chum in the waters.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

@Killer Shrike: It's worth noting that 60AP of attack against 20 DEF, 12 RDEF, no other defenses results in roughly 20 STUN for most forms of offense.  All having a massive spread lets you do is ignore uneven increases in defense and exploit weaknesses. 

 

@Toxxus: If A buys two attacks while B buys an attack MP, A can multiple attack and throw twice the offensive weight compared to B.  That's a pretty huge advantage. 

[Hugh Neilson]

21 minutes ago, Toxxus said:

 

In this scenario A has 9 powers to work with and B has two.  Unless A chooses incredibly poorly they're going to be more useful than B in a wide array of scenarios.

 

Another, scenario.  Player B has Attack 1, Attack 2 and Defense 1.  Player A using a MP has Attacks 1-9 and Defense 1.  All of exactly the same points.  It is incredibly unlikely that Player B is going to be more effective more often.  Especially since Player A can take Player B's exact same powers and have 8 more attack options available.  These could be enumerated, but unless you're building very unlikely scenarios you're going to end up with things like....

 

Player B Powers:

1-  Fireball (AoE)

2-  Firebolt (AP single-target)

3-  Magic Armor spell

 

Player A Powers:

1- Fireball (AoE)

2- Firebolt (AP single_target)

3- Magic Armor

4- Teleport

5- Cone of Cold

6- Hypnotic Pattern (AoE Mental Paralysis)

7- Life Support (AoE, Usable by Others)

8- Healing Spell

9- Call Lightning (indirect, single hex AoE)

10- Suggestion (Mind Control)

 

These two players have spent exactly the same points only one player got 9 spells for the cost of 2 and other other player got 2.

 

The multipower discount scheme is too effective, imo and verges on mandatory.  It's not literally mandatory, but anyone trying to get the most bang for their buck will do this.

 

OK, let's first pull out the Magic Armor spell.  Player A can either have armor or attack, but not both.  So let's assume A has a multipower of 10 60 AP attacks.  He can use one at a time.  Player B can have two 60 AP attacks which, as GnomeBody notes, he can use at the same time.  A picks his best attack to use against B.  B fires off a 12d6 Blast and a 6d6 STUN Drain against A.  Who is likely to win this battle?  Unless B has an achilles heel and A knows what it is, I am liking B's odds.

 

Now, B could also use his 120 points to buy a 12d6 Blast, a 3d6 Flash and a 6d6 Blast AoE Accurate.  Normally, he can Blast and Flash to both damage and blind his foe, but if that foe has high DCV, he has another option to consider.

 

In fact, I would say that clarifying multiple powers acquired at full cost can be used simultaneously, 5e/6e made a substantial mechanical improvement compared to those in 4e and prior who assumed B could only use one of those three attacks at a time - the MP was clearly the only cost-efficient choice.

 

Let's consider another option - C buys a 60 point Blast, a 30 point Multipower and 5 Variable slots - Flash Sight (up to 6d6), a tiny Mental Paralysis (fixed slot so half price), a 4d6 1 hex accurate Flash (fixed slot so half price), STR Drain (up to 3d6), and, let's say, a Blink spell for up to +6 DCV.

 

He can always Blast.  He can tack on a Blinding Flash or STR drain, or up his DCV by +6.  Or maybe only +3 DCV and 3d6 Flash, or +2 DCV and 2d6 STR drain.  He has a couple of slots to deal with the DCV monster.  I think he is way more effective than Mr 10 slot Attacks MP.

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

6 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

@Killer Shrike: It's worth noting that 60AP of attack against 20 DEF, 12 RDEF, no other defenses results in roughly 20 STUN for most forms of offense.  All having a massive spread lets you do is ignore uneven increases in defense and exploit weaknesses. 

 

You say that as if ignoring variations in defenses and exploiting weaknesses is not desirable or of high value to a character's capabilities.

 

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@Toxxus: If A buys two attacks while B buys an attack MP, A can multiple attack and throw twice the offensive weight compared to B.  That's a pretty huge advantage. 

 

No, throwing twice the offensive weight would be throwing twice the dice or level of effect. EDIT: simplistically / linearly / literally; in reality on a Gaussian curve twice the impact after defenses would not literally require twice the effect due to how defenses generally work.

 

For instance, using baseball as a metaphor...having a curve ball and a fast ball isn't twice as good as having a faster fast ball or a curvier curve ball.

 

The problem is, if an imposed restriction wont allow the fast ball specialist to have a better fast ball or the curve ball specialist to have a better curve ball than the guy with both.

 

Thus if the baseball commission or whomever said "no fast ball can be faster than 87 mph, and pitchers can only throw one curve ball per batter", suddenly the pitcher with an 87mph fast ball and a ok curve ball is more viable than the 105mph fast ball closer and the corkscrew pitcher who only throws with junk on the ball and lacks a fast ball.

 

Without such an imposed limit, all three pitchers are viable and have their uses and ideal match ups. 

__

 

If a GM is using campaign limits and tells the player who only wants the one ability that their character concept demands and want to specialize in it such that they are impressively good at it that they can't exceed the level of effect of the same kind of ability as the other player who takes a MP with a bunch of metagamed hosers and situational modifiers, then the GM is creating the situation in which the first player feels like they can't compete with the other player's character and suddenly wants an MP.

[Hugh Neilson]

3 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

No, throwing twice the offensive weight would be throwing twice the dice or level of effect.

 

Perhaps a minor point, but I disagree.  If the average opponent has 20 PD/ED, a 12 DC blast gets 22 STUN past defenses.  A 24 DC Blast will get 64 STUN past defenses, which is considerably more than double, and pass some BOD through as well.  18d6 will get 43 past defenses on average, about double, but will also typically STUN the target (as will 24 DC), so I think that is still more than twice as effective.

 

I would agree, however, that allowing the "One Attack Wonder" to have a few more DCs than the "Swiss Army Multipower" trades off some power for some versatility, and can be a good balancer.  If the characters only had enough points to be really good at one thing (15 DC attack; 75 points), pretty good at 3 things (3 12 DC attacks in an MP; 78 points) or marginally good at 5 things (5 10 DC attacks in a MP; 75 points), that balance would find itself more easily.

 

But, as you note way above, that will not happen when the campaign maximum is viewed as the campaign minimum.

[Killer Shrike]

2 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Perhaps a minor point, but I disagree.  If the average opponent has 20 PD/ED, a 12 DC blast gets 22 STUN past defenses.  A 24 DC Blast will get 64 STUN past defenses, which is considerably more than double, and pass some BOD through as well.  18d6 will get 43 past defenses on average, about double, but will also typically STUN the target (as will 24 DC), so I think that is still more than twice as effective.

 

Tangential to the point I was making, but if you allow for the offensive side, you have to allow for the defensive side. In other words, if some characters were allowed to have x2 effect, then some characters would also be allowed to have x2 the defense. 

 

The main take away of my response being that x2 options is not equal to twice the impact. It is only twice the choices.

 

Quote

 

I would agree, however, that allowing the "One Attack Wonder" to have a few more DCs than the "Swiss Army Multipower" trades off some power for some versatility, and can be a good balancer.

 

[Hugh Neilson]

While I'm in  mid-edit!  Oh well...

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

5 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

You say that as if ignoring variations in defenses and exploiting weaknesses is not desirable or of high value to a character's capabilities.

It certainly is, but I was speaking to your point about well-rounded opposition.  It took me quite a while into my HERO career to sit down and run the numbers and realize that in fact, 60 AP against 20 DEF was a fairly flat result.

The breadth a multipower offers is a marginal improvement against well-rounded foes, and only becomes a significant advantage against an enemy with significant investment in certain defenses or with significant failings in certain defenses.  How useful this is depends, of course, on the campaign.  It's nowhere near the advantage that a two-power multiple power attack affords. 

 

5 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

No, throwing twice the offensive weight would be throwing twice the dice or level of effect.

Is that not what using two powers at once in a multiple power attack achieves? 

[Killer Shrike]

19 minutes ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

It certainly is, but I was speaking to your point about well-rounded opposition.  It took me quite a while into my HERO career to sit down and run the numbers and realize that in fact, 60 AP against 20 DEF was a fairly flat result.

 

I can tell you that I am cognizant of the underlying dynamics of the game system and the math of it. If you question that statement or doubt my understanding or how long I've had such understanding, I can only refer you to the content, breakdowns, analysis, and so forth that I've made available to the community over the decades. I wont be able to type anything in the context of one post more expansive or persuasive than the large body of work already available.

I will say that you are interjecting fixed numbers and asserting them as universal constants. They are not universal constants. You can specify guidelines / constraints for a given campaign which causes those particular values to be constant within the guidelines you set. As I noted, in a given campaign with specific guidelines and restrictions, theory crafting can be done. But to then invert that and impose those operating parameters against all other possible campaigns is invalid. Different starting values generally produce different results.

 

You can of course assert those same assumptions on the next campaign, and the next campaign, and so on and get a similar outcome, but to interpret that as proof of a general rule rather than acknowledge you are imposing similarity in the outcome by reusing your default assumptions is an error.

 

Quote

The breadth a multipower offers is a marginal improvement against well-rounded foes, and only becomes a significant advantage against an enemy with significant investment in certain defenses or with significant failings in certain defenses. 

 

Agreed, generally, though we could argue around defining "significant". It was also part of my response to @Toxxus above re: rock paper scissors vs hybrid.

 

Quote

How useful this is depends, of course, on the campaign. 

 

And on other factors, but mostly campaign and GM.

 

Quote

It's nowhere near the advantage that a two-power multiple power attack affords. 

 

I kind of lost the thread of your argument here. What is "nowhere near the advantage" specifically? Could you clarify / explore this further?

 

Quote

Is that not what using two powers at once in a multiple power attack achieves? 

 

Only if the reserve is double the AP. And even then, not necessarily due to the way most defenses work in the Hero System,  and what those two powers are, and what defenses the target has and at what level they have them. It depends on the context.

[Killer Shrike]

I also want to point out an underlying factor to much of the argumentation in the last few pages: a lot of the discussion proceeds from an assumption of point caps being in effect.

 

However, point caps are not in effect by default, you don't have to use them, they are explicitly not official rules, and they aren't even uniform in nature, such that one GM talking about caps and another GM talking about caps are not necessarily talking about the same thing.

 

Now, we could segue into a historical discourse into past editions, and an anthropological study of the conventions and practices of the "Hero System Gamers" subculture and sects within it, but to keep things up at a 6e mechanics level, 6ev2 conveniently includes a generous spread of discussion around this concept, and explores various options and examples, starting on page 282.

 

I encourage people to read the section for themselves and draw their own conclusions or assert their own personal preferences. 

 

However, I think it useful to surface the following extract:

 

This section discusses some of the
most common methods, including both their
advantages and their drawbacks. These are not
official HERO System rules in any way; there are
no specific instructions for them, or requirements
that you institute them. They’re simply campaign
management tools some GMs consider useful.

 

 

[Toxxus]

25 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

Agreed, generally, though we could argue around defining "significant". It was also part of my response to @Toxxus above re: rock paper scissors vs hybrid.

 

Even in a strange world with no campaign caps (which honestly I've never seen in 30+ years of RPGs) the multi-power character has a lot more utility in a wider variety of situations.

 

In addition to the rock-paper-scissors thing mentioned earlier - they had access to heals, movement powers and other things that Mono Power Man or even Two Powers at Once Lass do not.

 

I do appreciate the extensive answers though I think we're just going to end up disagreeing at this point.

[Killer Shrike]

8 minutes ago, Toxxus said:

Even in a strange world with no campaign caps (which honestly I've never seen in 30+ years of RPGs) the multi-power character has a lot more utility in a wider variety of situations.

 

I must live in that strange world; I gave up on campaign caps a very long time ago due to what I considered to be unhealthy effects on my campaign metas and ran many campaigns without them. The Hero System by itself is mainly simulationist in the abstract. As soon as caps are imposed to a campaign, there is a strong tendency for it to become gamist as overt and blatant metagaming around those caps becomes dominant. IME, YMMV, all the standard disclaimers.

 

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In addition to the rock-paper-scissors thing mentioned earlier - they had access to heals, movement powers and other things that

Mono Power Man or even Two Powers at Once Lass do not.

 

Specialist vs Generalist. In a vacuum the balance between them is breadth vs depth. However, if a restriction is imposed such that Specialists cannot exceed the Generalists within their specialty, then there is no competition between them...the Generalist can be just as good as several Specialists. The issue is the restriction imposed.

 

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I do appreciate the extensive answers though I think we're just going to end up disagreeing at this point.

 

I've tried it your way. Could I convince you to consider trying to run a campaign without using caps and see what you discover?

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

1 hour ago, Killer Shrike said:

I kind of lost the thread of your argument here. What is "nowhere near the advantage" specifically? Could you clarify / explore this further?

 

Only if the reserve is double the AP. And even then, not necessarily due to the way most defenses work in the Hero System,  and what those two powers are, and what defenses the target has and at what level they have them. It depends on the context.

I think I got sloppy about clarity somewhere in the reply chain.  Let me be more formal. 

Assume: Defenses are generally bought relative to attacks such that a NND attack against a "normal" opponent and a blast of the same AP have roughly equal STUN output.  Based on the guidelines in FRED and the characters I have seen made by my group, posted on the forum, and in published materials, I believe this to be a reasonable assumption for superheroic play. 

Let character A have a pair of N point attack powers that are able to be used in a multiple power attack.  Let character B have a single N point reserve multipower with N points spent on ultra slots containing attacks.  Omit consideration of other powers A or B may have. 

Observation: A can multiple power attack, B cannot.  Observation: B can flexibly change the defense they are targeting, A cannot. 

Conclusion: A will have greater raw output, but be highly susceptible to variation caused by their target's characteristics.  B will experience the inverse, with a stable but lower output. 

[Killer Shrike]

4 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

I think I got sloppy about clarity somewhere in the reply chain.  Let me be more formal. 

 

Assume: Defenses are generally bought relative to attacks such that a NND attack against a "normal" opponent and a blast of the same AP have roughly equal STUN output. 

 

I'm going to use your assertion of 20 PD / 20 ED vs 60 AP from the previous post here to put some stakes in the ground.

 

Modulated Energy Beam: Blast 6d6, NND (ED Resistant Protection that Costs Endurance; +1) (60 Active Points)

 

Vs an opponent without the NND defense, 6-36 STUN & 0 BODY, 21 STUN avg.

Vs an opponent with the NND defense, 0 STUN & 0 BODY, 0 STUN avg.

 

Energy Beam: Blast 12d6 (60 Active Points)

 

Vs an opponent with 20 PD / 20 ED, 12-72 STUN & 0-24 BODY, 42 STUN & 12 BODY avg rolled; 22 STUN & 0 BODY taken past defenses avg.

 

21 STUN on avg vs 22 STUN on average. 

 

The simple case of normal damage bears out your assertion. 

 

If a campaign is set up in which virtually every character has 60 AP attacks and 40 AP defenses, then viola your perspective seems to be validated...as long as attack and defense are at a 3:2 ratio we would expect this to bear out consistently...because ratios.

 

But lets change it up. Lets not impose hard caps. If literally anything goes, then there is no basis for comparison via averages. It comes down to individual match ups.

 

If a veritable anarchic freestate of anything goes until you run out of points is off the table, lets look at the recommended ranges of the character ability guidelines table and factor across that.

 

 

I'm going to assume Standard Superheroic. We notice that the 60 AP assumption of the first example falls dead in the middle of the AP range, while 20 DEF is the floor of the DEF range. We would expect them to both be floored, ceiling'd, or mean'd  together within the range if there were indeed an intended direct correlation between them. But pretty close.

 

So, let's re-run the numbers. First, bottom of the range.

 

Floor:

Modulated Energy Beam: Blast 4d6, NND (ED Resistant Protection that Costs Endurance; +1) (40 Active Points)

 

Vs an opponent without the NND defense, 4-24 STUN & 0 BODY, 14 STUN avg.

Vs an opponent with the NND defense, 0 STUN & 0 BODY, 0 STUN avg.

 

Energy Beam: Blast 8d6 (40 Active Points)

 

Vs an opponent with 20 PD / 20 ED, 8-48 STUN & 0-16 BODY, 28 STUN & 8 BODY avg rolled; 8 STUN & 0 BODY taken past defenses avg.

 

14 STUN on avg vs 8 STUN on average.

 

Middle:

Modulated Energy Beam: Blast 6d6, NND (ED Resistant Protection that Costs Endurance; +1) (60 Active Points)

 

Vs an opponent without the NND defense, 6-36 STUN & 0 BODY, 21 STUN avg.

Vs an opponent with the NND defense, 0 STUN & 0 BODY, 0 STUN avg.

 

Energy Beam: Blast 12d6 (60 Active Points)

 

Vs an opponent with 23 PD / 23 ED, 12-72 STUN & 0-24 BODY, 42 STUN & 12 BODY avg rolled; 19 STUN & 0 BODY taken past defenses avg.

 

21 STUN on avg vs 19 STUN on average. 

 

Cieling:

Modulated Energy Beam: Blast 8d6, NND (ED Resistant Protection that Costs Endurance; +1) (80 Active Points)

 

Vs an opponent without the NND defense, 8-48 STUN & 0 BODY, 28 STUN avg.

Vs an opponent with the NND defense, 0 STUN & 0 BODY, 0 STUN avg.

 

Energy Beam: Blast 16d6 (80 Active Points)

 

Vs an opponent with 25 PD / 25 ED, 16-72 STUN & 0-24 BODY, 56 STUN & 16 BODY avg rolled; 31 STUN & 0 BODY taken past defenses avg.

 

28 STUN on avg vs 31 STUN on average. 

 

So, generally, we're tracking well against your assertion.

 

Lets look at bad matchups...floored EB attack vs ceiling'd defense...14 vs 3 STUN avg. Ceiling'd EB attack vs floored defense...28 vs 36 STUN avg

 

Interestingly, NND seems to do better at the low end and worse at the high end compared to a standard EB. A more interesting characteristic of NND vs EB is that the NND is binary and the EB is not. The value, and threat of the NND is that some targets will shrug it (which will only happen once per target as the NND wont be reused against them, typically) but most targets will eat it in its entirety. It becomes a wildcard ability, and one that often works. That has some cachet...the commonality of the NND's defense vs the commonality of higher DEF obviously is a bit of an intangible.

 

But overall we're in the ballpark of "fair" on raw numbers to support your assertion. 

 

* I just typed this out freeform, so math may be off.
 

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Based on the guidelines in FRED and the characters I have seen made by my group, posted on the forum, and in published materials, I believe this to be a reasonable assumption for superheroic play. 

 

In the case of NND and EB your Assumption bears out well enough to work with.

 

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Let character A have a pair of N point attack powers that are able to be used in a multiple power attack.  Let character B have a single N point reserve multipower with N points spent on ultra slots containing attacks. 

 

Omit consideration of other powers A or B may have. 

 

Observation: A can multiple power attack, B cannot.  Observation: B can flexibly change the defense they are targeting, A cannot. 

 

Conclusion: A will have greater raw output, but be highly susceptible to variation caused by their target's characteristics.  B will experience the inverse, with a stable but lower output. 

 

I agree with that conclusion given that the pair of powers A has are EB and / or NND and the power that B has is either, per the Assumption. It might bear out over further examples and we would expect it to do so to the extent that we trust the underlying costing of base attacks and base defenses are legit. 

 

However, I don't think this is what we were actually discussing in previous posts. 

 

I'll use your model and type over it. I worked out your assertion; maybe you'll return in kind and explore this one...

 

Let character A have an X AP attack power

 

Let character B have a multipower  with Y AP Reserve and 3 or more fixed / ultra slot attacks with Y AP.

 

Omit consideration of other abilities character A or character B may have spent their points on. 

 

Observation: if X == Y, character B can have a slot with exactly the same power as character A's only power (or a functionally equivalent power)

 

Conclusion: character A is not competitive or viable compared to character B.

 

Let X > Y

 

Question: How much greater than Y must X be before character A becomes competitive / viable compared to character B?

 

Question: How much greater than Y must X be before character A becomes more effective than character B in terms of defeating campaign typical enemies in combat?

 

Tangent: do NOT omit consideration of other powers character A or character B may have spent their points on. 

 

Let L == Real Cost of character A's one power

 

Let M == total Real Cost of character B's multipower reserve and slots

 

Let N = M-L

 

Question: how much greater than 0 must N be for the other abilities character A can afford to be enough to improve their competitiveness and validity compared to character B? 

 

EDIT: @Gnome BODY (important!), I responded.

[Hugh Neilson]

14 hours ago, Killer Shrike said:

I must live in that strange world; I gave up on campaign caps a very long time ago due to what I considered to be unhealthy effects on my campaign metas and ran many campaigns without them. The Hero System by itself is mainly simulationist in the abstract. As soon as caps are imposed to a campaign, there is a strong tendency for it to become gamist as overt and blatant metagaming around those caps becomes dominant. IME, YMMV, all the standard disclaimers.

 

KS, I am assuming "no caps" does not mean "no limits, no oversight" - which should go without saying, but someone will question it, I expect.  I'm confident you exercise a good level of oversight, with an eye to "give the player what they want within the campaign's parameters".

 

I think many of those very experienced with Hero develop a sort of zen character review - this guy will be overpowered, that guy will not.

 

Prior to 4e, when hard caps really seemed to take over, I saw a lot more "campaign standards" and "tradeoff" models for capping character design.  Maybe the campaign standard was 12 DCs, but the Brick could have a 70 STR because he only had one attack option - hit the opponent again and again - and a 4 SPD.  But the Archer with 15 attack slots and 6-7 SPD only got 10 DC maximum, because of that significantly greater versatility and frequency of attacks.  Plus the archer had a high OCV and the Brick's was fairly low.

 

The Brick had way higher defenses than the Archer, but the Archer had a far superior DCV.  The guy who also had all of the exotic defenses had a lower DCV and campaign standard PD and ED.

 

Then we'd balance "this guy is higher on offense and lower on defense than the campaign standard", and that guy had limited movement, so more restricted tactical options.

 

Hero has a lot of moving parts.  But it feels like a lot of games became "You get 12 DC attacks, 25 defenses, 5 SPD and a 9 OCV and DCV.  Write your special effects beside them and let's play" around the time 4e came on the scene.

 

Perhaps part of the problem was that there were no guidelines for tradeoffs (Mutants and Masterminds caps some tradeoffs, but has less moving parts).  Another part was that we could afford campaign max in every ability, so why would we not buy every ability to campaign max - that "maximum becomes minimum" issue raised above.

[Hugh Neilson]

On multipowers, I think VPPs also have to come into any analysis.  There is a point at which the VPP becomes more cost-effective.  Once we have established that "pick 60 real points worth of powers with 60 AP or less" costs 60 + [30x3 = 90] 150 points, we have to assess the point at which even the slots we have in the MP would be more efficiently purchased as a VPP.  It's a complex analysis, but it is part of the equation.

 

14 hours ago, Toxxus said:

 

Even in a strange world with no campaign caps (which honestly I've never seen in 30+ years of RPGs) the multi-power character has a lot more utility in a wider variety of situations.

 

In addition to the rock-paper-scissors thing mentioned earlier - they had access to heals, movement powers and other things that Mono Power Man or even Two Powers at Once Lass do not.

 

Now we seem to be talking about "my concept is any powers I want my character to have".  I know when I design a VPP based character (moving beyond the Multpower), I start by defining what the character can't do.  Comparing that to the Full Power Cosmic VPP, I apply a limitation to the control cost accordingly.  Often, "what he can't do" will be partially driven by other characters in the game (e.g. we have a mentalist; maybe there is a reason his VPP cannot do mental powers), as well as conceptual issues.

 

I have, on occasion, asked "why does the character have this ability", and had to rephrase it as "not 'why would that ability be useful to the character', but 'how does that ability fit with the vision and concept of the character' ".   Slapping a huge movement power and a big defense power in an attacks multipower "cuz I can, and it will be useful if I don't want to attack" is not a sign of a good player for any campaign, in my opinion.

[Ninja-Bear]

Hugh when I started in 4e I took 60 act pt because like you stated, everyone had 60 act pt powers. I’m not sure if I have the right mix yet but on mummy mind though if you want people to take less powerful options, then there should be a good game reason why. Iow if 12DC is max and 10DC is average I think villains should be able to be hurt at say 8DC. Not a lot mind you but not to be totally useless. In my games now I strive for more versatile characters to not have the max DC output.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

5 hours ago, Killer Shrike said:

I'll use your model and type over it. I worked out your assertion; maybe you'll return in kind and explore this one...

 

Let character A have an X AP attack power

 

Let character B have a multipower  with Y AP Reserve and 3 or more fixed / ultra slot attacks with Y AP.

 

Omit consideration of other abilities character A or character B may have spent their points on. 

 

Observation: if X == Y, character B can have a slot with exactly the same power as character A's only power (or a functionally equivalent power)

 

Conclusion: character A is not competitive or viable compared to character B.

 

Let X > Y

 

Question: How much greater than Y must X be before character A becomes competitive / viable compared to character B?

 

Question: How much greater than Y must X be before character A becomes more effective than character B in terms of defeating campaign typical enemies in combat?

 

Tangent: do NOT omit consideration of other powers character A or character B may have spent their points on. 

 

Let L == Real Cost of character A's one power

 

Let M == total Real Cost of character B's multipower reserve and slots

 

Let N = M-L

 

Question: how much greater than 0 must N be for the other abilities character A can afford to be enough to improve their competitiveness and validity compared to character B?

Let d be the distribution of defenses in the campaign. 

 

Let x(d) be the mean damage of a successful attack by character A's attack.  For a Blast or similar power, this would be (X/5)*3.5-DEF where DEF is whatever defense applies against this attack.  So long as (X/5)*3.5-DEF >> 0, this is a good approximation.

Let var(x(d)) be the variance in x(d), which in turn is just the variance in DEF.

 

Let y1(d), y2(d), y3(d) be the mean damages of B's attacks.  Let y(d) be the maximum of y1(d), y2(d), y3(d).  Let var(y(d)) be the variance in y(d), which will be lower than var(x(d)).  Computing this is a bit harder, but still doable. 

 

Let W be the value given to mean damage-per-phase and V be the value, likely negative, given to variance. 

The relative value of A's powers and B's powers can be expressed as W*(mean(x(d))-mean(y(d))) + V*(var(x(d))-var(y(d))).  If this has a positive result, character A is optimal for this distribution of d and choice of W and V.  If this has a negative result, character B is optimal. 

This is a bit unsatisfying to me since it's admittedly just a fancy way to say "depends on the campaign and how much you want stable damage output", but it's a fancy mathematical way that could be made into a computer program to very decisively answer the question for a given d X Y W and V. 

[Killer Shrike]

On 2/16/2019 at 8:00 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

KS, I am assuming "no caps" does not mean "no limits, no oversight" - which should go without saying, but someone will question it, I expect.  I'm confident you exercise a good level of oversight, with an eye to "give the player what they want within the campaign's parameters".

 

Caps means ceilings placed on D6, DEF, etc. I do apply some limits in some campaigns, such a Skill Maxima, or limits on levels of Combat Luck and Deadly Blow when that seems appropriate to the tone of the setting. I tend to prefer checks to disincentivize via diminishing returns rather than "hard No" things when possible; overhead costs, etc. I do use the character ability guidelines as a loose guidance for some campaigns, but not in others. 

 

Of course there is oversight. Heavy oversight. I carefully consider each character overall as an individual, then how they fit within the group of PC's, then how they fit within the campaign setting, both at character creation and as play progresses and the character develops.

 

Given that I've made hundreds of characters available to the community over the years, and detailed many campaigns and how I used the system to realize that campaign, I feel like my approach in this area is sufficiently covered. Some of the campaigns I developed collaboratively on these very forums with other forumites. My "coding style" with the Hero System has been on display for a very long time. Those who are familiar with my material tend to recommend it, and even years later after not being active with the community or the system for several years I still get emails from people asking for advice or wanting to incorporate some aspect of the material in their own work. 

 

Not everyone is familiar with the material, not everyone is interested in it or cares, but for those willing to challenge their long-held habits of how they have used the system and preconceptions might learn a thing or two, just as I continue to learn a thing or two from other practitioners of the system. People who are unfamiliar with me who might think I'm a lone bearded maniac howling from a cave on the mountainside are free to peruse my stuff, or not, but I've never been shy about putting my efforts out there for others to see...the good the bad and the I wont be doing that again et al.

 

I'll respond to the rest later, but family duties call...

[Hugh Neilson]

5 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Hugh when I started in 4e I took 60 act pt because like you stated, everyone had 60 act pt powers. I’m not sure if I have the right mix yet but on mummy mind though if you want people to take less powerful options, then there should be a good game reason why. Iow if 12DC is max and 10DC is average I think villains should be able to be hurt at say 8DC. Not a lot mind you but not to be totally useless. In my games now I strive for more versatile characters to not have the max DC output.

 

This is one of the more challenging issues in setting a range.  The D&D character who does 1d6 or 1d8, with no bonuses, still does some damage, even when that 1d10 + 5 warrior does quite a bit more.  A Hero character with low DC may get nothing past defenses on enemies built to stand up to much higher DCs.

 

With 20 defenses, an 8d6 attack will average 8 STUN past defenses.  That seems a reasonable low.  12d6 passes 22 points past defenses, and 14d6 would average 29.  That's a pretty big range - how useful will the 8dc character feel?  Bump defenses up to 25 and 12d6 passes 17 damage through, while 8d6 is only doing 3 stun (**plink**).

 

I am thinking a 4 DC range is probably where we settle in.  That might mean a typical attack is 12d6, 14d6 is the top and 10d6 is the bottom we would expext, and we expect defenses of 25 on average, maybe 20 - 30.

 

But if you want 14 DCs damage, you should expect little or no versatility, and should be below campaign average in some other respect.

[Killer Shrike]

17 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I think many of those very experienced with Hero develop a sort of zen character review - this guy will be overpowered, that guy will not.

 

Sure. The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition speaks to this tendency. In that model the move from Competent to Proficient to Expert is characterized by a shift in explicit, implicit, and tacit knowledge. Other competing theories of skill acquisition have different spins, but it is fairly well accepted that intuition, chunking, and understanding of nuance are common characteristics of mastery in many fields.

 

Quote

Prior to 4e, when hard caps really seemed to take over, I saw a lot more "campaign standards" and "tradeoff" models for capping character design.  Maybe the campaign standard was 12 DCs, but the Brick could have a 70 STR because he only had one attack option - hit the opponent again and again - and a 4 SPD.  But the Archer with 15 attack slots and 6-7 SPD only got 10 DC maximum, because of that significantly greater versatility and frequency of attacks.  Plus the archer had a high OCV and the Brick's was fairly low.

 

I started playing in 4e, but I self-bootstrapped and spread the game to others. I didn't encounter another person who already played the Hero System for a handful of years. I proceeded from what the rulebook said and made things with it. What I found later when I began to interact with other players outside the circle of those I introduced the system to is that a large part of how many other people used the game was apocryphal or based on tradition rather than rules based.

 

I noticed a tendency towards a certain cookie-cutter approach for character and campaign designs, a self-gimping of the systems capabilities, a straightjacket of convention restraining creativity.  

 

I speak of course largely of campaign caps. 

 

Initially, I thought...well...maybe the way I've been doing it was wrong. Maybe these people know something I don't know. So I gave it a go. I used "recommended" point caps, tried various versions, DC and DEF, or AP, or RC, or some combination, or various "Rule of X" schemes.

 

No matter what approach is used, there will be at least one number and as soon as there is a hard number, it becomes the defacto minimum value for most players, and ways to sneakily exceed that number begin to creep into character builds. Character design stopped being about modeling a cool character, and started becoming an exercise of building to the allowed maximums and bending a character around whatever is left. Characteristics inflated across the board. Players sat down to make a new character, and just started assigning values to well known characteristics sweet spots, resistant defenses, an attack of XD6 where X is the max, and oh yeah what was this character's shtick again? Add some stuff for that. Good to go.

 

The definition of what's appropriate to a campaign as expressed entirely in combat effective values for attack and defense immediately puts players into the mode of metagaming for combat effectiveness instead of character concept mode.

 

Hard limits on AP or RC cause defining abilities with powers to become a metagame exercise to work within the caps rather than an attempt to model the character's concept as accurately as possible.

 

Rules of X vary, but whatever characteristics or values are used within a given Rule of X become the target of min maxing to work within.

 

Just, meh, no thank you.

 

After a bit I just went back to doing it the way I started out doing it, holistically. All was well and character building returned to being about expressing the character first, and the cookie-cutterness effect diminished quickly.

 

Quote

The Brick had way higher defenses than the Archer, but the Archer had a far superior DCV.  The guy who also had all of the exotic defenses had a lower DCV and campaign standard PD and ED.

 

Then we'd balance "this guy is higher on offense and lower on defense than the campaign standard", and that guy had limited movement, so more restricted tactical options.

 

Hero has a lot of moving parts. 

 

Agreed. 

 

Quote

But it feels like a lot of games became "You get 12 DC attacks, 25 defenses, 5 SPD and a 9 OCV and DCV.  Write your special effects beside them and let's play" around the time 4e came on the scene.

 

This is the sort of "cookie cutter" narrow approach to the game that I refer to on occasion. Gamist and unimaginative and uninteresting, in my opinion.

 

Quote

Perhaps part of the problem was that there were no guidelines for tradeoffs (Mutants and Masterminds caps some tradeoffs, but has less moving parts).  Another part was that we could afford campaign max in every ability, so why would we not buy every ability to campaign max - that "maximum becomes minimum" issue raised above.

 

Yes. And that brings me to a point that I've raised in the past, only to get mostly blank looks and crickets.

 

The Hero System naturally has a hard cap on character abilities, and that is character points themselves.

 

As soon as the GM chooses the number to determine how many cp characters will get in an upcoming campaign, they have put a hard cap on all of those character's capabilities. It is a very effective cap unto itself. 

 

Furthermore (in my opinion, obviously), the wonderfulness of the Hero System is its nearly boundless capabilities, its flexibility, its open endedness. I have been made to realize over the years that many people are uncomfortable with that sort of open sandboxy freedom and prefer to limit and restrict and confine their options to something they feel more comfortable dealing with. And that's fine, I guess, for people who prefer smaller surface areas of possibility. However, there is much to be gained by unclenching a little and allowing more diversity in character capabilities within a campaign. The game is robust; it can handle it.

[Killer Shrike]

10 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

This is one of the more challenging issues in setting a range.  The D&D character who does 1d6 or 1d8, with no bonuses, still does some damage, even when that 1d10 + 5 warrior does quite a bit more.  A Hero character with low DC may get nothing past defenses on enemies built to stand up to much higher DCs.

 

With 20 defenses, an 8d6 attack will average 8 STUN past defenses.  That seems a reasonable low.  12d6 passes 22 points past defenses, and 14d6 would average 29.  That's a pretty big range - how useful will the 8dc character feel?  Bump defenses up to 25 and 12d6 passes 17 damage through, while 8d6 is only doing 3 stun (**plink**).

 

I am thinking a 4 DC range is probably where we settle in.  That might mean a typical attack is 12d6, 14d6 is the top and 10d6 is the bottom we would expext, and we expect defenses of 25 on average, maybe 20 - 30.

 

But if you want 14 DCs damage, you should expect little or no versatility, and should be below campaign average in some other respect.

 

I'm going to tell a little tale of whimsy...it's the 1980's, fantasy roleplaying games have sprung from nowhere and become a craze sweeping the nation. That seems cool and all, but me and my pals are way more into comic books than Bored of the Rings knockoffs. If only there were a roleplaying game where me and my pals could roleplay as superheroes!

 

Turns out there are a few. One of them is called Champions! The Superheroic Roleplaying Game. Me and my pals acquire that game. I'll be the GM, my pals will make up their very own superheroes.

 

One of my pals wants to play a superhumanly strong and tough superhero like the Thing or the Hulk. Now, we know our comics and thus are aware that a superstrong character in the same "weight class" as one of them must be able to lift around 100 tons and maybe more. Oh look, there's a characteristic called "STRENGTH" and how much a given amount of Strength can lift is indicated by a handy dandy chart. Literally NONE of the other characteristics get a chart with specific quantifiable values for a given amount of that characteristic, only Strength does. But whatever. According to this chart, to lift 100 tons requires 60 STR. We're also helpfully informed that 60 STR allows a character to do 12D6 damage in hth. Ok, cool.

 

Now one of my other pals wants to make a fire based character like the Human Torch. We eventually figure out that this is probably either a Energy Blast or a Ranged Killing Attack, or maybe both for the sake of variety. We have a little group pow wow and decide that our characters are true blue superheroes and wouldn't kill, so we agree Energy Blast seems best for this guy. How much damage should he do? Well obviously if the brick is doing 12D6, the blaster should be competitive with that. We go with 12D6 for now.

 

Finally my last pal wants to make a gun guy, like the Punisher. The rest of us groan and point out we just all agreed that these characters aren't killers, and proceed to have the same "its unrealistic, the bad guys will just escape and come back" vs "yeah no kidding that's part of the tropes of the genre" argument that silver age and bronze age enthusiasts were starting to have in that era and have continued to have...except we're teenagers and have a limited vocabulary and life experience and thus the argument soon degrades into "well, if you want me to play this stupid game with you jerks, that's what I want to make" and we let him. So, we already figured out that Ranged Killing Attack can be used for guns, so we start there. We learn enough about DC's to figure out that 12D6 normal damage is equivalent to 4D6 killing attack, so the Punisher-wannabe gets a 4D6 gun to compete with the blaster and the brick. We notice there's a chapter on weapons and armor so we page to that because it might be relevant. We find a section for Ranged Weapons, which includes Assault Rifles...which only do 1 1/2 D6 to 2D6 + 1 killing damage?!?!? Huh? What gives? Paging down a bit we see that an Anti-tank Weapon does 4D6K damage. 

 

We all stop and kind of look at each other. Something doesn't make sense. Did we make a mistake? We go back to first principles. The brick is definitely as strong as a first class brick in the comics, and that definitely grants 12D6 damage. The provenance of how we got to a 4D6 K attack for the anti-hero seems to make sense. So why then is that so out of line with the weapons list printed in the book?

 

I as the GM get the bright idea to see if there are rules for destroying stuff, and find a Breaking Things chapter. A chart in which informs us that the front door of a house has 4 DEF and 3 BODY. We do some math. A 2D6 assault rifle would shred that door on an average roll but would mostly bounce off of a 10 DEF 9 BODY safe door. We collectively agree that this seems more or less legit. 

 

So...if the Assault Rifle is 6 DC and the brick punch is 12 DC, is the game trying to tell us that a punch from a brick is supposed to be twice as dangerous as getting shot with an assault rifle? After some discussion we agree that this doesn't make sense to us; in most comics characters that aren't invulnerable generally must at least respect the presence of a gun even if the writer never allows them to get shot.

 

We eventually just decide to roll with it in the interests of playing the game, and let Punisher-wannabe have a 4D6 KA to quell the whinging. But something is clearly a bit fishy vis a vis definition of real world / mundane structures and weapons vs superheroic powers and "weapons" bought as powers.

[Killer Shrike]

On 2/16/2019 at 2:32 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

This is one of the more challenging issues in setting a range.  The D&D character who does 1d6 or 1d8, with no bonuses, still does some damage, even when that 1d10 + 5 warrior does quite a bit more.  A Hero character with low DC may get nothing past defenses on enemies built to stand up to much higher DCs.

 

With 20 defenses, an 8d6 attack will average 8 STUN past defenses.  That seems a reasonable low.  12d6 passes 22 points past defenses, and 14d6 would average 29.  That's a pretty big range - how useful will the 8dc character feel?  Bump defenses up to 25 and 12d6 passes 17 damage through, while 8d6 is only doing 3 stun (**plink**).

 

I am thinking a 4 DC range is probably where we settle in.  That might mean a typical attack is 12d6, 14d6 is the top and 10d6 is the bottom we would expext, and we expect defenses of 25 on average, maybe 20 - 30.

 

But if you want 14 DCs damage, you should expect little or no versatility, and should be below campaign average in some other respect.

 

Tale of whimsy, part 2...alternate universe version.

 

Same basic setup, still the 80's, etc...but in this dimension there is no chart with fixed values of lift weight per point of Strength. It is defined in relativistic terms LIKE EVERY OTHER CHARACTERISTIC. 30 STR is obviously meant to be a little stronger than 29 STR, but how much stronger is not specified. 

 

"But how strong is the Hulk supposed to be in this game?", asks my brick making pal.

 

I shrug and answer, "I don't know...how smart is Mr. Fantastic? How agile is Spiderman?". 

 

"Well, the book says a person weighs around 100kg, and people have 10 STR starting.  So a normal person can move their own weight around plus a little more; that gives us a baseline. Also Ted Arcidi just set the benchpress record at 320 kg. That's more or less maximum human capacity as far as we know it, so maybe that's 20 or 21 STR?", the blaster making and sports trivia junky pal says.

 

"Well, how much can a character carry? That should give us a clue.", my Punisher-wannabe pal says.

 

We all agree that's a bright idea. We page around in the book and find a section talking about Encumbrance. The books says encumbrance is genre dependent,  more appropriate to heroic campaigns and suggests that for superheroic play we just use common sense based upon a character's anatomy and STR characteristic using a Strength characteristic roll if necessary for a given situation, and then refers us to the Characteristics Roll section. 

 

The Characteristics Roll section describes how to calculate a characteristic roll, and discusses why a GM might ask for a characteristic roll in general, and talks about standard penalties for a characteristics roll expressed in relative terms...something like:

 

 

It also lays out a basic model of Primary Characteristics having max "normal" value of 20, 30 being mildly superhuman, 40 being superhuman, 50 being extremely superhuman, and each 10 points beyond that being another order of magnitude.

 

Specifically it suggests that a GM peg the maximum allowed value for a superhuman campaign at 50 reserved for only a few characters within the setting, with 40-45 being much more typical high end values. Thus in a Marvel-like campaign maybe the "strongest one there is" character might have a 50 Strength, while his orange concrete faced sparring partner is 40 or 45 and Quicksilver or Northstar are 50 DEX, while in a DC-like campaign Superman might be at 50 STR and the Flash at 50 DEX even though they are portrayed as being much stronger or faster than their Marvel counterparts within their own setting.

 

In other words, a relative scale for a given campaign. 

 

The Strength Characteristic Roll discussion also describes how far one can throw something based upon success or failure of a Strength roll with various modifiers rather than being directly weight based. Something extra heavy for a character imposes a bigger penalty, something very light for a character grants a bonus. Aerodynamic, etc, all just modifiers to the roll. Degree of success determines distance.

 

We get back to the business of making the characters. After some discussion the group agrees that it would be better to give their characters some room to grow over time, and the brick making pal gives his character 40 STR and buys a couple of PSL's to offset STR Characteristics roll penalties for lifting extra heavy objects. This also gives him 8D6 HtH damage.

 

We move on to the fire blaster, and end up with an 8D6 EB.

 

We move on to the Punisher-wannabe and end up with a 2 1/2 D6 K assault rifle. The player explains how his assault rifle is tricked out compared to a standard version, which accounts for its extra 1 DC over the top end assault rifle in the book, and we agree that seems legit. He takes a DNPC called "Old Army Buddy Munitioneer" and says that's the guy who does his custom gun work, and we agree that's a clever thing for him to do. We're really getting the hang of this roleplaying stuff.

 

 

Anyway...the main point is STR is anomalous in giving concrete quantification of real world values (weight) tied to a specific STR value. None of the other characteristics do this and don't need to do this. As a particular STR value also grants a specific # of Damage Classes in Normal HtH damage, and possibly because Marvel superheros used to identify their top end superstrong heroes as having "Class 100 Strength" defined as "lifting 100 tons or more over their heads" or possibly for other reasons unknown to me, 60 STR to reach 100 tons (eventually clarified to represent the maximum amount of weight the character can just manage to lift off the ground, stagger with for a step or two,  then drop vs press over head, but we didn't know that yet) seemed to become the norm, and once that value was pegged the bog-standard 12 DC campaign spawned.

 

In 6e there's a handy "toolkitting" blurb for changing up the STR chart per genre. I don't know if that was put there due to the occasional rant I would go off on about making the STR chart genre or setting based, or if it's just a happy coincidence that it somehow appeared in the book. Regardless, it's worth considering and solves issues caused by trying to pin a specific STR value to simulate the expectations of a Marvel-like or DC-like or Valiant-like, or some other specific context-like setting, and the unfortunate ripple effect that often has on Damage Classes and stat inflation.

 

TOOLKITTING:
THE STRENGTH TABLE
The standard Strength Table applies to all genres, and thus has
to cover a wide range of STRs to allow for mighty superheroes,
enormous giants, and the like. However, the GM can adjust the
Strength Table to suit a particular campaign or genre if desired.
For example, in a “Low Fantasy” campaign, where no character’s
ever going to be able to lift more than, say, 400 kg, the GM could
reconfigure the Table so that STR 30 can lift 400 kg and things
scale down from there. That provides a broader range of useful
STR values for the campaign.

 

[Killer Shrike]

16 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

On multipowers, I think VPPs also have to come into any analysis.  There is a point at which the VPP becomes more cost-effective.  Once we have established that "pick 60 real points worth of powers with 60 AP or less" costs 60 + [30x3 = 90] 150 points, we have to assess the point at which even the slots we have in the MP would be more efficiently purchased as a VPP.  It's a complex analysis, but it is part of the equation.

 

 

Now we seem to be talking about "my concept is any powers I want my character to have".  I know when I design a VPP based character (moving beyond the Multpower), I start by defining what the character can't do.  Comparing that to the Full Power Cosmic VPP, I apply a limitation to the control cost accordingly.  Often, "what he can't do" will be partially driven by other characters in the game (e.g. we have a mentalist; maybe there is a reason his VPP cannot do mental powers), as well as conceptual issues.

  

I have, on occasion, asked "why does the character have this ability", and had to rephrase it as "not 'why would that ability be useful to the character', but 'how does that ability fit with the vision and concept of the character' ".   Slapping a huge movement power and a big defense power in an attacks multipower "cuz I can, and it will be useful if I don't want to attack" is not a sign of a good player for any campaign, in my opinion.

 

I don't like to post just to say "I totally agree with this". But...