Unified Success Mechanics

[Sean Waters]

There is an interesting thread on whether 6e is mechanically the best version of Hero. 

 

It strikes me that ‘mechanics’ can cover a lot of ground, so I thought I might throw a spotlight on particular mechanics and see how we feel about them.

 

Determining if you hit in combat is essentially unchanged since Champions began: OCV+11-3d6 Roll gives you the DCV you can hit. 

 

Then there are skill rolls which are done by rolling under your skill on 3d6, with modifiers to the roll.

 

Essentially this is the way it has always been done, so no change in the success mechanics between first edition Champions and 6e (although IIRC there were almost no skills in first edition Champions – possibly Acrobatics?).

 

There are a number of ways we could change these mechanics, the most obvious one being to just pick one and use that for both combat and skill determination.  I'd rather avoid discussion at the moment on whether we should roll high or low, and I am assuming that we will use one or both of the current mechanics, not something entirely different, but you may think otherwise

 

If we were to go with the Combat Model, skills would be determined by having a SSV (Skill Success Value), which would be the equivalent of OCV and DCV.  You would roll OCV+11-3d6 and the result would give you the SSV you could beat for opposed rolls, or the TSV (Target Skill Value) you could beat for non-opposed rolls.  We could say that the TSV always starts at 0.  The TSV and SSV would be modified by circumstances.  I'm certainly not wedded to the terms and abbreviations - they are there so we know what we are talking about.

 

So The Acrobat is trying to swing off a flagpole and has a SSV of 4, his 'skill' is at 15 (11+4), subtracts 3d6 (I just rolled a 10) and the result tells him what TSV he needs to beat.  In this instance he could beat a 5 or less.  That easily beats a 0, so he would succeed, and (if he was trying to get an advantage in combat he would get +1).  However, if it was icy that might act as a penalty (which increases the TSV) of 3, and if he is falling and is at full reach that might be another penalty of 2, so the TSV is 5.  He would still succeed, but it would be a much closer thing (and no combat bonus!)

 

Alternatively you could use the Skill Model for combat: if you have an OCV of 8, then you have a Fighting Skill of 19-.  You need to roll 19 or under on 3d6, which is easy – only a roll of 18 would fail, because a roll of 18 always fails (I just rolled a 9).  In this example I succeeded by 10, so I could hit anything with a DCV of 10 or less.  You could also do this as an opposed roll (Defence Skill = 10+DCV) or use Defence Skill where it is dramatically appropriate – for instance when a PC is trying to avoid falling debris, it might be more interesting to have them roll to ‘dodge’ than have inanimate objects roll to hit.  The skill is at DCV+10 so that the odds don’t change i.e. are still slightly in favour of hitting.  Fighting and Defence would be General Skills that always start at 11- i.e are not Characteristic based.

 

Results wise they are the same, but they have a different feel to them, even though all you are really doing is re-arranging the equation.  I think the feel is important though, and I don’t think having a single unified mechanic would hurt at all.

 

Thoughts?

 

[Killer Shrike]

They basically are the same already; 3d6 roll under with situational modifiers.

 

In the case of an attack roll it is resisted by the opponent's DCV, vs the typically unresisted nature of skill rolls...but the resistance of the target's DCV is really just a penalty to the 11- + bonuses roll made by the attacker and is thus the same as say a Acrobatics roll with a situational penalty.

 

Edited January 31, 2019 by Killer Shrike
clarity

[Sean Waters]

They are exactly the same, mathematically, so why present them in different ways?  One mechanic for resolving everything makes the game easier to learn, and the rules section shorter.  Funnily enough a lot of games have adopted a very similar mechanic to Hero, including D&D.

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

True, the presentation is different for no real reason. Every character effectively has an additional "Combat" characteristic of "10", which provides a 11- base "combat value" as seen in 11 + OCV or the flip side, 10 + DCV if you are doing roll high.

 

The first thread to pull on would be...instead of buying OCV and DCV as stats as in 6e, one would just buy up their "CV" characteristic, getting a +1 every 5 points of characteristic like any other characteristic roll. 

 

The missing bit there would be the reciprocal nature of OCV vs DCV. Instead of a flat roll as is done currently, the same dynamic could be achieved by instead doing a contested Combat roll for every attack, with whoever made their roll by more succeeding, with a tie favoring the defender per HS tradition. 

 

OCV / DCV / special purpose CSL's would work the same, though a recosting would be in order (but, that's already true anyway in 6e).

 

It would simplify the characteristics.

 

To follow it to its logical conclusion, the mental CV stats would be collapsed into Ego. Ego would no longer be used as a comparison offset for certain mental effects. Mental Defense would be made a characteristic, mirrored exactly as PD and ED. Mental level of effect powers would be refactored a bit to remove the EGO basis of comparison, and also get recosted as necessary.

 

It is totally doable. 

 

In the end it would function more or less the same as the current model, just more streamlined / less baroque. I'd not have a problem with it and would likely prefer it, but I suspect most people would experience a certain amount of FUD or general disgruntlement over the butchery of so many sacred cows all in one go.

[Hugh Neilson]

13 hours ago, Killer Shrike said:

True, the presentation is different for no real reason. Every character effectively has an additional "Combat" characteristic of "10", which provides a 11- base "combat value" as seen in 11 + OCV or the flip side, 10 + DCV if you are doing roll high.

 

The first thread to pull on would be...instead of buying OCV and DCV as stats as in 6e, one would just buy up their "CV" characteristic, getting a +1 every 5 points of characteristic like any other characteristic roll. 

 

The missing bit there would be the reciprocal nature of OCV vs DCV. Instead of a flat roll as is done currently, the same dynamic could be achieved by instead doing a contested Combat roll for every attack, with whoever made their roll by more succeeding, with a tie favoring the defender per HS tradition. 

 

OCV / DCV / special purpose CSL's would work the same, though a recosting would be in order (but, that's already true anyway in 6e).

 

It would simplify the characteristics.

 

To follow it to its logical conclusion, the mental CV stats would be collapsed into Ego. Ego would no longer be used as a comparison offset for certain mental effects. Mental Defense would be made a characteristic, mirrored exactly as PD and ED. Mental level of effect powers would be refactored a bit to remove the EGO basis of comparison, and also get recosted as necessary.

 

It is totally doable. 

 

In the end it would function more or less the same as the current model, just more streamlined / less baroque. I'd not have a problem with it and would likely prefer it, but I suspect most people would experience a certain amount of FUD or general disgruntlement over the butchery of so many sacred cows all in one go.

 

d20 (or at least one version) noted that, instead of an AC of 10 + modifiers, the defender could roll a d20 and add their modifiers.  Basically, they are always "taking 10" on defense.  It would make combat more volatile.

 

Similarly,, a Hero character could roll 3d6 and subtract (or add) OCV and other modifiers, opposed by the defender rolling 3d6 and subtracting (or adding) DCV and other defense modifiers.

 

I would not want to make CV a single characteristic, though.  I prefer the idea that people can be better at offense than defense, or vice versa.  This also makes abilities which enhance (or impair) one and not the other (whether for that character, or usable on other characters) much easier to build. 

 

In games where mental combat is uncommon (maybe right up to many Supers games where mental powers are  not all that frequent), I could see merging mOCV and mDCV.  That  might be less intuitive, though, where CV remains split.

 

Given how Hero (like most RPGs) handles combat, I am thinking focus on the combat resolution roll first, then figure out how to make skills similar.  Start with "a passive defender is assumed to roll an 11 " for combat and move that to skills, so we have all rolls against a target not actively opposing the ability having a static "resistance number", while those actively opposing make a roll.  Or, perhaps. we go the d20 route, and the assumption is that all defensive abilities "take 11".  As an optional rule, they can be permitted to, or required to, roll.

 

Tack on the ability to "take 11" in many situations, and we eliminate the possibility that Tarzan rolls an 18 and fails to climb a tree.

[Sean Waters]

At present you hit a DCV equal to your OCV on an 11, which is 55% chance, IIRC.

 

If you had people rolling for both attack and defence (in the way you do Skill v Skill) - which might be appropriate for a duel or somesuch - the attack would logically be taken first and the defence would then be a response: assuming even OCV and DCV for all concerned and rolls of 11, ATTACKER would roll 11, hit the DCV (so the attack is a success) then DEFENDER would roll, and would also succeed on an 11-, so the attack would miss.  This would mean that there is a 55% chance to hit and a 55% chance to avoid a successful hit.  That would mean that there is only a 30% chance of a successful hit.  

 

What we'd need to do is roll simultaneously rather than serially: you have OCV+11-3d6 vs DCV+11-3d6, with ties going to the attacker, to emulate the current chance of success.

 

The other way you could do this, to perhaps speed things up for the GM is to have your NPC characters 'take 11' on attacks, and the PCs roll to avoid their attacks - so a NPC with an OCV of 6 would have an attack of 17, and the player would then roll DCV+11-3d6 and try and get 18 or more to avoid the attack (or, more neatly, roll DCV+10-3d6 and equal or exceed that attack).  Obviously when players are attacking, they roll to hit against DCV as usual.

 

 

 

[Sean Waters]

Just to toot the 'roll high' horn, contested combat rolls could be done on a straight 3d6+OCV vs 3d6+DCV - no need to modify both sides equally.  Technically you could say the same with a 'roll low' mechanic and have OCV-3d6 vs DVC-3d6 as the +11 to both sides cancels out - trouble is that you then run the risk of negative numbers, and that is going to cause consternation and confusion, or FUD as Killer Shrike recently styled it  

[sentry0]

I'm a fan of the roll high approach as it unifies the two basic roll types into one.  Arguably, it's more natural to tell someone that more (high) is better...always.  I'm also a sucker for systems with difficulty numbers that you have to meet or exceed in general.

 

I like the idea of saying to someone "roll 3d6 and add it to your OCV, beat an 18".  KS is right in that 10+DCV is mathematically exactly the same as 11+OCV-3d6 but it's a whole lot easier to calculate for new players.

[Hugh Neilson]

3 hours ago, Sean Waters said:

What we'd need to do is roll simultaneously rather than serially: you have OCV+11-3d6 vs DCV+11-3d6, with ties going to the attacker, to emulate the current chance of success.

 

The other way you could do this, to perhaps speed things up for the GM is to have your NPC characters 'take 11' on attacks, and the PCs roll to avoid their attacks - so a NPC with an OCV of 6 would have an attack of 17, and the player would then roll DCV+11-3d6 and try and get 18 or more to avoid the attack (or, more neatly, roll DCV+10-3d6 and equal or exceed that attack).  Obviously when players are attacking, they roll to hit against DCV as usual.

 

The former is what I was envisioning,  but the latter is a great way to enhance player engagement - they roll all dice that impact their character's success or failure.