6th Ed Hit locations, Stunx

[JesseBFox]

In the champions discord, Teetengee brought up a very good point that had me thinking. In 6th edition, the way killing attack stun multipliers are calculated changed, but the hit location chart appeared to stay the same.

 

This resulted in a discrepancy in that without hit locations, the average stunx for a killing attack is 2 (average on a d3) but using a 3d6 on the hit location chart, ignoring called shots/aimed shots the average stunx is 2.87 (rounded to second decimal - All my math in this post will be rounded to second decimal) resulting in far more stun damage on average. It also resulted in x4 and x5 results, which are not possible with the non hit location method.

 

So I went looking for a solution for a personal game I am going to run, and I wanted to post here my thoughts and get feedback and other ideas from the interwebs.

 

If you take the stunx on the chart, and you halve them, what results is an average of 1.67, which is below the 2.0, but more importantly the spread of results is skewed. While you get the range of 1-3, you get 1x 37.5% of the time, but you get the 3x only 4.63% of the time, and a predictable 2x 57.87% of the time. Not ideal. 

 

So the two solutions I thought of that I like are as follows:

This chart gets things close. It is close to the 2 average, and gets the spread a lot closer to the evenly distributed that you get from rolling a 1/2d6. It keeps things in the same range too.

 

Here is an alternative chart:

The only difference is that I increased head shots to 4x, which is out of range normally of the 1/2d6 spread of 1-3. However, it gets the average directly in line, gives a better feeling of getting your bell rung with a headshot and the spread is still comparable.

 

Calculating the special hit location rules, it gets interesting but not broken. It seems the stunx average goes down the harder shot you try to take. You really are gambling on hitting a specific location.

 

Note, that I chart above doesn't show the math, but a body shot (-1ocv, 2d6+4 hit location) still averages out to a 2x. 

As you get in to high shots, low shots, leg shots, head shots (as per special locations in 6e2 pg 110) the stunx starts to drop the average. I think this is intentional on the design.

 

So what do others think? Do others have a solution for this, or do you use the stock hit locations? Is there a better way to do it than the charts I listed? Any tweaks or improvements?

 

 

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

This is something I'd thought about as well the moment I found out they'd changed the Stunx to d3.  The Hit Location Chart is out of proportion.  Now I'm actually fine with how the hit location chart works, and it feels right in play.  But the two are at odds with each other, which is something the rules don't really address.  Now, its not unreasonable to state that in superheroic games, killing attacks shouldn't hurt as much (they clearly don't in the comics) so the system is working but it is something to consider.

[JesseBFox]

I agree with the reasoning that in superhero games killing attacks should do less stun (and more body, and be more erratic with more swing in damage) The more I dived into the math of the special hit locations, the more I appreciated the balance of the hit location chart.

 

As a personal note, I have run a lot of 3e and 4e in all kinds of genres. 6e I have only run superheroic and not that many. Next month I plan to run a heroic one-off with my gaming group hoping to get them interested in hero and also to see how well 6e runs the setting I want to try it with. I will likely use the default hit location chart for that session. It worked out well for me before, and being a heroic dark and gritty campaign, it will be dominated by killing attacks anyway, so they just have to compare to each other.

 

However, if someone wanted to keep the hit location chart inline with the non hit location chart rules for stunx, these are some things to think of and charts to look at.

[ScottishFox]

Caveat:  I only play Fantasy HERO now.

 

I find the hit location chart to be a touch stun heavy with hit locations and have considered trying to make adjustments that make sense.

 

The more I tried to mess with it the less I liked tinkering with it too much.

 

One option I'm still considering is capping the stun multiplier at 3x unless body damage gets past armor.  One of the problems I'm seeing in game play right now is that head/groin shots are immediate fight enders.

 

Ex:  Tanky McTankerson (Tier 4 - near end of campaign) has 15 rPD and 8 PD.  Monster damage is typically in the DC 8-10 range plus or minus special effects.

       One average damage hit to the helmet is 11 BOD / 55 STUN  minus defenses leaving him unscratched, but down 34 STUN and nearly unconscious.

       The groin shot is slightly less unbalancing at 11 BOD / 44 STUN but that is still 21 stun through defenses.

 

 

 

[JesseBFox]

Just a thought, if you cap the stunx, you are essentially tinkering with the hit locations again, and the result would be 62.5% of all hits are at x3 stun multiple, 31.02% at x2 and 6.48% at x1. In other words, x2 really rare, and x3 shows up twice as often as x2. As long as you are ok with that spread I say go for it. It only lowers the average multiplier from 2.87 to 2.56 so not a big impact on the overall damage, but very much reducing extreme results.

 

But you are essentially tweaking the chart again, just in an indirect way. And I can completely understand once you get to higher power levels wanting to reduce the multiplier to prevent these extreme results. 

[Hugh Neilson]

Pre-6e, KAs in Supers games were far too effective at passing STUN through past defenses.  Most Supers had rDEF such that BOD was not an issue.  Supers players saw a serious issue with the Stun Lotto.

 

Heroic games did not seem to see a similar issue.  But, in a Heroic game, using hit locations, those head shots also received a Stun Multiple if you were using a normal attack.  That left the heroic games more balances, at least comparing normal attacks to killing attacks.

 

I believe that is why the 6e fix addressed non-hit location games by reducing the Stun Multiple with no alteration to the hit location charts.

 

My first thought if I wanted to adjust would be to look at reducing the multiple for each location by 1 (leaving 1s unchanged).  How close would that be?

[JesseBFox]

On 8/20/2019 at 9:35 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

My first thought if I wanted to adjust would be to look at reducing the multiple for each location by 1 (leaving 1s unchanged).  How close would that be?

 

Interesting question. If you look at the hit locations I provided above, the second solution, as it turns out the only difference between that chart, and the chart you propose, is that the chart you propose has a stunx on thighs of 1, where the one I list has it at 2.

 

To answer your question, it looks like this:

So average of 1.93 vs non hit location of 2. And the spread is closer than the one I proposed. However you bring up very good points about the hit locations giving a stun modifier for normal attacks too. Personally I am going to use the default hit location chart for my upcoming game. One thing I think will mitigate the high stun results from some shots is how I will be handling armor. But that is a discussion for another thread, I think and too far off topic for here.

[Christopher R Taylor]

The normal stun effects are pretty low, but again, the hit location chart is not designed for superheroic fights, its meant for heroic only where you aren't flinging 12-16 DC attack around.  So x1½ is going to hurt, but not be overwhelming.  x2 stun on the head is probably excessive, but it does simulate things like a rogue clubbing someone on the back of the head to drop them quite well.

[ScottishFox]

Here's one I was toying with.  I was aiming for 2.5 as an average.

 

As an homage to my martial arts years I feel like I have to leave vitals at 4x STUN Multiplier.  Excepting eyeballs nothing stops a man like a groin strike.

 

Mostly I lowered the stun multiplier for lower legs and shoulders.  Just not a fan of limb hits making people go unconscious.