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Freakin' Triggers, how do they work?


MechaniCat

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1 hour ago, ScottishFox said:

 

The player I had with this setup maxed their OCV, had martial block and could reliably block two or three attacks per phase.  That's a lot of damage output while taking 0 in return.

What I meant was the Risposte as written in example, are you required to successfully Block for the trigger to set off?

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On 4/2/2020 at 11:25 AM, ScottishFox said:

 

The player I had with this setup maxed their OCV, had martial block and could reliably block two or three attacks per phase.  That's a lot of damage output while taking 0 in return.

 

The solution is using ranged attack. :)

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22 minutes ago, dsatow said:

 

The solution is using ranged attack. :)

 

Sure I can rock-paper-scissor the encounters to always include some Kryptonite, but it can feel forced after awhile.

 

I've found that action-economy abilities are massively, disproportionately purchased by my players.

 

All of them have Breakfall, Acrobatics, Fast Draw or any other skill that could routinely save them 1/2 a phase.

When I explained how Triggers worked all they saw was double-the-phases!  I can Block for damage immunity AND attack at the same time.  That's way better than block this phase and attack first next phase.

 

Which also ruins one of my favorite aspects of heroic sword fights in Fantasy HERO.  You can get a series of strike-block-counter-attacks going and it feels very cinematic.  Losing that to a trigger - blech.

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5 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

 

Sure I can rock-paper-scissor the encounters to always include some Kryptonite, but it can feel forced after awhile.

 

I've found that action-economy abilities are massively, disproportionately purchased by my players.

 

All of them have Breakfall, Acrobatics, Fast Draw or any other skill that could routinely save them 1/2 a phase.

When I explained how Triggers worked all they saw was double-the-phases!  I can Block for damage immunity AND attack at the same time.  That's way better than block this phase and attack first next phase.

 

Which also ruins one of my favorite aspects of heroic sword fights in Fantasy HERO.  You can get a series of strike-block-counter-attacks going and it feels very cinematic.  Losing that to a trigger - blech.

 

As GM, you control the game pace.  In this case, it's not about Kryptonite or specialty attack, but just a common attack type.

 

1) If a player has a high level block and trigger attack linked to it, why wouldn't some of the villains?  What will happen is that in one phase, you will get a person blocking and riposting which in turn gets blocked and riposted until one of them fails.  Remember, anything you allow the players to buy, you should be able to buy for the NPCs.

2) Ranged beats HTH in real life which is why the army is equipped with guns and not two handed swords.  Even in fantasy, a quick drawn thrown dagger spoils a fencers actions time and time again in movies.  If your city guards only have swords, then your city guard is poorly armed.  I would equip them with crossbows and have swords as back up weapons.

 

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3 hours ago, dsatow said:

1) If a player has a high level block and trigger attack linked to it, why wouldn't some of the villains?  What will happen is that in one phase, you will get a person blocking and riposting which in turn gets blocked and riposted until one of them fails.  Remember, anything you allow the players to buy, you should be able to buy for the NPCs.

How does the initial attacker Block?  He's already made an Attack Action. 

Or are you proposing yet another Trigger to "Automatically attack whenever I declare a Block" (or vice versa)? 

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On 4/6/2020 at 3:01 PM, dsatow said:

1) If a player has a high level block and trigger attack linked to it, why wouldn't some of the villains?  What will happen is that in one phase, you will get a person blocking and riposting which in turn gets blocked and riposted until one of them fails.  Remember, anything you allow the players to buy, you should be able to buy for the NPCs.

 

The attacker can't Block - he's already attacked. 

I don't think this scenario plays out unless you have a very specific trigger along the lines of, "If I get blocked - another attack is triggered" which could be broken if it resets instantly.

 

Gnome has it.

 

And if I build a trigger that specific it will feel antagonistic to the player which is something I try to avoid.

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It's not that complicated, I don't think.  Not sure, but I don't think it is.

 

Riposte is Triggered when you get attacked.

 

It's an automatic Trigger.

 

Even if you have attacked, the Trigger should still work.  (which is one my beefs with it: players see it as just what Scottish Fox described:  Free Actions)

 

 

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If both guys have a triggered riposte maneuver, it's just one guy who gets stabbed one time.

 

Guy #1:  Declares attack

Guy #2:  Aborts to block (before #1's attack roll), is successful.  Trigger activates.

Guy #1:  Can't declare block because he already attacked this phase, gets stabbed.

 

Now if they don't have a "must successfully block" condition on the trigger, then just let them kill each other.  Cinematically, the camera lingers on these two guys as they continue shooting each other, blood squirting out, until one falls over.  Effectively they would break into their own mini-combat, and then the action resumes with everyone else.  It happens in movies all the time.

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I think we're getting a little hung up on the specific use of Trigger for Riposte.

 

Let me take a second crack at generalizing: How much of a restriction is too much or too little if the trigger gives a free attack? Free movement?

 

would it be bad balance to have a character get an out of turn movement on a successful block? An instinctive "create distance" trigger?

 

In my original post I mentioned using trigger for a cleave style effect: Defeat an enemy > trigger an attack.

This restriction seems too much, since unless the PC goes up against large waves of enemies then something they paid a lot of points for won't trigger perhaps at all.

 

Where's the happy medium?

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I think the message here is that you really need to look closely at all triggers to see how they would work in your game.  There is no blanket recommendation.

 

I think a cleave effect is decent for particular kinds of game.  If you are a HERO in combat with waves of very weak, mook type characters then you want a way to clear the combat area pretty quickly - so a good attack can move through and attack another enemy in range.  Obviously this would be useful for enemies in adjacent hexes - several good rolls could clear a space all round the HERO.  VERY appropriate for some games, not for others.  I might require that the attack takes out an opponent (takes it below 0 BODY) AND does at least half the original BODY of that enemy to trigger an additional attack of another enemy within reach.

 

I do not think that anything can be entirely ruled out, or ruled in.  Completely GM discretion.  I would also tell any player that I give the nod to that I would want to re-evaluate after three or four sessions to see if it is too effective and needs another look.

 

Doc

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On 3/27/2020 at 6:12 AM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

One could house rule that an attack on a trigger is an automatic abort as well, using up your next Phase and so on and so forth. 

 

It doesn't _prevent_ the infinite loop of trigger-counter trigger-counter trigger ad infinitum, but it puts a heavy in-game penalty on doing so.  For what it's worth, I prefer an in-game penalty over a cost penalty _any day_, as an in-game mechanical penalty is effectively forever (or at least until the build changes), whereas a cost penalty need only be overcome once, and then it doesn't exist anymore. 

 

 

This seems to go against the whole concept of the Hero System. In Hero, you can put together almost any mechanical effect that you want to. A "fireball" could be a wide variety of things, it all depends on who's building it and for what purpose do they want a fireball. If you want a super awesome fireball with AoE, DoT, no endurance cost, etc. all you must do is get it passed by the GM and then Hero just lets you build it. 

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8 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Which part?

The part about in game penalties vs cost penalties. The game is set up so that you can make your abilities arbitrarily powerful and all you must do is pay the cost. You can just keep buying more d6 of effect, you can buy NND and just completely ignore defenses, you can buy autofire with penalty skill levels to just attack more times than one at once, you can make it cost no endurance to use, you can make it take almost no time to use. You can just keep piling on bonuses at as long as you've got the character points for them you are allowed to have the power (unless the GM says no, but the books provide no guidance for GMs on what to say no to, they just have to bump into overpowered and powergamed things and make notes about them through pure experience).

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5 hours ago, Shoug said:

This seems to go against the whole concept of the Hero System.

 

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Which part?

 

4 hours ago, Shoug said:

The part about in game penalties vs cost penalties. 

 

[...]

 

(unless the GM says no, but the books provide no guidance for GMs on what to say no to, they just have to bump into overpowered and powergamed things and make notes about them through pure experience).

 

I think you slightly contradicted yourself.  The game itself suggests GM approval in all kinds of places.  Duke's suggestion of the in-game penalty is part of the player GM negotiation that you can have rather than the more stark yes/no situation.

 

I think, if the GM allows it, he allows it at book cost.  He is entitled to require penalties and limitations on the power (on the promise of allowing it) but those should reduce the cost (as per rules).

 

I am all for a GMs companion to the HERO rules.  It would be a great discursive book, talking about the full rules and how to implement them to run a game. 

 

All we need is an eloquent author with an in-depth knowledge of the rules and an inclination to put it all down on paper.

 

@DeanShomshak, I am looking at you....

 

Doc

 

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A short list of things with in-game penalties:

 

Accidental change

Berserk

Dependence

DNPC

distinctive features

Hunted

Psychological limitation

Public identity 

Reputation

Rivalry 

Vulnerability

 

 

As I said, a _short_ list. 

 

A short list of things considered to be enforcers of balance with a cost penalty and no in-game penalty:

 

Normal characteristics maxima

 

 

I don't think an in-game penalty is particularly "anti-hero system," having been an integral part of it for forty years, or, put differently: since the very first edition. 

 

It is a tool for creating balance.  It has a limitation every time you use it as opposed to just one time, before the game begins, and then you never worry about it again. 

 

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8 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

A short list of things with in-game penalties:

 

Accidental change

Berserk

Dependence

DNPC

distinctive features

Hunted

Psychological limitation

Public identity 

Reputation

Rivalry 

Vulnerability

 

 

As I said, a _short_ list. 

 

A short list of things considered to be enforcers of balance with a cost penalty and no in-game penalty:

 

Normal characteristics maxima

 

 

I don't think an in-game penalty is particularly "anti-hero system," having been an integral part of it for forty years, or, put differently: since the very first edition. 

 

It is a tool for creating balance.  It has a limitation every time you use it as opposed to just one time, before the game begins, and then you never worry about it again. 

 

You have literally just listed a bunch of complications, which are only in game penalties, penalties which you can eschew if you don't want those last 50 points, thereby using points instead of taking in game penalties. I never said "In game penalties aren't Hero." I said, "Not being allowed to use points to avoid in game penalties isn't Hero." There are very little "in game penalties" in Hero that you can't get out of with a single downpayment of character points. There are loads of ways you can spend points to just bypass certain game effects, Hero comes with built in hard counters to everything, things like NND, Affects Desolid, Killing Damage, etc. I mean, this philosophy manifests itself all the way to the core of the system. In most games, you are only allowed a very specific amount of action economy. Because action economy is pretty much the best thing to optimize in almost any game, it is usually tightly controlled, one cannot simply get more. In Hero? 10 points per extra phase you want to have. You can just pay for any amount that you want. Now, I understand that it's up to the GM to set the constraints on these things, choose the maxima and stuff, but even the way the maxima rules are written don't stop people from being able to pay points to get what they want. They just have to pay more. If the GM really wants control over the action economy of the game, he has to house-rule hard caps. 

At the ground floor of Hero's design is a philosophy of unlimited freedom to spend character points for the mechanical effects that you want. If you want to spend all your points to have no complications and 1 or 2 abilities which are virtually limitless in their application, you can. It's one of the things I love about the system. You can make a single ability so powerful that it is the whole concept of your character. Imagine the fun that could be had with a character who has nothing but 20 strength of TK, no endurance, increased range, fine control. Imagine if he was always invisible too. You could build that guy on 175 points, play him as a ghost in a low fantasy game. In any other game, this would be impossible or require tremendous house ruling. DnD has no TK that isn't some kind of spectral ghost thing like a hand or servant or some stupid garbage, there's no way to have unlimited invisibility without a magic item that just gives it to you, there's nothing.

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19 hours ago, Shoug said:

The part about in game penalties vs cost penalties. The game is set up so that you can make your abilities arbitrarily powerful and all you must do is pay the cost. You can just keep buying more d6 of effect, you can buy NND and just completely ignore defenses, you can buy autofire with penalty skill levels to just attack more times than one at once, you can make it cost no endurance to use, you can make it take almost no time to use. You can just keep piling on bonuses at as long as you've got the character points for them you are allowed to have the power (unless the GM says no, but the books provide no guidance for GMs on what to say no to, they just have to bump into overpowered and powergamed things and make notes about them through pure experience).

 

 

If you are referring to my earlier reply to the "how can I control this problem' question, 

 

then your reply makes even less sense.

 

 

Go back up through it:

 

The problem being presented was created by _exactly_ what you are describing:  My player spent some points and made kick-ass game-breaker; how do I deal with it?

 

There were lots of good suggestions, by lots of people, though it struck me at the time that most of these were cost-based solutions: price game-breaking kick-assery out of the budget.  I offered a different one.

 

I also demonstrated _why_, albeit far too subtly:

 

I offered a list of Limitations-- things which genuinely limit characters in-game and one that doesn't.  One applies a cost penalty.

 

Those that apply an in-game penalty tend to provide an issue every single time it comes up; so long as the player wants Thing X to be a part of his character's construction, Thing X will have to be "dealt with."  The character will have to find new and wily ways to cope, or change his strategies, or whatever-- because Thing X is there, within reach and untouchable, like a shadow (unless you fly, of course; if you fly, your shadow can be hella long way from you  :lol:   )

 

The cost penalty method-- as seen most commonly in normal characteristics maxima-- ultimately does nothing:  save up for a session or two, and it's overcome.  Once you spend the points, there is absolutely no further penalty, period.  You've overcome it by throwing some points at it.  Woo-hoopity-hoo.  Go, you.

 

Now forgive the earlier subtlety: as you've posted readings from philosophical works, I felt subtle would be the most courteous presentation, as I felt it would present itself both humorously and obviously to someone inclined to really examine something in-depth.  I was wrong, and I apologize.  I will refrain from subtlety in the future.

 

However, when the problem is "for some points, my player can build this and wreck my game; how can I deal with it," I just don't think "he's supposed to" is really the best possible answer.  My suggestion was to rule on a mechanic that would prevent it-- create a house rule, if you prefer to call it that.  Create another step that still allows the neat thing to happen, but prevents it from actually breaking the game.

 

 

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