Swords and damage

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

6 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

I recall in the SETAC days suggesting that Martial maneuvers should be variations from standard maneuvers, but should not do things standard maneuvers can't.  I believe 6e was the one that added a Shove and a Trip maneuver.  It also has the optional Choke maneuver.

 

To me, full move maneuvers are "martial moveby/move through"

 

Is anything still missing, GB?

 

Wasn't aware that Shove, Trip, and Throw were added to 6e's core maneuver set!  Thank you for pointing that out.  I feel at that point there's not much value in retaining MA. 

There's some things that can't be replicated like Flying Dodge, Grappling Block, and Defensive Throw, but I'm vaguely expecting that they're all things that shouldn't be retained or aren't interesting enough to retain. 

[Ninja-Bear]

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

Wasn't aware that Shove, Trip, and Throw were added to 6e's core maneuver set!  Thank you for pointing that out.  I feel at that point there's not much value in retaining MA. 

They are built using the martial art rules for creating Standard maneuvers which you could have done since Ninja Hero first came out. It’s just now they’re listed for anyone with the core rules. So yeah let’s keep the rules.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

1 minute ago, Ninja-Bear said:

They are built using the martial art rules for creating Standard maneuvers which you could have done since Ninja Hero first came out. It’s just now they’re listed for anyone with the core rules. So yeah let’s keep the rules.

There's a huge difference between "this book which the GM may not have or feel is appropriate to the campaign contains optional rules that let you do this" and "it's right there in core". 

Now that the job is done, let's put away the tools. 

[Duke Bushido]

And to be completely honest, I think we all added those in our own campaigns long before Ninja HERO was ever a thing:

 

It was _really_ hard to justify not being able to shove someone into the spiky museum piece mounted on the wall behind him because there was no maneuver on the character sheet, so we all ran with it decades ago.   And once we were shoving, nothing was more annoying than shoving someone over a bench and him somehow flipping over it and landing on his feet every. single. time. because there was no maneuver for "making target fall down."  So we did the old school thing:  rather than waiting for tacit approval to specifically state it was allowed, we assumed we could do anything that wasn't explicitly forbidden: we could make people fall down.  Actually, I don't recall ever even _questioning_ the ability to make someone fall in a game with rules for knock back.....

 

And honestly, as absolutely _little_ as I know about comics, I know that tripping the speedster hero is an absolute _staple_ of the genre, so we ran with that, too.

 

All of that was actually in 1e, before I got my hands on my beloved 2e.   Long before someone published a book that told you that you had to pay four points to stick your leg in front of theirs.

 

[Vanguard]

18 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

Urban combat. Hidden deployment.

 

And walking around the corner of tight street and meeting an AC/10 was always a surprise.

 

Those little murder cans are can be highly effective, if used where they were designed to be used.

[Hugh Neilson]

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

Wasn't aware that Shove, Trip, and Throw were added to 6e's core maneuver set!  Thank you for pointing that out.  I feel at that point there's not much value in retaining MA. 

There's some things that can't be replicated like Flying Dodge, Grappling Block, and Defensive Throw, but I'm vaguely expecting that they're all things that shouldn't be retained or aren't interesting enough to retain. 

 

Flying Dodge can be viewed in a variety of ways.  Like Dodge itself, it's bonus DCV if you use a half phase and don't attack.  You get your full move instead of you half move, though.  Is it variant Martial Dodge?

 

You can do a Move By for free, with -2 OCV and -2 DCV, with reduced STR but a velocity bonus.  We have the Grab By, which changes the base from Strike to Dodge.  So a Dodge By could logically be - OCV (as you don't attack) and +1 DCV.  By that logic, Flying Dodge adds +3 to the Dodge By, should cost more than Martial Dodge, since it adds +3 instead of +2.  Defensive Strike costs 5 points, and adds +1 OCV as well as +3 DCV to a standard Strike.  Flying Dodge adds +3 DCV to what could easily be a standard maneuver like Grab By.

 

Once we view Move By as an "adder" to other maneuvers, perhaps some of the other fMove maneuvers come into a bit more clarity.

 

I don't have HSMA in front of me, so I can't speak to the other two, but they feel like a combination of Block and a second maneuver.  Once someone has Grabbed an opponent, why can't he use the opponent like a shield, to block an incoming attack?  Maybe if we had more robust rules for that, we get the Grappling Block to work.

 

12 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

And to be completely honest, I think we all added those in our own campaigns long before Ninja HERO was ever a thing:

 

It was _really_ hard to justify not being able to shove someone into the spiky museum piece mounted on the wall behind him because there was no maneuver on the character sheet, so we all ran with it decades ago.   And once we were shoving, nothing was more annoying than shoving someone over a bench and him somehow flipping over it and landing on his feet every. single. time. because there was no maneuver for "making target fall down."  So we did the old school thing:  rather than waiting for tacit approval to specifically state it was allowed, we assumed we could do anything that wasn't explicitly forbidden: we could make people fall down.  Actually, I don't recall ever even _questioning_ the ability to make someone fall in a game with rules for knock back.....

 

And honestly, as absolutely _little_ as I know about comics, I know that tripping the speedster hero is an absolute _staple_ of the genre, so we ran with that, too.

 

All of that was actually in 1e, before I got my hands on my beloved 2e.   Long before someone published a book that told you that you had to pay four points to stick your leg in front of theirs.

 

The lack of an ability to Trip someone grated on me, which was the reason for my suggestion in the SETAC days.  But what stopped you from using "grab and throw" as a Shove?  I don't like it as much, but -1 OCV and -2 DCV, I Grab and immediately Throw the opponent into the spiky museum piece (instead of across the room or to the ground), or back into the bench where he crashes over.  Of course, I could just do a Move Through (or a Strike) for damage and if he's knocked back he falls over the bench.

[Duke Bushido]

Pretty much what most of us have been thinking / doing, I imagine, and thank you. 

[Ninja-Bear]

In  Ninja Hero cause it was listed erroneously, I put Abort for +1 on a strike.

[Ninja-Bear]

On 5/22/2020 at 9:15 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

I don't have HSMA in front of me, so I can't speak to the other two, but they feel like a combination of Block and a second maneuver.  Once someone has Grabbed an opponent, why can't he use the opponent like a shield, to block an incoming attack?  Maybe if we had more robust rules for that, we get the Grappling Block to work.

Since UMA 4th you could use someone you grabbed to block an attack at -2 OCV.  (This expansion to grabs isn’t in HSMA. It’s either in the Core rules, like Shove did, or got shifted to Advance Players Guide.) 

[Ninja-Bear]

On 5/21/2020 at 7:56 PM, Duke Bushido said:

All of that was actually in 1e, before I got my hands on my beloved 2e.   Long before someone published a book that told you that you had to pay four points to stick your leg in front of theirs.

 

No. You pay points to do it better. I’ll encourage you to read his Ninja Hero errata. He goes into how he came up with costs for maneuvers. It was by breaking down what you could do for free the. Assigning points to bring them to zero. 

[Ninja-Bear]

Oh and Duke, there are Martial Arts presented in Robot Warriors and in Super Agents. As I understand it, in 3rd ed. Era you could and encouraged to cut and paste so to speak from different books for rules you liked.

[Duke Bushido]

9 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

breaking down what you could do for free

 

That pretty much sums up everything I've ever said about Martial Arts as a vital and necessary separate separate structure. 

 

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Oh and Duke, there are Martial Arts presented in Robot Warriors and in Super Agents. As I understand it, in 3rd ed. Era you could and encouraged to cut and paste so to speak from different books for rules you liked.

 

 

Yes; that's how 4e came about in the first place: rather than shooting from book to book to pick and choose what you wanted, Harlick chose to (was tasked with?  I really don't remember any more) put everything all in one book. 

 

It worked extremely well, if you didn't mind the flavor lost by taking one-off mechanics and twisting them a bit until they were brought into line with enough other mechanics that they could be grouped by type.  Some did; some didn't.  I think he missed a bet by not leaving the originals as optional, but really, it's irrelevant at this point. 

 

As to the rest of it:

 

Why do you want to do this again? 

 

We had like a nine page disagreement about this already: I said nothing to change your mins; you said nothing to change mine. 

 

I am happy enough to leave it that way that I am not going to address the rest of it. 

[Ninja-Bear]

Duke only reason I brought up the Ninja Hero errata is that I find it interesting how how he came up with what he did.  I get the impression (probably wrong) that you feel  the current system was pulled out of thin air. He was also working on a variant damage type iirc. 

[Ninja-Bear]

Oh and Duke I haven’t tried to convince you about using the current martial art rules either. 

[Duke Bushido]

2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Duke only reason I brought up the Ninja Hero errata is that I find it interesting how how he came up with what he did.  I get the impression (probably wrong) that you feel  the current system was pulled out of thin air. He was also working on a variant damage type iirc. 

 

 

Yes.  Allston garnered his oft-denied reputation as a Champions guru because he was an incessant tinker.  As to his footnotes in Ninja HERO, I have read them there.  I have read some of his other thoughts on it in Space Gamer.  I have read still another set of thoughts on it in another magazine-- forgive me; the names escape me, but likely because I am old and it's summer and the 14+ hour days that go with this time of year are catching up to me.  Well, that, and a 34% upswing in production while still enduring a 12% downturn in staffing (lots of guys said "Nah; I think I'm going to ride this out" when the layoff was over and they were still getting bonus bucks for unemployment.  For those who wondered just how many people would rather milk the above-normal-wages "bonus" for unemployment rather than go back to work, I'm going to hazard "about twelve percent."    ) and a couple of other magazines, and on his own and a couple of other websites back in the early 90s.  (remember back when everyone had their own _awesome_ and noncommercial website and the internet was nothing but cool things to see and do and hang out?  Man I miss that.....)

 

I read some of this thoughts on the variant damage-- I imagine most of us here have, but I never saw anything concrete from it.  

 

My take-away with regard to Ninja HERO was it was something he did for flavor to create a particular campaign back under 3e, and it was a massive hit with his players (some of whom were as hobby-connected as he was) and eventually he was asked to compile it for a sourcebook.  He always seemed genuinely surprised at the way it took off in his writings, considering that it wasn't-- and I _never_ knew the man; I am not going to pretend I did.  I don't know if his humble tone in writing his notes was an affectation or genuine surprise, but it came off as real enough-- to his line of thinking, anything particular groundbreaking.  It was done mostly as a way to get his players to invest in flavor more than anything else.  Again, that's based entirely on his writings that I've read,of which, considering how many places he was asked for his thoughts on the subject, I have probably been exposed to a minority.

 

I think the system was pulled out of thin air because the original author as much as _said_ it was pulled out of thin air: breaking up things that already existed and ripping skill levels into smaller bits.

 

So....  things you can already do, plus some Skill levels.

 

 

Things you can already do.

 

To set things straight, just so we are both on the same page as to my standing:

 

I don't care that it has been expanded and refined a number of times.  I like the Martial / Asian sourcebook part of the original and all the reworkings since.  I find the "how to build" and "how to use a Martial Art" stuff frivolous and painfully unnecessary.  It annoys me that, when you view the maneuvers block on the character sheets over the years, that something the author himself called an exercise in flavor for a particular campaign setting became  the defacto law of the land.  it's infuriating that a martial artist so skilled that he can add...  two dice to his 10STR attack-- which is, beyond question, genuinely impressive: by concentration or careful study or mystic something or focusing other _double_ the effective power of his blow!  No; I'm not being facetious: that _is_ amazing!

 

That same martial artist gets exposed to the Exciter Ray at Daniels R&I and develops an STR 80 during the night!  So he can use his mystic whoozits and years of technical training to add...   two dice to his 80STR attack.

 

It's underhwelming, to say the least.

 

It suggests-- _to me_ that it was just what the author said it was: some interesting flavor bits for an appropriately-themed campaign where everyone was doing it.  In practice, it's something of a joke outside those games-- again: _to me_.

 

Don't doubt for a minute that I don't respect the creativity that went into it, or that I think it's a fun and interesting bit of kit to play ninja-versus-ninja with, particularly if-- like the Fantasy HERO / magic discussions, you find some reason to want to make being really powerful _very expensive_ or just have tighter controls on it. I have never been disappointed with the work that went into it or the product that came out of it.

 

The _reception_ is where I found disappointment.

 

Rather than being "well here's a neat thing," it became a cult of "this is how it must be done."

 

Something really unique-- really, _really_ creative-- built for the HERO system was turned into something that is more routinely used to _stiffle_ the freedom and creativity that birthed it:

 

Nope.  According to HSR....   

 

How many different discussions have there been over the years that it isn't possible to make someone _fall down_ without building  a martial maneuver?!  Does this happen in real games?  Do character's announce "I leap to tackle his legs!"  and the GM fires back "You have grabbed him firmly around both ankles, wrapping your arms nearly double about his calves and ankles!  He comes to an instantaneous-yet-standing stop because you didn't buy a _martial_ grab-him-by-the-ankles-in-a-flying-tackle, with an "opponent falls" element.  Wait!  You didn't buy a _Martial_ tackle with a "flying" or "movement" element, either.  No; I'm sorry.  He gets off scott free because it is not possible for you to make a running dive for his legs."

 

We just had one a few days ago!  "No; you can't pin that on this construct because that's a _Martial Arts_ adder..  err, Element, and that's not a Martial Maneuver.

 

Once upon a time we had NCM-esque multipliers for FTL and Superleap.

 

_ONLY_.

 

Somewhere along the way, someone did a revision and thought "Damn; this really should just be a movement thing, period."  And it was.  And it was good.

 

Once upon a time we had Haymaker, and I quote "A special kind of punch...."

 

Then somewhere along the way someone decided "That should work for every attack power (I have to guess someone far enough removed from _actual_ fighting that he didn't actually know what "Haymaker" meant, or he'd have changed the name     ).  And it was.  And it was good.

 

But don't F' with Martial Arts.  Verboten.  Sacred.  Unchanging.  The anti-creative.

 

And it was little more than a lark to coax players into being more relaxed, comfortable, and descriptive to begin with.

 

 

_That_-- to be fair, everything else, too, and lots of it, but _that_, more than _any_ of it, is what I have against Martial Arts as they currently are.   Even more than the pointlessness and unnecessary-by-the-very-nature-of-the-system design of them, I detest the "this and this alone must remain immutable and separate from the rest of the game" nature of not of the optional expansion to the rules, but those who embrace and sanctify it.   It's the chemical fumes from that many candles: they make me dizzy and irritable.

 

 

 

 

Now, if you are amenable to it, I would like to just come to a gentleman's agreement to agree to disagree forever and get back to the cookies before our milk gets much warmer.  
 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

Of course I’ll give you a gentleman’s agreement. I’m less interested in the correct way for rules and edition and more interested in how to make the game work for you. (You know the general you not the you you.😁).

[Ninja-Bear]

Duke you have inspired me though. I don’t have Champions 2ed but I do have 3rd. I’ll poke around around it and see what I can create.

[Hugh Neilson]

10 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 it's infuriating that a martial artist so skilled that he can add...  two dice to his 10STR attack-- which is, beyond question, genuinely impressive: by concentration or careful study or mystic something or focusing other _double_ the effective power of his blow!  No; I'm not being facetious: that _is_ amazing!

 

That same martial artist gets exposed to the Exciter Ray at Daniels R&I and develops an STR 80 during the night!  So he can use his mystic whoozits and years of technical training to add...   two dice to his 80STR attack.

 

Am I missing some MA rules back in history?

 

In 1e,IIRC, that equally amazing Martial Artist would have spent 10 points (cost = STR) to have the same 5 martial maneuvers as everybody else who purchased martial arts, and would add 2d6 to his attack as long as he kicked instead of punching (or at least Martial Kicked instead of Martial Punching).  If he developed an 80 STR during the night AND spent another 70 points to retain his Martial Arts, he could now double his 16d6 to 32d6 with a Martial Kick.

 

Which, due to the doubling rule which has also been with us since 1e, that training which previously allowed him to deliver an amazing FOUR TIMES the force with that Martial Kick would now permit him to deliver an astonishing 65,536 TIMES the force with his Martial Kick.  That's some spin!

 

But the 4e - 6e Martial Artist could spend 56 point on Martial Damage Classes instead of 70 maintaining his Martial Arts and get the same result.

 

So I am not sure that comparison demonstrates any superiority for either approach.

[Grailknight]

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Am I missing some MA rules back in history?

 

In 1e,IIRC, that equally amazing Martial Artist would have spent 10 points (cost = STR) to have the same 5 martial maneuvers as everybody else who purchased martial arts, and would add 2d6 to his attack as long as he kicked instead of punching (or at least Martial Kicked instead of Martial Punching).  If he developed an 80 STR during the night AND spent another 70 points to retain his Martial Arts, he could now double his 16d6 to 32d6 with a Martial Kick.

 

Which, due to the doubling rule which has also been with us since 1e, that training which previously allowed him to deliver an amazing FOUR TIMES the force with that Martial Kick would now permit him to deliver an astonishing 65,536 TIMES the force with his Martial Kick.  That's some spin!

 

But the 4e - 6e Martial Artist could spend 56 point on Martial Damage Classes instead of 70 maintaining his Martial Arts and get the same result.

 

So I am not sure that comparison demonstrates any superiority for either approach.

 

 It really doesn't. At it's heart this discussion is about preferred House Rules over general RAW. I have my issues with certain aspects of RAW as do we all and rightly so. But a consistent RAW is necessary to publish a game system. The people who at various times owned the game felt that it should be more universal across all genres and thus we have the six editions . I just don't see the need to disparage newer RAW because you favor the older. Argue for change and present your arguments but don't call the RAW you disagree with heretical arse pulls. Especially when many of the rules changes are things your house rules arrived at in parallel.

[Brian Stanfield]

On 5/27/2020 at 6:10 PM, Ninja-Bear said:

Duke only reason I brought up the Ninja Hero errata is that I find it interesting how how he came up with what he did.  I get the impression (probably wrong) that you feel  the current system was pulled out of thin air. He was also working on a variant damage type iirc. 

 

Hey, can you point me to the Ninja HERO errata? Is it a file, or is it the Adventurers Club 17 article that you're talking about? 

 

And . . . does anyone have Adventurers Club 17? 

[Ninja-Bear]

36 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

Hey, can you point me to the Ninja HERO errata? Is it a file, or is it the Adventurers Club 17 article that you're talking about? 

 

And . . . does anyone have Adventurers Club 17? 

If you google the Red October BBS I think it’s still listed. On breaks at work I’ll poke around and see if I can’t find it again.

[Ninja-Bear]

If I uploaded this correctly, here it is.

NINFIX13.ZIP

[Ninja-Bear]

On 5/28/2020 at 9:06 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Am I missing some MA rules back in history?

 

In 1e,IIRC, that equally amazing Martial Artist would have spent 10 points (cost = STR) to have the same 5 martial maneuvers as everybody else who purchased martial arts, and would add 2d6 to his attack as long as he kicked instead of punching (or at least Martial Kicked instead of Martial Punching).  If he developed an 80 STR during the night AND spent another 70 points to retain his Martial Arts, he could now double his 16d6 to 32d6 with a Martial Kick.

 

Which, due to the doubling rule which has also been with us since 1e, that training which previously allowed him to deliver an amazing FOUR TIMES the force with that Martial Kick would now permit him to deliver an astonishing 65,536 TIMES the force with his Martial Kick.  That's some spin!

 

But the 4e - 6e Martial Artist could spend 56 point on Martial Damage Classes instead of 70 maintaining his Martial Arts and get the same result.

 

So I am not sure that comparison demonstrates any superiority for either approach.

Hugh I’m curious as to 2ed Champions did it now. I have third ed. and it’s a Power as you said.

[Brian Stanfield]

16 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

If I uploaded this correctly, here it is.

NINFIX13.ZIP 17.61 kB · 4 downloads

 

Thanks, Ninja-Bear. Do you know if this wall of text is from the Adventurers Club #17 that I mentioned above?

[Spence]

On 5/21/2020 at 4:56 PM, Duke Bushido said:

And to be completely honest, I think we all added those in our own campaigns long before Ninja HERO was ever a thing:

 

It was _really_ hard to justify not being able to shove someone into the spiky museum piece mounted on the wall behind him because there was no maneuver on the character sheet, so we all ran with it decades ago.   And once we were shoving, nothing was more annoying than shoving someone over a bench and him somehow flipping over it and landing on his feet every. single. time. because there was no maneuver for "making target fall down."  So we did the old school thing:  rather than waiting for tacit approval to specifically state it was allowed, we assumed we could do anything that wasn't explicitly forbidden: we could make people fall down.  Actually, I don't recall ever even _questioning_ the ability to make someone fall in a game with rules for knock back.....

 

And honestly, as absolutely _little_ as I know about comics, I know that tripping the speedster hero is an absolute _staple_ of the genre, so we ran with that, too.

 

All of that was actually in 1e, before I got my hands on my beloved 2e.   Long before someone published a book that told you that you had to pay four points to stick your leg in front of theirs.

 

 Same here.

We also had Heroes trying to "aim" the target into things with knockback. 

It's superheroes and the game is supposed t be flexible.  We are not playing D&D or worse Pathfinder.  Not having a detailed rule doesn't mean it can't happen.