Trebuchet

When I say "4-color" I don't mean there is no ugliness in the world and we all live in Disneyland. We're simply running in a less morally ambiguous game world. Bad guys are evil, superheroes are good, normals need rescuing, etc. It's really more reminiscent of the comics of the 50's and early 60's even though our campaign is contemporary. But we've still got the usual shenanigans by government agencies, criminal conspiracies, terrorists, rogue nations, supervillains of various stripes, etc. In our game universe paranormal powers first manifested themselves in the late 90's and didn't go public untl 2000, so we have a much less crowded field of supers to compete with for attention. There are only a few hundred paranormals on Earth instead of the thousands in Marvel, DC, or the Champions universe. It's our characters who are different from the modern comics. No brooding loners, no sociopaths with claws, no alcoholics or drug addicts, no angst-filled teenagers or any of the other staples of modern comics. There isn't any leather in the costume of a single one of our characters. It may be "Ozzie and Harriet with superpowers" in the eyes of some, but we play to escape reality, not to immerse ourselves deeper in it. We have a great campaign, with excellent players and several talented GMs, that has been running since 1992. We have interesting characters, and our team MidGuard is the Justice League/Avengers of our world. What could be better?

There are no official rules in HERO regarding point caps, so we are not really "house ruling" the problem away. Active point caps are in themselves house rules. I will confess that for the first 11 years of my campaign we used active point caps as well as caps on total defenses. But since releasing the caps last year with the release of FREd I've seen nothing but benefits to the game. Character design has become much less stilted, and our defenses and attacks have considerably more variation. Players are no longer afraid to experiment. When I had a 60 AP cap everyone's character did 11d6 or 12d6 damage, now the spread is from 8d6 to 14d6 and our team mentalist has a 90 point VPP. And no, he's not unbalanced in the least with the other characters.

Why not? Doesn't that tend to create a rather cookie-cutter sameness to characters if their defenses are all within 10 points of each other? If the martial artist has 20+ PD, what makes the brick's 30 PD special? Our spread is 21 points (12 - 33 PD) and I'd be happy if it were higher. Now admittedly I play in (and GM) a 4-color game; I'd never attempt to use such low defenses in a Dark Champions or "graphic novel" style game. In 4-color games superheroes don't get shot by goons; it just isn't done unless it's relevant to the story. When was the last time you saw Spider-Man get shot by some thug robbing a liquor store? Goons are to get everybody warmed up before the battle with the boss. If you have such a low spread between defenses, then I don't blame you. I wouldn't either. If average defenses in your campaign, including between villains, were lower then such attacks would not be ineffective.

I don't see any real problem with your method, although I think +½ may be a bit low. DS was IMO underpriced in 4th edition, I think they swung too far and made it overpriced in 5th. On the whole, however, I'd rather a power be too expensive than too cheap. Perhaps Steve Long will consider such a change for 6th Edition around 2011 AD.

I don't think many characters with DS rely on it as their only offensive option either. If you consider the comic book source material, there are lots of low defense heroes running around. Spider-Man, most of the X-Men, Daredevil, the Flash, etc, all depend on not getting hit more than on defenses. So it largely depends on whether you are playing a comic book game or looking for character "optimization". In our campaign we stress character concept over combat efficiency. For us it just works out better. I basicly agree that DS is a bit overpriced at +1½, but that's easily solved with a house rule. I discussed this topic yesterday at our weekly lunch with both of my fellow GMs, Mentor and Blackjack. While we all saw valid reason to consider DS a bit overpriced, none of us saw compelling reason to change it in our campaign. Considering we've all recently fought villains with DS, none of us felt it was ineffective as is, at least not in our campaign. Of course, since we have no point cap in our game we don't run into the problem of a +1½ advantage making a power too expensive or large to fit into a Multipower; we just ramp up the size of the MP. Our campaign is unabashedly 4-color (You know, where wearing glasses provides an inpenetrable disguise in your secret identity.), so we have lots of PCs and NPCs with low defenses. If you find DS too ineffective, you can approach the problem from two directions: 1) Decrease it's cost or raise the point cap to allow larger ones. 2) Keep average defenses in the campaign low enough that it is effective against more PCs. We chose option #2. YMMV.

No, it causes some attacks not to be made in the first place. In my book that's just as good as extra PD or ED. When I was in the Army 22+ years ago, I was in air defense. To air defense personnel it really doesn't matter whether they shoot down the enemy plane or just make it go home to avoid being shot down. If he doesn't attack he can't succeeed in his mission. Damage Shields can accomplish much the same thing. They are an active defense, not a passive one. If even one character declines to attack a character with DS then it has worked defensively.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here. I'm basing my comments based on my own experience as a player and a GM in my campaign. In 21 years of playing HERO I have simply not found Damage Shields to be ineffective (even the 5th Edition ones); rather I've found them to be half defense and half offense. Of course that's not as good as either a pure offense or pure defense of the same active points; compromises seldom are. I've built villains with DS and I've fought villains with DS. It is not useless in my experience. Obviously your experience differs. As for being overpriced for the effect, perhaps you think that also applies to NND attacks as well? After all, if the player has even 1 point of the appropriate defense then the NND does zero damage. So is NND overpriced at +1? What about AVLD?

Agreed. But I think spreading out defenses and damage is a good thing, which is one reason I don't like point caps. Point caps always seem to lead to maxed out characters. I've alway thought it silly that martial artists were doing 10d6 but bricks were doing only 12d6. Once I relaxed the point caps in my campaign the field spread out considerably. I totally share your evaluation of the old Hero characters, but I think you'll find the 5th Edition characters are considerably superior to their 4th edition predecessors. While I don't use them (as is, anyway) in my campaign, that's more because I have my own campaign universe. With minor alterations and costume changes many if not most of the supervillains from 5th Edition are quite serviceable as good opponents for my players. Dr. Destroyer is absolutely horrifying.

If a Damage Shield prevents a character from being attacked by a low defense character (whose attack might well be on par with the brick's attack.) then I'd say it's paid for itself just fine. If your campaign has characters which can't be hurt by a 5d6 DS because of a 60 active point cap, then why not raise that cap or reduce the advantage to +1 or +¾ instead of griping about how your favorite screw-over for hand to hand types isn't cost effective anymore. Aren't you the GM in your campaign? If you aren't and you think your case for lower advantages for Damage Shields is so solid and logical then present it to your GM and ask him to change the house rules or the ap cap. Why do you feel the need for "official sanction" in the most flexible game system in history? You are deliberately missing the most salient point about Damage Shields, which is that they generally require the character with one to be attacked in order to work. That applies equally whether the DS is 5d6 or 15d6. Of course, if the character is not attacked because of his "obvious damage shield" then he's got his points' worth out of the DS, hasn't he? Damage Shields are as much defense as offense, in spite of what you happen to think. Maybe that's because not everyone is stupid enough to want to attack someone with a Damage Shield, in spite of how ineffective you personally happen to think they are. Do you really think if you increase the DS to 8d6 he'll be less of a target for the ranged guys? I'd say that'll probably just put him higher on the priority list. I comprehended your comments just fine, thank you.

Since we're discussing changes wrought by FREd to Damage Shield, using 4th Edition guidelines may be a mistake. It is quite clear from both the pre-designed characters in Champions and CKC and comments made by Steve Long that 5th edition made a deliberate attempt to lower average defenses. I'd say they are now looking more along the lines of 1 to 1½ times attack for low end characters, 2 to 2½ times for average, and 3 or more for bricks. So a martial artist with a 12-15 PD is not unreasonable in a game with 8-10 DC attacks. YMMV. My martial artist with 12 PD gets knocked out or Stunned almost every adventure, our last one was notable because she wasn't (although she finished the fight with only 3 Stun left.). And raw defenses are only part of the equation. CON and Stun are equally important parts of total combat toughness. Our team's brick Silhouette can take much more damage than our powered armor guy Cyberknight even though their defenses are virtually identical because the brick has a 33 CON and 50 Stun whereas our PA has 20 CON and 35 Stun. That makes an enormous difference in combat. One problem I have seen from reading these boards is that many campaigns increased from 250 to 350 CP with the release of 5th Edition without a corresponding increase in damage caps. Since characters have an extra 100 points to spend but can't spend it on more damage they often pump it into defenses instead. The unfortunate results are cheesy martial artists with 23 PD who don't even bother to dodge a thug's bullet because it can't possibly hurt them. IMHO if your martial artist doesn't need to dodge bullets then you're doing something wrong. The obvious solution is to either raise damage caps or eliminate them altogether. If that is done 75-80 active point Damage Shields versus average defenses of 20-24 suddenly look a lot more reasonable. I am not claiming a 5d6 DS is equal to a 12d6 EB in power, I'm saying it may be it's equivalent in usefulness. Damage Shield help keep characters with one from being pounded on by low DEF/high CV/high SPD characters. They are as much defense as offense. While the attacking character does have the choice of whether or not to attack the character with DS, if he opts not to attack because of potential damage then I'd say DS just acted as 100% Damage Reduction. (And any super with no resistant defenses who lets himself get hit by a normal with a 9mm deserves what he gets. But when was the last time you saw a normal with a CV of 4 hit a superhero with an 12 CV? )

There is nothing "mere" about an 18 STR. In real world terms a man with 18 STR would be an NFL linebacker or a professional weightlifter. He's capable of lifting 300 kilograms, or over 660 pounds! You darn sure wouldn't think it's "mere" if he punched you. So my question is: Why is your frail skinny little elf stronger than a circus strongman?

All 3 of the martial artists in my campaign would potentially take damage from a mere 5d6 DS. Catseye has 16 PD/ED, 6 of that from Combat Luck. Eagle Eye has 18 PD/14 ED, 3 of that from Combat Luck. And my own Zl'f has 12 PD/ED, 6 of that from Combat Luck. While these defensive values are on the low side, only Zl'f's are really low. If the average DEF in Champions is actually 24 (and of course that is average between martial artists and bricks. I notice Green Dragon from Champions has only a 10 PD and ED and Ironclad's are 25, so I am not certain "average" defenses in Champions and CKC are as high as 24. Even Mechanon's PD and ED are only 30.), then clearly your average brick isn't likely to be affected much even if the DS is 8d6 rather than 5d6. Both of our team bricks would barely even notice an average 8d6 DS. I think our game is probably atypical in our unusually wide spread of characteristics. We have DEX ranging from 20 to 43, SPD from 4 to 9, PD from 12 to 35, damage spreads from 8d6 to 14d6. Most games I've seen are more centered numbers-wise, but we like our variety. Of course, when you get right down to it only bricks and martial artists/speeedsters are likely to possibly be effected by any Damage Shield no matter how large. Energy projectors and mentalists typically attack from range anyway. So right off the bat DS is pretty much useless against any ranged attackers. That may increase the incentive to reduce DS to a +1 advantage, which is where I personally think it belongs. But that's easy enough to do with a house rule.

I disagree that DS isn't useful, even with the +1½ advantage cost. We just disagree as to what's it's primary use is. I view it as an attrition power which is used to chip away at low-defense characters, and the ability to use DS to effect multiple opponents in one Phase who attack the character with DS is useful. Since it also provides a guaranteed hit, that makes it more useful. And the ability to "attack" characters who attack the DS user while he uses another attack or defensive power is also very useful. Attacks don't need to do damage in any case. How about a 5d6 Flash Damage Shield, or a 2" Teleport Usable as Attack Megascale Damage Shield? The possiblities are endless with a little imagination. You are thinking too linearly.

That's true, but many martial artists and speedsters have DEF well below 20 so a 5d6 DS would leak Stun through to such characters. My own MA would take an average Stun of 11 Stun from a 5d6 Damage Shield (Combat Luck does not work vs. Damage Shields. 50% of her total PD/ED of 12 is Combat Luck.). If she did that 3 times she'd be out cold. If the DS was 1½d6 Killing she'd take 3 BODY and from 3-15 Stun. That is not an insignificant threat to a character without Resistant defenses. Who's going to use an Autofire punch against an opponent with a DS? I think some people are misunderstanding the real purpose of DS. IMHO it's not supposed to be a fight-winning power, it's supposed to make it dangerous for lightly defended characters to attack the character. Leaking 5-8 Stun through per Phase or Segment will seriously hamper most martial artists and/or speedsters fairly quickly. DS is a character-concept power in most cases, not a primary means of attack. If it's a major portion of the character's attack, then the GM should allow it as long as it isn't too (read: unbalancingly) powerful. (That's why I don't like Active Point caps; they're too limiting towards interesting concepts. We have no limits in my campaign except character concept. We police ourselves.) Making a Damage Shield big enough to hurt a typical brick should reasonably be expected to use a substantial portion of a character's CPs, and might well be his only offensive power. Or it might be Penetrating...

The obvious compromise is to make DS a +1½ advantage, but require the No Range limitation for -½. There is adequate precedent; HtH Attack requires the No Figured Characteristics limitation.

Let's look at this logically, and with the obvious caveat that we're dealing with a game system and not the real world, so I'll argue from a system perspective rather than a real world one. Simply put, the results within the game system do not support exponential increases in damage per d6. Based on exponential increase, 10d6 is 512 times as much damage as 1d6 and 15d6 is 16384 times as much damage as 1d6. Are these numbers supported by results in the game world? Absolutely not. Can anyone honestly show me an example in Hero where 15d6 bounces off an object but 16d6 completely destroy it, as would be the case with a 16d6 attack 32768 times as powerful as 1d6? Do you really think 30d6 is 536,870,912 times as much energy as 1d6? Does each +1 of PD or ED make someone twice as tough in game terms, therefore making someone with 25 PD 3275.8 times as difficult to hurt as a character with 10 PD? Is a character with 30 PD (Over 500 million times as tough as 1 PD if figured exponentially) really 320 times more difficult to injure than one with a 25 PD? Of course not. The game mechanics do not reflect any such disparity in difficulty to injure another character. 30 PD is tougher than 25 PD and way tougher than 10 PD, but the corresponding toughness is not exponential. And of course extra BODY would also apply: Each +1 BODY should make something twice as difficult to destroy if damage is exponential, but does anyone here think a character with 10 BODY is only half as difficult to mortally wound as one with 11 BODY? As someone pointed out above, 15d6 can't even be guaranteed to kill a normal. A martial artist hitting for 10d6 is not hitting for 1/32 as much damage as the team brick with 15d6. It just doesn't work out that way in the game. Therefore it stands to reason, based on the way the Hero system works within the game itself, that each d6 is only an undefined but incremental amount of additional damage, not twice as much. Exponential looks good at first glance, but not when you actually do the numbers. The damage/defense scale may not be arithmetic either, but perhaps logarithmic or some other method of scaling. But one thing it is clearly is not is exponential.

I don't really think it's overpriced, my only real objection is that you can't use the "No Range" Limitation on a power that would usually be able to take it such as EB or RKA. That seems a bit wierd to me. But it's extremely effective against lightly defended HtH types like martial artists and speedsters who depend on being hard to hit to survive. Damage Shield essentially guarantees a hit against these types of characters. As a player who runs a PC with only 6 PD/6 ED (The other half of her defenses are Combat Luck, which doesn't work against Damage Shield) I can tell you first hand how dangerous an opponent with Damage Shield is. I've had to fight two of them in the recent past. Ultimately, a well balanced character built to concept rather than munchkined who would have a Damage Shield should buy it even if it's expensive because it's concept. Magmaboy should have a Damage Shield.

Flash suppressors only prevent the gun's user from being blinded by the flash muzzle flash when he fires the weapon, they do not prevent that flash from being seen by others. Of course, you don't see a visible flash from most firearms during daylight, although the flash may be visible at night. I've fired weapons at night several times and have usually been surprised at how unspectacular the muzzle flash is. Even a .357 Magnum round only looked like a few sparks flying out of the muzzle. In the military, enemy snipers are as often spotted by the poof of dust the muzzle blast kicks up from the ground as from an actual flash, which is why skilled snipers lay a cloth on the ground in front of their muzzle. (I have a number of books and videos on sniping.) There would, of course, be nothing to prevent you from building a "flash suppressor" in Champions that makes the muzzle flash totally invisible.

You are correct, however the assertation that each +1 BODY damage to an object doubles the size of the hole applies only to walls. That is a significant fact when we are being told by some that xd6 will destroy the Earth because of the doubling effect. If Earth has 11700+ BODY, it will take that many d6's to destroy it. Equally obviously if each d6 makes the hole twice as big it will take far fewer d6 to vaporize our poor planet.

And I fully support your choice to use your interpretation of the damage scale in your own game. However, in net game effects the difference is virtually nil. In Hero terms, 11d6 is only slightly more powerful than 10d6, be it twice as powerful or hundreds of times more powerful in real world effects. Were we operating in the real world, this would be a much more important bit of information. As it is, it's merely an interesting bit of trivia to argue over. I think such things are best decided on a campaign by campaign basis. Your numbers make more sense at the cosmic end of the superhero scale (Superman, Legion of Superheroes, Thor, etc.). I think mine work better at the lower levels my campaign uses. My team still fights agents. I can accept our team brick (65 STR, 13d6) hits dozens of times harder than my martial artist (15 STR, 10d6), I have a hard time accepting she's hitting thousands of times harder. That just seems a bit implausible to me. YMMV.

I believe you are incorrect in this assertation. Nowhere in HERO does it say that +1 BODY damage doubles the size of a hole in all objects. This rule specifically applies to walls only (5th Edition, page 304). In no way is the Earth similar to a wall in configuration. Walls are thin objects with a thin cross-section, the Earth is an oblate spheroid with a substantially different cross section. ( | vs. O ) Can you provide the data on how you arrived at a number of 200d6 destroying Earth? Earth's total volume is 10^21 * 1.1m³, so how many doublings does it take with each cubic game inch taking 8 cubic meters? By my calculations (Admittedly possibly incorrect; math is not my strongest suit) that gives Earth 137,000,000 cubic game inches, of which the square root of is 11726.0394. So wouldn't that mean it would take over 11,000d6 to destroy the Earth? And what about the vastly denser and tougher core of iron at the center of our little planet? How does that effect your formula? (Although in practical terms, any attack that penetrates to the Earth's core in effect would destroy the planet.)

In the real world people who can lift twice as much don't jump twice as far, so why should that apply in the Hero universe? And even in Hero how much damage delivered by a blow is as much technique as raw strength, hence the popularity of martial artists. I'm more than willing to concede that lifting is a better measurable scale for strength than damage, but that's been my point all along. You have no evidence anywhere to indicate that 11d6 is twice as much damage as 10d6. You are basing your argument on a false premise; which is that the Strength Charts support your theory. In point of fact they neither confirm nor deny it. While you can plausibly argue that since each 5 points of STR means lifting twice as much and therefore that each Damage Class equates to delivering twice as much energy when striking, I can just as plausibly argue (theoretically) using the very same charts that since leaping distance doubles every 10 points then each 10 STR doubles striking energy and therefore each 2 DCs is twice as much. This is not an insignificant difference. By your method 10d6 is 512 times as much energy as 1d6, by mine it is approximately 24 times as much. "1 DC" is a purely arbitrary number applied in a game system to keep track of an abstraction within that game, not a physics formula. Let's concede we just don't know and move on. On this at least we can agree. It may be flawed, as are all things made by mortal man, but it is not broken.

The History Channel is running a program Monday night, June 23, at 9pm/8 central on superheroes. Looks interesting, and right up our alley.

Do you know where in the rules this is stated? I'm not currently building any characters that would use it, but it seems like a good thing to know. And it looks like BlueBuddha just saved 52 points on his character. Of course, that just exacerbates his problem. Now he has to figure out how to spend 76 CP.

Interesting character. I have one question: Why does his Left Arm Cable Weaponry cost as much as his Right Arm Cable Weaponry? In every example I've seen in CKC, duplicate powers like that only cost about 10% as much as the initial set, unless there is some specific reason you want to be able to use both simultaneously. So you may be screwing yourself out of about 50 CP. As for XP, I'd look at buying more martial arts maneuvers. Martial Block and perhaps Offensive Strike would be good choices. Buying his DEX up naturally 6 points to 21 would be another good way to go; I've seen plenty of "normal" human characters with 20 DEX. 18 max may be a bit low for a gene-engineered hero, and buying more DEX straight up would allow you to reduce the extra points you've spent on Acrobatics, Breakfall, Climbing and Stealth. Plus, it would give you a natural CV of 7 and a superheroic CV of 10 (And do you really assume your character will never be attacked when he's not in his Hero form? I thought not. ) Zl'f, my own speedster/gymnast/martial artist, has a natural DEX of 18 which she ramps up to 38 (although I'm currently looking at a revision which starts her at 23 DEX and ramps it up to 43 in Hero ID!)