Trebuchet

Re: 5th Ed: Flying Dodge

 

We have two PCs with Flying Dodge in our Champions campaign and haven't had any trouble with it.

 

I thought it just allowed a Full Move and a +4 DCV; which is obviously nice but hardly guarantees an automatic miss?

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

Clearly, they can have very different things they are good at. One might be faster. One might be tougher. One might be very accurate. One might dish out enormous amounts of damage. etc.

 

But each of them should be ~ equivalent to their peers in "combat CP spent" in how long they can survive and how effective they can be while fighting.

Define "long." Is it number of Segments? Number of Phases? Number of Phases they take offensive actions? Is a Phase where they take a defensive action subtracted?

 

Define "effective." Is it the number of hits they take to take down a normal? To take down a martial artist? To take down a brick? To punch their way out of a wet paper bag? Do Recoveries change these numbers? Are they considered effective if they solve the mystery but can't take down the bad guy? Are they effective if they only helped take down the bad guy?

 

Define "survive"...

 

 

My point is that these are entirely subjective concepts. Player A's idea of success may be totally different from Player B's. One player may be happiest running a supporting character who is not as effective in combat by design. Others may prefer to run a concept that is less effective in combat because they feel it enhances the role-playing experience to think their way through problems instead of powering through them.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

I stopped using hard AP caps in 4E.

Makes the game better, doesn't it?

 

You've evidently not seen many characters where their offensive and defense capabilities are significantly asymmetric.

I suppose that depends on your definition of "asymmetric." I run a PC with an 11d6 attack, base 14 OCV/DCV, and 12 PD/12 ED in a campaign where average attacks are in the 12d6 - 13d6 range. Is that asymmetric?

 

I'm sure you noticed that attack:defense ratios changed when you dropped caps. With caps, once you've hit what you consider your most important attribute (offense, defense, SPD, OCV, etc.) because of a hard cap, you have to go spend points on the next thing. IME that certainly led to very little real asymmetry. Now you can actually build an eggshell armed with a hammer or a tough character who can't hit the broad side of a barn.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

There have been plenty of broken or munchkin builds discussed over the years that involve overuse of things like CSLs and DCs to the point of being abusive.

Almost anything can be abused in the system if overdone. Preventing that abuse is the job of the GM, not the rules - official or otherwise. Too many GM's substitute house rules for a willingness to say "No. I know it's legal, but that won't work in my campaign" to an player's face.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

Damn straight. But when someone wants to play an 80 STR Hulk clone in a campaign where the human MA tend strongly to top out at 25 STR' date=' I call that "significantly higher final DCs" under most circumstances...[/quote']Yes, but MA's also have martial maneuvers and perhaps DC's to pump up their damage. As I noted earlier, our team does just fine with an 80 STR brick and 2 MA's (One with 15 STR; the other 25 STR) who hit for 11d6 and 13d6 respectively. 4 or 5 DC's doesn't seem like an unreasonable spread given the relative SPDs and defenses.

 

Why do you keep pretending DC's don't exist? You may not like them or may even have house-ruled them out of your game, but that's not the case for 99.9% of games.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

Not necessarily - a 60 STR Brick has the same damage output as someone with a 12d6 Energy Blast. In fact, I often see bricks given a low SPD, when there's no reason to do so balance-wise.

 

Damage/Turn: SPD * Accuracy * DCs

By this metric, a Brick with SPD 4 should be dealing 1.5x the DCs and have the same accuracy (or even higher DCs if they have lower accuracy) as a Martial Artist with SPD 6. But as a result of DC caps, I seldom see that.

Which is precisely the reason I dislike caps and that we discontinued their use completely with the introduction of 5E. Our team now has a DC spread from 11 to 16 and a corresponding SPD range of 9 to 4.

 

There is, BTW, no reason that accuracy (or its opposite number, damage evasion/avoidance) needs to be included in such a formula. Lightly defended characters need to be harder to hit for the obvious reason that they can't take as many hits, so this evolution will take place naturally anyway.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

But if the team's best brick is also the team's best MA' date=' that kind of leaves the team's MA "out in the cold".[/quote']Which brings me back to what I said earlier about protecting a character's schtick. There's no more reason that a brick couldn't have martial arts than that a mentalist or energy blaster couldn't. If you have a martial artist, then you have to protect his schtick - but martial arts are not necessarily a schtick. We have two martial artists on our team. One is the fast agile one; the other one is the sneaky ninja/chi-powers one. No overlap on shtick, and no problems. (We also have an immortal mentalist with a very basic martial arts package to represent his centuries of swordsmanship experience - again, no problem.)

 

If you allow the brick to overshadow the martial artist in every way, you've created a problem, but his simply having martial arts isn't what's causing the conflict - it's that you've made the MA redundant. If the MA can still do things the brick can't, then there shouldn't be a problem. So what if the brick does more damage than the MA? Bricks usually do in well run campaigns; they're almost always the heaviest hitters just as they generally are the toughest. But the MA is likely to have a higher SPD, higher DEX, be harder to hit, and have a significantly better OCV. Their roles in combat are probably quite different - and their roles in non-combat settings can be wildly different. (Our brick is also our resident supergenius.) Batman and Superman (or Captain America and Thor, if you prefer) perform very different roles on their respective teams; and they all four have very different shticks as well.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

In most games with a 10 DC cap' date=' an EP with 60 STR would at first blush appear to be a real threat to other characters roles and schticks.[/quote']Since it exceeds the specified DC cap, duh. So would a STR 60 brick. OTOH, such characters would be fine in a 12DC+ game.

 

An EB with 60 STR risks stepping on the team brick's schtick. Of course, if that brick has a 75 or 80 STR then the 60 STR EB is an also-ran so far as strength goes and he's no threat to the true brick's schtick whatsoever. We have a hybrid brick/EB on our team with a STR of 50. Since our primary brick has a STR of 80, there's no conflict whatsoever. The STR 50 character is a nice backup/auxiliary, but he looks rather puny compared to the one with STR 80.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

And if you can come up with a 60 STR MA that is play balanced compared to the other PCs' date=' you are welcome to play such in any supers campaign I ever run.[/quote']Perhaps you need to define "play balanced" for us. Are you requiring bricks do identical damage to other archetypes?

 

Me, I can't see any reason not to run a STR 60 brick with several martial maneuvers. There are even ones that don't add to damage, such as Defensive Strike or Nerve Strike or, for that matter, using ones that do add damage. Bricks hitting as hard or harder than most MAs or EBs seems quite consistent with the source material.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

Offensively, (chances to attack)*(chance to hit)*(damage done when hitting) has to ~ be a constant between characters who have spent equivalent CP in the same areas.

Defensively, there's an equivalent equation.

 

The character's DEX and SPD are slightly better than middle of the road while their damage is on the low side. That means defences have to be higher to play balance the character.

Why? We've already agreed Thor and Captain America work fine on the same team. I'm pretty sure we'd agree that Thor's defenses and attacks are significantly higher than Cap's. I haven't noticed that Thor misses very much; in point of fact he's an extremely skilled warrior even by Cap's standards.

 

My thought is that this player brought you a well-thought-out character concept and asked you to build it. He wanted a character that had to think and use skill rather than raw power to accomplish his goals; which I think is entirely admirable. It seems to me it's unlikely he didn't realize he might be lower in several categories but still wanted to play that character as conceived. Maybe you ought to stop trying to shoehorn him into your view of what is balanced when it's not even clear "balanced" is what the player wants.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

What I don't understand is why Ki-Rin implied this concept cost 40% more using RAW than it did with his rather minor Limitation on STR. Yes, the build seems to be a bit overdone, but it still doesn't seem like it should be so expensive unless there's a lot more to it than we've seen. A 40% overage on a 350 point Champions character comes out around 490 CP. Nothing in his posts suggested a 500 point-level MA. Quite the contrary; it sounded like the character was perhaps dangerously underpowered.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

He's a very narrow specialist while the average Brick has that STR multi-tool you spoke of earlier.

I think you misunderstood me (and if you didn't them I apologize ): It's not that a brick has a multi-tool - which sounds like I meant a Brick Tricks Multipower or Power Tricks (STR) Skill; it's the STR itself that is the multi-tool. You can bend things with it, you can break things with it, you can lift things with it, you can hold things with it, you can catch things with it. It does pretty much anything we use cranes, bulldozers, beams and braces, fireman's nets, wrecking balls, battering rams, and other heavy equipment to accomplish IRL. A brick is a one-man rescue (or wrecking) crew.

 

The old axiom in our campaign is "There is no substitute for Strength."

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

Congratulations, you've created a variant of Martial Demi-Brick. I've seen many of these over the years, although most of those had STR in the 40-45 range.

 

Me, I think I'd have just gone with a higher STR (but still NCM) build to represent the same thing as your 10 STR PC. It's not like a 20 STR would be out of line as an abstract representation (as all Characteristics are anyway) for someone trained and in good physical shape using leverage and techniques to perform extraordinary feats of "strength." (I've got nothing against 10 STR MA's, by the way; I play one in our Pulp Hero campaign and he's hands down the most dangerous HtH character in the game.)

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

Since we haven't seen the actual writeup we don't know the details, but in considering this character Ki-Rin has been discussing in this thread I did have some concerns about the END usage of a high STR MA as opposed to one using DC's for damage.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

First off, I believe it was you who said that the line between Brick and MA is a Blurry one? In fact, "increasingly more blurry" was closer?

 

I don't think Bricks and MA should be bought the same way. =BUT= I do believe that character concepts should be honored as long as it can be done in a way that's fair and fun for everyone in the group.

 

In the typical supers campaign, no character with NCM or whose concept is based on them being a superbly disciplined and trained yet otherwise normal member of the base population of the campaign is going to have the ability to dish out or take the kind of damage the typical superheroic Brick can.

Nor are they going to be able to do any of the rather large set of "Brick Tricks" a Brick's inhuman stats allow them to.

 

If STR for the MA is in the 18-25 range, STR for the Bricks is going to often be 50+, with "semi-Bricks" usually in the STR 35-40 range.

 

If SPD for the Bricks is going to be in the 2-4 range, SPD for the MA is going to be in the 4-6 range.

etc.

 

And then we come to Play Balance.

Defensively, the more hits you can take, the slower and easier to hit you should be. The less hits you can take, the faster and harder to hit you should be.

 

Offensively, the more damage you do when you hit, the less likely you should hit. The reverse is also true.

Alright, I can see that. What I don't understand is why you think martial arts Damage Classes won't do what you need? After all, if you're harder to hit you're almost by default going to hit more often as well, so I don't see why an MA should be expected to hit as hard as a brick. Captain America (one of my absolute favorite heroes, BTW) fights on the same team as Thor, but nobody expects Cap to hit with the same power as the Thunder God. That sure as Hell doesn't mean he's some kind of wimp.

 

...and along comes a perfectly reasonable and well thought out character concept that has MA and combat survivability in the Batman or Captain America range but does not have the STR or other advantages of those characters.

I'm going to find a way to reward the player for doing the innovative and right thing regarding character design. I'M GOING TO MAKE IT WORK. That's my responsibility as GM.

(and my privilege. It rates to be a cool character. Especially given the player's IRL expertise in the subject matter the character is based on.)

If a brick in the campaign is doing 10d6+ damage with his 50+ STR, why in the world would an MA with a 20 - 25 STR, Offensive Strike (+4d6) and perhaps a couple of levels of Damage Class be considered inadequate?

 

In our Champions campaign, our team brick does 16d6. My MA does 11d6 and has just a tad over a third of the brick's defenses (not even counting CON and STUN). Even with her much superior DEX and SPD there's almost no chance she could beat the brick in one-on-one combat given the vast differences in their potential damage and defenses, but I don't see my MA as suffering in any way by comparison. She's just as viable a character; she just has to approach combat differently. She accepts that she's going to get hit sometimes, and often be Stunned or knocked out if she does get hit, but she can still Recover and get back into the fight most of the time. That's just the way it works.

 

=You= were the one who introduced the concept that Bricks and MA are both HTH specialists. I agree with your original statement.

I disagree with my original statement as written.

 

What I should have said was that a brick can be an HtH specialist, but it's not an automatic correlation to having high STR. Circus strong-men and competitive weightlifters are obviously strong, but I don't think most people would consider them hand-to-hand combat specialists by default. You certainly don't have to be an "expert in combat" to beat someone up; my experience is that most fistfights are pretty clumsy - even banal. My contention is that the primary roles of a brick are two-fold: 1) Damage sponge; soaking up damage that would hurt their more lightly defended comrades (such as MA's); and 2) Heavy hitter; authoritatively delivering the coups de grâce once the team has worn down the bad guy(s) a bit.

 

Bricks and MA approach HTH differently just as heavy cavalry and light cavalry approach that differently. But neither Bricks nor MA is going to be as useful in a ranged EP role as that character concept will. Just as cavalry can not do the job of polearms or archers.

What about horse archers?

 

That's why "STR only for the purposes of figured characteristics and combat maneuvers but not for lifting or other feats of STR" is a legitimate (-1/4) Limitation to me as long as the math works.

I agree it is legit if it works in the context of your campaign, although I could point out that IRL martial artists are often known for performing feats that would often be attributed to strength but more often actually involve leverage and/or technique. Does the player of this MA you're working on feel his character needs to have a high STR (with Limitations, of course) in order to be competitive or to be fun to play? What kind of STR are we talking about here? 25? 40? 55? Surely the "little old man" master typical of martial arts films isn't using pure (if Limited) strength to perform his feats and bump up his defenses? I'm not certain you wouldn't be better off concept-wise buying some extra DC's, Leaping, and a bit of Damage Reduction or Combat Luck, but you know your own campaign best. Buying limited STR solely for the extra PD, REC, and STUN it provides rather than the "muscle" just smacks of metagaming to me (specifically, metarule #6). Even if it's technically legal it still feels to me like an attempt to end run the RAW; and I'm pretty sure I'd disallow it in my campaign if a player came forward with such a build.

 

An accurate homage build of Thor involves building a =god=. 1000 CP is not unreasonable for such a character concept.

That's something I think we can agree on 100%.

 

Do post the character when he's completed. It sounds like a cool concept even if I might not agree completely with your build. That's OK; you probably wouldn't agree with all of mine.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

"Houston, we have a nomenclature difference."

No problem. I'll adopt yours.

 

A Brick is a character whose -role- is being a HTH combat specialist based on a STR and/or CON + BODY -schtick-.

 

A MA is a character whose -role- is being a HTH combat specialist based on a MA + (DEX and/or CON) -schtick-.

 

Bricks are awesomely powerful blunt instruments. MAs are awesomely precise razors.

You seem to see the difference, so why do you seem to think they need to be built in similar ways? One doesn't build a scalpel the same way one does a hammer. Both are excellent tools, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. MAs don't need the kind of CON, REC, or Stun bricks do because they're supposed to avoid getting hit in the first place - that's why they tend to have higher SPD and mobility: to evade getting hit. Higher SPD for MA's isn't to allow them to hit their opponent more often; it's to give them enough Phases to Dodge or DfC to keep from being hit and still get in some counterattacks. I've never seen a Hero MA that didn't spend a good third of his or her Phases Dodging, Blocking, or otherwise evading attacks or recovering from them; attacks that many bricks can simply shrug off.

 

(As an aside, I personally disagree that bricks are HtH specialists. As you note, they are blunt instruments, who IMO tend to use HtH because that's where their high STR and defenses are most useful. The HtH aspect is incidental; a serendipitous benefit to being strong, tough, and getting your hands on the enemy.) Strength has plenty of other uses than just delivering damage; it's the super equivalent of a multitool. There are plenty of major bricks out there in the source material with serious ranged attacks.)

 

Try this analogy: The intended targets of both AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks are enemy armored vehicles, but nobody would dream of suggesting that they use the same tactics or be built the same way. They have similar attack ranges and can dish out similar amounts of destructive firepower, but the tank is armored in ways the helicopter could never even dream of. That Apache is going to be in serious trouble if he just sits still a kilometer away and swaps shots with an Abrams. He needs to use his superior agility and speed to outflank the tank or he's going to get blown out of the sky in one hit.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

...and how much of a commission do =you= get on every copy of 6E sold?

Seriously, some of us ALREADY have $sizable $investments in HERO products. Mine is in the $four $digit territory.

I've done my bit to support HG and will continue to do so as I can afford it.

I don't intend to buy 6E and certainly don't get any commission for copies sold. But, seriously, I also don't think 5ER is as broken as you seem to. I simply don't get what you think the problem is.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

As you yourself have stated' date=' both Bricks and MA are HTH combat specialists. That -is- their "schtick".[/quote']I don't see HtH as being a schtick. A schtick is something that defines the character's uniqueness within a team or campaign, like "most agile" or "toughest woman" or "fastest flier." Characters do not share schticks; each one - barring rivalry - is theirs alone.

 

HtH specialist, or ranged attacker, or other such things define characters' roles within the campaign, not their schticks. I would argue that martial artists and bricks don't even fill the same role: martial artists are HtH specialists; whereas bricks are actually damage sponges who have a secondary role in HtH combat because their toughness makes them reasonably good at mixing it up at close range. Perhaps that's the true source of your difficulty: you're try to merge roles with schticks?

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

DCs add damage to MA. They do not help a low STR character HTH specialist get their needed PD, REC, and STUN at a fair price.

 

If the character concept did not need PD, REC, and STUN effects where I needed anything but DCs to keep things fair, I'd just be using DCs.

 

THIS CHARACTER IS NOT STRONG. But they are very effective at performing and surviving HTH combat.

 

The player should not be scrod for "daring" to design a HTH combat specialist that does not conform to HERO's ingrained stereotypes (not to mention that the player is something like a 4th Dan BB and therefore knows WTF they're talking about when discussing what a such a HTH combat specialist looks like in game terms.)

 

I've got a solution that passes multiple "is this fair" tests. It happens to not fit cleanly in the RAW. It's more fair and less messy than anything else I've seen or thought of.

Unless someone has better idea that achieves the same goals, It's a Done Deal and everyone please stop bothering me about it.

Yes, there's an easy solution to address this "imbalance": Switch to 6E. No more Figured Characteristics; no more problems with Figured values one way or the other. Now the HtH characters will be balanced, and ranged combatants will hold the upper hand instead. Isn't that better?

 

You are still, IMO, trying to fix a non-existent problem. No real problem, no satisfactory solution. I have to ask: Why did you even start this thread if you already had the answer and didn't want input?

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

...and I quote

"No Normal Attacks are STUN only; they can do BODY only if the character also buys the Does BODY Advantage; which requires the GM's permission" 5ER p265 description of NND.

 

A NNDA that routinely does BODY is a bigger deal than a Stop! power.

That's extra-legal enough for me.

You apparently have umpteen pages of house rules to correct (if I may be blunt) non-existent problems, but can't see any possible case where you'd grant GM permission for an NND Does BODY attack? Granted they should be as rare as hen's teeth, but exceedingly rare and requiring GM's permission certainly does not equal no way to build them.

 

But the fundamental principle must be that if a Brick and a MA both spend the same amount of CP on being good at HTH combat, they should be equally effective. DIFFERENT, most certainly. But equally effective.

Why? Equal points does not equal equally effective. They are different character concepts. IME neither brick nor MA have a significant advantage over the other. The sheer number of "Bricks are too powerful" and "Martial artists are too cost effective" threads over the years on these boards suggest that the line is nowhere near as clearly defined as you paint it or these players wouldn't be complaining that they're finding one or the other too effective against the other archetype. I've played both over the years; and I've fought both with both types and won and lost.

 

If I had to call it for one or the other, I'd say bricks have a slight edge, maybe 45/55. That might be important in a tactical wargame, but it has no bearing in an RPG. One can roleplay well with either.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

Oh' date=' for the record - Linked is the most common construct used to build a single Attack that does more than one type of Damage. What I believe Trebuchet was referring to when he said Combination Powers, yes?[/quote']I actually should have used the term Compound Power, but IDHMBIFOM.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

Ah, but you see the problem is that HERO does not offer an easy way to simulate what I've been talking about.

 

NNDAs are supposed to simulate an attack that can -never- do BODY. Never ever.

Wrong. They're designed to simulate attacks for which there is no normal defense - hence the name of the Advantage. It is entirely possible and legal to build NND attacks that do BODY.

 

One of the meta rules of HERO is that an attack can never be bought with more than one type of damage. An attack can do ND, or KD, or NND, but ONE CAN NEVER BUILD AN ATTACK THAT USES MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF DAMAGE DICE IN HERO SYSTEM.

It seems to me that this is exactly why there are Combination Powers. A quick reading of the 5ER metarules shows no such prohibition against using two or more types of attacks. Could you provide a reference and/or quote the relevant sentence(s) in the rules?

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

That doesn't even make any sense; there are no NND attacks in the real world. There are real world attacks that NND is designed to model' date=' but that's a different thing. When the real world attack becomes sufficiently potent to do actual physical damage it ceases to be an NND attack; the abstraction breaks down. Consider a knockout gas, an especially potent dose that is non-lethal still doesn't do physical harm, it's just more effective. If the dose is so potent that it does cause physical harm, then it is, by definition, no longer an NND attack when modeled in the game.[/quote']Precisely. Recall the events in the Moscow theater in 2002, when Russian special forces used a "knockout gas" to knock out terrorists holding 850 hostages. Over 100 of the hostages died from the gas.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

And a "Martial Brick" is not the same thing as the "Classic Brick". Neither is it anything at all like what he describes in the OP.

No, he didn't, but my point was that there's no clear line of demarcation between bricks and martial artists, "classic" or otherwise, even in a Champions campaign. The line blurs even more between genres, where a 25 STR "brick" in a Fantasy Hero game can be weaker than a "martial artist" in a supers game.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

 

You also note that this is supposed to be a "normal" person' date=' yet insist that he should have PD equal to a Brick, so in fact, your very premise just doesn't work. If you want to play a Brick and call it a Martial Artist, fine, but you're not building a Martial Artist by most conventional definitions in the source material or the system.[/quote']I didn't note Ki-Rin specifying a particularly high PD for his speculative character, but I definitely disagree with your assertion that such a martial artist as he's postulating has unreasonably high defenses. There is no clear cut line between bricks and martial artists. Both are HtH specialists; and I've seen any number of "martial bricks" over the years who split the difference by leaning to one side or the other of the exceedingly blurry "dividing line."