Gary

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? At a MUCH reduced level of effectiveness as shown previously. He doeesn't need one since the attacker presumably has a lower defense total if he's spending the same number of points on defense as flex boy. You yourself admitted that spending 1 or 2 pts in the defensive multipower would make a mentallist or Power Defense attacker useless. Show me how spending 1-2 pts in an attack multipower would make an entire class of defender useless. Your post that I quoted, mentioned a 40 pt multipower with 20 pt slots including PD and ED. It seemed completely pointless and bizarre for a 40 pt reserve and no slots above 20. However, if I were to build the multipower, it would go something like this: 35 Multipower reserve 3 u +35 PD 3 u +35 ED 3 u +17/+18 or +18/+17 1 u +15 mental defense 1 u +15 power defense 1 u +15 flash defense That way, I would have either mega physical, energy, or 2 exotic defenses up at the same time. Total cost 47 pts. 7 pts more expensive than your 20/20 FF, but spends 1 end less and has lots more flexibility including the ability to be virtually immune to certain attack types. Nope. Even if there's an attack and a defense multipower, the attacker still has to guess how the defender has his defenses allocated. If the attacker has both physical and energy attacks for example, there's still a 50% chance he'll guess wrong unless the defender has a balanced slot up. The designers specifically mention that adjusting defenses at full effect was unbalancing. Adding directly to a defense is even more efficient than adjusting it. I can point to what the game designers say about adjusting defenses.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Actually, VPP man dominated until we shut down that nonsense. You may want to check your math... If the attacker has 3 separate attacks, then he's not the person I've been describing throughout this thread. Stopping 10 pts of attack for 1 pt sounds like a better deal to me. Far fewer of those. Just look at CKC and see how many attackers have 1 type of attack vs defenders with a spread of say 15 or more pts between PD and ED. Check the math... Yep, so flexible defense is more devastating than flexible attack.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Unless the brick or MA has energy attacks or non-physical attacks, they will get creamed. Other characters are paying lots more for that level of PD/ED than flex guy. And again, even if flex guy isn't at 40 PD, he's still doing significantly more damage to the other guy than he's taking. Just look at CKC. There are plenty. Normal guy with 15 MD spent 15 pts. Flex boy spent 1 pt, so it's not much dead weight when he's not facing mental boy. And he's certainly far better off vs someone who spent 0 pts! You mean 20 pt multipower with 5 2 pt slots for 30 pts. 10 pts cheaper than the 20/20 FF. In fact, the 20 pt multipower can purchase 1/2 End and still save 5 pts and 1 End per phase! Not much difference between adjusting PD upward and having a slot add directly to PD except that it's more efficient the second way. If you don't care about what the rules say, then why are we even having this discussion?

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? No, the claim was that 1 pt spent on defense is 8 times as effective as 1 pt spent on attack for ego attack or drain. It's magnified greatly in a multipower. You're going with the strawman again. I clearly stated again and again in this thread that people with 1 type of attack get creamed. And for someone like the mentallist or brick, unless he gets the drop on the character before he allocates his defensive points, he gets creamed. If the attacker has multiple types of attacks, then the defender simply switches to a balanced slot and is no worse off. Shrug. If changing defenses on the fly wasn't devastating, there wouldn't be a 1/2 rule for adjusting defenses. If you don't agree with the designers, that's your perogative, but since the designers explicitly stated that there were game balance problems with adjusting defenses at full effect, I'd say they were on my side.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? This is magnified when dealing with multipowers. Yep, a relatively low amount of defense points neutralizes a much larger amount of attack points. Just do the math (I'm not sure WHAT the heck you're doing with your numbers). 1 pt in a MP buys +10 mental defense which neutralizes 29 pts of ego attack. 1 pt in a MP buys 1d6 ego attack which neutralizes 3.5 pts of mental defense. 29/3.5 = 8 times as effective. Maybe in your world where the villains get the drop on the PCs every single time. Actually, the rulebook supports my position. Adjustment powers affecting defenses have 1/2 effect. If you go all the way back to Champions 2 or 3, the philosophy behind this was that adjusting defenses positively or negatively had a much too big of an impact on gameplay. So even the designers think spot defenses are far more powerful than spot attacks when they were designing the game.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Reserve cost should be 40 pts. So yeah, 80 pts is "gobs" more than 48 pts plus the added benefit of cheap slots. See above. Wrong matchup. I specifically stated throughout this thread that flexible multipower dude crushes opponents with 1 attack form, such as a mentallist or brick. Against an attacker with multiple forms of attack, the defender simply switches to a balanced slot and is no worse off. You really don't see that 1 pt in a spot defense is more powerful than 1 pt in a spot attack even after that example?????? Attack multipowers generally need lots of points to be effective, and the ability to be flexible generally isn't too devastating since usually the base attack will do some damage anyway. For example, someone with a 60 pt multipower may have a 12d6 attack and a 6d6 nnd. Vs a 30 def target, the 12d6 does 12 net stun and the 6d6 NND does 21, gaining 9 stun on average. Whereas with the spot defense, you don't need a lot of it compared to an attack multipower (1 pt is 8 times as effective in defense vs drains and ego blasts or 2 times as effective vs standard 5 pt/die attacks) and generally ALL of it will be effective in reducing damage. Just take a look at what a 25 pt defense multipower with 2 pt slots will add to a typical character.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? There are lots more foes where defensive multipower dude is nigh invulnerable than your typical unbalanced defense dude. This statement has nothing to do with defensive multipower dude.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? If everyone has the same multipower, then no problem. However, that is not going to be the case. Not in precisely the same fashion. The person without multipower who has 40 def either spent gobs more points to have 40/40 or he's permanently going to be at a huge disad if he's at 40/15 and gets attacked by the wrong attack. The multipower dude has the best of all worlds, a PD slot, ED slot, and balanced slot. He'll crush both Brickman and Laserman whereas your 40 def person crushes Brickman but gets annihilated by Laserman. You don't have to abort if you're expecting the attack. Do your characters ALWAYS get the drop on the PCs? And if the multipower dude catches Egoman or Powerman by himself, he crushes them for a grand total of 2 pts. That's simply an assertion. In actual gameplay, the balancing factor is that characters have to buy up both PD and ED. If there was simply Defense, then it would be too cheap at 1 pt per point. 1 pt in the defense multipower gives you +10 mental defense. That counters +29 pts of Ego Attack on average or +14 pts of Mind Control. That same point spent on an attack multipower gets you either +1d6 Ego Attack or +2d6 mind control which counters only 3.5 or 7 pts spent on defense. If you can't see the massive discrepancy in this, there's no point in further discussing the issue.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? And then you get the whole host of GM judgement calls in game. It's better to simply have the mechanic where this isn't a problem.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Somehow at a cost of 1 pt for +15 mental defense or +15 power defense, that's a cost I'm willing to live with. Again as I've explained before in this thread, 1 pt spent on defense generally counters 1.43 pts spent on offense for regular attacks or 2.86 pts spent on something like ego attack. Conversely, 1 pt spent on attack only counters .7 pts spent on defense or .35 pts if it's an ego attack. The balancing point is that usually you have to purchase multiple defenses to cover your bases. This dynamic becomes completely skewed if you have a defensive multipower.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? My game consists of one on one matches, many on many matches, one on many matches, etc. In some subset of cases X, the multipower dude is no worse off than a regular defender. In (1-X) cases, he crushes. There are a lot more opponents where the multipower defender will crush. Anyone who depends on 1 attack form which is a fairly large chunk of the super population. Much larger than a 6 OCV blaster in a world with 15 DCV martial artists.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? The person with 45/5 straight can only fight one type of foe. The dude with a multipower would annihilate in a one on one, bricks, martial artists, most weapon masters, many blasters, mentallists, people who depend on power attacks, etc. And with a balanced slot in his multipower like in my example, he'd do just fine vs foes with multiple types of attacks. Big huge difference between the fixed 45/5 and the multipower. I specifically stated throughout this thread that the character would crush anyone who depended on a single attack type (a good chunk of the super population). I'm not sure why you're bringing in someone with 2 attacks vs difference defense types. And what does the 15 DCV MA have to do with what was quoted?

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Well, defenses are significantly cheaper than attacks because you generally have to purchase multiple types. If you can optimize the defense against a specific attacker, that dynamic breaks down. 1 pt of defense generally blocks 5/3.5 or 1.43 pts of attack for a standard attack, or 2.86 pts of attack for something like ego attack. So points in a spot defense are magnified compared to points in spot attacks.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Not all campaigns have hard caps. You haven't really responded to my point that attackers reliant on 1 attack form such as bricks, martial artists, most weapon masters, and many blasters are screwed vs this type of multipower. In fact, it looks like you're agreeing. The difference between the multipower structure and someone with Power/Flash/Mental defense "normally" is that it costs only 1-4 pts for lots of protection in the multipower vs full price if bought straight. And that's a pretty huge difference. In my sample multipower, it costs only 1 pt to gain 15 pts of mental defense.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? If the attacker has a multipower with both physical and energy attacks, then the defender can't optimize. If the attacker only has 1 type of attack, he's screwed.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way?

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? I was talking automatons. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Yep. But it's the same as who's concept justifies power defense or mental defense as well. And the GM decision is basically made once at chargen rather than time after time during actual gaming situations. Not really. All of them do things that real life equivalents don't, especially when wielded by their aforementioned characters. They just don't batter down large vault doors.

Re: House rule I'm considering, Hit Location I think both sides are talking past each other at this point. A change like this doesn't make abilities that don't take hit locations less valuable in absolute terms, but it does in relative terms. As an example, suppose we changed the rules so that killing attacks did their regular damage, but normal attacks did 1d6+1 Stun per 5 pts. The KA isn't any less valuable than it was before in absolute terms, but it's less valuable relative to the NA than before. This proposed HL change adds some amount to the average damage of any attacks that use HL. So attacks that don't use HL aren't any less valuable than before, but are less valuable relative to attacks that do. How much less valuable depends on the average attack level, defense level, OCV, and DCV of the campaign.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Knockback at this level can easily be handled by the base defense. And there isn't always a convenient high tension power line to attack with. In general, defense trumps offense. For example, a character who has a 50% chance to hit his foe but a 1% chance of being hit will do FAR better on average than someone who has a 99% chance to hit his foe and a 50% chance of being hit. Once you make yourself nigh invulnerable either through defenses or DCV, the battle is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Yep For energy it's tougher and can be simulated either way, but physical KAs generally are quite noticeable. Not that many have 34+ either, but you seem to be using that as your threshold against my method. Yep. Nope. Standard KAs still have the high variability in Body damage and the stun lottery. A lot of energy attacks could go either way and would tend to be defined more as EBs if KAs become less effective at stunning foes. As for physical attacks, things like maces might now be defined as NAs instead of KAs like under the current system (to make them competitive with swords). 3 pts of Lack of Weakness might. And power, mental, and flash have a whole lot of other beneficial effects. Also, it's probably going to cost more because you can't harden only part of a defense. Also, you have to harden the base PD and ED as well as the damage resistance, so now the cost is 9 pts to harden 6/6. It's up to the GM to determine what style his campaign is. If the GM wants KAs to be terrifying, he should limit rDef and hardened. If he wants it to be just another attack option, then he simply doesn't set any limitations on defenses. That leads to a whole lot of GM judgement calls which opens a whole can of worms. If you declare arbitrarily that a longsword can't damage 16 Def, then how about 15 def, 14 def, etc? And suppose Longswordman's buddy Clawman has the same attack. Is he limited as well? How about their buddy Lightsaberman? 12 body in 1 shot is basically death for mooks. Actually 5 body past defenses for 10 total body and 24.5 Stun. Same as the others, but a lot more variability. The attack could easily roll 8 body 8 stun, or 20 body 100 stun. 7 Body through defenses and 19 Stun. The AP attack is less effective in general vs low rDef characters. This time you did halve defenses for AP. Nope, the AP attack does less body to the mook in all cases. In the 75 AP version, there's a reasonable chance that the mook is killed outright with the regular KA. In all cases, there's less time for help to arrive to save the mook for the reguler KA vs the AP KA. Supers who can do this usually have magic or special weapons such as Wolverine's claws or Black Knight's sword. "Normal" KAs such as Green Arrow's regular arrows, Punisher's guns, or Taskmaster using a sword will never penetrate a vault door. Wolverine seems to have a variable number of levels of AP and Penetrating. It appears the writers roll a D6 and that's how many levels of each advantage he as for any particular issue. Given the visuals of any typical movie such as Conan, Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, etc, blood most certainly means Body damage. He's not merely KO'd, he's taken a lot of body in general He's usually at close to negative his body and often has to be nursed back to health over weeks or months. It's more effective at removing a force wall, but not vs brick walls at 5 Def. Vs a 6 def 6 body entangle, your KA needs to roll 4 above average to take it down with a full phase to spare. My KA needs to roll 2 only above average, which is significantly easier. Vs low def high body objects such as dirt, trees, or airplanes, my KA is much better. As I stated above, it's up to the GM to determine the tone of his campaign and set attack levels and defenses accordingly. There are offsetting advantages such as vs entangles and low def high body objects and automatons. Those lingering effects have a great deal of effect. First of all, you can't recover body in a combat without regeneration while you can recover stun. With 1 or 2 recoveries, it may take longer to knock out the target than you think, especially if he has teammates covering him. Secondly, if he faces another combat within the adventure, he's starting off at a significant disadvantage. This may influence a 12 body character who has already taken 6 body whether to proceed or might affect his strategy in his next encounter. Don't forget better vs entangles and vs low def high body items and automatons. And if you inflict body damage, you can skirmish, doing a little damage, retreating, and striking again. If you're only inflicting stun damage, this will never work since all stun will have been recovered by the time you get back. Ok.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Defensive multipowers or vpps are more of a game problem than attacks when facing 1 foe. Consider the following multipower: 15 Multipower 1u +15 PD FF 1u +15 ED FF 1u +7/8 FF The same total cost as +9/+9 FF bought straight. Let's assume the character has 15/15 def base. Against a mix of foes, the character has 22/23. Against Ogre, he has +30/+15. Against Thunderbolt, he has +15/+30. His defense is slightly weaker vs a general foe, but MUCH stronger vs 1 foe. The example becomes worse if the character starts throwing in 1 pt Power, Mental, and Flash Defense slots that give +15 of the relevant defense.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Let's take a real world example. A soldier in a battle who gets a shrapnel hit that doesn't penetrate his helmet would in game terms be stunned but not necessarily knocked out. What would likely happen is that when he shakes off the effects, he'll stay in the battle and continue fighting. Now if the same solder was shot in the chest for 8 Body damage, even if he's conscious, he's calling for a medic and getting out of the fire zone! I have no reason to believe that the mook wouldn't have the same thought process. It's a viable main attack in Fantasy Hero as long as the GM doesn't give all opponents plate armor. Perhaps a knight might carry both a mace and sword like historical knights did, and use the mace vs highly defended targets. In the supers genre, KAs only become less viable unless AP because PCs in a RPG tend to have lots more rDef than characters in the comics. In comics, there's a lot of characters running around with very little in the way of rDef who would rightfully be scared of a KA. I think you're only looking at the supers genre, and only at campaigns that you're familiar with. There are a lot of potential targets where the KA would be more useful. Plus under this approach, overall rDef doesn't have to be as high as the current model. You can use the exact comment for the current structure. The 12d6 normal attack is useless vs targets with 42 def, but the KA is useful vs all types of targets. Therefore the NA is "overspecialized" I disagree that the KA becomes useless. It merely shifts downward the range of defenses where it would be effective. Again, it's a matter of GM control. If the GM wants KA to remain terrifying and a viable weapon, then he can simply control the level of PC defenses to more closely model the source material. And the GM can help by sending fewer villains with AP KAs so there's less incentive to buy hardened defenses. You're assuming KAs will be just as common under the new system as under the current system. And just because a character can buy something doesn't mean that he should. Otherwise 1-3 pts of mental, flash, and power defense and lack of weakness would be pretty darn good buys for EVERYONE. If you're complaining about the lack of effectiveness of KA and you're the one who allows every character to purchase hardened, then yes I see a lack of control by the GM. Not if someone actually purchases a .50 cal with character points. Or a longsword that's 1.5d6 and 3d6+1 with Str. Because the range of damage is so great, the vault door will eventually be chopped to pieces by the longsword paid with character points. It would happen even quicker if the character purchased a 2 handed sword. That example supports the fact that Wolverine has AP on his KA. If he simply rolled lots of dice rather than reducing the defenses of the target, those mooks would be quite dead. There also has to be an element of believability as well. After all, the game would be quite playable if there were rules that blow guns can penetrate M1 Abrams tanks or if normal humans can leap 100 feet. But that would violate believability. The longsword hacking apart the vault door isn't quite as bad, but it's still pretty unbelievable. I wouldn't say "incapable of inflicting any harm". The KA still does stun, just less of it than the corresponding NA. Also, the KA is generally only good in the source material against weakly defended foes. You don't see Hulk, Thing, Invisible Woman, Iron Man, or any other hard targets afraid of guns or a sword. But Storm, Cyclops, Spiderman, Hawkeye, etc go to great lengths not to be hit by sharp pointy objects. Also at the lower power levels, swords only seem effective when they draw blood as can be seen from countless novels, movies, tv series, comics, etc. You almost never see someone wear down the targets stun and knock them out while not doing body, a result which is quite possible in the current system against a knight wearing plate. It still leaves a mechanic that's significantly different from everything else in Hero and it still has the extreme volatility in dice rolls. My proposed KA isn't neutralized. It does less stun true, but still does stun unless the target's defenses are extremely high. In fact, it does roughly the same stun as your proposed KA (33.5 at the 60 pt level vs either 30 or 36 under your system). If you're saying that my KA is "neutralized", then you're also saying that your KA is "neutralized" as well. I was doing the numbers in my head instead of using a spreadsheet. Mistakes happen. As many players as under the current system. A character with 4-6 rDef faces the exact same thing vs a 4d6 KA, possibly worse since rolling really high is far more likely than rolling really high with 9.5d6. Since some players still play relatively low rDef characters under the current system, there's no reason why they wouldn't under the new one. They may not play a 0 rDef character, but they wouldn't under the current system or your proposed system either. Funny how 30 or 36 stun is considered "competitive" in your eyes, but 33.5 isn't. Unless Healing or Regeneration is very common, then taking body has effects that linger long after the battle is over. I wouldn't consider a body drain that regenerates per month to be useless, but you wouldn't get many dice at 60 pts. 6 or 12 less stun is "marginally less stun" but 8.5 less stun makes an attack "neutralized", "useless", or "not competitive". Hmm...

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Nope. If neither stuns for con, then the one that does body is more terrifying. If a mook is going after someone with 50-60 pt attacks in the first place, he's probably the minion of someone tougher, and he's probably expecting to take lots of stun if attacked. OTOH, taking 8 body per shot is life threatening and far more terrifying for any rational being no matter how well trained or prepared he is. Yep. Which is why someone shouldn't casually throw around KAs unless the genre supports it. But my approach makes KAs absolutely terrifying vs unprotected targets (very realistic), and not so terrifying vs well protected targets (also realistic). Apparently, you've never had a low rDef villain in your campaign ever. Either AP or more DCs allow KAs to penetrate armor. So obviously the comic book characters with KAs who are effective have one or the other. It's just that in a RPG where characters have a budget, the AP is a more cost efficient choice. If you scale your KAs to the PCs defenses, it's easy to inflict body without killing. Actually easier than with traditional KAs since someone with 10 rDef could easily take 10+ body from a single 4d6 KA. If your players don't ever want their characters to die, then perhaps they shouldn't play RPGs. In a typical PC party, perhaps 1-2 characters have hardened defenses. If every character has hardened defenses, that calls into question metagaming and conception issues and perhaps a lack of control by the GM. That's what KAs do. In real life, most KAs are of higher DCs than the defenses they face which is why they're effective. If facing defenses higher than their DC, they generally don't do anything, or very little. But in game terms, to be immune to a .50 cal, a vehicle must have 18 rDef. Even a vault door would be shot apart by a .50 cal eventually which would never happen in real life. And this tears through low rDef targets. Also, you're the one who stated that "Not every character should have, or need, the proverbial swiss army multipower." A KA with -2 SM would be far worse at inflicting stun at typical targets than my method. That would automatically disqualify it in your eyes because apparently the need to do equivalent stun as a normal attack is your sole criteria for whether a KA is viable. You're right, it should be 10 Body and 24.5 Stun. Still a very lethal attack. At 30/15 it's relatively close. At 20/10, the AP KA does 4.5 more body and slightly less stun. Taking 4.5 body would tend to scare people more than taking slightly more stun would. Anyway, based on your 3 examples, the AP KA is quite competitive with a NA. That's a very good assumption. Someone who takes 8 body in most campaigns would be far more terrified than someone who takes one hard shot but no body. It's not a lemming, but a rational trained soldier. Of course if the GM doesn't give mooks recoveries or has all cowardly mooks who run as soon as hit, then taking body doesn't matter. Not useless. Highly useful vs certain foes. Using the 10/4, 20/10, and 30/15 targets: 10/4 12d6 KA under this system would do 10 Body 20 or 26 Stun 20/10 12d6 KA does 4 Body 10 or 16 Stun 30/15 12d6 KA does 0 Body 0 or 6 Stun. I find it very interesting that you spent pages of analysis saying that if an attack does less stun than a NA or if an attack isn't viable as a character's sole attack, that it would be useless. Yet the one method you actually like fails both tests!