bobooton

Re: Should Speed have a scaling cost?

I just factor it into Rule of X. Cheap or expensive as it may be, what matters is how effective the character is in the game in question.

Re: Government Logo Contains Secret Code

And if you'd checked it yourself as opposed to listening to the yahoos commenting on the article' date=' you'd find that the MD5 hash of the phrase exactly as I posted it, is in fact the answer. [/quote']

 

If you put the code (not the language) into an MD5 decoder (not encoder), you get what AlHazred posted originally.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game

Champion (mostly blue) and Virtue (mostly red) here. Have three 50s blueside (Arik Magnusson, Streetlight Samurai, Furious Flea) and mid-40s redside (Streetlight Shogun, Lei Bao), with a pretty full range under them. Mostly playing weekends, but occasionally on Tues & Thurs nights.

Re: DC Guidelines versus DEF Guidelines

Followed the math. But. How do you figure when the DCV/DEF changes? How did you come up with an 8 OCV/DC 10? Why not an 11 OCV, DC 12, SPD 5? (90.74% x 22 = 99)?

 

I'm just curious - do you define the average DCV/DEF and make the Rule of X fit that?

 

Thanks.

The DCV and DEF are standardized figures, used in all cases to get an idea of how the character fits into the game. If the game standard changes, then you'd change the target number. If you're balacing at the individual level, then you can bring specifics into play. I usually only do this for mastermind fights where it pays to know expected damage for an entire group of heroes attacking a single target.

It still completely ignores defenses, which are the other half of combat. You could work out a similar formula for defenses, I guess. Maybe OCV 8 & DC 10 vs. DCV & DEF?

Re: DC Guidelines versus DEF Guidelines

I loves me some game balance, so I tend to take a little more complicated route. First I look at the likelihood of hitting a given DCV (say, 8). Then I look at average STUN against a standardized DEF (say, 20). Multiply the probability of hitting by average damage to get a probable damage/attack figure. Multiply that by SPD and you get my preferred balaccing calculation/"Rule of X".

So an OCV 8 (62.5% chance to hit), DC 10 (15 avg STUN), SPD 5 character would have a "Rule of X" figure of 46.875. I tend to look for something around 50 in a game like that, so this would be fine.

Re: Armor Wars

The same Crimson Dynamo who couldn't get out of a box made of lumber and never took a shot from anything during his first appearance? Who Iron Man Mk. II defeated handily with... seriously now... an open-topped box of made of trees? Who in his second appearance was able to use one trick (once) to disable Iron Man Mk. III for a few panels, but then witnessed and stated how much more powerful the Iron Man armor was? Up until then, outside of being punched around by Iron Man and wiped out by a trick weapon, he hadn't taken any hits from anything. IM3 didn't exactly

Like others, Titanium Man started strong by using a staged environment, but suit-for-suit he was outmatched against the Mk. IV. The second battle showed almost comparable armor, but he ended up defeated by... water. The third saw the TM armor heavily modified by a super scientist and it was almost comparable to the Mk. IV armor.

Later, IM Mk. V fights both an updated CD and TM and wins. CD & TM are using Starktech as of #73.

Re: Armor Wars

No. Titanium Man was Eastern Bloc. Based on the plans created by Anton Vanko, who created the original Crimson Dynamo.

 

Mauler and the Raiders had been improved by Hammer using stolen Irontech. Oh, wait, all of those villains existed prior and were only improved by Hammer using the stolen Irontech.

 

Go figure.

Titanium Man & Crimson Dynamo both show up as Starktech beneficiaries in #229...

And yes, I'd agree that some got started on their own, but they didn't get truly powerful without the Starktech. Before then? Beware of tanks and helicopters...

Re: Armor Wars

Stilt Man, Cobalt Man, Firebrand I, Rampage, Grizzly...

Seriously, dude. Thousands of people who can do it is not an exaggeration. Arguing that these armours are second-best or third-best, or whatever, down to Iron Duck and the Slasher is just evading the point that they are still better than regular infantry, and mostly better than having a tank. You haven't even come close to making me understand why the whole 82nd Airborne isn't running around in Guardsmen suits.

Lots of those and more are b-grade armors, Turtle armor at best. Stark builds and sells the Guardsman armor, so that explains part of why the entire military isn't so equipped. Starktech had to be stolen to create dozens of armored villains out there (Spymaster working for Hammer), so they weren't capable of this on their own. Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man, Force, Mauler, the Raiders, the Controller, the Beetle, the Mandroids, the Guardsmen, Firepower, and even Stilt-Man all fall under that umbrella, plus many more. None of that happens without Stark and none of that happens without at least one other supertech mind getting access to Stark's tech - that mind almost invariably incapable of doing the work themselves without the Starktech.

The argument that if something better exists, then everyone should have it, just doesn't work. Airborne is better trained and equipped than regular infantry, right? So why aren't all infantry given Airborne training and equipment? Why aren't all pilots flying the latest state-of-the-art warplanes? The resources don't exist to cover it. Not everybody can handle the training. Not everybody is effective with certain equipment. Some equipment and training costs a LOT more than others. The goals don't always require the best of the best for everything and, in some cases, just require a LOT of minimally-trained and -equipped people. It's all been said before, of course.

Re: Armor Wars

Objection! Your honour - assertion contradicted by facts already in evidence!

 

Stane, Stark and Hammer have already sold their technology to the government (and to private organizations, too). It has already been mass produced. It has already been deployed in small numbers and almost always successfully. In addition, as shown by the government Firepower projects, unnamed government scientists have already the capacity to design and build their own.

The stuff that has been mass produced has been b-grade at best. No government gets the best tech. The Mandroid and Guardsman armors both came out of Stark tech and are Turtle armor equivalents, if you will. Stane never mass produced the Iron Monger. He thought about it as a way of creating his own private army to take over the world, but there was only ever the one suit. The Iron Monger, Firepower, and just about every armored villain and hero in Marvel used Starktech to some degree. Firepower wasn't made by the government, but by someone who'd stolen Stark tech and gotten government funding for his project (and who later refused to let the government have Firepower and went rogue with it). A second suit randomly appeared about 50 issues later in government hands, but was disabled in that same issue. No other mention of such suits exists.

Again, there are only a handful of people out there with the capability. There aren't tens of thousands of people out there who can do it and those that can are independent enough that they don't need government funding or assistance to create their best tech. They may let the table scraps go, and governments are plenty hungry for those, but they don't get the best. When they do get something good, they don't get to keep it for long and they don't get it in bulk.

Re: Armor Wars

At one point in history, there were only a handful of people capable of designing atomic weapons. If you had those people, you could do it. If not, you couldn't. To this day, very few countries have the capability to deploy weapons of that sort and it's been nearly 70 years since one was last deployed. Sure, they can get a guy who can design one today, but they can't get the money, the supplier, and/or requisite resources to implement, let alone do so in quantity. Most comics are set in a period of time where only a handful of people can develop supertech and very few of them are willing to provide supertech weapons to governments. Those that do so tend to be villains and said supertech is usually destroyed in short order or removed from government control by those villains.

Stark, Stane, Doom, Richards, Mary Sue T'Challa, and more have supertech capability in Marvel, but they're still a much smaller population than the number of people who can design nuclear weapons in today's world. If they aren't willing to work for the government and/or if resources necessary for the armor are limited (e.g. adamantium, vibranium, extremis, etc.), then there's nothing that the governments of the world can do about it.

Re: Armor Wars

Heh. You almost made me snort coffee out my nose. Really? You really think nukes aren't used more because they're "unfair"? "Fairness" has nothing' date=' nothing and nothing to do with war. It's not fair for an operator in Ohio to put a Hellfire missile into some guys' living room in Pakistan while he's dandling his grand daughter on his knee, but we do that too. Nukes aren't used more because they make great big firestorms and leave radioactive ground, killing civilians by the millions or hundreds of thousands. There are few situations where you actually want that outcome - but trust me, if we found ourselves in that situation, then the nukes would fly. That is, after all, why we spend hundreds of billions building and deploying them.[/quote']

 

And why don't we eradicate enemy populations wholesale? Why don't we "want that outcome"? We can do the same with conventional tech right now and we still don't. It's bad publicity, that's pretty much it. It'd save (friendly) lives, money, and time, but it's a horrible thing to do and it won't settle well domestically or abroad.

 

Except that we know drone pilots aren't heavily monitored at all times - the CIA is using civilian drone pilots. Likewise, a sub captain, or the pilot of a plane carrying nuclear-tipped warheads is carrying a vast amount of firepower. Saying "The military would never trust one person with a vast amount of firepower" fails the real world test, because actually, they do. They cope with it by pre-screening, good training and failsafes in the system - exactly as they would do with troopers in battlesuits.

 

Drone pilots are in a room with many other people directing them and their actions. They aren't alone in a closet somewhere - someone is constantly staring over their shoulders and monitoring the missions. The sub captain thing doesn't fly at all, given that multiple people are involved with even prepping the weapons to be fired, let alone firing them, nuclear or otherwise. The plane is probably the closest thing to valid you've come up with, but it's still limited by fuel and ammunition. It may be able to do a lot in a short time, but it becomes a very expensive lawn ornament after that without resupply.

 

Sure, the comics in fact don't let supertech out of the box, because it's part of the setting. It's a genre trope. Readers accept it, because it's a genre trope. But it's not realistic, as you just pointed out yourself. I should point out that I have no problem with it. I know it's unrealistic, I know it makes no sense .... but I don't care. I'm reading a comic book where people can mutate to shoot energy beams out of their eyes, for pete's sake, where verifiable Gods walk the streets and yet people still go to church like nothing had changed ... none of that makes the slightest sense, but that's OK: I can willingly suspend my disbelief.

 

I'm not sure what realistic would mean. Would governments realistically have the tech first and have the resources to both design it and mass produce it? Realistically, few people or even corporations (if any) would have the willpower and resources to invest in powered armor development. That means government funding and the whole point is moot, because only the government gets the goodies. In comics, however, individual people have the funding, the ability, and the desire to do this on their own. Once that premise is established, then all the other stuff comes with it (the other stuff being whatever the author throws into the fictional setting). Comic book governments have their super-soldier programs and whatever else, too, but they never seem to get the mass produced goverment oo-rah types they want, while the superscientists go on about personal responsibility and the need to keep their tech from falling into the wrong hands. So the programs exist, they just don't have that commitment from the people capable of doing the work the government wants done.

 

How would people *really* react to seeing superhumans among them? Worship? Terror? Meh? I say none of that matters until it happens and nobody can know until it happens. I can set up a fictional setting that establishes exactly what happens easily enough, though. That leaves me with real world apples and fictional setting oranges, and nowhere else to go.

 

Ummmmm .... that doesn't represent anything like the position I have taken. The position I have taken is that if supertech and ritzy batttlesuits existed and costumed crimefighters proved their effectiveness, by - let's say - going successfully one on one with tank, eliminating a pack of insurgents with minimal collateral damage and then successfully evading some F15's, then the military would be interested* ... and if interested, would spend a whole lot of money to build and deploy that tech. Kind of like the US did with nukes, now that I think of it. Actually, exactly like the US - and everybody else who had the technology - did with nukes. Indeed, exactly like the Iranians are trying to do today, even at great cost to their society and economy. Again, you're setting up an argument that simply supports the point I am making: if the technology demonstrates clear military potential people will want it it - want it badly enough to risk their economy to get it.

 

This assumes access to it, which is problematic, and effectively unlimited resources to both design and manufacture the item. The Iron Man movies offer an example there: very few people (2) can make the mini arc reactors, let alone the suit tech (1). Government says "gimme" and Stark says "no". It's the creation of one guy working alone, so there aren't hundreds of people who were involved in the process that you can take in and put to work duplicating the effort. Stark does the same in the comics repeatedly, though one story arc kind of gets away from that by establishing a black market for old Iron Man parts. It always goes to fear of the tech in the wrong hands and the assumption that the government (composed of many hands) is guaranteed to have a bad one in there somewhere. Still, Stark does share quite a bit of tech with militaries, enhancing their conventional warfare capabilities significantly. Nobody gets the Iron Man suit, but you can have this pretty missile instead.

 

How many scientists in the world are capable of designing - not even constructing, just designing on paper - a nuclear weapon? I'll throw out a completely uneducated guess at a thousand and that's a decent pool to choose from. How many people are capable of learning how to design a nuclear weapon? Several thousand more? Again, this is a nice pool to choose from. How many people are capable of designing Iron Man tech? One. How many people are capable of designing Iron Man tech? One. Even assuming that everything else is "realistic" and the government is willing to throw untold trillions to get even a single suit made, they still need that one guy or it doesn't happen.

 

This applies even more strongly to battlesuits - they are, in the world view you have just laid out, the perfect weapon - the firepower of a tank, the threat of a nuke, the deployability of a drone and a gigantic force multiplier exactly at a time when numbers are a crucial issue .... without the collateral damage, without the deployment difficulties, without the political fallout. Nothing I said suggests that having developed these weapons, the country would go on a killing spree. It didn't happen with nukes, I have no reason to think it'd happen with somewhat less destructive technology. However, nukes were developed, refined and deployed by the tens of thousands at vast cost to the economy - exactly like battlesuits would be, if they existed.

 

Again, it goes to access to the resources and knowledge required to complete the task. Given the level of science that general shows up in comic book governments, they can and do produce battlesuits and equivalent tech. They just don't make a lot of them and they're still b-team equipment compared to the stars of the setting. There is no mass production, either due to cost, lack of resources, or something else. Nuclear weapons have been developed in quantity by countries that could afford to development both the warheads and the delivery capability, as well as the resources necessary to actually put the thing together and decades of dedicated research by some of the most amazing minds in history. Even when someone manages to establish a seat at the table, they still can't get what they need to duplicate US or Soviet quantities or delivery systems and they'll likely never be able to.

 

For that matter, why isn't every single infantryman fully trained to the highest possible levels (e.g. SEAL, Ranger, etc.)? If I buy your argument, and you have access to the best methods for something that has effectively no cost, then the best should be the default. Right? Compared to building a better plane or missile, the training is chump change. If we also accept that resources are effectively unlimited for everybody everywhere, then why isn't every single pilot flying state-of-the-art stealth fighter-bombers? Why isn't every unit in the Navy using only the newest tech? Something is limiting the expenditures and production. Part of that is ability - not everybody has what it takes to perform at the highest levels. Part of that is resources. Part of that is mission-oriented. Part of that is production capability. That's a lot of limitations. Most comic book supertech adds the further limitation of a single source of knowledge, which none of those other items has to contend with.

Re: Armor Wars

Because war is about winning' date=' and if you don't do it, the guys who do, will take you apart.[/quote']

 

It's about getting bang for your buck and achieving goals. When you need lots of people to hold ground, you need lots of people. No one person is going to be able to handle it all. If you need to roll over some slightly-armed goatherders in Nowherestan, you could send an army of supermen or you could send conventional forces much cheaper and still get the job done. Plus, it doesn't quite look as bad. Why aren't nuclear weapons used more often? They'd do the job fantastically well, but they're a PR nightmare, largely because they're just unfair and too effective.

 

So according to this, the military would never employ fighter jets or drones, or let one guy captain a nuclear sub - after all, he could go rogue at any time! Of course, in real life militaries do precisely this as a matter of routine.

 

Drone pilots are heavily monitored at all times, with loads of failsafes in place. Regular pilots have a lot more autonomy, but they have to stop for fuel sometime if they go running off and they can run out of ammunition pretty quickly. The nuclear sub may have one captain, but it has many more people there and loads of failsafes, especially regarding any decisions to use the weapons. It's not the same argument as talking about giving a guy an unlimited supersuit that can take him anywhere and just hoping things go well. Of course, that makes for some good villain backgrounds, too.

 

Riiiiiight. So in a world where supers - both Heroes and Villains, do exist, and paranoia about their capabilities is justifiable, you're saying the military would not attempt to redress the balance, because they somehow trust these civilians who keep their identities hidden more than their own people.

 

I would say that they might, depending on the setting. In some settings, the military and society as a whole might be vehemently anti-super. In others, it might just be the military or even just some elements in the military. In others still, it might be a shiny happy place where people just take the fact that gods live and battle among them like its no big thing. It's all about the setting. In Kingdom Come, that meant humans became scared enough to order a nuclear strike against the supers. That's oldtech, nothing they needed Iron Man suits or Reed Richards's tech for.

 

On the other hand, groups like SHIELD and Checkmate keep tabs on superhuman abilities and weaknesses and craft tech to handle them. They might be content to sit in the background, waiting for something to happen, or they might want to strike first before things get out of hand. Look at how the Sentinels were used in the X-Men titles. Tanks are still around, as are fighters and pretty much every other conventional unit, because conventional warfare is still relevant. However, the superhuman element is also accounted for. It all goes back to the setting.

 

You know, that doesn't make any sense. Haven't you just argued convincingly against your own position? Doesn't that paranoia suggest the populace would be desperate to deploy supertech to provide normal humans with some protection? They would, of course, just as I have been saying: if the means were there, people would use them. I say this, because in real life, they always have.

 

Not taking any positions here, really, just throwing out thoughts. Several different settings and how they might handle each of the circumstances.

 

Think about this: the US has nuclear weapons, the means to eradicate any of its opponents, but has only used those means twice (or once, depending on how you look at it). Since then, it has not used them and no other country has used them, despite a multitude of wars and countries of all sorts gaining access to nuclear weapon tech. If your reasoning held true, the US would use them constantly, as would every other nuclear power. Technically, most countries could achieve similar, if not more potent, effects by using conventional weapons, but they don't do so. It looks bad to wipe cities off the face of the earth. It isn't good PR domestically or abroad and that's enough to say "no". So do you send a human nuke to do the same work?

 

An example of this would be Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen, how he was used, and how he was viewed domestically and abroad. A similar example would be Hyperion from Squadron Supreme (JMS). Look at Waid's Plutonian in Irredeemable for an example where people are just helpless and are looking to appease the superhuman threatening them after years of taking him for granted. Or you could take the approach that supers are just part of life and the non-powered populace just smiles and nods as they go about their business. It all depends on the setting.

Re: Questions from a newbie

 

• D20 (D&D in particular) doesn't, in my experience, scale very well past about level 12 or so. Combat tends to take a long time (in actual minutes) to play out, while happening over a very short amount of in-character time. At a similar level of power, is Hero less cumbersome? How does it scale as you become more and more powerful?
  
• I'm reading that your typical sci-fi or fantasy game is "Heroic" and starts at around 175 points per character. How many more points might someone accumulate during a fairly long campaign?
  
• One of the more annoying aspects of D&D in the mid to high levels is how easy it can be to kill off characters, which is something I prefer to avoid unless they brought it on by doing something dumb. If you're dealing with very powerful characters in Hero, how easy is it to accidentally kill them off?
  
• In another post, someone mentioned pre-generated characters as a way to ease people in to the Hero System. Any other suggestions?
  

 

Thanks!

 

Bart

1) In my experience, HERO can be one of the slowest systems to play. There's a tactical component, speed, lots of rules and optional rules, and lots of die rolling for any given moment. High defenses or DCVs can make the game take a really long time, so limiting those will be helpful, but potentially deadly for the characters.

2) Think about how often you'd play and the average xp/game session. At 2xp/session and one session every two weeks, you'd get 52xp/year.

3) HERO is more random that D&D. Lots of stories around here about that one great roll or that one terrible roll, depending on your POV. However, splitting HP into STUN and BODY helps make HERO a bit more survivable than D&D, IMO. Just watch out if you decide to include hit locations.

4) Start simple? Unless your group is used to rules minutiae, you're better off skipping the optional stuff and keeping it simple for a while. Encourage purchasing of the books (e.g. 5xp for each core books) to get them buying into it. Once you've paid your money, you're more likely to delve into the game. Also, if possible, I would recommend hitting a convention or a game demo if you can find one in your area, just so you can see it in action.

Re: Armor Wars

More thoughts on this...

1) Conventional military units are made to fight conventional military targets. Why spend on one UberSuit when I can get dozens of highly-capable conventional units if the purpose is to fight other conventional units. Destruction is easy. Taking and holding an area is much harder and requires more boots on the ground. Also, why put all of that power in the hands of one person? That's just asking the guy to take it for a walk and never come back.

2) This also leads me to think of White Wolf's Aberrant game, where superhumans essentially became the first line of fighting, then became military proxies. Why spend hundreds of billions on tech, training, and mobilization of military forces when you can throw, say, half that at a very powerful group of superhumans and let them work as the new nuclear deterrent?

3) One reason why you wouldn't is good old fashioned "us and them" paranoia. When people are literally lifting mountains and laying waste to city blocks with a single bat of an eyelash, it's scary to be a normal person. Do you really want to rely on them for your protection or do you want things that don't rely on them in case they become the enemy? Think of Kingdom Come and the reaction of normal people to a society gone super. Boom.

Re: Armor Wars

1) Tanks (flying tanks!) with that kind of firepower

2) Turtle armor!

Re: Not D&D

Again' date=' while fascinating, a lot of these replies have said "Here, use this (religious idea) instead." When any of those concepts will go against what the poster is espousing as his personal beliefs and the limits his conscience will allow him to go to.[/quote']

 

This.

 

I have run into players that are troubled by religious elements in games. If they're in my game or I'm in their game, I'll work to accomodate them. For some, sexual content or overly violent content might have very clearly delineated lines that shouldn't be crossed. Some might have limits on all of that, plus an unnatural fear of fire or drowning or whatever. Common courtesy dictates that you don't purposefully put people into an uncomfortable position, especially in an entertainment context, unless they've consented. If you want to explore some other themes or cross those lines, have a side game or excuse the player for a moment.

Re: CHAMPIONS VILLAINS -- What Do *You* Want To See?

Something that might be helpful would be a listing by DC. So if I was looking for a villain or a group of villains of a similar power level, I could find it just by running my finger down an index.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now?

Feeling 90s today...

"Here and Now" by Letters to Cleo

Re: Damage Class and Balance

In people's opinion, is a compound attack made of a 7DC attack and a 5DC attack on balance with a 12DC attack?

Please opine given the following caveat: All forms of defense are about equally prevalent including Deflections, DCV boosts and Power Defense.

Generally, the 12DC attack should be more effective by virtue of the stun-to-defense ratio alone. That said, the real answer is absolutely dependent on what the attacks in question are and the average levels of those defenses mentioned above.

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

I like the game, though it's been a couple months since I logged in. My wife and I both have lifetime subs. Unfortunately, she doesn't like the game much and strongly prefers COH/V. It didn't help that we had two grumpy old friends who just couldn't let go of COH long enough to give CO a legitimate shot. One hates cel-shading and stubbornly resists change, while the other takes to even small changes about as well as he'd take to someone kicking his cat. It also didn't help that my wife's laptop is a bit tired, but she has a new Asus on the way that should cure that.

Personally, I started avoiding CO due to my friends not playing it much, rampant imbalances, jarring changes that never seemed to target the real problems, and network issues. They're working on all that, but there are a lot of games out there that don't have those problems and I can play them right now while things get fixed on CO. When the fixes are in and the balance issues go from gaping chasms to cracks in the sidewalk, then I'll likely give it another shot. It's a good game with a chance at greatness, so I look forward to that day.

Re: As A Hero Gamer, Do You Use The Surbrook's Stuff Website?

As a time-strapped person, anything that helps pare down prep time is wonderful. Art is always useful, so can't go wrong there. Pure setting material will be useful, but writeups won't be useful to me unless they're in 6E terms. A lot of work went into the 5E stuff on the site, but it's (unfortunately) dated now.

Re: Newbie and GM shouldn't go together.

You could try to work out damage/turn figures...

1. OCV vs. DCV to get percentage chance to hit
   
2. Damage vs. Defenses to get average damage on a hit
   
3. Multiply percentage chance to hit by average damage on a hit to get expected damage per attack
   
4. Multiply expected damage per attack by the character's SPD to get expected damage per turn
   

Then you can figure out what sort of combination of defenses, combat values and Stun will be necessary for your NPCs to last a hypothetical number of turns. This only goes so far (good/bad die rolls can hit anywhere at any time, melee characters need to get in range, etc.), but it gives a basis to work from.

Re: Really, Hero Games? Two Rulebooks?

It's tough to argue costs, given that almost any book can be bought significantly below MSRP. Personally, I'd say that any game today is likely to be a significant investment. There are a few bargains out there, but $70 is a pretty typical buy-in price to run a game. The availability of free support varies by publisher & game, with some offering extensive free material and others offering nothing outside of user-made materials.

That said, I would also ask any potential buyer if they have significant time to devote to the game or not. As a GM, this is a pretty big issue, but HERO6 has a steep learning curve and a fat stack of pages that can be too much even for some players. If you've played prior versions, this isn't such a big deal, but if you're new to the game it can be a lot of work.