Paragon

Re: Noob question - Defensive Strike and Martial Strike? Generally speaking, a small, carefully chosen martial arts set is an incredibly efficient buy for a melee attacker; for example, an art that included Martial Strike, Martial Block and Martial Dodge is almost certainly a better deal by far than you'd get going any other way, and its unlikely someone with that orientation will ever regret the points. Just how efficient that buy is depends too much on setting to say; in a campaign where almost all combat is unarmed, or at least is melee and no special rules about blocking unarmed are applied, its pretty much golden, for example (you can use the Martial Strike constantly, with the appropriate bonus to DCV, and the Block and Dodge allow you some flexibility).

Actually two, only marginally related questions, but I figure why clutter the forum with multiple posts. 1. This may just be confusion on our part, but does it require anything special to use a weapon off hand in terms of Familiarity (I know the DCV bonus "Off-hand WF" but that's obviously something different). In other words, If you use, say, a war fan in each hand, does the one in your off hand take any additional penalties beyond the usual for those without ambidexterity. 2. I've searched for this looking under "shield" in the forum, but I'm not finding anything. If I understand correctly, one of the things that being stunned does is lose you the benefit of DCV levels (as compared to being suprised in combat, which appears to just halve everything in DCV but still allows you to use them). Since shields are basically DCV levels on a focus, do you lose the benefit of that when stunned, too?

Re: Consolidating Skill and Combat I think that's the issue; you need to assess the cases where a small difference in attribute should actually have a big difference in likelyhood of success against another force, you just really don't want to be using 3d6+mod, unless you're going to use variable mods (and if you don't watch it when doing that, you can have a situation where you make the situation just impossible).

Re: Consolidating Skill and Combat If you look at the original publication date of TFT, it only barely predates Champions; by the time the original authors got ahold of my houserules, it wasn't out yet, so it had no influence on me. Now whether George and/or Steve had played TFT by the time they were approaching getting Champions together, I couldn't say, but I kind of doubt it. There's really no need; other than converting a lot of flat values to dice, most of Hero's core traits are pretty clearly derivable from S44 and the houserules; most of the innovations could easily have been in the actual development rather than with any real second inspiration source. Certainly the 3d6 roll (which was present for melee and mental combat in S44) and the general scale and point build approach were already present in S44, and my houserules expanded on that, so any similarities to TFT are pretty much parallel development.

Re: Consolidating Skill and Combat I think there's some reasons to keep two types of resolution 3d6+mod resolution for things that are somewhat linear (only somewhat because of the 3d6, but I think you understand what I mean) and dice-count-body for things where you want the result to get flatter and flatter as the value increases. I think they serve different kinds of purposes better.

Re: Consolidating Skill and Combat The reason I wish I'd done it as Char/3 is that it would have increased the number of points of meaningful distinction for some characteristics that get a bit of short shrift here like Int. Admittedly, you'd lose the place where Char/5 cuts in, but most of those are on characteristics that have some interim value anyway (Dex for initiative, Strength for lift, damage and Figured Characteristic contribution, Ego for resistance value).

Re: Consolidating Skill and Combat If there's anything I ever curse myself about, its that when I did the house rules for Superhero 2044 that Champions in part is based on, that I based the skill rules on attribute/5 instead of the smaller scale. If I had based it on attribute/3 I suspect you wouldn't even be having to think about this, Chris.

Re: Consolidating Skill and Combat

Re: Consolidating Skill and Combat

Re: Philosophical: Definition Of A Mechanic Sorry for the bit of necro here, but Chris had asked me to give this question a look, and I've been very busy the last few weeks, enough I wasn't looking at this board at all (and I think at this point I'll bail out of the 6e discussion since I've sat out enough of it). My own feeling is that no component of a power mechanic is sacred. Choosing the base effect you're looking for from available options based on what seems closest to it, and mutate the rest at need. Otherwise you're forced into mechanics that don't seem appropriate to you just because of what a power is called. Two classic examples: 1. You want a power that does nothing but knock people away from you. There are two obvious ways to do it: a Limited TK and a limited EB. A purist approach would argue for the TK because TK is about moving things, whereas knockback is a side effect of an EB. But TK is largely all or nothing; if your concept is that the effect that knocks things away is variable in its reliability or has other properties where the blast seems more appropriate, I say go with the Blast. 2. You want a concealment power that affects the target's perception roll, but doesn't make you automatically unseen. Two obvious ways are to Limit either Invisibility or Images. The purist will say Invisibility, because its property is to conceal you; but if you want to be able to manipulate the degree to which you're hard to see, there's no obvious metric with Invisiblity, while Images has one built in, so it might be the better choice. That said, Hero has never been entirely non-conflicted on what is appropriate for base effects anyway; some powers have always carried a lot more baggage than others (partly because there are two kinds of powers in Hero; real base core powers, and a handful of "powers of convenience" that represent effects seen often enough in comics that it was seen as tedious to have to construct them every time (and prone to getting into potentially undesireable inconsistencies)). That's one reason some purists would like the "Four Basic Elements" approach.

Re: Area Effect TK If I saw any reason to not just do it with a regular area and not do this silly power spreading which is done nowhere else in the system, I might agree, but as it is its kludging a fix for a problem I don't see any reason to exist in the first place. As I said, I honestly think this is a psychological issue, not a balance one. Any logical problem with the TK effecting individual objects at full power and not contrinbuting more against multihex objects applies just as much to damage; any balance issues applies just as much to any area NND.

Re: Area Effect TK Honestly, I really don't see it as any more problematic than the example of the large blast area that doesn't do any more damage to the building that the single target version. Both are dodgy, but they're equally dodgy and you see area effect done all the time. And I do understand the agent issue; but that's just as much of a problem with single target versions and a flying hero, and at least the time taken is an issue (given how moving objects works with TK unless that's changed in 5e its based on throwing). Until you get to a certain threshold, its entirely possible for the targets to struggle free before they get to any great height, and by the time you've gotten them there--well, how many times could you have shot them with a regular area? A dozen? Well, you can probably predict my answer from how I see the area thing; of course I'd treat each TK unit in the autofire attack as full power.

Re: Area Effect TK

Re: Area Effect TK The problem is (and this is a general problem in Hero; even though I've used it for years, I don't think a one-cost-fits-all system really works right in a multigenre game), I have to ask the question "In what genre/setting?" I'd give you a much different answer in Champions than in Fantasy Hero, and yet a third answer in a modern low-paranormal game. I tend to consider the damage component of TK pretty trivial in a game where multipowers exist (since in the majority of cases that's what people are going to do to do damage anyway at a distance), so only the ability to manipulate and lift are really relevant; the manipulation ability is essentially a fixed cost benefit at the bottom and is hard to assess. The lift ability is a variable benefit, but I don't think is at all overbalanced in Champions as its currently priced; if anything, in practice, its too expensive. There are some issues in using TK at its current cost in other sorts of genres, but in practice, I don't think the area question impacts those, since for the most part the more problematic uses require more buy in than you're going to see with an area effect in those genres. A single target version of greater strength is much more problematic.

Re: Area Effect TK There's a clear exception to that; any area Body Doing NND; yet there's no special case applied there.