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.

Re: Area Effect TK Sure there is. Mass. If you have a giant area TK but its only 20 STR, you're still not going to pick up anything that requires more than that, just because its area; you'll just be picking up more things that can be picked up with that. That doesn't seem meaningfully different to me than damaging a bunch of things that have low defenses in the same area. Think of it this way: And if the area was filled with a lot of glass bottles you wanted to break, it'd destroy them fine. Again, the situations seem quite parallel (barring Christopher Mullin's evaluation of the benefit of lift, which I disagree with the premise of, and thus the conclusion). And if the area had a large number of low defense and Body objects, the damage would break them all. As to your question, the answer is "20 Strength", same as you'd only apply 1d6; if size of object doesn't change the damage it takes when it fills more than one hex, then there's no reason it should change the lift that gets applied. And I simply disagree because to me the weight _is_ the defense; its what prevents you from lifting it up, and that's the primary function of TK. The same way I do on the damage in the same area which I consider no more or less of a problem; if the logic bothers you with TK, I think it should do just the same with damage (at least on all exposed faces of a multi-hex object). I don't find it a bit more than the fact you'll do the same damage to a house with a single hex area effect than one that effects all its faces at once. And I completely disagree. Its a case of this bothering people in this area where it doesn't bother them anywhere else, but that doesn't make it more consistent; its just a case that one bothers people and the other doesn't.

Re: Area Effect TK Sure. That's my point; any problem that applies to TK applies equally to damage, and if you're not going to allow people to sidestep it with damage, there's no reason to do it with TK; but there's no reason to treat TK more _harshly_ than damage, just because it'll allow you to pick up a large number of one hex objects cheaply, same as area damage allows you to damage a large number of one hex objects cheaply. I think the only reason the issue exists is people have cognitive issues with the distinction with TK that for some reason they don't with damage; the same people who'd never expect an area damage effect to damage a three hex area object three times will somehow get wierd that the area TK doesn't treat all three hexes as seperate lift. Not at all. If you apply 1d6 killing to three objects, you'd done 3d6 killing; it isn't as efficient as 3d6, but neither is lifting 3 100 kg. objects as efficient as lifting 300 kg. As long as you can't lift one 300 kg. object with it _no matter the object's size_ the situations are exactly parallel.

Re: Area Effect TK And again, if you have a lot of tiny objects in an area, you get to damage them with an area damage effect numerous times. I'm still not seeing why one is okay and the other isn't.

Re: Area Effect TK I've never seen the problem the official ruling is designed to address here that isn't just as much a problem with any other area issue; yes, you can have some bizarre artifacts when you have more than a one-hex object (because in practice you're getting no benefit from the extra hexes of lift) but that's just as true with damage; you're only getting one damage increment there even though the damage could hurt each target in the seperate hexes for the same value. The fact that you get to do seven seperate STR 20 TK effects in a 3" area doesn't seem any more prone to abuse or problematic than the fact you get to do seven seperate 1d6+1 killing attacks in those hexes. In other words, its a rules exception that seems to serve no useful purpose that I can see, and makes it harder to produce some effects than seems justified on any balance grounds.

Re: EC's cannot have non-END powers!!!! This only works if you run into a lot of Drains targeted at powers; otherwise its an occasional extra problem (that may not even come up in those cases depending on how the Drain is built) offset by a constant benefit.

Re: Character Effectiveness Though I favor a systemized approach, all of Sean's suggestions above are good; in fact, my Rule of X was based on weighting most all of the same things.

Re: Character Effectiveness

Re: Character Effectiveness Actually, when I set up my version, I assumed a team environment, because its actually _very_ hard to make assumptions about values against any single given specific opponent for the kinds of reasons you state; so I set it up assuming utility against a variety of opponents with at least some support. And I think it passed the simple test of well, working, when I used it extensively throughout a campaign; the few problems with it I ran into were ones I expected (overinflating the value of specialized defenses if used overly literally for example).

I was using the Wight from Monsters, Minions and Marauders this weekend and wasn't sure if its Paralysis of Fear power wasn't missing some information; as listed, it has the Advantage for Takes No Damage and a Limitation for breaking people out with a PRE attack, but wasn't bought AECV or the one for broken with Ego, so as far as I can tell the Wight still had to hit to make it work (which seemed to somewhat defeat the purpose described for it in the text) and would be broken out with Strength (which just seems odd for what it was). Is there some errata on this writeup I've missed?

Re: Character Effectiveness Well, when I'm talking about this I'm primarily talking about combat effectiveness, as that's a big enough element of most games that it tends to be more of an issue. There's also more moving parts there; if you want to know how effective someone is as a security intrusion specialist, looking at one or two powers and certain skills tells most of the story. But then, often he's the only one seriously involved in that area, so that turns into an exercise in how important that operating procedure is in general (i.e. how much spotlight that specialization gives him) rather than specifically how good he is at it (you can run into issues in a more specialized campaign--a spy game, say--but even there unless there's a large group you'll likely not get too much overlap). Combat, on the other hand, takes up a bit too much screen time in most campaigns to be blaise about it, and eyeballing suffers from two problems because of its subjectivity: 1. If there's absolutely any group stress at all, it can make things look like favoritism is going on. I know some people don't care about this but I think some people are also blaise about how not adding to the potential for this is a virtue. 2. It gives the players no metric for good or ill; they don't have any concept of what's too good (or too bad) so they're designing by guess, and then finding out if its okay. It also avoids one of the benign values of a system: it doesn't give people a metric to aim for if they _want_ to be combat effective. When I did it, it served as much on the latter as the former; it not only restrained the excesses of the more power-gamey players, but told others what to do if they were finding they didn't seem to contribute in combat as much as they wanted (and I encouraged it, as it meant I could put together opposition to a fairly common standard without worrying if they ended up against the wrong characters they'd clobber them).