Paragon

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

7) occassionally do massive STN damage to invulnerable characters that they can't inflict BOD on at all: Highly undesireable in supers genre.

 

I don't get this. It seems to me that Superman getting taken out by cruise missile occasionally--but not severely wounded at all--is perfectly in genre.

The problem is it seems, if anything, the inverse of the genre; people who in the comics ignore conventional weapons but will care about agent blasters and the attacks of others supers often do the inverse.

That was always the big pain of the killing attack; you'd see people take it, not because it was a good way to kill people (which at least would be consistent with its apparent purpose) but because it was a good way to get a gusting massive stun result on otherwise next to impossible to stun targets. When you're taking the Killing Attack to do Stun--well, something's backwards conceptually, and probably in process, too.

Re: Simple questions on AP caps

Well, yes, this is true, and I point it out to my players when they consider buying it that all they really are doing is buying more BODY and STUN essentially, but maybe it's psychology?

 

Well, to be fair, its more Body, Stun, Con and Recovery, since the divided stun effectively comes back faster and is less likely to Stun someone too.

Re: Real point caps?

I honestly think it would be less disruptive than most people are worried about here. The fact is' date=' real points give you the truest sense of the actual power of an ability over time in a game. Sure, that 15% chance when the 30D6 blast works it's spectacular, but the other 85% of the time [i']it does nothing[/i] and as a result is not particularly useful. One of the

 

At least in combat (and remember, itsnot 15%, its 25%) the problem is that likely it does the job as well or better than it having worked a hundred percent of the time would; at least in Champions, a single 30D6 blast is more dangerous to a target than four 10D6 blasts in the vast majority of cases because of a combination of the Defenses involved and the likelyhood at least one recovery will have rolled around in the time frame when four blasts landed (about eight phases worth of attack). That's a quirk specific to damage, but other, similar problems apply to other sorts of abilities with Limitations; if you're getting more total power out of the effect, often the fact that applying the power is more troublesome doesn't really balance them.

The reason Active Point limits work is you don't end up, in parctice, getting more raw power; you get points to divert to something else, but its often, if not usually less useful than more of the same would be.

There's certainly a point that this gets more complicated away from the superhero genre, but I think its still fundamentally true about combat applications even away from that.

Re: Real point caps?

To me, Real Point caps are the least effective, because a character could have a power with high Active Points but with tremendous Limitations and it makes a highly convoluted power.

 

In addition, it can make for a highly disruptive result. The classic example would be a GM who caps a campaign's real point limit on offensive powers at 50. Now someone takes a Blast at 50 real points with Activation 8-. He spends a lot of time watching it fizzle, but the one time in four it actually works, it blows out 30 dice of damage, enough to demolish most opponents outright. That tends to turn combats into incredibly dicey procedures, where its more an issue of when the dice turn up than any decisions on anyone's part. Similar problems can arrise with a lot of Limitations. In others, the cost to benefit swings too high; its often not trivial to make an OAF quite the problem it should be anyway, but its weighted high because it can be a big problem; on the other hand if the OAF user is doing twice the damage anyone else is, even with those problems its probably overwhelmingly attractive.

Re: Simple questions on AP caps

Which is what Damage Reduction and Recovery are for.

I'm not a big fan of indiscriminate use of Damage Reduction on every master villain, and Recovery doesn't actually help necessarily, since you can have a villain taken out before his post-12 rolls around, and taking a recovery mid-fight when you're outnumbered is usually a non-starter.

Re: Simple questions on AP caps

Thanks for the reminder... I wasn't looking at making things quite that turtley though

It can be a fine line though, especially if you have a group of heroes up against a single villain without backup. Over the course of a full turn, it isn't at all uncommon for a group of four heroes to be able to launch 20-24 attacks off, and depending on the CVs involved and so forth, a few stun here and there can sometimes add up pretty quickly.

Re: An observation on two systems

I'm currently investigating the Mutants & Masterminds system. Not so long ago I would have sworn I'd never play a D20 superhero game. But a friend bought the rulebook and I had a chance to look over it. M&M lacks the two things that I hate most about D20--no levels and no classes.

 

I've concluded that it might be a worthwhile system for playing supers after all. Simpler than HERO, but with enough "crunchy" bits to keep the rules lawyer in me happy. Plus, it allows you to build a lot of characters fairly easily that would be difficult to impossible in HERO (at least, without insane levels of points and a very tolerant GM).

 

If you're feeling overwhelmed by HERO, M&M might be worth a look.

M&M has its own issues, but its actually become the superhero game of choice locally for a lot of people, including a lot of long time Hero players.

Re: Simple questions on AP caps

I think I'm going to start by:

1. Making "mook" fights really easy (the players are all new to HERO and I want them to appriciate how extraordinary their abilities are)

 

Well, that's easy to do; if you don't pump up defenses and Stun totals and the like, almost any reasonable super tends to flatten normals pretty reliably in Hero. In most cases that's true even of agents. Classically, they've been heavy enough offense to offer concern, but go down easy.

 

2. Making BBEG fights long in duration (Defenses are close to expected damage) so the players can learn the real value of tactics, cordinating attacks, teamwork, END conservation, etc.

 

Just be aware that because of the way Recovery works, this can make for _very_ drawn out fights; if an opponent has 32 PD and ED and his attackers are using 10 dice, he's only accumulating 3 stun per successful attack, for example, and he likely bleeds off somewhere in the 6-10 range at the end of every round.

Re: Simple questions on AP caps

An issue to consider with defenses is how you want typical fights to play out. Killing attacks tend to confuse this because the standard rule gives them so bloody much variance, but the closer the defenses are to the expected damage with normal dice, the longer the fights will go, and the less often you'll see stun results; at the other end, if you have too much damage relative to defense, you get too much opportunity for whoever gets the first shot off to be too decisive.

Re: An observation on two systems

Hero was originally designed in a far more gamist/simulationist way than any more modern superhero game, back in the day when that was kind of the ethic that was growing for all new games. That means it has a lot of tools for making distinction in places you want to make distinction (the whole martial arts system for example).

What it isn't, is quick and smooth flowing. Even though it was reasonably crunchy by modern standard, TORG and its descendants Masterbook and Shatterzone were attempts to turn a game-play experience to dramatist ends, and while it didn't work for everyone (the card play could positively interfere with people who wanted to primarily get into their characters heads because it was both elaborate and pretty much disconnected from any in-character process) it did a pretty fair job of producing the flow of certain sorts of stories.

So in practice, the systems are trying to do pretty different things.

Re: package deal question

If that's what the problem is, I fail to see how NCM helps. If they're all determined to have STR 23, they'll all spend the extra points for it, I would think. You're telling me that in your experience, without NCM the players would all choose, say, 23 to 25 STR, but with NCM most of them don't but one or two do? Do the rest cluster around STR 20 then?

 

"All" and "most" weren't in my statement, but on a more limited case you're response is exactly correct. People will tend to not go above human unless they feel like they have an overriding reason to do so with NCM. Strength might be a bad example as its often too attractive in heroic scale games, but I've certainly seen the effect with Dexterity. So yes, in my experience it does what its supposed to; makes trans-normal-human-range attributes rarer in the PC population than it otherwise would be.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc)

And I disagree, pretty much with everything mentioned there. That Energy Blast should cost 5 points per 1d6 isn't a campaign dependent issue. That you shouldn't have more than 60AP in Energy Blast is.

 

In a campaign where doing damage isn't important? Why? Cost is nothing if not assessing value relative to available resources.

 

 

And I think they were ones that make for a better balanced and more enjoyable game. So no, I don't think we're going to resolve it.

Then I think we're done.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc)

Yup, I'd say so, and I doubt we'll resolve it. Putting an arbitrary "you can't Summon things larger than this" rule in place puts rules for enforcing a specific power level/play style in place by default. The rules of a generic system shouldn't be doing that. That's the Ref's job. Pointing

 

They already do that the moment they put a point cost on things; that's just as much a campaign dependent issue, and just as much something I think should have a default state.

 

out that a point cap or other such limits might be necessary is potentially a good idea. But putting an official one in place isn't, at least in my opinion.

 

And there we are.

 

I agree it isn't an excuse. It is a way to let Refs and potential Refs know that the power is one of those that can be easily abused. I think the basic design decisions were made, just that they weren't the ones you would prefer.

And I think they were ones fundamentally less safe on balance grounds. Again, don't see any way we can resolve that. Do you?

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc)

While I appreciate the history lesson, I've been with the system since 1st edition, so I've been around for all the changes.

 

Just wanted it to be mentioned for any readers who weren't aware that active point limits and their kin weren't in the original design.

 

I'm well aware that synergistic interactions are where the majority of the balance issues come from. I just think that the Ref is better equiped to handle most synergistic problems than the game designer is.

 

I don't really agree, but I'll agree its one of the stickier areas to fix systematically (since I did it once, and it was a pain in the ass).

 

As far as AP limits, they apply to whatever the Ref wants them to apply to. In fact, they can set them up so that different Powers have different limits if they want. If you don't want players to be able to Summon something built on more points than they are, don't let them. I just think those kind of limitations are best put in place by the Ref, not the system. It might be

 

And that's where we fundamentally disagree. I think the system should default to them being present, but allow the GM to override them if he judges appropriate. I can't see how we're going to resolve that.

 

I mean Summon already has a Stopsign on it. Any time the power is included in a character, that character should get extra scrutiny.

I just think that Stopsigning is necessary, but not sufficient; its not an excuse not to make some basic balance design decisions in how the power is set up and presented.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc)

So do you think that AP limits don't apply to Summon? Or that even with AP limits in place that it is still overpowered?

Well, that requires a digression, so bear with me.

Power in games tends to turn on two things, which I'll call (from lack of a better set of terms) breadth and depth.

Early on (specifically as of at least 2nd Edition) Hero figured out the hard way from field experience that it was doing a halfway decent job of addressing bredth (though the Limitation system could sometimes confuse this, as did the presence or lack of frameworks), but did nothing about depth. That's pretty much why things like active point limits, defense caps and skill roll limits appeared in the system; because it had shown that just points didn't tell the story, as often narrower, but heavily focused characters were way too problematic to deal with (and as far as I can tell, neither the designers nor most of their market thought entirely ad-hoc decisions as where these should be capped on a character to character basis were good ideas).

That said, though, the inverse was also true; one of the limits of AP caps and the like is that it doesn't address synergies. If you have two otherwise identical characters, one of which has a wide sensory Invisibility and the other doesn't, then that latter character is, usually, far more powerful than the former. Its possible to put together a regulatory framework to deal with the latter, but its a lot of work, and always provides disagreement space, as the exact value of those synergies is not easily reduced to simple mathmatical analysis, as some of the benefits are situational.

So for most people the usual limiting factor is the points involved; unless the setup has a huge amount of slack, its hard to cover all the basic ground well and still pull too many synergies out (as most of the dramatic ones aren't cheap).

The problem with both Multiform and Summoning (in slightly different way) is they pretty much end run this control. In Summoning, the lack of a point cap means that its entirely possible (and not necessarily even deliberate) to sidestep the limitations points normally put on your synergies simply because you can pull a controllable NPC out a larger point than any character in the campaign.

In Multiform its less an issue of overall points than the fact you can, essentially, convert any character traits you don't need for specific purposes into ones you do, again, allowing you to afford breadth-related functions you otherwise couldn't.

So, honestly, even if AP limits do apply to Summon (and I don't think its entirely clear they do, but I suspect most sane GMs would treat them as they do), it doesn't entirely address the problem, because of the ability to build a summoned entity that is higher point than any PC would allowed to be.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc)

Then I doubt that we will come to any sort of consensus. You think my discussion is pointless' date=' and I think yours is. [/quote']

 

Possibly so. But we've at least presented our own positions on it, which is often all you can do in a discussion anyway; different premises will produce different conclusions, and sometimes premises are next to impossible to debate on, because they're based on perception and experience.

Re: package deal question

I'm sorry you have such problematic players. In my experience, most people understand why it's possible for an Ogre to have STR 25 but not a Pixie.

 

But they don't necessarily understand why one human can, but you don't want all of them doing so, or even most.

 

So, do you also allow people to break other campaign limits by doubling the points?

 

Since attributes are the only areas where there's an absolute limit in the first place, its moot. Most other areas, I don't claim that a limit is based on species traits, either; its simply naked campaign support. As such, I don't consider the two cases parallel except in the vaguest possible way.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc)

His point seems to be that unless the system is attempting to be balanced without GM involvement, discussion of non GM involved balance is pointless.

 

If that's not his point, I've missed it completely.

 

Also I completely disagree, for reasons presented earlier.

You've missed it completely. My point is that as soon as GM involvement is assumed to solve balance problems, you can't talk about balance, because GM involvement can _always_ solve things that way.

However, it often doesn't, and if the GM has to be involved to make something balanced in the routine cases, what's the point in the cost purchase rules? Just have people write down what they want and move on; after all, the GM is going to have to decide its okay anyway.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc)

I am confused as to what you are arguing about Paragon. As a GM' date=' would you allow someone to have a 250 AP Energy Blast in a 250 pt. campaign? If yes, than clearly you are not worried about balance anyway. If no, then why would you allow unrestricted buying on other powers?[/quote']

 

But I don't need to prevent that, because there's already a mechanical balance for that. Its called AP limits. The fact its not directly in the blast rules doesn't make it less of a mechanical limit.

 

Now I know that people are going to say "but AP limits are decided by the GM". And the answer to that is "yes and no". They are part of campaign setup, but so are point limits, and I don't think people would argue that's less of a mechanical limit. There's still default suggestions as to what to use. A similar thing could have just as easily been done here. Yes, for some campaigns someone would want something else, but I fail to see how that's somehow harder than leaving it open and deciding when its _not_ open.

 

In matters of balance its my firm opinion its always better to have limits and then selectively permit exceptions than the inverse; the former can frustrate some designs if the GM is conservative, but the latter is an easy campaign wrecker if the GM doesn't consider the implications of a construct closely.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc)

True, but that hasn't seemed to be what you were arguing. The arguments I've seen have basically seemed to me to be "it is possible to buy a broken power with this, therefore it is flawed". I don't agree that that is true. To have a discussion about whether or not that point was met there would have to be recommendations as to what would get the current system to that point, assuming it isn't already there.

I made one. You simply don't agree with it. There's not much I can do about that. Other than that, I think you're conflating my position with others in the thread.

 

 

And I disagree that putting an arbitrary cap on Summon would fix anything. It would make some legitimate builds more difficult without doing much to cut down on illegitimate ones.

 

I think it did a reasonable job of reducing dubious builds in 4th for just that reason, so I'm afraid I can't agree with you here, and I don't find the builds that need to exceed that cap all that legitimate and common.

 

And I know this will shock you, but I disagree. Leaving out a key aspect of balance like Ref input makes any discussion about the balance of a power pointless. And though our arguments may appear to boil down to that, that

 

And I think bringing it in essentially makes the discussion pointless, as its the all purpose get out jail card, as its been used that way in every balance discussion I've ever seen. (This does not mean I think you've personally used it that way, but I think others in this thread have).

 

isn't the case. It isn't "we like it so there's no problem". If anything it is "we find that it encourages both balanced characters and Ref/Player involvement. Without some example as to what is broken and suggestions as to what should be changed, I don't see any reason to change anything.". And in and of themselves examples of broken power constructs aren't conclusive evidence that a Power is broken and needs to be rewritten. You can build a broken power construct with any Power.

In the case where all you need to do to make a power broken is to dial it up, I don't think it takes much demonstration. Most powers are not broken just by buying a lot of them, per se (and to the degree they are, the game already has a mechanism to limit that in Active Point limits or defense caps that don't require any _necessary_ GM examination).

Re: package deal question

Which would make sense, if the alternative was "nothing."

 

It probably seemed so on design.

 

 

So it doesn't have to be absolute. Like all other campaign limits, it can be a "soft cap" rather than a "hard cap."

This assumes you consider soft caps, which are fundamentally arbitrary, a good thing. Sometimes they're necessary in some areas, but as far as I'm concerned, the less I have to debate with players about why player X gets to do something they don't, the better; attributes are universal enough its the last place I want to see it.

 

 

Only because it's always had the NCM. Eliminate that, and what balance problem do you have?

 

You don't. But you have a different kind of problem I don't see as any better, as I note above.

Re: package deal question

I've said it before and I'll say it again; if NCM is a good idea, why isn't it used anywhere else in the system?

 

I think it lands in the "better than nothing" area; an absolute limit might not always serve most campaigns here, so there's a comprimise. Personally, I use a bit of both; in heroic scale games I have the the doubling point, and then an absolute cap about one and a half times that (so in a typical heroic scale game I run you can't have a human with more than a 30 Dex or a 6 Speed tops, for example).

Now this does run into the issue that you need to set different racial maximums, which can create some balance questions, but that's wrapped in a problem Hero's always had in that area.

Re: Repeated Attempts

I can't win, can I? Follow the rules they complain, make it up they complain

 

I'm just noting that a simple following of the rules here isn't necessarily benign.

 

I do take the point, but th epoint I was making is that 'hitting' is only the first step in the process, like finding the file you want is the first step in the 'hacking' process: you still have to read it.

 

there should be a lot more skills involved with telepathy but I'd allow, absent a re-write, for instance, Acting (the skill) to be used to give misleading information to someone reading your mind as I would to someone talking to you. I'd probably also rule that if you failed enough times you started taking

 

That probably is reasonable with surface thoughts, but it really doesn't make much sense with hidden thoughts, and certainly not once you've gotten down to memories.

Re: Repeated Attempts

If you keep missing with the punch' date=' you will get knocked out. If you keep trying to crack a system, you will get caught.[/quote']

 

Except you sometimes just don't care about getting caught; you abandon that computer and try somewhere else. You still shouldn't have a situation where simply forcing a couple hundred checks will always do the job in things, here or elsewhere where a single result is important.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc)

Mechanical balance can be an important criteria without it being the ONLY important criteria. As you said, perfect mechanical balace is impossible. At some point further attempts to reach the impossible make things worse, not better.

 

I don't disagree at all. However, that means its legitimate to argue whether the point was reached here.

 

I have on pretty good authority that the design ethic of at least the current version of the rules is "have fun". Towards that goal the current version of the rules do a very good job of balancing the input of both the system and the Ref in balance, as do in my opinion all the previous versions. I would be shocked if it was done by accident.

Well, its to be noted that any rules system that goes on long enough to some extent "just grows". I have no evidence that Hero is any different here (and in places I can trace things that did just that; the distinction between the combat system and the skill system is largely an artifact of what the original design of the system was based on for example). And as I said, from what I know of the earlier design, at that point there was no attempt to factor the input of the ref directly into character design, except in the areas of things like disad and limitation frequency (if anything, this wasn't done as much as it should have been in some areas).

That said, as I noted early on but got lost a bit in the back and forth on whether this was always a virtue, Steve Long clearly does have a slightly different design ethic here; there are powers (like Summon) that are set up because he did not want to exclude some usage that was dubious at the price of excluding some that wasn't but would have been precluded by rules to prevent the former.

On the whole, this is a net break even I think; it means the advice does not discourage actually customizing the system to your own needs, even if it requires changing core rules (something prior editions were quite reluctant about). But I think it also errs on the side of making it open to the point that it requires more GM input in more places that it did before, likely to the defiicit of more users than it needed to. For example, Summon could have easily have a top listed cap, with a note that the GM should consider allowing it to be exceeded in some cases. That wouldn't have perfectly balanced it, but it would have eliminated the simplest way to abuse it for most people without really harming its utility for those who had legitimate uses for it at all.

So I think its quite legiitimate to argue whether these constructs are broken, and I think that, honestly, arguing about GM involvement in the rules is begging the question. I _do_ think its legitimate to argue that some sorts of rules constructs are intrinsically dodgy and hard to balance directly mechanically without crippling them, but that doesn't say that the current constructs couldn't be done better, and just fending off that argument here is essentially saying "we like it so there's no problem" and once you start that, there's no possible grounds to argue about mechanical balance at all, and I'm not prone to accepting that tenet without a fight.