Paragon

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) At which point that part of our exchange was a simple miscommunication. That doesn't mean the middle ground is, however, the design ethic of the system, and in fact, I have no evidence it is. As I said, if mechanical balance isn't an important criteria, then almost any critique of the design system and costs is moot; if it is important, its as legitimate here as anywhere else, as long as you understand the limits of process.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) The difference is entirely in degree, and often in the eye of the beholder. I'd have said the same about you, so I'd say we're even.

Re: Repeated Attempts Probably where I got it from; I've GMed Hero so much over the years its sometimes hard for me to remember where my houserules end and the book rules start (the fact that one of my houserules migrated into FRED doesn't help...)

Re: Repeated Attempts I don't find blind consistency a virtue here, since this sort of thing has far greater implications than most other single attacks; its no better than letting someone keep rolling their Computer skill until they penetrate the system they'll only get into on a 4-.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) Then are we doing anything here but repeating ourselves? Then I'd not use phrases like "their goal was not yours." Actually, yes it was, at least in George's case, as far as I can tell. If you want to state their goal shifted, I'd agree, but that was out of necessity, which is what I've said all along. And here _I_ don't agree. I think in parts it does just that, and in parts it doesn't. As I said, if values aren't going to balance, what's the point of worrying about values of Advantages, Limitations, Drawbacks and even base costs? Those are only relevant in terms of matching cost to value, and I've yet to hear anyone actually present an argument as to that _not_ being their purpose. Its the claim that this is _not_ a primary purpose of those rules that I'm having issue with, and why I've continued with this thread.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) That's the practical effect of it, but at that point none of the individual costs matter if taken to its logical extreme. Nice false dichotomy. I don't need to micromanage player design to not have a video game, and if you do, I'd say you have other problems there.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) Of course there's a middle ground, but the question is, is the middle ground the consequence of desire or necessity? Did George and Steve design it Champions so that referee oversight was a part of character design because they thought that was intrinsically desirable? I don't think so. They did so because the reality was there was no good way to make a rules set entirely self-reinforcing, which they quickly figured out. That doesn't mean they thought those necessities were a virtue. (Note I'm _not_ talking here about the necessity of GMs to intervene to get the rules to do precisely what they want: that _is_ a virtue. But there's no reason why a lot of Champions GMs wouldn't have found the intended result just what they wanted. The rules just weren't going to do it by themselves). And that's my point. That's a flaw in process. In a perfect system, that would, indeed, be the result for the intended purpose of the game. In practice its impossible, but that doesn't make that a virtue. Actually, having known at least one of the two designers fairly well, I think it was indeed their goal. They just concluded quickly (by the time of 2nd Edition) that it was in impossible goal.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) I don't believe that the first statement is correct; it certainly wasn't correct at one time. The rules most certainly were designed to produce a balanced game within the limits of rules design. Otherwise, as I said, the focus on precise point costs would be, well, pointless.

Re: Repeated Attempts

Re: Killing Damage: Adding damage, manuevers and velocity The simple difference, far as I can tell, is that damage added from movement, whether via special manuever or not, are not the same as direct DC added effects; they both cap at twice the killing DCs, but the first adds at full value, the second at half value.

Re: Repeated Attempts The rule of thumb I've had on tasks I didn't see as trivial is "you can't do it again until you can improve your success chance". You'll note the time chart is one way to do that...

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) Then you don't need any rules at all, and any mechanical discussion is fundamentally irrelevant to you. And you're welcome to think what you like.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) It isn't. Being forced to do it because the rules don't provide any limitations on it is. Again, if you can't understand the difference between those two statements, don't know what to tell you.

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

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

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) And any rules set can only aim for the middle. Other things within the system may or may not be balanced in some campaigns, but if you wait for campaign specifics to talk about balance, no rules set can ever try for it at all, and even such things as point costs are essentially, well, pointless. Its just as easy for a GM to make something legal that normally isn't as it is for him to block something that is, and is far less likely to blow up in his face.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) That they need them to be balanced is not. It may not in practice be a flaw in most cases, but there's nothing intrinsically good about a rules set that requires intervention to be used in a balanced way. If people want to keep telling me to the contrary, feel free, but I'm telling you flat out its not going to get anywhere. That's why I say its a virtue that you can do so, but not a virtue that you must. If you feel otherwise that's your business, but frankly, I don't buy it.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) When using these powers, you certainly have to use judgement, and that's not a virtue in and of itself.

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

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) Even without the point break, Multiform (and to be upfront, this was just as true with earlier edition's versions of it) has one questionable balance trait; it allows you to hyper-specialized your character. Usually some amount of a character's points are spent on things that are, fundamentally, not needed at the same time. Multipowers make their living off this fact. Multiform turns the dial up to 11 on this, as it allows you to, essentially, discard any traits of a character that you don't need for one general task. The iconic 4th Edition Multiform character was, in fact, a demonstrator for this: Jaguar had a human form that had all the investigative, knowledge and interpersonal skills he needed, and then his were-jaguar form that was a fighting machine. This can be an excessively attractive idea outside of concept for any player who uses up a sixth of more of his points on skills, characteristics or other traits he doesn't actually need to use in combat. Duplication is a lot more complex, and tends to be less of an issue, if for no other reason but most Duplicates don't vary that much from one another, so most of the most beneficial features of Multiform are moot for them, and even when they do vary, the extra overhead on Duplication isn't helping them that much compared to doing something similar with Multiform.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) And that's fine, but I don't really think that's an aspect of the system so much as an acknowledgement of the limits of game system.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) And that's where I'm in fairly profound and specific disagreement. I think powers that literally let you manufacture points are, on the face of it, out of balance, even if they're needed for certain purposes.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) Not in the least, since I never qualified that statement in the first place; I was simply taking issue with the idea that Active Point limits really limit offensive output by themselves. Only if you consider that a mechanical balance in the first place, rather than essentially saying that the power isn't balanced, and the GM will have to do the work. As I've noted, Hero is conflicted on this sort of thing; it does it sometimes even though its really not consistent with the ethic of the rest of the system, which is that you get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. The fact it may be necessary in some of those cases doesn't make the conflicted nature of that design any less true.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) And mine is that I think Hero is at its heart a bit personality-fragmented on it, and people should be aware that fact is going to lead to differences in expectation here; we are talking about about a system that goes out of its way to have a very detailed and specific incremental point build after all.

Re: 1 for 5 powers (summon, duplicate, mult-form, follower etc) Then I think the most straightforward answer to the original poster would have been "Yeah, they're out of balance. So?" But that's not been the tone of some answers which added up to "Not really."