Paragon

Re: Lower Water and Part Water

Force Wall is a possibility for 'part water'. I dunno; this is one that I've muddled with for a while. I've done FW for part water and the like' date=' but I [i']did[/i] use Change Environment for other 'lower water' sort of things.

I looked at Force Wall, but it wouldn't really work since someone could still penetrate the water if they wanted to (I suppose I could have Limited it, but at that point it really starts to look like I'm using the wrong tool for the job when its got almost none of the properties of the original power).

Re: Lower Water and Part Water

You can use telekinesis or change environment' date=' TK is expensive because it takes 30 STR to move a hex of water, Change Environment is a bit of a hand wave but if you GM will let you, you might be able to use it: the environment being changed is the water level, the amount changed is the area of effect. By all means check [i']The Fantasy Grimoire[/i] out, it's a great resource. I built both spells for my Water spells in my Codex, but they were spendy.

I did the telekinesis approach, and assumed you didn't need much Strength because I'm buying it area anyway (I know this is always a muddy topic when applying area to TK; you clearly don't need the full strength any more than you need enough damage with an EB to harm every part of the area, but exactly how much is questionable, and I was probably overly generous in my assumption; I probably should have used a man-size mass of water as the Strength value (not a full hex though, or there's no difference between a 1-hex TK and a targeted one in its effect, and that doesn't seem right).

I was trying to avoid the handwave aspect with CE, because it looked like it'd set a precedent I didn't want to do.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Well' date=' you're certainly welcome to your opinions. I think you're wrong. And as I've said in the past, I think it is pretty insulting of you to assume that the reason that not everyone agrees with you is just that only you and the people you game with have ever actually put any thought into the topic. I think it is much more likely that people don't agree with you because they think you are wrong.[/quote']

 

I don't think none of them have put thought into it. I think that even among those who have, its such a given in their minds that they can't get around that. Since that's the way people respond to a lot of "accepted wisdom" I don't see it as particularly insulting to assume it here. If others do, well, not much I can do about that, but its hardly a major slam to suggest that most people don't think outside the expected; that's just an acknowledgment of human nature. I'm sure there are areas of my life its just as true about me.

 

And just for the record, its not just me and people I game with; its just not common thought on the subject.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

I just checked my own 1981 edition and there it is on page 49. Whatever has evolved since is certainly a matter for debate but it seems clear at that time in the upper left hand column " The standard rule is that each die of damage or 5 points of STR is twice as powerful as the die before it. This geometric scale should be considered when attempting to add STR and damage together."

As you say, you can certainly argue that the concept has drifted since then (though I'll note that any system that has a rifle doing only half again the damage of a medium pistol is clearly using non-linear damage progression) but I'm really surprised there's any debate about this being the original premise; it wasn't exactly a big secret during the early period of the system, and there's enough oldtimers on here I'd have thought that'd be pretty well known.

Re: Lower Water and Part Water

Change Environment FTW!

Its not clear what you'd base the cost on, even if usable; it doesn't provide any of the standard modifications, as such.

In my ongoing conversion of the RuneQuest color magic spells I have (some of which are derived from old D&D spells) I'm going through Grey (water) Magic, and I've hit a couple more troublesome cases. I came up with solutions for both, but I don't really like either of them, and one was particularly dodgy.

The two effects are:

1. Lower Water: This essentially lowers the water level in a body of water over a reasonably large area (about 160m radius) for a while. I did something with Transform, but I'm not in love with how it came out.

2. Part Water: This simply slides the water to the side (the Red Sea effect) for a while, leaving a 2-4 meter wide, 160 meter long and up to 160 meter deep trench. I did something with Limited Telekinesis in area with the Affects Porous adder, and its a bit better than the above, but I'm still not entirely thrilled with it.

Thoughs and suggestions?

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Intent?

 

Nice authoritative statement, but no proof.

 

I believe Warp9 gave a quote from the 1e rulesbook on the subject upthread. Past that, just what proof would you like?

 

Prove it.

 

And before you do - go do some searching on past threads on this topic.

 

Some were debates of the first magnitude.

 

And yet, no definitive proof has ever been proferred.

 

Its a nice theory, but not one that holds water.

Since short of getting George McDonald to post in this thread, it doesn't sound like you'd find anything proof, you'll excuse me if I find I don't care much about your disbelief.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Majorly disagree here. I simply put would never run a campaign with the constraints you're wanting. It seems you've had some bad experiences and want to guard against them. I , on the other hand, have playing in and ( so have been told ) made some pretty inspired campaigns that couldn't exist with out the GM having the major say and authority. Sounds like really shallow confrontational roleplaying to me.

 

I've never run into the problem personally in my life, as I'm very fussy with whom I play. On the other hand, I've seen enough of GMs complaining about what struck me as perfectly legitimate attempts by players to get a little more control of their gaming experience that I have no reason to believe this is a meme that's serving people well on the whole. Its just what they're used to.

Maybe if you're just dungeon delvers but in our games the PCs evolve, have relationships, develop holdings, have deep friendships some marry have kids etc. They expect the world to be ready for any of these sorts of activities. It alot of work and you want the GM to do the setup work but not be allowed to have the major authority? No thanks!

And that's the common view, but as I said, not one I share, and not one I think most people would have if this hobby hadn't started with a basically top-down paradigm.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

To make sure I remembered correctly I quoted the specific post above. You'll note it doesn't say "I strongly suspect that that is due to most people having expectation that have developed in the hobby as it is". You specifically used "you" in a post that was a response to one of mine, with no language indicating that it was meant in a general fashion, and context

 

I was, however, using the generic "you" in that sentence. Again, I apologize if it appeared more specific and personal than it was intended.

 

indicating that it was meant in a specific fashion. If your intent was not to claim that I personally did not have a well thought out opinion on the subject, you certainly worded it poorly. What I see is you making a specific statement about a specific poster, and then later claiming that you would never do that when confronted about it.

 

I certainly endevor not to without far more information than I have at hand. At most you could say (and I think if that sort of thing bothers you you have some justice in your view) that since I think most such people haven't really thought it through thoroughly, or have been so influenced that it colors their view excessively, and you're in the included class, that this means I think most likely that's the case. But I still see a difference between that and bringing it to personalities. If you don't, well, that's as it is.

 

But somehow it is other people that are being rude to you...

I don't recall my carefully posting a general post to the thread using someone by name and disparaging them. Do I need to quote the post where someone else did? You'll note that's the only one I've objected to here, as it was a baldfaced slam at me that did not seem to even have anything to do with the actual discussion at hand. If someone wants to attack my opinion, and even ascribe possible causes to it, that seems a different beast than going out of their way to attack me. Again, if the distinction isn't meaningful to you, it isn't.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Hero damage is heavily abstracted, and its not exponential. There are parts of

 

As Warp9 quotes, it certainly was in intent, and the weapons and DEF values were derived with that assumption. As you correctly note, real damage, especially to living things, is far too complicated for that to tell the whole story or even most of it, but that doesn't change that intent and how it works in regard to inanimate objects (where energy applied gets much closer to the only meaningful metric, though even there structural issues of the target are a factor).

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Much clearer thank you and not nearly as extreme as I thought. Player input to setting creation and into their characters place in the world is a very good thing. I still think to make a truly exception campaign the GM needs a vision and not that is his not a committee thing but it seems you're saying far less than that. It also helps when you have a group pretty much on the same wavelength. Both the GM and the players need to be happy with the setting.

 

Well, they aren't always on the same wavelength; that's rather the point. What everyone wants out of the game varies somewhat. What I don't see is why the guy sitting with the GM screen should be the total authority on how that's resolved, or even necessarily the major authority. In the end he doesn't have to run anything he doesn't want to, but that doesn't tell me he needs nearly the degree of power the hobby assumes to get an acceptable result, and I think in the end that assumption does a fair bit of harm.

 

I personally thinks the GM deserves kudos and respect for all the work he does the players don't.

Respect and power aren't the same thing (and honestly, I've seen campaigns where I'm not sure I'd say the GM was even doing that much more work than the players; certainly not more than the extra enjoyment he's getting).

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Then how can you flatly state that each DC is double the damage when you can't even agree on clear definition of damage? It doesn't matter what the original basis was; that's even less useful than claiming 1930's Superman comic strips are the "basis" for Champions. It's a starting point; no more.

As I said, if we didn't have a set of built in benchmarks in terms of weapon damage values and DEF values, it'd be less of an issue, but we do; as long as that's the case that progressive damage is built into the functional game and to ignore them in the context of this sort of discussion is simply nonsensical.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Damage, even in real life, is an abstract little system that's impossible to pigeonhole.

 

Even if the original designers had one intent in mind it's obvious that it is a malleable intent that can be molded to what you need in a game anyways.

Yes, but to not acknowledge that intent ignores the real problems that decision caused, especially in the context of the benchmarkes that were used to derive things like weapons damage.

There were reasons to do it; a non-progressive damage system is almost certainly a non-starter for a superhero game, which is, after all, Hero System's root design. But there's a price for it, too, and it creates a lot of ripple effects too, and often those don't serve the system when its being used for something less stylized.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

And that makes my point quite nicely' date=' thank you. If it's not about the size of the hole or how tough the material hit is, what is it? Define "damage" in a way that doesn't use hole sizes, thickness and/or toughness of the material damaged, or how far the pieces are splattered.[/quote']

 

When it comes to targets without reference to structure, life, or other features, the energy dumped into the system that it is not capable of absorbing or repelling is about the only generic descriptor of "damage" you can do. Otherwise you either say that a needle through the heart does less "damage" than blowing off a hand, or that a ten ton stone that has been riddled with cracks is less "damaged" than if it had a tiny hole bored through it.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

That argument fails to hold up unless you make the a priori assumption that energy = damage; which it clearly does not even in real life.

 

As I said, its as close to the metric as you're going to get; it fails less than any other single metric.

 

The only correct answer to the question "How much more damage is 4 Damage Classes compared to 3 DCs?" is "One more Damage Class." In Hero Damage Class is the only relevant scale for damage; and it has little if any relationship to real world scales. You're correct that small arms (pistols and rifles) were obviously the basis for weapon damage, but that's only because the original designers needed some basis to start from and firearms were an obvious and easily obtained starting point.

 

Actually, the original designers _did_ use the 2x Energy=+1 DC assumption, if you're going to bring that up, because they said so on several occasions.

 

Consider that an M1A2 Abrams main gun has 22 megajoules of muzzle energy, or approximately 6875 times more energy than a .308 Winchester rifle's 3600 joules. Is the hole left by an Abrams 6800 times larger? Would it penetrate

 

The size of the hole per se, is not an indication of the damage it does.

 

through 3800 men if they were all lined up in a row? Consider also that each Damage class does an average of 1 BODY to a target. If each DC is twice as much damage, that makes a character with 15 BODY 32X harder to kill than one with 10 BODY; and that's not including the BODY below zero required to

 

That's just making my point, actually.

 

cause death (If that's included, the numbers become outright ridiculous). Damage Classes might well scale with energy, but energy in and of itself is not the sole determinant for damage done to the target.

No, but it was the original basis for the rough assumptions, and since those numbers haven't changed, whether Steve considers that the primary basis, its still all over the system, since those benchmarks haven't changed appreciably with 5th Editions.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

There is no basis for assuming that each additional DC is twice as powerful as the previous DC. The only place in the system which illustrates strictly geometric progression is Lifting strength.

 

The damage system has been based on that form day one, and while not explict, is pretty obvious all over the weapons damage tables; otherwise the relationship between handguns and rifles make no sense.

 

Even if the damage system is *theoretically* based on energy, twice as much energy does not automatically equate to twice as much damage to the target.

Its as close to a single metric as you're going to get, and if the metric fails, its on the opposite side; two half energy attacks are _less_ likely to do damage to something in reality (all other things being equal) than one of twice the energy (this doesn't mean that twice the energy does twice the damage in all cases, but threshold issues are even more pronounced in reality in some ways than they are in the game).

In either case, treating two half energy attacks as doing _more_ damage (barring hit locational effects) is almost always senseless; the cases where it makes sense only occur in special circumstances.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

How do you feel that the mechanics are currently flawed?

 

Well, on its simplest grounds, damage to creatures/objects/barriers and so on is always a pretty high order abstraction, because in reality it turns on a lot of things involving what "damage" means, and the structure and material of the objects. Damaging a living thing is not the same as damaging a machine is not the same thing as damaging a non-functional object, and what translates into damage turns on issues such as the hardness, sharpness, power behind and other issues on the offensive end, and the hardness, brittleness, structural consistency and other issue of the target.

In the end, that means that the damage system for the most part tries to deal with the biggest, coarsest parts of the process, and hope that some of the rest of it gets paved over in the randomness inherent in damage dice. If the system is properly designed, this will work with most of the common cases, as it does in Hero. But there are _always_ going to be corner cases, and I don't think in practice that a human-administered system can eliminate all the corner cases (except my making the process so abstract as to make resolution almost meaningless or so general to be really unsatisfying for many people).

Hero has to deal with another issue, which is that geometric progressive damage really never works right with an accumulated damage model. It just can't, because its mixing an additive with a progressive function; a 3 DC attack twice does more damage than a 4 DC attack (defense threshold issues confuse this, but don't really eliminate the problem) even though the 4 DC attack is theoretically twice as powerful.

The first part of this problem, as I say, can't be handled at all, and fixing the latter would require a radical reworking of the system to deal with it (and isn't unique to Hero; the problem was even more start with the old DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes system).

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

I really don't get what you're saying here. That the world should be controlled and created by committee isn't what you're trying to say. I don't think. Could you clarify for me. What aspects beyond their character's influence should the players control?

 

How those characters interact with the world is at least as much an issue for them as the characters themselves, and that's exactly the sort of thing that is classically GM-only in terms of his dominance over rules issues.

Obviously this isn't tidy; rules say something about the world general too, so there's cases that are going to be problematic. But to act like this is an issue where only the GM has a stake, and somehow his is intrinsically greater, doesn't describe the situation to me at all, and that that's assumed is an artifact of the way GMs were treated early on in the hobby.

I have to agree I have no interest in running a game I don't run and if I ever get to play I'd want to interact with the world as my character, nothing more

 

I am I misunderstanding you somewhere?

Only in degree, I suspect. Let me give you a couple of examples.

In the upcoming FH campaign I'm running, when I was deciding on the campaign, I went though a rather complicated selection process based heavily on player input. In the end, I didn't end up with the campaign I'd have most liked to run, because it wasn't the campaign they'd most like to play. That doesn't mean its one I won't find interesting to run (things that flat out weren't interesting to me, because I didn't put things I just wasn't flat out willing to run up on the table. But in the end, the players had at least as much input as I did on it. This included pretty extensive discussions of tone, character power, and so on.

Now, I'm not going to say most groups need to go into the detail and complexity of the selection process I used; that's an artifact of specific traits of my gaming group (though I think there are a lot of potentially conflicted assumptions that go on in a lot of gaming groups that would be better served by more discussion, but that's not a direct issue of GM power but communication; the issues are somewhat orthogonal to each other).

Another example is that I did an initial set of houserules for the campaign. I also told people that once they looked them over, if four of the six of them didn't like a rule and told me to change it, I'd change it. They understand what the campaign is about and its intended tone. They understand what I like as much or more than the inverse. They understand that a game I don't like likely won't go well or last long. So if something really is enough of an issue that 2/3rds the group wants it changed enough to vote for it, why should I be the immovable post in the process just because I run the game?

Is where I'm coming from here any clearer?

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

And it should do so on both sides. You see the people disagreeing with you as being uncivil. And at least some of them see you as being uncivil.

 

I don't see most of you as being uncivil at all. I reacted to one specific post that was directly dismissive of me in specific rather than of one of my attitudes. If that distinction doesn't seem important to you, it doesn't, but its the classic definition of the difference between taking things to personalities to me.

For instance, you continue to refer to people "ignoring the rules". As I've stated, I never ignore the rules. I don't always slavishly follow them, but I never ignore them. They are always taken into account when I make a decision.

If the terminology annoys you, I genuinely apologize for that. Most of the time I attempt to avoid semantically loaded terms when I see another one that describes what's going on accurately, but what would that be here? "Bypassing the rules?" "Disregarding the rules?" Would either of those suit you better?

 

Another example would be your insistance that if I would only think things through that I would agree with you about how much control a Ref should have over their campaign.

I haven't insisted that. I'm willing to bet some people who make this argument haven't, and I strongly suspect that's the majority of people, but I'd never think to say so about any individual poster who makes such a statement, because the simple fact is that I don't know anyone here well enough to know.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

And you would be wrong. I am perfectly capable of thinking things out for myself' date=' and have in fact already done so. And intended or not, telling someone that they either aren't capable of having an honest opinion, or that they didn't bother coming up with one is insulting. And serves as further conformation of my previously stated opinion that I doubt I would enjoy gaming with you.[/quote']

 

I don't know that I ever argued with the latter, but that's as it is. I'm not going to stop thinking a certain percentage of this hobby does things out of habit rather than thought. That statement doesn't mean I apply it to any given poster, and if people want to assume it does, there's not a lot I see I can do about that.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

So waht is a good time to ignore the rules then.

 

On the fly, not many. Usually that two sets of subrules don't seem to be working together in the manner not intended.

_Changing_ rules is a different story. A permanent change in rules can be done for all kinds of reasons serving different purposes, and as long as everyone knows its been done and is at least moderately onboard, that's fine. Ignoring a rule is one-off event though, and the justifications for doing it are very limited as far as I'm concerned.

 

To me anything that maximises the fun is good reason to ignore the rules. Anything that takes away from that fun can be safely ignored.

 

If I actually thought most cases of ignoring rules really did that for the majority of participants, I'd probably agree that's a good principal.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

While there is certainly some demonization on both sides' date=' I think for the most part it is just a matter of people stating what they consider to be important. From what I've seen of your "playstyle" in this and other threads, I doubt that I would enjoy gaming with you. And I doubt that you would enjoy playing with me. I don't think that makes you a bad person. Just not someone I want to game with.[/quote']

 

And in and of itself, that's fine. But I'll simply note that its _very_ common, even on this board, to badmouth people who are concerned about rules. I don't really think I'm overstating to say this is far more common than its opposite.

 

As I said, I also think its tied up in what is, to me, an overly protective view of GM prerogative.

 

Edit: "Concerned about rules" isn't probably a fair way for me to put that; there are people in this thread on the other side who are still are concerned about rules. More accurately "Convinced that rules should only be ignored in very limited situations." As an example, there have been people in this thread who indicated that a good reason for ignoring a rule was because it interfered with the story. If you present that that's not, per se, a good reason to ignore the rule, the response tends to be pretty aggressive (even if you qualify that you're mostly just talking about ad-hoc rules adjustment to make a story work rather than something more systematic to make the game the kind of game you like).

 

Given that, I don't think a little push-back occasionally is uncalled for. It just ought to stay civil.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Understood. But as I said, reverence has nothing to do with it.

 

I have no interest in running a game that I don't run. And I don't have any interest in playing a game that the Ref doesn't run. As a Ref, I run the entire world outside of the Player's characters, and am responsible for it. As a Player I only run my character, and that is the limit of my responsibility.

 

And this is coming from someone who, particularly recently, plays much more than he Refs.

 

But I've pretty much stated my opinions here on another thread.

To be dead honest, I'd argue that part of that is probably a simple case of your expectations from having developed in the hobby as it is. I don't mean offense, but I think a lot of this is expectations and inertia rather than what people really want.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

 

 

And I think there is a clear attempt from some people to project the later as superior. Personally I never ignore the rules. I frequently modify them, and occasionally do things contrary to them. But I always keep the base rules in mind.

I don't think there's a thing wrong with presenting either as the case, if that's one's opinion. I do think its inappropriate to get offended when there's disagreement though, and take one as a given while writing off the other.

The truth is that different approaches here serve different people better, and as long as you don't demonize people with the opposite view, its all good. Unfortunately I think demonizing people who are serious about rules is all too common in this hobby, and as such, I'm going to continue defending that view whenever it comes up.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

It has nothing to do with reverance. It has to do with it being their world. The Ref is in charge. The players can choose to play or not' date=' but the world is the Ref's. The Players control their characters. The Ref controls everything else.[/quote']

 

And I consider that to _be_ excessive reverence. There may be some practical necessities for a GM to have more power than the players, but to nowhere near the degree its commonly assumed. And I say that as someone who GMs far more than he plays, and always has.