Paragon

Re: 8pt CSL

Eh... maybe you have this problem in a supers campaign' date=' but since I run Heroic, I really [i']don't [/i]have to contend with that. As when my players are purchase their stats at the beginning, they can only have two stats over 15 anyway. And, this being a Heroic setting, their "stats" don't go up much. I'm also a stat minimalist. So while I agree that

 

That's artifact of how you're doing things though; in the regular rules that's only an issue when someone's already hit 20 Dex even in heroic campaigns. Otherwise, you can just buy 3 points of Dex, sell back the speed contribution, and get +1 OCV _and_ DCV for six points.

 

- A whole bunch of skill points (remembering that +1 with all skills of a Category is 5 points, IIRC). Much cheaper than the extra Dex.

 

Not if they're all Dex skills; at that point you've saved a point.

The list goes on. I freely admit that buying up stats in the system gets useful, with the right stats. I also submit that as I run Heroic genre games, it's less of an issue to me than it is to other folks.

Again, until people have hit the NCM limit, its just as much a problem there barring houserules.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

No' date=' it wouldn't. The StunX for KAs has to be before defenses because there isn't a Stun total for the attack to apply defenses to until after you apply it. You can apply the NStunX and BodyX after defenses because the normal Stun total and Body totals already exist and so can have defenses applied to them.[/quote']

 

Yeah, honestly there was no way to avoid this, as stun calculation is an intrinsic part of how normal dice are counted, where its a multiplier with killing dice.

 

That said, one of the effects this has is that the reduced stun value locations often don't mean as much if you're already only marginally leaking, either; at worst it cuts a trivial effect to even more trivial. The sweet spot of the benefit is when you're getting some amount of stun through from normal dice, but not enough to stun someone.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

I generally use the Hit Location chart in its entirety. Though I don't generally force people using normal attacks to use it. They can if they wish' date=' they don't have to if they don't want to. Killing attacks have to use it, as that is where we find out how much Stun the attack does. [/quote']

 

I'd still think, unless there's something I'm missing, that if you use the normal stun multiples for NPCs, and if at least some of your players use it, you're seeing more stun gusting from normal attacks than is typical for those just using vanilla, non-locational rules.

 

Of course this is a two way street, but one the whole, as noted, particularly high results are often far more noticeable and meaningful than particularly low ones, unless you have a campaign where a lot of stun is normally being delivered through defenses on typical results anyway.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

So it's not that greater randomness is always better - it's better when you the underdog.

Or when you need to end a fight quickly for any reason. At that point, a result that will end the fight a round later than you want is no better than one that ends it two rounds later (and may be no better than one that you lose). That isn't necessarily a common result, but it comes up.

Re: Simple questions on AP caps

In "realistic" settings, they probably are. What else is there -- electricity?

 

For offensive uses outside of wartime, I'd argue electricity is actually more common than fire.

But while you're correct in general, that's an arguement about ED costing what it does in general in a lot of heroic settings; its probably overpriced in the first place for how often it comes up.

 

In general though I think you are right. For some reason the Limitation values in the published writeups often seem way too low to me.

Been that way for a long time though; this problem goes back at least to 4th, and probably earlier.

Re: Simple questions on AP caps

50% DRr is 30 pts (fire is always energy, afterall), so at -2 it would be 10 pts, at -1, 15. A -1/2 limitation sounds silly for something

 

Had a brain thing, obviously, but is it worth it even at 15 or 10? You can buy quite a lot of more consistent value out of that after all.

 

that specific. Yes, fire attacks are common - heros run into burning buildings, militaries have flame throwers, and so forth. But, seriously, -1/2 is comparable to a 14- activation, which is a power that works 90% of the time. No way are 90% of energy attacks fire. Of course, activation is also unpredictable, while you could know to dodge non-fire attacks, but still...

 

You're preaching to the choir with me; the specialized defense limitations have always seemed overconservative to me; as you can see, I'm not entirely sure they aren't overconservative at -2 most of the time.

You do run into the problem that if you set fire or electricity at -2, you _really_ need to crank up the limitation on things like radiation or sonics, though.

 

Another rule of thumb I've seen used for limitations is that a 1/2 limitation should come up aproximately once every other game. That'd mean you'd expect to be hit by nothing but fire attacks in about half of the sessions you play in.

Or at least regularly be hit by them in half, yes.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

Remember that the expected result is not necessarily the result of the average outcome. Consistently doing 7-8 STUN per attack, with little or no chance of stunning the target, can be substantially inferior to doing 1 STUN per attack on average, but with a nontrivial chance of stunning the target, since stunning the target can completely change the contest (it can cause the target to drop nonpersistent defenses, which might drastically raise the average STUN of the attacks, it will probably lower the DCV of the target, which will raise the effective average STUN by making more attacks hit, it reduces the damage done to the attacker by not allowing the target to retaliate, it leaves the target open to other, situational, effects, etc.).

 

Finally, remember that for a highly variable event, the "average" outcome for one event might not be as relevant as the "expected" outcome for multiple events. (That is, to more accurately judge the effect of being hit 5 times by a KA, don't calculate the average KA hit, then apply that 5 times in a row.... rather use a model to determine how likely each outcome is, and use that information instead.)

These are the keys to this problem, really; the fact that a smaller amount of consistent stun is rarely as valuable as getting very little sometimes but a lot others. It becomes much more pronounced as the average damage approaches the defense value as you note, but even without that, the benefit of the intermittant gusts in taking down a target are not easily overstated; even in the case of characters with persistent defenses, being stunned potentially sets them up to get a lot of damage delivered to them that they normally wouldn't, including standard manuevers like haymakers and the like.

Its easy to either intuitively over or understate this effect if you've happened to hit a run in one direction or another (and if you rarely see killing attacks of a size to be noticeable used, this effect is likely to be more pronounced), but the tactical realities of combat end up tending to favor those gusts more than a simple analysis of expected stun to target will tell you.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

I don't consider such things fixes' date=' no, but I have to acknowedge them. When a game is popular and has been around a while, it's players tend to learn to ignore, deny or accept it's foibles and flaws - or even have some affection for them.[/quote']

 

Sure. But that doesn't mean they aren't still problem children, and as such aren't always so easily ignored. Even people who disregard them for a while can get sick of them sooner or later. We lived with the KA multiple for at least two editions of the rules, but about the middle of 4th I'd had it up to here with it, and I was regularly hearing other people commenting about it. (This, again, only refering to Champions as what "little games" we'd had locally all used hit locations as far as I can recall).

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

So if you use Hit locations, you slightly nerf KAs and you nerf EBs at least as much. Nope, that does not help. Well, on second thought: Since EB will already never stun (0.23% is nothing), then reducing that to 0.01% is not much of a difference, even if it is a factor of 20. It's only 0.2% really. So yeah, if you use HL, your EBs lose a bit of punch, but the KAs lose more. Still not a sound solution.

Well, I'm not going to speak to their use in superhero games where the very high defenses go, but I will suggest that its still a better result than the current one; honestly, having everything less likely to stun is better than having the killing attack be the attack of choice in those cases.

In heroic scale games, I'm rather convinced it tends to even out the field much more, however, as normal attacks actually do stun with some frequency if there isn't a big PD/attack discrepancy, and it pushes the two together considerably. I haven't seen a heroic scale game with high defense and low damage so the result may be less benign there, but see my comment above about that.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

I have to admit, I haven't seen the KA problem as much as I expect to. Part of that, of course, is that I run more than I play, and I use a KA variant. When I play, I occassionally gaurd against it, too, pulling tricks with DR or whatever to minimize the impact of the STN LOTTO on my character.

 

Statistically, though, you should have 'invulnerable' characters falling to pathetically low-DC KAs rather a lot. Even when there isn't a variant or a specific 'invulnerability' build involved, though, I still haven't seen that a lot. Often, it's hand waving, the GM "doesn't bother" to roll the machine gun fire pelting the brick, because it's not meant to be a challenge, or Heros are discouraged from using KAs, or the game uses hit locations - or the guy who insists on playing the STN LOTTO loses a few times in a row, is soundly mocked, and gives up on it.

I'd tend to suggest many of these are what I call "operational" solutions to a rules problem; i.e. many people recognize the problem, but essentially minimize it in how they use such attacks and allow them to be used, rather than addressing them systematically. That works after a fashion, if you consider that a good solution to mechanical applications issues, which some people do.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

And in fact, as I've said on many occasions, I've never noticed that KAs were a problem. Then again I've never really noticed them being a problem even when I've played in games that didn't use the Hit Location chart.

 

*shrug*

If you haven't watched people fishing for it as a GM, and your GMs didn't have the habit, I doubt it'd be particularly noticeable, either.

Out of curiosity, in your own game do you also use the normal dice stun multiples from the hit location chart? If so, that'd probably tend to color your view of it too, as it ups the variance in stun over the routine somewhat, too.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

Oh' date=' my use of the Hit Location chart had nothing to do with "balancing" KAs. It was because I like using it. [/quote']

 

Well, I do have to note if you've been using it almost from the getgo, you'd never have likely noticed a problem in the first place; with it in place the advantages to KAs against high defense characters become pretty subtle.

Re: 8pt CSL

Generally my players use 6 point levels because they don't meet a lot of mentalists. Actually, who am I kidding? They use five point levels and then limit the crap out of them. *sniff* I love my little power gamers.

 

But no, seriously. They're a good deal for the money. The 8 Point CSL (unlike its siblings, the 2 & 3 point CSL) is not dedicated to a single task. It can float, not only among OCV, DCV or DCs, but also among Hand to Hand, Ranged & Mental Combat. That's the big trick with an 8 point level. A 6 point does the same thing, but only for two types of combat.

The problem is you also have to compare it to buying Dexterity for most characters, as the Mental Combat aspects is partly moot for them (its useful defensively but means nothing offensively).

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

One of the reasons that I don't generally comment on KA vs NA threads is that I've been using the Hit Location chart for determining the StunX of Killing Attacks pretty much since it came out. In all genres. It seems to work quite well.

I've seen that as a solution used by others; my own take is that there's a bit more mechanical overhead on bothering with the hit location chart just for that purpose, but YMMV.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

Actually it is very easy to deal with. If you as a Ref want Superheroes to be for the most part immune to normal guns, you put an extra limitation on any gun that takes the "Real Weapon" limitation: If it does no BODY, it does no STUN. Or to make it more geared to Supers being immune, if the target has more rDef than the attack can do in Body, it does no STUN.

 

The problem is that you don't necessarily want them immune to them; you just don't want them to be the weapon of choice against them. The fact they often are is entirely an artifact of the stun lottery.

 

Since the issue is the genre convention that Supers should be able to bounce normal bullets, even though other lower energy attacks will potentially hurt them, the solution isn't to rebalance the entire game so those high energy attacks do less damage. It is to change the way the campaign rules are

As I said, you don't need them to do less damage, per se; most Champions characters are built so a 2d6 KA isn't too much a threat to them on Body. Its only the fact that about one in six rolls does 35 stun that suddenly makes it a superior choice against them compared to any other 6DC effect (note that this is somewhat damning with faint praise with a weapon that low, but the effect gets much more pronounced when looking at something like a heavy machine gun at 3d6KA compared to a 10D6 lightning blast).

Re: 8pt CSL

To the best of my knowledge, they only apply to one side at a time, but as others have said, they can even be applied to Ego Combat as far as I know. Are they overpriced compared to Dex. Yeah, pretty much, always have been. Their only virtue is that in games that pay attention to overall CV, you can do a certain amount of flexibility in use of them in generating high end results at one end or the other at need.

Re: Simple questions on AP caps

In the published writeups' date=' I think it's only -1/2 (!).[/quote']

 

 

Even worse, then.

Re: Real point caps?

Just out of curiosity' date=' do you allow Killing Attacks in your game? I'm guessing from these and other comments that you at least modify them, but I haven't seen a post that says so specifically.[/quote']

 

Does it help to tell you that I'm almost certainly the source of the x3 fixed stun multiple rule option from FRED?

Re: Real point caps?

Depends entirely upon the intent. You are assuming that no one would ever possibly want to play something inherently fluky or circumstantially effective, etc.

 

People want to play a lot of things, but that doesn't make it a good idea from a game point of view.

 

And also, there's a matter of degrees; you seem to be making your case around extremes and ignoring the granularity in between.

 

More modest cases have more modest problems, but that doesn't make the problem any less present, it just makes it less severe.

 

All that aside, if you question the validity of the very concept of Limitations, I seriously wonder why you play the HERO System at all as the concept of a final cost modified up or down from base effect based upon the presence or absence of Limitations is very central to its architecture.

I question whether they're capable of doing the job by themselves, for good reason. Champions 1st had nothing like Active Point limits or the like, and one of the first lessons most groups learned was that point costs were not even close to enough to prevent this sort of problem from occurring. Conceptually limitations are a valid idea, but I don't think expecting them to do the heavy lifting here is going to work.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

That's a values statement. Unfortunately' date=' in HERO, we have to accept a certain level of consistency. It may simply be that a lot of comic book characters we wouldn't think of as Very Powerful simply are, and that comic book martial arts DCs tend to be very high. I know that unarmored supers definitely don't like to get shot by guns. I don't find this issue convincing as a problem in genre emulation. It seems to me to be purely a pet peeve from a gaming standpoint.[/quote']

 

I kind of think its both, unless your premise is that all gun and blade type damage in comics is of lower DCs than most normal type damage you see, and I think that's reaching to justify the mechanic, honestly.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

Once you get away from suppers defenses and CON/STN go way down, so a normal attack probably is pretty consistent an KOing people, and KAs better at killing them (as it should be). A low-dice KA, like 1d+1 or 1 1/2d (like a handgun) against a normal could do as little as 2 BOD and 2 STN - and will do less than 10 STN more than a third of the time. A comparable 5dN attack will pretty consistently do 17 STN or so, that'll Stun a normal person with room to spare, and do 3 BOD to him. Two hits are a virtually gauranteed KO, and 4 puts the beat-down in fatal territory. Though, of course, if you push resistant defenses to better than the DCs of the attack, and total defense to double that, you're back to the same effects you see in Kdansky's analysis. If you want guns (or swords) to kill people, though, you won't do that.

 

This still ignores the fact that a 1d6+1 KA will do 20-25 stun about one time in six unless you're using hit locations, where its 4d6 equivelent will do so immensely more rarely, and it has a maximum stun far higher than the normal attack can get. As I said, its not the routine result that's the issue, but the gusting, and the gusting actually becomes more pronounced as the die size of a killing attack goes down, as the base dice variance increases considerably over that of a typical superpowered one (where 3 or 4D6 killing attacks at least tend to flatten out the base Body the stun is multiplied by a bit). The net result is that if you're going to outright KO a lot of characters with one shot, or stun them at all, a killing attack is far more likely to do it. The fact it'll also frequently do less stun doesn't seem to counterweight that to me.

 

 

And, yes, hit locations go a ways towards resolving it for non-supers genres. They reduce the 'stun gusting' of KAs, and introduce some to normal attacks.

I completely agree there; I've not had a lot of issues with stun from killing attacks using the hit location chart. Its the linearity of the stun die roll that's the main culprit (though the smaller number of dice involved in heroic games still produce some aberrations compared to normal dice, its usually fairly tolerable by itself).

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

Since it's something that only pertains to supertough characters' date=' I'd say it is something you would address at the character level.[/quote']

 

But there's no good way to address it, unless you suddenly attach "only versus killing stun" to a bunch of PD on every superhero with a defensive power.

 

Honestly, the frequency of gusting looks wrong even away from superheroes; there's still something wrong when guns KO people more consistently than a blunt object of similar power. If you're using the hit location system it isn't too bad because the high stun swing results aren't that common, but 1 in 6?

Re: Real point caps?

Yeah I get you' date=' I'm just saying if I had a gun that worked 25% of the time I'd not consider it powerful even if it killed the target outright every shot that actually fired. With an 8 Speed (!!) you'd still only have 2 reasonable shots a turn, that's not as disruptive as it might seem initially.[/quote']

 

Like I said, really can't agree; I'd expect its very inconsistency to make the problem worse, not better; the fact you never know if its going to come up as a GM makes planning things a massive pain: do I put things out that can occasionally take that or not? If not, and the person gets lucky on his activation, the combat becomes a cakewalk as he blows core opposition away early on; if I do and he has bad luck, he and his teammates get eaten for lunch.

 

Not good.

Re: The great debate, this time with Java!

As I said, you can blame comic book writers. It's not a problem with the HERO system that comic book writers trivialize bullets while letting karate chops, explosive arrows, and super punches destroy metal robots.

 

I'd say it _is_ a problem when Champions won't properly match these, unless you don't view the function of a genre game to at least vaguely match the genre, conventions and all. Now of course you can note that the modern Hero System is designed to deal with more than just superheroes, but since most of this involves stun gusting, and the focus on stun in the system is a carry-over from its superhero roots anyway, I think that's not as relevant as it could be.

Re: Simple questions on AP caps

The point of DR is that you can take just p or e or put a limitation on it. It simulates a character who is particularly resistant to some attacks or in some circumstances.

 

The only problem with it there, like with regular flawed defenses, is that its often too expensive for its utility. Even if you gave it a -2 Limitation for Only versus Fire (and I believe the canonical is only a -1) 50% resistant DR versus it is, what, 20 points? That's quite a lot for something that comes up in a small number of attacks, and probably even less after it becomes known you're resistant to it.