Kristopher

Originally posted by Gary Ciaramella

Captain Commando... 4th edition character that had a weapon that did 4d6RKA Autofire 5 Explosion... he nearly killed all of the PCs and I think he was played once.

The perfect arguement for active point caps.

Originally posted by levi

Along those lines, we had a situation where a brick threw a guy who then would turn on his density increase! I was unsure how the change in density should affect the velocity of the character being thrown, but the GM ruled that no velocity was lost (the throwing distance / velocity was determined at the time of the throw based on the character's pre-DI weight).

.5mass * velocity^2 = Kinetic Energy

v^2 = KE/.5m

v = the square root of (KE/.5m)

Since KE is constant, increasing the mass decreases the velocity. I *think* that doubling the mass results in the velocity being divided by the square root of 2. (It's been a long time...I know where to check though, so I'll come back and correct this if that's wrong.)

How would you construct an improvement in turn mode? That is, what would it take to allow a character in flight to make more turns / make turns more often?

Example: a character with 15" of flight would normally have to move 3 hexes between 60-degree changes in direction when making a full move. Aerobat would like to be able to make a 60-degree change in direction in *every* hex he travels through. What should it cost him?

Originally posted by Arthur

As has already been pointed out, the physics of how a bullet damages a human body is an incredibly complex subject. In fact, the debate is still in progress. Most authorities consider KE to be the main deciding factor, others argue for momentum. I've even seen Momentum Density (momentum per cross-sectional area). Then the type of round has to be taken into account.

 

However, when designing a game system, you pretty much need to simplify a lot. Reverse-engineering shows that +1 DC = x2 KE holds to a high degree of correlation - more than enough for a game construct.

 

P.S. Go to the local gun store and declare in a loud voice that you think a .50 BMG round is three times as powerful as a .22. Let me know how it goes, if they can catch their breath after all the laughing.

 

3 times as many points in the game is just that: 3 times as many points. When the points are exponents, it's not a simple linear relationship to attack power.

I seem to recall being the one to point out that a .50BMG has woefully underpowered in FRED, having not seen the errata that changed it. 3d6 is *closer* to acurate.

Anyway, IMO, trying to equate DCs to KE is rather pointless. 3d6 really is 3 times as expensive and 3 times as powerful as 1d6. The minimum, average, and maximum damage are all three times greater. The relationship between Active Point cost and each of those numbers is linear, as well. For KAs, every 15 points gets you 1 min, 3.5 average, and 6 max BODY on the damage roll.

Where things get complicated is here: how is a certain number of dice / amount of damage likely to interact with the typical levels of defenses, STUN, and BODY in a particular campaign. 3d6 RKA is brutal in most heroic campaigns, but many supers aren't going to be that frightened by it.

What matters most isn't "What's the KE I'm trying to represent with this power/weapon?" It's, "How lethal / effective is this supposed to be?" One of the reasons bullets are so deadly is that they deliver their KE (and momentum) in a particularly damaging manner. But, I suspect you know that, given the post I'm responding to.

Originally posted by Arthur

Greece. 900 BC.

 

Brutus Bannerus, mild-mannered scholar, when endangered, transforms into...

 

Hulkules!!

 

I should be ashamed of myself for this, but I'm not.

Wouldn't Brutus Bannerus by Roman?

Originally posted by Trebuchet

Why not? Doesn't that tend to create a rather cookie-cutter sameness to characters if their defenses are all within 10 points of each other? If the martial artist has 20+ PD, what makes the brick's 30 PD special? Our spread is 21 points (12 - 33 PD) and I'd be happy if it were higher. Now admittedly I play in (and GM) a 4-color game; I'd never attempt to use such low defenses in a Dark Champions or "graphic novel" style game. In 4-color games superheroes don't get shot by goons; it just isn't done unless it's relevant to the story. When was the last time you saw Spider-Man get shot by some thug robbing a liquor store? Goons are to get everybody warmed up before the battle with the boss.

I've never really cared for the four-color atmosphere. A world like that is harder on my suspension of disbelief than the powers themselves are. I'm not doing Dark, either, though. My Champs games fall in middle ground / "graphic novel" area.

As much as certain comics characters rely on not getting hit, that's not a viable defense in a game. In a game, with dice and without absolute authorial fiat, someone is going to connect with that "can't hit me!" character, and paste him. (see pg 138 of Champions under "The Artful Dodger" for a passage that basically says the same thing.)

If you have such a low spread between defenses, then I don't blame you. I wouldn't either. If average defenses in your campaign, including between villains, were lower then such attacks would not be ineffective.

The defenses don't go that *high*, either.

On the other hand, the "average damage through" range of the attacks is probably more compressed than in your game as well.

I don't like extreme randomness. It makes game balance harder to maintain, and contingencies harder to account for.

It really hasn't led to sameness in the past. There are plenty of ways that characters can differ that have nothing to do with the DCs of their main attack or the toughness of their defenses. Besides, a range of 10 def is a *lot*. The character at the low end is taking about 20 more STUN per turn, is CON-Stunned by the average hit from an attack that is 3 DCs lower, etc. Then there's the variations in STUN and REC. As someone else pointed out, a 25 PD/ED - 50 STUN - 15 REC character is far harder to take down than the 25 PD/ED - 35 STUN - 10 REC character.

D-Man,

Thanks for a more detailed and clear explanation of what I've been trying to get at.

PS: a 3d6 RKA is 3 times as powerful as a 1d6 RKA.

Of course, since we have no point cap in our game we don't run into the problem of a +1½ advantage making a power too expensive or large to fit into a Multipower; we just ramp up the size of the MP.

 

Multi-powers are free points, and effectivly lower the cost of the DS. If, at the same time, you don't have AP caps then yeah, you've house-ruled/GMed the problem completely away.

I don't think it's fair for to ask a player to spend 1/4 to 1/3 of the points in a character just to have an effective damage shield.

Here's how it goes for me:

1) I'm not going to convince players to take a very wide range of defenses. I can justify a span of about 10, and that's if I get good players. 15 to 25 with a 20 average will work. Most of my players would take one look at the low-def characters in comics and ask "Why doesn't he put some armor in that costume? What if he gets shot?"

2) As it is, a 15 def, which is as low as I've ever seen in a Champs game, is going to more often than not IGNORE 4d6 of normal damage. If half of that is resistant, then the 1d6+1 of killing attack at the same level is almost pointless.

3) I'm not going to ask my players to spend 62 points in order to have a less than 50% chance that their DS will do anything through to the average defense.

Originally posted by bwdemon

Under old (2nd edition) autofire/AE rules: 2d6 NND, autofire, AE (radius). The character rarely ever hit with under 6 shots until the thankfully short-lived game ended.

4thEd, had a power armor hero. One of his attacks was a 1d6 NND, AoE 1-hex, Autofire x5, 32 charges (fully automatic gas-grenade launcher on the left arm). Great for taking out agents, and plinking away at guys with high DCV (AoE targeting the hex, remember).

Was autofire easier to hit with in 2ndEd?

Come on, the question posed by the thread was answered within the first few replies.

And by the way, nice work there, displaying your absolute ignorance of the concept of the non-specific 2nd-peron pronoun by parroting my attempt to make sure I was clear about not addressing anyone in general, and in your pathetic attempt to be humorously sarcastic no less.

Originally posted by Trebuchet

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here. I'm basing my comments based on my own experience as a player and a GM in my campaign. In 21 years of playing HERO I have simply not found Damage Shields to be ineffective (even the 5th Edition ones); rather I've found them to be half defense and half offense. Of course that's not as good as either a pure offense or pure defense of the same active points; compromises seldom are. I've built villains with DS and I've fought villains with DS. It is not useless in my experience. Obviously your experience differs.

 

As for being overpriced for the effect, perhaps you think that also applies to NND attacks as well? After all, if the player has even 1 point of the appropriate defense then the NND does zero damage. So is NND overpriced at +1? What about AVLD?

NND is all or nothing. Against most characters, an NND is brutal. Sometimes, it's useless. That's why you don't rely on an NND as your only offensive option.

AVLD is about right...4d6 vs Power Defense, for example...

Most characters have 0 to 5 levels of Power Defense, which gives results in 14 to 9 points of STUN through. Even the guy with _10_ levels of Power Defense takes an average of 4 STUN through, and few characters have that much Power Defense.

Damage Shield for EB and KA is overpriced at +1.5, because at that point it has no effect on most characters unless:

A) there are plenty of low-def supers running around

you allow it to significantly exceed the active point cap for the campaign.

Actually, most of the reason a projectile (on Earth or in a similar environment) lands is because it falls, not because it slows down. FYI.

Originally posted by Trebuchet

Since we're discussing changes wrought by FREd to Damage Shield, using 4th Edition guidelines may be a mistake. It is quite clear from both the pre-designed characters in Champions and CKC and comments made by Steve Long that 5th edition made a deliberate attempt to lower average defenses. I'd say they are now looking more along the lines of 1 to 1½ times attack for low end characters, 2 to 2½ times for average, and 3 or more for bricks. So a martial artist with a 12-15 PD is not unreasonable in a game with 8-10 DC attacks. YMMV. My martial artist with 12 PD gets knocked out or Stunned almost every adventure, our last one was notable because she wasn't (although she finished the fight with only 3 Stun left.).

Recommended max used to be 2.5x, so if bricks are at about 3 times DC, then the defenses haven't been lowered, they've been spread out more.

As for published characters, I haven't seen most of them yet, but if they're at all like the 4thEd characters, they'll be all over the place in terms of quality of construction, balance, appropriate attack and defense levels, etc. There were plenty of official published Champs characters in 4thEd that wouldn't have lasted 1 round against most groups I've played with, because they were jokes -- 200 pt characters built on about 300 pts, characters without the defenses to withstand anyone with attacks comparable to their own, characters with everything in one "underfunded" Multipower, so that they couldn't put up serious offense and defense at the same time, etc, etc, etc. While some of that might have been valid concept-driven character creation, that doesn't explain the fact that the shortcomings were so pandemic.

And raw defenses are only part of the equation. CON and Stun are equally important parts of total combat toughness. Our team's brick Silhouette can take much more damage than our powered armor guy Cyberknight even though their defenses are virtually identical because the brick has a 33 CON and 50 Stun whereas our PA has 20 CON and 35 Stun. That makes an enormous difference in combat.

I realise that. Never said otherwise.

The 4d6 EB Damage Shield isn't going to do anything to either one of them, though, is it?

One problem I have seen from reading these boards is that many campaigns increased from 250 to 350 CP with the release of 5th Edition without a corresponding increase in damage caps. Since characters have an extra 100 points to spend but can't spend it on more damage they often pump it into defenses instead. The unfortunate results are cheesy martial artists with 23 PD who don't even bother to dodge a thug's bullet because it can't possibly hurt them. IMHO if your martial artist doesn't need to dodge bullets then you're doing something wrong. The obvious solution is to either raise damage caps or eliminate them altogether. If that is done 75-80 active point Damage Shields versus average defenses of 20-24 suddenly look a lot more reasonable.

Heh. Once built a martial artist with power armor...bad things, man...bad things...

In my experience, a lot of that 100 points is eaten up by things that have gotten more expensive.

I am not claiming a 5d6 DS is equal to a 12d6 EB in power, I'm saying it may be it's equivalent in usefulness. Damage Shield help keep characters with one from being pounded on by low DEF/high CV/high SPD characters. They are as much defense as offense. While the attacking character does have the choice of whether or not to attack the character with DS, if he opts not to attack because of potential damage then I'd say DS just acted as 100% Damage Reduction.

A) It's not the equivalent in usefulness.

We disagree on the purpose of Damage Shield.

A 60-point damaging power should be capable of damaging most characters on a reasonable roll (average to somewhat above). By the FRED book, a 60-point DS needs to max out on the roll just to _scratch_ most characters.

(And any super with no resistant defenses who lets himself get hit by a normal with a 9mm deserves what he gets. But when was the last time you saw a normal with a CV of 4 hit a superhero with an 12 CV? )

Shot from behind...

In a 12 DC campaing, it's 4 STUN through on an average roll against average defense. (8 x 3.5 = 28, 28 - 24 = 4)

8d6 AP averages 16 STUN through.*

8d6 Pen averages 8 STUN through.*

8d6 AoE or Explosion averages 4 STUN through, but is much easier to hit with.

Even if you lower the average defenses to 20 (following the 5thEd advice), a 4d6 DS (at +1.5) only does 4 through on a MAXIMUM roll, and averages absolutely no STUN through.

* Leaving aside Hardened for the moment.

The velocity shouldn't be based on the distance thrown. The thrown character doesn't accelerate after being thrown ( unless he has flight, in which case why bother with the throw). All the acceleration for a thrown character takes place at the moment of the throw.

Lethality has to come into the equation.

Is a 3d6 RKA rifle 64 times more lethal than a 2d6 RKA rifle?

Is a 9d6 punch from a super 64 times more lethal than a 6d6 punch?

Originally posted by Geoff Speare

Perhaps a useful exercise would be to see how many characters from CU and CKC would be affected by a 60 point DS (5d6 EB) and a 75 point DS (6d6 EB).

Haven't seen them yet, but if they're anything like the characters from 4th Ed material, too many will have sub-par defenses for the power level in question.

Maybe you can count on NPCs to be go under-defended, but most PCs aren't that stupid.

Originally posted by Warp9

I have two different replies to your post. I cover the first in this post and the second in my next post.

 

This line of discussion started when you replied to Arthur's Post. However, instead of arguing with it, now it seems like you've simply re-stated his original message, only you've added one leap of logic.

 

 

Unlike Arthur, you assume that because .50 Cal HMG (3d6 K damage or 9DCs) doesn't play out in the game as 64 times more powerful than a pistol (with 1d6 K damage--or 3 DCs), that it therefore must _not_ be 64 times more powerful. I don't agree with that assumption.

 

The problem is that the HMG *is* 64 times as powerful as a pistol (based on kinetic energy), if the system doesn't reflect this, it just means that the system isn't perfect.

You assume that 64 x KE = 64 x more lethal.

That's not necessarily true.

The numbers I was using are based on the formula for balancing attacks and defenses that was printed on page S-22 of 4th Ed Champions.

According to that, average defense should 2x DCs of max attack, and max defense should be 2.5x (12 DCs = 24 average and 30 max). That would give a low-def super no less than 18/18 defenses. (And any super who has nothing in the way of resistant def -deserves- to be taken out from behind by a normal with a 9mm.)

10 DC = 20 average, 25 max, about 15 low-end.

8 DC = 16 average, 20 maz, 12 low-end.

Originally posted by Trebuchet

I disagree that DS isn't useful, even with the +1½ advantage cost. We just disagree as to what's it's primary use is. I view it as an attrition power which is used to chip away at low-defense characters, and the ability to use DS to effect multiple opponents in one Phase who attack the character with DS is useful. Since it also provides a guaranteed hit, that makes it more useful. And the ability to "attack" characters who attack the DS user while he uses another attack or defensive power is also very useful. Attacks don't need to do damage in any case. How about a 5d6 Flash Damage Shield, or a 2" Teleport Usable as Attack Megascale Damage Shield? The possiblities are endless with a little imagination. You are thinking too linearly.

No, he'd not. He's dead spot on. Increasing the cost of a an attack power by 150% should not make it useless against characters with average defense. Even at +1, you reduce the attack to half the DCs of the maximum attack, which still leaves it more likely than that it will do nothing to a character with average defense. 12d6 max = 24 average defense; +1.5 for DS leaves 5d6 (-if- you allow a couple extra points for the DS) with an average damage of 17.5 (you'd have to average fives on the dice to do any damage); +1 for DS leaves 6d6 with an average damage of 21 (you'd have to average over four on the dice to do any damage).

Putting Damage Shield on an EB robs the EB of its range. Never mind that the character with DS has to pay the END to keep it going, on top of whatever other END he's using each Phase.

I'm not sure what the big stink is about flight. If you're in a Champs game, find some excuse to buy some for your character. Or don't. Who cares. If you're not in a Champs campaign, who has unlimited, easy flight that other's can't get?

As for the relative point costs, big flippin deal.

("You" in general, not anyone specific.)

Hmmm.

I've never personally been in a campaign with a Champs PC with low enough PD/ED to -really- worry about a vanilla 5d6 EB. Or one with absolutely no resistant defenses, for that matter. Your total PD/ED would have to be under 18 to worry about 5d6.

* Of course, all of the campaigns I was in or ran were back in the 4th Ed days, so there wasn't any Combat "Luck" back then.

* For some reason, damage dice in Champs hate me. A lot. So I tend to count on getting no better than the average damage for a certain number of dice.

Originally posted by Snarf

This is a better comparison if you want to think about defenses, since my AP limit is a loose 60. The campaign isn't fully running yet, so the average is still a mystery...

 

Burnination Blast: EB 8d6 (AP 40) (RC 40)

 

Burnination Field: EB 5d6, Continuous (+1), Damage Shield (+1/2), (AP 62); No Range (-1/2), (RC 41)

If you follow the suggested formula, that makes average def about 24, doesn't it? 8d6 would do an average of 4 STUN through. 5d6 would do an average of NONE (zero, zilch, nada), and a maximum of 6 through. That's it. No more than 6 STUN through, and typically nothing at all.

A damage shield that doesn't do any damage isn't much of a shield, is it?

What level of defense is average in the game that 4d6 is intended for?