The Souljourner

Re: Ideas for Cliched Cartoon Powers Great ideas, everyone... I forgot about cosmetic transforms.. that's a definite must have Teleportation is great for the "go in one door and out another" trick, too Hrm... I wonder what kind of a limitation that would be... "only from one door to another"? Doesn't allow for stepping from one scene to another, though.... Stretching, big mallet (or big boxing glove on a spring)... Damage reduction is a must, and probably something I wouldn't even put in the VPP... it's just something cartoon characters have on 24/7 -Nate

Re: Making Hero more deadly *lol* Ok, ok. I cede the point about needing campaign restrictions. I still think defense in general is a little too cheap, but I'm willing to let it slide... this time -Nate

Re: Making Hero more deadly See... that's where you and I differ, GA. I think that if you have to impose restrictions above and beyond those in the book on what characters can do with their points, then it implies a problem with the mechanics of the rules. I believe that there should be a mechanical reason why not every character has 20+ rPD. The only mechanical restriction you can really impose is to make armor more expensive (or less effective, which is really the same thing). If everyone is willing to pay for 20+ rPD, then it's too cheap. Jack the price up until only those who really want the power will take it. For some things, like desolidification or telekinesis, the power just isn't going to fit into everyone's character concept... but your basic offenses and defenses are what everyone's going be buying, and resistant defense is vague enough that you can justify it on just about every character through one mechanism or another. Who's to say your custom superhero's costume isn't made of some super advanced bulletproof fabric that gives 10 rPD? If you have to impose a limit on rPD through GM fiat, then by definition there are people who would take more and probably shouldn't. That still implies that armor is too cheap, and thus even with a cap, those who take it aren't paying enough for it. -Nate

Re: Making Hero more deadly The problem with lower defense is that then people just take that much more stun and are knocked out that much faster. I'm fine with some people having very little chance of death, like bricks, but when 21 character points of resistant defense stops the average damage of a 60 character point killing attack... something's wrong. Sure, killing attacks have a more random element to them, so they could easily do more... but, still... Maybe the solution should be to make resistant defenses more expensive... I know, you can say that many people shouldn't have them, but in my experience, most people do... sure, not 20 or 30 def worth... but all you need is 14 rDef and you ignore the average roll of 4d6 KAs. NuSoardGraphite - I play superheroic campaigns almost exclusively... I would imagine that in heroic campaigns things are far different. -Nate

So, one thing that bugs me about Hero is the way armor, damage, stun, and body all interrelate. It's pretty rare to see anyone ever take body damage, because armor works equally well against stun and body, and yet you generally take 3.5 times as much stun as body damage. 60 points of offense buys you 12DCs which do 12 body and 42 stun on average. 60 points of armor buys you 20 each PD and ED. You're unlikely to ever beat that PD with your body damage - it would take an amazing roll. So here's my suggestion for a slightly more deadly Hero system... each point of defense only provides 1/2 protection against body damage. If you wanted things to be really gritty, you could try 1/3, which is probably a more accurate representation of how stun relates to body... -Nate

So I was trying to think up a unique character concept last night, and it came to me - cartoon powers. You know, like the kind of stuff you see on Looney Tunes. My general idea is to make it a Cosmic VPP, since cartoon characters can generally make whatever they need right on the spot. Here are some ideas I've come up with: Anvil (Energy Blast vs. PD, Indirect, maybe AoE: Hex?) Rocket Skates (Running, OIF, Only on Appropriate Terrain) Tiny Umbrella (Gliding, OAF) Painted Tunnel (Desolidification, OAF, Does Not Protect Against Damage, Gestures) I welcome other ideas... the funnier and more classic the better! -Nate

Re: Double Knockback, How do you find it? Ahh, funny Your idea of having the doubled knockback do half damage is interesting, except for one thing - you're less likely to blow people through walls if it only does half damage... and that's almost more fun than simply blowing them clear across town -Nate P.S. what are cf and NB? I assume EG is e.g. i.e. "for example" (heh), and I sorta recognize cf, but don't remember when it stands for. [seinfeld]So what's the deal with Latin, huh?[/seinfeld]

Re: Double Knockback, How do you find it? This is an interesting discussion, since I was thinking about making a character with a DKB EB. I think that +3/4 is too high, too. A 21DC EB does 14" of knockback on average. A 12DC DKB EB does 17" of knockback on average. Assuming you hit something quite sturdy, you take 38d6 for the first one, and 29d6 for the second... and you only go 3 extra inches away. Let's try it at +1/2: 18DC EB: 11" knockback 12DC DKB EB: 17" knockback Both do 29d6 assuming you hit something solid, and the double knockback power actually increases the knockback by almost 50% And those ratios stay the same even as things go up: 30DC EB: 23" 20DC DKB EB: 33" Both do 53d6 I might even price it at +1/4, since you're far from certain of doing full damage with knockback, and it's in two "chunks", so armor is far more effective against it. 15d6 EB: 8" 12d6 DKB EB: 17" Now the knockback really is doubled... and if you do get the benefit of full knockback damage, you do a little more (23 vs 29) Btw, if you don't hit anything, you take half knockback damage, right? So this would become 19 vs. 20 DCs of damage. Pretty fair, I think. So... my conclusion? It should be +1/4, or *maybe* +1/2. -Nate

Re: Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6? Thanks for that chart, Pres, I was thinking 3d12 might make a nice spread with a good resolution, but didn't have the time to work it all out. Of course, it has a similar problem to d20 - in that +1 is now half as useful. It would be cool to use that and just double all bonuses... then you could allow for what would be half bonuses in 3d6, to allow for better granularity. I'd actually love to see a reworking of Hero using 3d12, since I think it gives the best of both worlds - a nice granularity but still with the sweet bell curve so average is really average. Maybe that'll be a project I'll take up at some point. And besides, it would be nice to make those d12s feel useful for once... -Nate

Re: Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6? Thanks for the repping, guys. I do eventually come around to the side of reason

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage Actually, all this discussion of destroying the world made me realize something - damage and BODY *are* exponential... it's just implicit instead of explicit. By saying x2 mass or thickness or whatever is equal to +x BODY.... you've just defined BODY (and by extension, damage) to be exponential. This is under the assumption that by exponential, we mean that damage is somehow related to real-world work used to destroy an object, and that the work required to destroy an object is directly proportional to its mass. Since doubling the mass doubles the work required to destroy it, yet only adds +1 BODY, it must mean that +1 BODY is equal to doubling the amount of work required to destroy an object. So.. damage and BODY are exponential... it's just that we don't pay points for them that way (which is exactly what you wanted). +1DC doubles the much real-world work that the attack does. This equates directly to the lifting chart, where you pay linearly for strength, but the amount you can lift is exponential. [Edit]Sorry, just re-read the initial post.... So, I guess I don't understand what the problem is. Yes, every +1 BODY you buy doubles your theoretical damage soaking capacity... but because damage and BODY are both exponential to the same degree, you can relate the two linearly. Yes, superheroes often have more defense and BODY than a tank, regardless of how massive the character actually is. They're superheroes, that's as it should be. You have to have this dichotomy, or one of two things happens - either super-strong heroes wouldn't be able to lift huge things, or they'd vaporize each other with the first attack that hit. -Nate

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage The exponential-ness of some of Hero's rules is actually one thing I *don't* like. Doubling a wall's thickness only adds a single body point? How the heck does that work? Let's assume we have a 1m thick wall of metal. It has 17 body. A 2m thick wall has 19 body. So by that rationale, it's better to build two walls right next to each other than one big thick wall, since the two walls would have almost double the body of the single wall. That's just too wacky for me. A material should have a certain amount of body per thickness, and leave it at that.. it's makes a heck of a lot more sense, IMO. -Nate

Re: Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6? I agree 100%... and I would not want to be the one trying to rework it. That is a very cool idea. Your skill determines your base percentage of success... and then modifiers (as a percentile) are applied to that percentage. Thus, let's say two people were trying to climb a wall. One has climb 11- and one has climb 17-. The 11- is going to succeed 62% of the time on an "average" wall. The 17- succeeds 99% of the time. But that's on an average wall... let's assume this is a particularly slippery wall, and thus applies a 25% penalty to climb checks. Now the 11- guy has only a 37% chance to succeed, and the 17- guy 74%. I like that. (in comparison, if you just call it a -3 to climb checks, the 11- guy drops to 25% and the 17- guy only drops to 90%). -Nate

Re: Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6? Yeah... after this extensive discussion, I will admit that you can't convert from 3d6 to 1d20 simply by rolling one die instead of the others. Changing to a d20 about doubles the resolution of the die roll without changing the resolution of combat values, and thus you get a bank robber hitting spidey 25% of the time, which I agree is not the way things should be. No, you're absolutely right... as the discussion has progressed, my understanding of how 3d6 and d20 compare progressed as well, and some original assumptions I had made turned out to be wrong. Originally, +5 CV over your opponent didn't seem to be that big of a difference to me... after all, you can buy that in skill levels for a mere 10 points with a single attack (and who needs more than one when you have +5 to hit with it?). However, after hearing the rest of you guys talking about it, I realized that's supposed to be a huge difference in Hero, and thus should be causing the huge swings in probability. As I was coming to understand that, I had a chance to really dive into the probabilities, and noticed what happens with very small differences in skill. Here's my revised position on 3d6 vs. 1d20: I like the bell curve provided by 3d6, and appreciate that it makes truly spectacular failure and success as rare as it should be. However, I don't like the resolution it provides for roll modifiers. Using 3d6 means that most modifiers (and differences in skill) should be between 1-5, with 5 being an almost insurmountable advantage, and +1 being a fairly significant advantage. I suggested d20 because it has a higher resolution than 3d6... +1 is 5% instead of up to 12%. However, its resolution comes at a price - randomness. The maximum value comes up 10 times as often as the maximum value of 3d6. Two successive rolls are likely to have wildly different results... So I don't know that there is a solution to the problem that doesn't cause problems of its own, if you even think there's a problem in the first place. All of this has brought me one question.... why don't more people take a ton of combat levels? Heck, for 10 points you get +5 OCV with one attack.... screw an extra 2d6 on your EB, spend the points on combat levels and you'll pretty much never miss. -Nate

Re: Missile Deflection question Right, which is why I said it was doubtful that a GM would call it a targetted attack The funny thing would be is if the DM did call it a targetted attack, and it somehow missed Or, if you deflect it, and by the rules, it does no harm to anyone or anything in the immediate area -Nate

Re: Damage Reduction Yeah, "they're different" is exactly right. One of the main considerations about DR vs. armor is how often you encounter lower strength attacks. If you tend to get shot at by bank robbers with 2d6 RKA autofire rifles a lot, 20 armor is looks a lot sweeter, simply because of how many times it'll reduce the damage to zero. The other thing about damage reduction versus armor is that armor is a hell of a lot better at keeping you from taking BODY damage. 20 DCs of damage is still only 20 BODY on average, which your armor 20 totally prevents. 50% DR has you still taking 10. If you just look at the BODY, you have to get up to 40 DCs before DR catches up with 20 armor. And 40DCs is a hell of a lot. So, yeah, Damage Reduction is pretty efficient against STUN... but far less efficient against BODY (simply because you don't get up to massive quantities for a long time). -Nate

Re: Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6?

Re: Damage Reduction Yeah, let me go back to what I said originally about liking DR. Given that by it's very nature it's never absolute (unless you allow 100% DR... ), it's actually not all that great. If there's one thing you learn in RPGs, it's that the death of a thousand paper cuts still kills you. Taking Damage - x is almost always going to be preferable to damage * x%, because at least Damage - x is zero for many values of Damage... whereas it never is for the latter case (except when you round down). -Nate

Re: Missile Deflection question Pretty much all of this is handled in the Missile Deflection description (which I happened to have just read for unrelated reasons). Asteroid impacts and the death star's beam are almost certainly area of effect attacks, and thus are explicitly not allowed to be deflected. There is a specific limitation for representing the inability to deflect really heavy missiles... if you don't have that limitation, you could deflect the Death Star itself if someone threw it at you (assuming the DM decided you were the single and only target.... which seems doubtful). -Nate

Re: Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6? I don't understand that at all... an 8- skill on 3d6 is a 25% chance of success... on 1d20 it's 40%. 1d20 is actually far better for people who have lower skill levels (or are you calling anything under 14- low?). I'm not worried about bank robber vs. Spider Man... Spidey doesn't need to deflect the missiles, the bank robber has an almost zero percent chance to hit. Let's assume Spidey has DCV 10 and bank robber has 4 OCV. The bank robber has a 2% chance to hit Spidey. 2%.... and that assumes Spidey's DCV is a mere 10. Like I pointed out above, spiderman ain't getting hit unless the bank robber get crazy lucky. And as I've been saying, it's not large differences in skill that bother me, it's the small ones. It's BankRobber Vs. SecurityGuard that bothers me. BankRobber has +1 skill level to each of OCV and DCV, 'cause he's pulled a few of these jobs and has learned a little in the process. SecurityGuard has been to the shooting range, but hasn't been in any gun fights. Both have equal dex. BankRobber is just barely better than SecurityGuard... and yet BR hits SG 74% of the time, and SG hits BR 50% of the time. That's a huge difference in ability for just very small difference in skill. Other system has bad mechanics. Other system has 1d20. 1d20 must be a bad mechanic. Faulty logic. You can easily do a juicer in d20. The problem is that if you do it like it sounds like it should work, you have the unbeatable character. And that doesn't make the game fun for everone else who isn't playing the unbeatable character. Besides, let's see you dodge the shot from my Glitterboy's railgun shot which is mounted on top of his nigh invincible power armor. Rifts should never be used in a discussion of balance I would be fine with a bell curve if it were flatter, but 3d6 is crazy tight. -Nate

One of the problems I see with Hero is the extremely tight bell curve of all skill and attack rolls. 9-12 comprise 48% of all 3d6 rolls. If you have a 9- to succeed and get a +3 bonus, you just added over 36% to your chance of success.... However, if you already had a 14- to succeed, adding +3 adds just under 9% to your chance of success. One of the things I like about the d20 system is how well it works with bonuses and penalties on rolls... +3 is +15% no matter how hard or easy the task (well, except if you run off the top or bottom of the scale... but that should be rare). What if one were to apply the same logic to hero? Instead of rolling attacks, skill rolls, etc with 3d6, use 1d20. I think that, especially for superheroic campaigns, it would make widely varying abilities less of a problem. For example, say Kung Foo Guy has an OCV of 13, and Brick Guy a DCV of 8. Using 3d6, KFG is almost guaranteed to hit every time... only a 17 or 18 misses, amounting to a measely 2% chance of missing. Now do the same thing except now use 1d20. 17-20 miss, making it a 20% miss chance, which is much more reasonable, given that its only a 5 point difference in CVs, which is not unusual given superheroic characters. And If I Ran the Circusâ„¢, I'd do armor classes the way d20 does them, more or less. 11+ your DCV is your AC. Attacker rolls 1d20 and adds his OCV... if he matches or beats your AC, he hits. It makes for much easier calculations than all this adding and subtracting... and it makes high rolls good, which only makes sense, IMO. Of course, this is coming from a guy who plays a lot more D&D than Hero, and I'm sure most of you die hards will consider this blasphemy, but I really do think it would make for a more balanced game (at least for superheroic campaigns.... heroic campaigns where OCVs and DCVs vary so much less, the 3d6 method is probably fine). -Nate

Re: Damage Reduction I'm sorry, did you read what you quoted? I like DR as it is, but some people don't, because it doesn't scale with damage like other defensive powers, thus, I came up with a way to make it scale. As I said... please ignore the points cost, I didn't balance them at all. Here's an attempt at balancing them: 25% 1/4 50% 1/2 75% 3/4 Thus, you can get 50% damage reduction against the first 40 points of damage for 20 points. Instead, you could spend 30 points and get 20 rPD Armor, which protects better when you take less damage, but equally well at 40 and above. If you spent 30 points on 75% damage reduction up to 40 points, you'd take only 10 out of those 40 points of damage. You could spend 45 points on 30 rPD instead, and it would again work better at lower damage and the same at higher damage. Thoughts? -Nate

Re: Damage Reduction I had a great idea. (At least I think it's great) It keeps the power fairly simple, but allows it to scale like other powers. Make the power such that you have to pay per point of STUN and BODY you reduce. Lower percentage reduction is cheaper per point. Let's make up a chart, so it's more obvious what I'm talking about: % Cost 25% 1 50% 2 75% 3 So, let's say you pay 80 points for 50% damage reduction of up to 40 points of damage. The first 40 points of damage you take from any attack, you would ignore half of. Any damage over 40 points is not halved. I haven't thought about appropriate pricing, the above is just pulled out of the air, but I think the general mechanic works the way people want - it costs more to reduce more damage, and, it's very simple, which I like. -Nate

Re: Damage Reduction I think maybe I see why we're not quite seeing eye to eye... I'm assuming that the only people who can take DR are the people for whom the power makes sense. For example, Joe Schmoe Martial Artist probably shouldn't ever be able to take Energy Damage Reduction. Damage Reduction is only for the Brickiest Bricks, and certain other characters whose character concepts warrant it... Stretchy Guy could take it for physical, Firey Guy could take it specifically against fire... etc. I believe that is the true balancer... the GM. Maybe DR needs a STOP sign next to it to indicate to the GM that he should take extra time in considering which people should be allowed take this power. Yes, I can see that it could be a problem if everyone takes it for every damage type... then fights will just always take 4 times as long.... but if only a few characters can take it for specific reasons closely tied to their character concept, then I think it's ok. -Nate

Re: Damage Reduction I like DR. The rule is elegant and does exactly what you expect it to. It has no loopholes, is easy to understand, and is hard to abuse. More powers should be like DR, not fewer. So what if it's not built exactly like Armor or Energy Blast? If you try to generalize things too much they get too complicated. Sure, you could make it a limitation on Armor, but personally, I think that's kludgy. You end up with something that is basically the same, but far more complicated to implement. If you don't like that it works against NND attacks... make DR not work against NND attacks (except maybe with a special add-on/advantage). If you think it's too cheap, make it more expensive. I don't think DR really gets better as points go up. It actually stays exactly the same by it's very design. Let's assume a 10d6 EB will normally do 1/2 a character's Body in damage at 250 character points (I'm just making up numbers here). 50% DR will reduce that damage to 1/4 of a character's Body. Now we scale everything up by 100%. A 20d6 EB will do 1/2 a character's Body in damage at 500 character points. 50% DR will reduce that damage to 1/4 of a character's body. Same effect, same cost. Just because at 250 character points 50% DR is blocking 5 Body in damage and at 500 it's blocking 10, doesn't mean its effectiveness has doubled. To the character getting hit, it's the same percentage of his total being prevented.... he's still taking twice as much damage from an attack which is twice as big. The reason Armor doesn't work the same way is that doubling your Armor makes you immune to things that used to hurt a lot. 100 guys shooting 6d6 rifles at the DR guy will kill him off fairly quickly. The same guys shooting at the armor guy will do nothing at all. Perhaps the points could change, I don't know, but the basic concept of the power is just fine, in my opinion. -Nate P.S. - EDM as Alter Reality is a huge hack. No alternate realities in my universe. Other dimensions? Sure, but they're wildly different from ours.