Sean Waters

Here's a completely tangential thought: STR minimum is probably not a well balanced Limitation or arguably a limitation at all: most people start with 10 STR, hardly anyone buys it down, so you are getting a cost break for doing nothing and, if you do, you are getting points back but you are less effective in both melee and now ranged combat, in that a weapon will cost you more. It might actually discourage people from buying STR down to fit character concept, which can't be good.

More to the point if you buy Strength up to, say, 15 you are getting the advantage of those 5 points and also buying a bigger discount on a beefier weapon, an extra -1/4, which changes the effective cost of Strength because it is buying more for the points.  By all means we can have a STR minimum based on active points, perhaps, but we shouldn't be discounting weapon cost based on the Strength of the wielder: that's double dipping.

So, right, I was walking the dogs and thought, “why do we do characteristic rolls for Strength differently to all the other characteristic rolls?"

Do go check, but instead of 9+CHAR/5 it is roll STR/5 as damage and count Body.  I like that.  Very Hero.

So, that got me thinking, why don’t we do that for everything?  Stealth check?  DEX/5 + skill levels rolled as damage dice and count Body against a difficulty determined by the GM or the characteristics of an opponent

Example: Dexterity 15 character with +1 in Stealth rolls 4d6 and counts Body to sneak past the 10 Intelligence guard.  Use INT/5 (2) as the difficulty – should be easy in normal circumstances.

Then I went mad and thought, “Why not combat too?”

OCV 3 attack against DCV 4?  Roll 3d6 and count Body aiming for a result of 4 or more (so you’ll need at least one ‘6’).

This has the advantage of having a single ‘Hero’ mechanic that is unique (as far as I know) for everything.  There's more (good and bad), but I thought we'd go one step at a time...

Thoughts?

Psych Lim: struggles to get out of bed in the morning or complete tasks

No.  Hang on.

23 minutes ago, dsatow said:

 

Well, that is what I think this forum should be used for, interesting rules discussions with points and counter points.  That and maybe recipe arguments

 

 

This is interesting, but a lucky roll might be overly impressive and the extra damage roll might slow the game (especially with players who have a hard time counting pips or in games where large amounts of dice are thrown).  Maybe using average stun and body for the attack and using the total body or total stun/10 past defenses (whichever is higher) for the bonus dice.  This would replace the +1d6 to +3d6 for violent action which I always thought was a little too small of a range of bonus dice for presence.

 

BTW: for everyone replying to this thread, THANKS!  The conversation has given me a lot to think about.

Yes, true, but I would argue that if PRE is anything is is psychological.  I'm happy with a lucky 'overly impressive' roll.  Sometimes you panic.   You would not normally, you do not know why this time is different, but something is.

I find myself arguing against me. Ha. 

OK, here is my problem with PRE attacks: generally I do not like the idea.

We were playing DnD once, Slave Pits Of The Undercity, IIRC, S1? and the party had a run of great luck. Three or four criticals in a row and even the non-criticals caused serious damage.

The DM decided that the defending orcs became terrified and fled, abandoning their posts and making the first bit easy.

THAT seemed like a decent use presence: sometimes it all just works out and you ride the wave.  Being able to decide when the waves arrive just seems wrong.  Hmm.  Not even that: you do a good enough  job of set-up, fine, if the plan works it is all far easier than it would have been.  However, the idea that a character, even a superheroic character, can just turn up an demand surrender - and get it - seems distressing and wrong.

I don't like the PRE attack mechanic: it is like an AOE Instant specific command Mind Control that costs no END.  I genuinely feel that it is more of a GM call than an important mechanic.

It should either be scrapped or SERIOUSLY developed.

5 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

I like the thinking for this, but the problem is not with the falling damage, but rather the lack of damage inflicted by someone like Grond.

 

My players constantly marvel that adding 5 STR only results in a 1 DC boost.

 

The idea that someone 2x as strong as you are only does 1 BOD and 3 STUN more damage may work well for 4-color comic book action, but in heroic campaigns it's so far off that it pops the immersion bubble immediately.

 

There are martial maneuvers that add 2 DC (4x stronger?) or even 4 DC (16x stronger??).

 

Hell, a haymaker adds 4d6 - So a normal man slinging a haymaker hits as hard as an ogre?

 

More succinctly - damage doesn't go up as fast as it should from increasing strength.

 

 

Oh this is such another thread

However, we've started, so - HERO uses Thresholds i.e. we have subtractors from damage in the form of Defences.  If you have 12 PD you are completely immune to a 2d6 Normal attack, not not from a 3d6 Normal attack (although you are on average).

Adding a couple of dice of damage to an attack that would already penetrate defences means that ALL of the damage gets through, whereas if you were not scoring any (average) damage on a target, a couple of extra dice means that most of the extra effort gets through.  Usually.

A better example is a 21pd superhero taking a 10d6 punch.  10d6 is almost certain to get stun through defences so any extra damage also gets through defences.  Same Hero facing a 5d6 attack: on average NO damage gets through and, indeed, you'd need a decent roll to get any damage through, but add 2 dice and you are causing damage on average rolls.

Here's a thought: Normal Defences do not affect Stun and Body damage equally.  Normal Defences subtract from Stun damage on a 1 to 1 basis, but subtract Body damage on a 2 to 1 basis.  So a 10d6 punch against 20 pd is (on average) 15 Stun and no Body through defences but even a slightly decent roll might cause Body.  Damn, that is another thread right there!

Right.  Done that.

There have been many attempts at producing a decent but manageable killing attack, right?  Maybe we have been going about it all wrong…

So, thinking about damage, superheroes seem to be largely immune to Body damage from Normal attacks, right?

How about this:

1.       Normal Defences only count half against Body damage.

2.       Killing attacks are a +1/4 advantage and mean that Normal Defences only count a quarter against Body damage.

So:

50 points: 10d6 attack against 20 (normal) pd:

Average Roll: 35/10 = 15 Stun through Defences and no Body and no real chance of Body using existing system (10 average against 20 defence) BUT an above average Body roll WILL cause some Body damage: not likely to be much and the result is not highly volatile, but some.

Same 50 points, gets you an 8d6 attack with (+1/4) killing.

So, Average Roll for 8d6: 28/8 gets 8 Points of Stun and 3 Points of Body through Defences.   Again, not highly volatile, but a worry.

I think this would make healers more valuable , and regeneration.  I think this could be really interesting.  Thanks to ScottishFox for basically handing me the idea.

So.  Whaddya think?

3 minutes ago, dsatow said:

A couple of points, in using move through (or any other velocity maneuver to determine equivalent damage to falling), you are encountering the problem that in general, people move at speed 2-4 while gravity moves at speed 12.  This matters because while the game segments actions on specific segments and the actions are completed in phases, in general they are really supposed to be spread out over the seconds between phases.  Just like post twelve recovery is more about recovery over the entire turn but for mechanics sake, its done at the end of the turn.

 

However, I would not advocate this methodology,  I would suggest using Newton's law F=Ma as a better comparison.  Using Newton's law, a fall for 1 sec is about 1000N.  F = Mass * acc. or 1000N = 100kg * 10 m/s^2.  A brick's fist is accelerating about 1m in 1 sec.(arm's length), so mass needs to be about 1000kg or a 27 strength using lifting calculations 25 * (2^(STR/5)).  This would be about 5d6 of damage which matches.

 

The big problem is that the mechanics of the game to represent higher levels of damage is not simulated correctly mainly because damage is linear on the strength scale which is exponential.  Take terminal velocity.  Kinetic energy is determined by the calculation KE = 1/2 * mass * velocity^2.  At terminal velocity for a 100kg man would be 145800.  For a dead lift at a speed of 1m/s, that would be about a 63 strength.  Most would agree that falling at terminal velocity would very likely be terminal but a 63 strength punch in the game could be survivable.  To sum up, the energy to move 25tons to 100tons is not the same as the level of damage of +2d6N.

 

 

Ah.  I said there were a couple of things, right?  See the 'I Feel The Need' thread to address that one.

So another thing I was thinking about, whilst walking the dogs: Speed. 

I like the Speed Chart. I don’t know of another game that has anything like it.  It is great.

But.

If Crimson Blur is Speed 8 and has a Run of 30m, she can get up to nearly 45mph in combat.

Meanwhile the Inedible Wombat has a Speed of 4, but a Run of 60m.  He can reach the same velocity in combat, almost 45mph.

Yet, the damage the Wombat does with a move through is considerably more than the Blur does, even though they have similar Strength.

That seems wrong to me.

Similarly if they both spend another 2 points on Run, the Blur can now run faster than the Wombat: there is only about a mile per hour in it, but still: they were moving pretty fast to begin with.

How to address it though?  Well, first, SHOULD we address it?  I think we should, so…

Easy, as it turns out: your Move costs the same as your Speed.  So if you are Speed 5, 1m of Flight or 2m of Swimming cost 5 points.  That perfectly balances Speed and Move so you wind up with the same top speed for the same spend.

WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

So, that messes with movement damage right?  Well, it would now you have a Velocity Factor (which can be calculated once, used many times) equal to (Move x Speed) / 12 (which is actually your velocity in metres per second).  That is what you add for damage to Move Throughs and Move Bys.  See table below.

I'm a fan of granularity.  And, you know, doing things in a cock-eyed manner.

Maybe we could consider, instead of extra CON you buy extra PD, something like:

I'm still standing: +5 PD (Only to avoid being stunned)

Now obviously this only applies to normal physical damage (although you could buy resistant defence or defence against other damage types).  It would not reduce the STUN damage you take and it would only really matter if you took damage over CON but less than CON+5, so the limitation depends on how often that would happen.  I'm thinking at least -1, and I might give you -2.  Judgement call and makes no actual difference on 5 points to final cost.  It means you can take a punch but you can still be taken down by taser.

Compared to the calculation that GB(i) did as the first response (i.e. -3/4), that sounds about right and is probably a more socially acceptable way of doing it.  I think we can probably all agree that CON is overpriced.

If we are talking realistic weapons then we are probably looking at a Heroic game and there are rules that allow for quite realistic damage, such as hit locations, disabling and bleeding rules.  Quite often gunshot or stab woulds are not instantly fatal but do kill because of bloodloss.  A bullet to the head is worth two to the chest (or something like that).

Massey points out that realism is a movable feast (I paraphrase), but most people would agree that a normal being shot or stabbed should have serious consequences, barring body armour.  On the flip-side, as Ninja-Bear points out, you don't want to have to rest up for a week every time there's a gunfight (I paraphrase).

The trick is to make the players feel their characters are genuinely threatened without requiring new character sheets every combat.  Unless, you know, they like that sort of thing.

Hell hath nothing to show me,

It's Heaven I really fear,

For if this is Heaven,

Then she must be here...

1 hour ago, PhilFleischmann said:

Slightly off-topic:

 

I've always felt that there should be an equal bonus for receiving a violent action (assuming you can shrug it off).  If the enemy lobs a grenade at you, and you swallow it and burp, that's imPREssive.  If the enemy mooks unload a hundred rounds of machine gun fire at you, and you're reduced to an unidentifiable bloody mess on the floor, and then the next phase you regenerate, and your parts fuse back together and you stand up and smile - that's imPREssive.  These should also be worth bonuses to a PRE Attack.

Agreed.

However, I think that familiarity breeds contempt: if you are used to seeing someone bounce tank shells off their chest or crush a medium size family car to a 1m cube by main strength, you will be less impressed that if you are seeing it for the first time.  You'll be less impressed if you can do that, or something similar, yourself.

Duke makes the point that is what differing levels of PRE are for, and I can see that, but, at the same time can see a character that would be seriously swayed by, say, Unearthly Beauty, being largely unmoved by Unholy Violence.  I can see a Normal and a Super both jumping at a sudden noise in a haunted house.  

To me, you are only going to be MORE imPREssed (to borrow your witty typesetting) by a violent action if it is actually a threat to you.  I mean, a Normal decides to PRE attack a Maelstrom (from the rule book) as a complete Hail Mary.  They snap off a chair leg, use it to smash a computer monitor and roar defiance.  It is a violent action, but is it really going to add 2 dice to their PRE attack against Maelstrom?  I'm thinking not.  Maelstrom has 15 PRE, so the extra dice could make a big difference, but the only way that PRE attack is actually going to slow him down is if he has to catch his breath from laughing too much.

6 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I really like the thoughts you've got, but I would like to point out that Move Through _may_ be divided because it isn't designed with the consideration of a sudden and instantaneous stop at the end.  I don't know either way, but it's something to ponder. 

 

Further, we can realistically apply "hit location: everything" to the damage, as the isn't going to be any part of you that misses the ground at terminal velocity. 

 

Actually, apply hit location: head all by itself would get some extremely lethal results even if you built it along the lines of Move Through. 

 

To be fair, though, I just dropped out of a thread where I was told that the rules were not intended to simulate realism, which makes a rough eighty percent of these conversations meaningless. 

If you do a move through and no KB then you take the full damage that the move through would have done, so I figured that was like hitting a planet.  It is all a bit complicated: you can work out the momentum of a falling object easily but the force that is applied in stopping it *almost* instantaneously is harder to guestimate and isn't necessarily that useful as it is hard to compare that to, say the force a super strength punch generates.

Agreed - hit locations (and bleeding) make damage far more deadly.  The NND Does Body thing is an attempt to unify the worlds of normals and superheroes: 30d6 (or 27d6) sounds far too high compared to other sources of damage, but it needs to by high (if it is Normal damage) to scare superpowered characters.  It is so high though that even a maxed-out human could never realistically survive (and a few have).

In comics, though, some characters can jump off skyscrapers with little ill effect, of fall from orbit without dying.  Others are in genuine fear of dying.  There are very few characters who are not specifically (and expensively) built to withstand falls that could take 30d6 normal and not be unconscious or at least stunned.  Even most Brick characters will take Body from that.

Now whilst I agree that Hero is not a physics simulation, it is just lazy to say it is not intended to simulate realism: it clearly is, at least to some extent.  I agree that gameplay has to take precedence over simulation, but there's no reason to avoid simulation where it can be efficiently integrated.  There are huge advantages to simulating realism, not least that it accords with people's intuitions and expectations.  I appreciate that we are often playing superheroes: I get that  but there is no need to make the level of abstraction arbitrary or greater than it need be.

So, accepting that Hero is not intended to simulate realism but IS intended, presumably, to simulate the sort of things you see in the comics, why don't the falling rules do that?  Rhetorical

This is not meant to be a simulation as such, just getting a bit closer to a shared reality.  I mean, if you had 30 points in Shrinking you should probably never take falling damage, right?  Something that weighs 4 grams could probably survive a terminal velocity fall easily.  I'm not going there.  Not yet

On 1/15/2020 at 6:03 PM, Chris Goodwin said:

It's sad because it's true.  

 

It's funny because it's true.

Sad = True

AND

Funny = True

SO

It's funny because it is sad.

It's sad because it is funny.

Also I have a real munchkin build for macaroni cheese....

On 1/28/2020 at 2:41 AM, Spence said:

I simply don't get the entire point. 

Right now I play far more games by Chaosium and Modiphious than anything else and they are all roll low.

I've yet to meet anyone IRL that found roll low harder than roll high. They are just die rolls with a target number.

Don't know Modiphious, but Chaosium is % chance to hit, IIRC.

I think that people understand percentages and if you have a 45% chance they instinctively know that is 1 to 45: above that is bad.  Also Chaosium doesn't (or didn't) have an equivalent of DCV.

Psychologically, I think Hero is different.  If you work out in advance what your hit chance is and call for a roll of 13 or less, that is fine, everyone knows where they stand, but the way the system actually applies hit rolls in combat is, frankly, weird.  It is not intuitive to add 11 to your OCV then subtract your 3d6 roll to determine what DCV you can hit.  It is easier and more intuitive to just say "Difference in CVs added to 11 and roll under that", but that tells the player what the target DCV is.  I mean the player might well work that out after a few hits and misses anyway, but the rules as written don't feel intuitively like the right way to do it.  To me.  YMMV.

Hmm.  Always wondered about the 'violent' action bonus: a minion might think melting a bus with an energy blast is terrifying, a super villain might just think it is a challenge.

How about this:

Make an attack but do not actually apply damage.  No need to roll to hit.  For every 10 points of stun (or part thereof) and 1 point of Body that WOULD have got through defences, you get +1d6 on your PRE attack.  If NO damage would have got through defences, the target is unimpressed and you take a -2d6 penalty on the PRE attack.

That sort of addresses another issue I have with PRE attacks: there take no time and there really is no downside to using them.  This way you have to waste an attack, in effect.  Well, not waste exactly, but certainly forfeit causing actual damage.

It also allows you to apply different bonuses to different opponents with the same action. 

So…walking the dogs and I got to think about a couple of things.

First off, never been entirely happy with the falling rules.  Straight off the bat, 30d6 seems like WAY too much damage for a terminal velocity fall.  That’s the equivalent of taking a punch from someone with 150 Strength who can lift 26 million tons.  I know, right?  WAAY too much.

Anyway, makes no sense.  Terminal velocity is about 120mph unless you are in a deliberate dive, which is 53 or 54 metres per second.  Call it 54 because 53 is prime.  That should mean that you do 27d6, using the same calculation as in the book.  OK that is not far off, but WHY are we just dividing falling velocity by 2?

A more realistic calculation would have it divided by 6, because Move Through, so 9d6 plus something for Strength – you are not going to deliberately add your strength to falling damage but mass will do: 100kg is like 10STR or +2d6, so about 11 dice.  That is still the equivalent of getting punched by someone who can lift over 50 tons.

Completely honest, that does seem a scooch low, but it would kill pretty much any normal human, certainly if reality is set to gritty.  Not all of them though.  8PD and some armour: you’d probably be out cold but otherwise uninjured.  That is unrealistic.

Also the falling rules are plain wrong, in the calculation of height vs velocity.  Actually if you fall 5m then you are falling for about a second and reach nearly 10m/s on impact.  The table also shows you reaching terminal velocity at 210m, which is actually less than half of the actual height you would have to fall to reach terminal velocity.  The reason for this is air resistance, which is probably (PROBABLY?) overcomplicating things, but it is a look-up table anyway (no one actually works out velocity for a 150m fall, right?), so why not get it more accurate?  Like this:

The damage row is fluffed a bit so you get a different value at each second of falling

The way falling kills you is that it damages lots of bits of you and it tears you up inside because your outer bits stop but your soft insides take longer, which burst them against your outer skin.  Normal defences will be of very limited benefit there.  Maybe falling damage should be NND (Does Body), the defence being LS: Falling (see below).  Maybe falls under a certain height you just take normal damage: let us base it on velocity.  Up to 10m/s is normal damage for anyone.  Anything over that is NND(Does Body). That makes it easy: falls up to 10 (bit high, never mind) are normal damage.  Anything more is nasty.

LS: Falling – for each point you spend you add 10m/s to the falling velocity you treat as normal only damage.  So for 1 point, you treat damage from falls up to 20m/s as normal and for 5 points you can treat falls at up to 60m/s as doing normal damage only.  It provides no defence but does mean, as you get to apply normal defences,  many superheroes will never normally take Body damage from a fall on Earth no matter how high, even with an uncontrolled descent.

So:

1.       A fall under 5m does no damage.

2.       For other falls, check the distance and read off the fall time and damage.

3.       If you can make a DEX roll, you can reduce your final velocity by the vertical distance you can combat leap: work out final velocity from fall height, subtract vertical leap, then treat that as your final velocity.  Characters who have not invested in Leaping can only leap up 2m.  That might do a bit of good.  I suppose.

The idea is that falling any great distance is scary and dangerous but quite a few characters will be able to survive or even ignore falling damage easily enough without needing mad high(but limited) defences.

References:

http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/math.html

http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/speedtime.pdf

On 12/9/2019 at 12:39 AM, Duke Bushido said:

I'm with the guy who said "let him just have it" (or words to that effect)...

 

What?  Derek Bentley?

9 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

The cost of normal senses is considered to be the same as the point value one would receive for its loss as a Physical Limitation or Complication.  Thus, the cost for normal sight of 25 points in 5th edition or 35 points in 6th.  

 

Also, the normal senses are considered to fall under the "simulated Sense Groups" rule.  Normal sight is Targeting and (partly) Discriminatory because the Sight Sense Group is Targeting and Discriminatory.  

 

 

...

Hi Chris

True, but I can not get my head round the need (partially) discriminatory: sight has to be an example of something that almost everyone has direct experience of.  It's discriminatory, or 'discriminatory' is written wrong i.e. in a way that people can not easily relate to.  Sorry: that has bugged me since it first happened.  That is an aside from the actual question at hand, but sometimes I need to vent.

Other than in character creation, it is rare for a character to want to round down.  By 'character' I mean anyone with PC in their description, even if that is preceded by a 'N'.

So, if a character with an odd numbered DCV is at half DCV, round up.  If a character with an odd numbered OCV is at half OCV, round up.  Round in favour of the character (PC or NPC) that is applying the modifier.  Attacker or defender, no matter.  PCs do not get a better deal from the rules than NPCs do.

That's my take, anyway.

11 hours ago, Tywyll said:

This is a weird one I've been trying to wrangle for awhile. How would  you build a god's ability to take the soul of their worshipper upon death and put it in an afterlife? I know this would typically just be hand waved, but could it be built? 

A huge killing attack.

On 1/16/2020 at 11:23 AM, Tywyll said:

I'm running FH and I did away with END tracking to help my players learn the system better and play faster (since our sessions are usually only around 3-3.5 hours). Casters have to buy END Reserves, but noncasters don't track END unless there is something extreme (they had to swim underwater for 200'). 

 

This makes the game faster and such, but does remove some interesting build concepts for non-casters. 

 

I was thinking last night and it occurred to me that maybe in place of END, a non-caster could still buy abilities that 'cost END' but instead of END they cost Stun. This way they can 'exert' themselves, and have abilities that require balancing resources, but without needing to track everything else. 

 

Good idea? Bad idea? I don't expect it would come up much, but I'd like to have the option and this seems like a decent way to handle it?

Hmm.  Make spell casters buy 'Susceptibility to using too much magic too quickly' (you define what those terms mean).  Boom.

I can think of some suggestions if you like.  Well, I just did, but I can type them out if you like

On 1/15/2020 at 10:12 PM, dsatow said:

Here's another system I have thought about similar to the damage system (blame Silicon Valley rush hours):

 

Instead of modeling skills after damage, why not treat it like combat.  You stat/3 gives you a SV similar to an OCV.  To make a skill roll, you target a value set by the GM or the opposing SV.  If you make the roll by half, you score a critical success of the skill.

1. While this does eliminate a method of rolling from the game and increase granularity of the stats in a skill, it doesn't really add anything else.
2. It offers little advantages over the current system along with changing a system the current players might have problems digesting without sufficient impetus.

Funnily enough the original version of the OP included an analysis of something very like that, but I figured we are already far too good at chasing rabbits down rabbit holes to start with more than one.

Best not get me started on this one as this is already page 10, but you can't really build normal sight with the Enhanced Senses rules straight out of the box, you need a custom modifier because, apparently, 'discriminatory'.

I, well, I'm confused.  Who thought that was a good idea?

Interestingly enough there's an argument to be made that the value of blindness should not be the same as the value of sight because you have other senses and you can buy 'targeting' for 10 points for a single sense.  Also even if you don't you can still perceive a great deal with a PER roll using another sense.

The Complication should be based (arguably) on how often and how much it is a problem rather than a direct cost comparison.  We do not, for example, cost Vulnerability (2xStun) to Fire by the cost of buying 1/2 Damage Resistance to Fire.