BNakagawa

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? You still haven't addressed the issue that I don't think Defender is a very good approximation of a balanced character, much less a close approximation of the average powered armor character in play. I don't know why you'd name a character with such lousy defenses "Defender" anyway. He's a lot like a BattleCruiser...all the speed and offense of a Battleship and none of the staying power. Just ask the Hood. The published characters have lately been characterized as tin-foil tanks. Plenty of offense, and nothing even vaguely resembling defense. Of course, all of the champions except Ironclad will be knocked out by 2 average 12d6 attacks. Does that mean that 80% of all PCs in play will be knocked out by 2 average 12d6 attacks? Three of them will be knocked out by 2 average 11d6 attacks...are 60% of all PCs in play that wimpy? 2 of em have stun numbers in the thirties...does that mean 40% of all PCs in play are that prone to being stunned? I suspect not.

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? Sure, the average damage per shot is only 7.3 but the average damage from those that hit solidly (get past defenses) is over 32 Stun. Odds of a 12d6 EB inflicting 32 stun on a def 40 target is 1 in 2,176,782,336. Again, who's concerned with a power that is optimum for facing turtle armor? not me. Very few of the supervillains I have encountered in 20+ years of playing Champions fall into the def 20 range (assuming a 60 ap campaign) unless they also rely on invisibility, shrinking, desolidification, darkness or something else to augment their defenses. If you're facing somebody who will take 5 shots to drop, they have 4 opportunities to adjust their tactics to deny you the putaway shot. With an attack that could at any moment drop them completely, they have no way of telling when to switch their levels, abort to desolid or dodge. Defeating a competent opponent with an EB requires either a freakishly lucky roll or for them to be willfully ignorant of basic tactics, or to be so narrowly defined that their only rational option is to stand there and trade shots with you until one or the other runs out of stun. That, or they have an AI that would rival the standard scripts being used on computer 'RPG's today...which is to say, a lot of A, not very much I.

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? 10 points more than average is way more when you're trying to stun Defender, whose stun number is 9 higher than the average on 12 d6 normal...

Re: Limits on Killing attacks?

Re: Effective Concepts Your GM WON'T Allow.

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? You use the best tool for the job. I can count on one hand the number of PCs I've seen whose ONLY 60 active point attack option was a 4d6 ka. The superhero genre is strongly weighted to the high end of the spectrum. Nobody really cares how good your PC is at beating up nearly infinite numbers of 0 point unarmed thugs. The game is about your ability to go toe to toe with serious threats, especially the 'master villain' who is designed to take on the whole team. Against such targets, your weapon of choice is the trusty 4d6ka. You have numbers against him so the fact that you may waste one attack in 3 is immaterial. The fact that one time in 3, you will do way more damage than if you threw 12d6 EB is not immaterial. It is why the munchkins in every campaign I've been in end up throwing 4d6 KA as often as possible whenever they think they can get away with it, whenever the situation calls for it.

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? Gameplay results are purely anecdotal evidence. The properties of one random number multiplied by another random number is not. But if you are committed to anchoring your arguments in actual game play experience, my contribution is this: Most of the GMs I have played with use villains with considerably more defenses than the published materials would suggest is average. They are dissatisfied with villains that fold like a cheap suit after one solid hit, be it EB or KA. This makes using EBs in play less attractive than KAs.

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? compare two powers - one will do 1/6th of the target's stun (through defenses) every time you hit. the other has a 5/6 chance of doing nothing and a 1/6 chance of doing all of the target's stun in one go. Which one is better? They both average the same net stun, BTW. Another way of looking at it: if I am being attacked by a person or people using normal attacks that are constantly hitting me for small amounts of damage, then I have the opportunity to move my levels into DCV, dodge, run for it or take hostages when my STUN gets low. If I get drilled in the head for 90 STUN by a KA and koed in one shot, I have NO opportunity to adjust my tactics.

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? This may be so, but he costs 350 points. Which begs the question, should a PC be allowed to take him as a hunted at the 'as powerful' level even though the player may or may not know that he's essentially the Champions equivalent of Glass Joe?

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? True, these characters are very vulnerable to getting their tickets punched by a 4d6 KA. Also true is that I don't think many of these villains are very well constructed. In terms of supporting a superhero game where the action even vaguely resembles the source materials (comic books) these writeups do not deliver the goods. I do not think it is a very good thing where a villain (take Blowtorch for example) is basically one solid shot away from being taken out of the game. 18 def and a Con of 18? Even a bad roll on 12d6 EB stuns him. First one to land a shot sets him up for the inevitable putaway shot. An average roll leaves him with all of 6 stun left. That and he has a DCV of 7. Did they playtest any of these writeups? I'm sure they want to make combats quicker but I don't think the answer is to make villains out of balsa wood and paper mache.

Re: Stun Problem in Fantasy Hero (Double it) It might cause more net stun, it might not. The reason is that the average stun generated is not as important as the average net stun. (that's average stun - average defenses) It's possible for a power that causes more average stun (like an EB, which causes more average stun than an equivalent KA) to be less effective at generating average net stun. (a 3d6 EB will never do any damage vs an 18 def target but a 1d6 ka does some STUN 5/36 of the time) It all depends on the average def of your campaign relative to the average attacks.

Re: Combat!! It makes two point ocv levels too cost effective. It makes low DCV bricks essentially unplayable. It turns being flashed, entangled, tripped, presence attacked (at a high level) or surprised into a death sentence. I don't think this is a good idea.

Re: Effective Concepts Your GM WON'T Allow. Martial arts with ranged attacks. No love for the blasters

Re: Limits on Killing attacks?

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? KAs do more stun after you subtract (significant) defenses. Oh, look -- a dead horse! I set for haymaker!

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? My work here is done. As a point of clarification: My primary goal is to educate people on the hidden effectiveness of the stun lottery. Most PCs have no fear of even a hundred agents armed with 6d6 EB blasters, but cringe if faced with a dozen agents armed with 2d6 KA rifles. Now you know why.

Re: STUN Reduction buy more stun.

Re: Entangle, Desolidification, and the Quest for Truth

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? This is true when you fight opponents with 0 def. It is less true when you fight opponents with higher defenses. The higher the defenses, the less true it becomes. A 12d6 EB will never do any damage whatsoever against a target with 72 defenses, but a 4d6 KA will sometimes do some damage...in fact, it might do as much as 48 points. Also, in Champions, a typical EB has a low, bordering on laughably low chance of generating a stun result on a typical opponent. An equivalent number of active points of KA will typically stun the same target one shot in 3 or 4.

Re: Funny Sided Dice You never want to do damage as a modifier because, while it may be perfectly balanced as long as they are the only modifier, as soon as you add stuff like armor piercing, autofire or NND, everything goes quickly to hell in a handbasket.

Re: Find Weakness Actually, a 10- is 50%. Also, the difference between them (besides a slight reduction in cost) is rated in GM's willingness to allow this thing into their game.

Re: Balance Rating I don't particularly care for any rating system that equates a damage class with a number, and especially when that number is equivalent to a SPD point or an OCV level. The fundamental reason is that the first 6-8 DC a character throws just don't matter. The average combatant has enough defenses to ignore anything below that threshhold. 12 SPD, 8d6 vs 30/30 defenses will leak some damage through on a good roll, but it's doubtfull whether or not you'd ever do enough to matter. On the other hand, if you're throwing 16d6 4 times a turn against the same 30/30 defenses, you're stunning people all the time and a good roll equals a one shot KO. If I'm getting peppered by a pesky gnat that attacks every segment and does no damage on an average roll, I have plenty of time to adjust my tactics to avoid getting knocked out. If I get stunned on the first attack, I had better have more SPD than you or I won't even have an opportunity to abort to anything before your next attack wipes me out. It's been true ever since The Fantasy Trip (first game I encountered where armor subtracted from incoming damage) attacking twice for N damage is not as good as attacking once for 2N damage. Assuming you attack targets that have defenses >0, that is. I rarely find my PCs attacking things with 0 defenses. $0.02

Re: Balance Rating and a teammate of Furious George...

Re: Balance Rating True, and I never said I thought of it, I only said that it was the only scheme that I had any faith in.

Re: Balance Rating There is one and only one rating system that holds any water in my book. All you have to do is figure out what the vanilla combatant looks like in your campaign. 12 d6 EB, 10 OCV, 10 DCV, 5 SPD, 30 PD, 30 ED, 40 STUN. is a good starting place for the average game. Then take your PC and throw attacks until the 'vanilla gorilla' gets knocked out. Count the segments. Then, let the vanilla gorilla beat on your PC until the pc gets knocked out. Count the segments. This rating scheme takes into account your OCV, DCV, levels, damage clases, SPD, defenses and stun. It also handles damage reduction which almost nobody's rating schemes take into account...Find weakness...same deal. And you can scale the 'vanilla gorilla' to handle just about any genre or power level imaginable. The advantage to this scheme is that it does not attach a fixed value on one damage class, or one level or one pip of stun or one speed point. It values overall effectiveness in delivering damage to an average target and surviving the return fire from an average opponent.