Ki-rin

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Thank you for backing me up Hyper-Man.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong "Houston, we have a nomenclature difference." No problem. I'll adopt yours. A Brick is a character whose -role- is being a HTH combat specialist based on a STR and/or CON + BODY -schtick-. A MA is a character whose -role- is being a HTH combat specialist based on a MA + (DEX and/or CON) -schtick-. Bricks are awesomely powerful blunt instruments. MAs are awesomely precise razors.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Definitely a problem w/o an easy answer. As shown by the sheer furor ignited by the simple question. I suspected I had the best answer that was going to be found, but I'm not arrogant enough to think others can't come up with better ideas. So I came here to check the price of the solution I had found and see if someone had a better idea.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong It was responded to. It was rejected because DCs BY THEMSELVES DO NOT CREATE THE EFFECT NEEDED. You seem to like point based examples. I gave one. This perfectly valid and fair character concept costs 1.4x the CPs it should. If the player had wanted to do something where using DCs were all that was needed to keep things fair, I would've used DCs. I certainly did not want to have a F'ing target painted on my back by the more commonly participating members of these forums.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong As you yourself have stated, both Bricks and MA are HTH combat specialists. That -is- their "schtick". If one of them has to spend 1.4x as many CP to be equally good at being a HTH combat specialist, that's A Problem. The irony in many of the "Brick vs MA" debates is that it is often exactly backwards- It's the -Bricks- that tend to be too cost effective. Bricks have an edge compared to any other HTH combat specialist in HERO. How big that edge is depends on which character concepts you are comparing and what circumstances you are comparing effect for effect. Usually it can be ignored or lived with. But when a player comes to me with a good, well thought out, and should be fair character concept that just happens not to fit cleanly into the stereotypes HERO is biased towards, part of my job as GM is to see they don't get F'd. That's =more= important IMHO than even protecting the game from mini-maxing. IMNSHO, a GM's primary responsibilty is to make sure everyone can have fun in a fair way.

Re: What CV's (OCV & DCV) model in Heroic settings BNakagawa makes goods points. Here's an expansion on them. Below is the 3d6 curve. 03.....1........1 04.....3........4 05.....6......10 06....10.....20 07....15.....35....-4 08....21.....56....-3 09....25.....81....-2 10....27...108....-1 11....27...135.....0 12....25...160....+1 13....21...181....+2 14....15...196....+3 15....10...206....+4 16.....6....212 17.....3....215 18.....1....216 As you can see from the above, If someone is at -4 To Hit, they will hit 35/216. Less than 1/6. At -4 or worse, To Hit chances are so low that you are mostly wasting your time rolling the dice. If someone is at +4 To Hit, they will hit 206/216. More than 19/20. At +4 or better, To Hit chances are so high that again you are mostly wasting your time rolling the dice. The same effect occurs with stat rolls and skill rolls. Just about everything interesting die roll wise in HERO happens in the -4 <= chance <= +4 region. Thus HERO tends to encourage character concepts that get you into that range overall with things like CV that affect major portions of what a character can do and use levels as possible "icing" of +1 or +2. +4 levels in HERO is a -huge-skill level modifier.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Until 6E, the STR pump was considered fair. In addition changing things so this character concept comes closer to matching the efficiency of the STR pump has far fewer ripples than changing the far greater number of characters based on the STR pump. HERO Games gets to cause major trouble like that. Not me.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

Re: Well, we haven't talked about Killing Attacks in a while... "D'oh!" No wonder it sounded so reasonable.:o *Ki-rin realizes just how forgetful he is getting as he gets older* Thanks Ghost_Angel. ...and I agree that this is much better than any STUN Lottery.

Re: Well, we haven't talked about Killing Attacks in a while... I've been doing some experimental builds based on KD doing 3x STUN Multiplier and a possible new Ad/DisAd of "Change STUN Multiplier" which is -1/4 for each -1 down to a minimum of 1x STUN Multiplier and +1/4 for each +1 up to a maxmium of 5x STUN Multiplier. Perliminary results seem reasonable so far. What do others think?

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Agreed. Nothing I've said violates any of this. I am reasoning from effect. I am not allowing NNDs that do BODY in their normal operation. I am not doing the players any favors. It is in fact a Bad Thing if an NND is Too Big and therefore risks doing BODY. It's certainly what I'm focusing on in a sub thread on MAM's and their damage. I've already apologized for allowing this subthread to inappropriately widen in scope beyond that.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong STR RAW gives you certain benefits. Prior to 6E, it was in fact one of the most point effective purchases in the game due to the "STR and CON pump" that made building Bricks so efficient over the years. STR that does not allow you to actually -be- strong is obviously STR that is Limited. My question at the start of this thread was how large or small should that Limitation be. The (-1/4) that came back was in line with my original suspicions for 5ER or earlier, but I wanted some other opinions. I can't discuss 6E STR responsibly yet because I do not have 6E yet. Everything else that has been discussed in this thread has been OT. Interesting stuff, but OT. I'd be well within my rights and the rules of civility to simply refuse to discuss the OT stuff. But I'm trying to be nice. Some folks are doing their best to make me sorry I ever asked their opinion. ...and some folks are doing their best to make me sorry I ever came on this board.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Guys, those examples are TWO powers Linked to work together simultaneously. They are not ONE power that uses multiple types of damage dice simultaneously. And for combat maneuvers, which is what all MA attacks are, I'm even more sure there is a specific prohibition against a single maneuver using more than one kind of damage dice simultaneously. ..and since the whole point of this sub-thread is MA, I apologize for inappropriately broadening it's scope beyond that. Let's stop talking about powers in general and stay focused on MA please?

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong ...and I quote "No Normal Attacks are STUN only; they can do BODY only if the character also buys the Does BODY Advantage; which requires the GM's permission" 5ER p265 description of NND. A NNDA that routinely does BODY is a bigger deal than a Stop! power. That's extra-legal enough for me. I know I've seen the prohibition against building an effect with more than one kind of damage dice. I'll try to find it. In the meantime I invite you and everyone else who jumped on this point to find me a single official HERO Games published source with an attack in it that uses more than one kind of damage dice simultaneously. Just one.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Every RPG is a reality simulator... The quoted prinicple is a very inaccurate over generalization of a complex problem. MA have always been a complex and imperfect part of HERO. For many years, the most point effective way to build a combat specialist in HERO was to to build a Brick. Then things changed so that building Bricks was merely the most point effective to build a HTH combat specialist. Then people started tweaking the rule kit to allow MA as a different way to build equally point effective HTH combat specialists. The pendulum swung too far at one point (Paek-Tu MA in Aaron Allston's _Strike Force_ which he himself said, in the original _Ninja Hero_ IIRC, was found to be game imbalancing upon further play test.) and MA sort of got "frozen" at a certain point of effectiveness and, far more importantly in my PoV, overall approach. Simulating MA well in HERO is complex enough given that the assumed reality of the base damage system is 4 color comics. It gets worse when attempting to merge them in a game balanced way into a reality that includes beings who can lift jumbo jets and throw tanks. But the fundamental principle must be that if a Brick and a MA both spend the same amount of CP on being good at HTH combat, they should be equally effective. DIFFERENT, most certainly. But equally effective.

Re: Normal Human 1= Given origin stories that change everything from children to old folks into powerhouses with stats "beyond the ken of men" of course there's no hard cap on stats. I never said there was. 2= At some point, people go from being impressed or awed by a person's stats ("Damn! that person is !") to looking at what a character can do and deciding that what they are seeing simply is not human ("OMG! are among us! Please don't ") or they start worshipping them or ... It's a continuum. Not a step function. 1000 years ago, a man who could lift a motorcycle's worth of weight over his head, let alone -throw- it after doing so, would have been considered inhuman. Now a significant portion of the population regularly trains to be strong enough to accomplish similar feats. Evolution + better living conditions + better training methods have changed the upper limits of what we consider peak human performance. (There was a time when the 10 sec hundred yard dash and the 4 minute mile were both considered impossible.) 3= The "past some point it costs 2x to improve a stat" models this reality better than hard caps would.

Re: Normal Human

Re: Normal Human Yep, and I've been pointing out the flaw in that interpretation quite vigorously during my entire participation in this thread. Every game mechanic or group of mechanics in HERO that results in a game effect has SFX. Every. Single. One. If you are playing or GMing HERO properly, ONE MUST SIMULATE AS BEST AS POSSIBLE THE SFX OF AN EFFECT IN BOTH COSTS AND PLAY In fact many of the ways munchkins try to manipulate the system basically boil down to violating this meta principle. If you've bought a stat or group of stats with NCM or CM on them, there is a SFX involved. And that SFX must and should be simulated as best we need to in play if we want to keep things fair and fun.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Ah, but you see the problem is that HERO does not offer an easy way to simulate what I've been talking about. NNDAs are supposed to simulate an attack that can -never- do BODY. Never ever. Problem is that both myself and some of my players have too much ITRW experience with some of the IRL attacks these NNDAs are supposed to simulate. We -know- that one of the IRL issues with all of the attacks I'm describing is the DisAd that if you put too much power into them they can, will, and do cripple or kill. One of the meta rules of HERO is that an attack can never be bought with more than one type of damage. An attack can do ND, or KD, or NND, but ONE CAN NEVER BUILD AN ATTACK THAT USES MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF DAMAGE DICE IN HERO SYSTEM. So if I want to simulate an effect with enough accuracy to overcome the lack of said that sometimes bothers the heck out of both me and others in our group, I need to find a way to simulate this reality that is NOT a= "building an attack that does more than one type of damage" and b= the same thing all the time just bigger or smaller. The critical facts here are that IRL, 1= under certain circumstances these effects transition from what is best modeled by one kind of HERO damage to something that is best modeled by a different kind of HERO damage; and 2= that it is always a Bad Thing if it happens. So I've done the best I can to simulate these attacks realistically while staying as close as I could to the RAW and the meta rules of HERO. HERO started off simulating the unrealistic 4 color comics where people simply do not die except for purposes of dramatic license. That bias is so deeply embedded in the system that some RW effects are nigh unto impossible to model well within HERO w/o tweaking the system toolkit.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Only if you think "agreement" means "100% black and white with no shades of grey or exceptions ever". Things are sometimes not that simple. NND MA is one of them. The game mechanics we have to simulate them break down in some fairly common contexts in a supers game. Fixing them so they retain logical consistency with what we as players would expect given ITRW experience and knowledge requires playing with the toolkit we've been given to some extent.

Re: Normal Human NCM is a possible bonus to be given to heroic characters competing against superheros in a superheroic campaign. It's a DisAd bonus for those worlds. It can also be used as a (potentially very ham handed) game balance tool for heroic campaigns. But that is a different topic than what we are presently discussing. Heroic characters in supers campaigns do not need to take NCM. This means that they do not want these SFX issues to come up in play in such a manner as to affect how they are played. OTOH, Heroic characters who -do- take NCM in a supers campaign are getting extra points up front for character design in exchange for a= restrictions on how they can develop in the future b= having the implications of their "merely mortal" SFX come up in game play. So, 1= non characters are not entitled to NCM (so no NCM inanimate or nonsentient objects.) 2= Normals and DNPCs might be depending on context. 3= NPC's and PC's might be depending on character concept and GM or player choice.

Re: Normal Human Hugh, I do not give -0 Limitations. Those are essentially SFX. At this point, it is clear we are not going to agree about the SFX implications of NCM. Not a problem. We will just have to agree to disagree. The rest of your more recent post has been responded to in different posts by me to others.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong On that we agree. If you think I am advocating "Pick the right SFX and get a package of free bonuses", you and I are having a serious misunderstanding. If anything I'm =more= draconian than the RAW. 100% agree with first sentence. However, sometimes the world is not that simple. Sometimes things happen that invalidate the model we are working from. When that happens, the situation needs to be cleaned up somehow. My choice is to use the RAW as far as I can until the results drift too far from what would be logically consistent given what we know ITRW. Then I patch things as best as I can to keep the game world logically consistent.