GAZZA

Re: Theory Discussion: Defense Alternative Off hand, the only system I've played that simulates this would be Amber. And maybe not even that. Actually, I tell a lie - I think the original Marvel Superheroes had a non-random damage mechanic, so that would count as well. Assume a normal human has say 8 STR, then anything with a DEF of less than 5 he might be able to damage one day, and not the next (maximum BODY damage he can roll is 5). Any system that uses a randomiser for damage (be it d20, GURPS, Hero, RQ, or whatever) will show some degree of unpredictable results. Obviously rolling the defence and the damage increases the randomness, but it's a difference of degree rather than kind, and there's already plenty of common ways to do this in Hero (I already mentioned the Absorption-as-defence trick, but there's also any defences with an Activation Roll or Ablative, albeit not in quite the same way).

Re: Measurement in HERO A fairly recent phenomenon, though. Napoleon almost conquered the world, after all. Much like the Italians - laughable in war now, but they do have the Roman Empire in their history. And in any case - the US has its own share of problems in war, does it not?

Re: Theory Discussion: Defense Alternative I think this is an artefact of HERO having descended from Champions. But HERO works much better for lower level ("heroic" rather than "superheroic") games than (say) GURPS does for higher level games - hit locations and low resistant defences can make HERO acceptably lethal if that's truer to the genre.

Re: Points Equality I'm not man enough to suck that hard.

Re: Points Equality Of course you are correct. I suck. But not as much as the prequels.

Re: Theory Discussion: Defense Alternative It's interesting that Rolemaster was brought up as the "combined attack and damage" example, when in fact DC Heroes is (IMHO) a much better example of the same principle (both because - again, IMHO - it's a superior system to Rolemaster, and also because I would have thought more Champions players were familiar with it). In fact I recall someone did a Champions conversion back in 4th ed days that more or less imported the combined table idea from DCH.

Re: Who plays: Jack of all trades, master of none

Re: New Mechanic: Meta Defense I think perhaps either I'm misunderstanding this proposal, or some others are. As far as I am aware, it's not "6 points for total immunity", it's "6 points per point of defence against anything of this special effect" (ie the 6 points buys you, effectively, 1 point of PD, 1 point of ED, 1 point of Flash Defence, 1 point of Power Defence, and so on - but only against the special effect mentioned). (And "6" in the previous paragraph is used purely as a point of reference).

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack Hmm, yes, good point. Still, to properly parallel Damage Resistance, it wouldn't be an adder, but rather a separate power that made 2DCs "Killing" for every 5 points... although at that point we're into semantics.

Re: Theory Discussion: Defense Alternative It's interesting the way these threads work out; on one side of the board, we have various proposals to reduce the randomness of an attack (cf the Killing Attack mechanics), and on this side we have a proposal to increase the randomness of defences. I can't imagine it would cause anything to implode; you already have something similar in several published characters (with defences "only up to amount rolled on Absorption").

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack Okey dokey, -1/2 it is. I don't really have time to play test the idea, but here's what I can do: I'll work up some numbers for some typical weapons from 5ER, and check it out against some of their sample characters, and see what happens. Should be able to post some results by the end of the week. Like I say - it's certainly an interesting and quite possibly workable idea - the fact that I foresee some problems doesn't make those problems real (I'm not psychic anymore than anyone else is).

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack It could work. However, I foresee a few problems - mainly, what level of limitation to set it? Many supers buy the majority of their defences as resistant (often via Armour or Force Field), so it would be very little limitation (-1/4 might be too high; it might work out no more than -0 similar to STUN only). On the other appendage, heroic level games often have half or more of their defences as non-resistant, so it's about half as effective as Armour Piercing there; might be good for as much as -1/2 or higher. I guess I'm just a little suspicious of a core rule that would have to vary by genre. Rules that vary by genre aren't bad in and of themselves (for example, "works vs EGO, not BODY" for Transform or some Entangles is usually an advantage in a supers game, but might be a limitation in a mystic oriented game), but they tend to be a little obscure. Killing Attacks don't really fall into that category, IMHO.

Re: Measurement in HERO My understanding is that they built you a famous statue and helped you kick out the Brits. You might have thought a little gratitude was in order.

Re: Who plays: Jack of all trades, master of none

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack Since a "scaling adder" seems to be a unique mechanic not used anywhere else, I'm curious as to why you don't just propose it as a +1/2 advantage (which costs the same)? In any case this still suffers from the same "problem" - it lowers the BODY of a Killing Attack relative to a Normal Attack.

Re: Measurement in HERO It's 25.4, actually. For what it's worth, because the battlemats they sell over here are made in the same place yours are, I have both a hex and a square map of the appropriate scale. But I honestly don't have a tape measure with inches on it. Anyway, what's with you Yanks? You threw out everything else that was British when you won your independence - driving on the left, the letter "u" in lots of words, the spelling of words ending in "re" (or "er" for you lot - "center", "theater", and so on) - but you kept the silly measurement system. Talk about inappropriate priorities!

Re: Points Equality

Re: New Mechanic: Meta Defense +2? How are you getting that? AVLD is only +1 1/2 at most. Mistyped, or are you using a variant that I'm unaware of (I only have 5ER; if there's something in one of the ultimate books you're referring to, can you point me to it? I've been deciding which order to buy them in, and whether or not the ones that duplicate 4th ed titles are worth getting).

Re: New Adder: Killing Attack I'm of two minds. If you restrict yourself to "normal" AP ranges (say about 75 active points maximum in an attack), then you're only looking at a difference of 2 BODY and 7 STUN, and it's in favour of the attack without the adder; you'd need to have resistant defences of less than about 13 or so to have the advantage go to the Killing Attack. On the other hand you could crank up the AP to say about 150. At that point you're comparing a 28d6 Killing Attack against a 30d6 Normal Attack. But I'd imagine at that sort of rarified "beyond Galactic Champions" power level, most defences are going to be resistant and quite possibly Hardened as well, since defences are comparatively cheap. To be honest I'm not convinced that a mechanic that lowers the average BODY for Killing Attacks is "correct", as the BODY of Killing Attacks is not what is currently "wrong" with them.

Re: Who plays: Jack of all trades, master of none Most games I run/play in have 3-4 players, so there's a lot of archetypes to choose from before having to take 2nd place at everything. There's a lot of flexibility in HERO; short of being built on a lot less points than your fellow players, you're probably going to be the best at something.

Re: Measurement in HERO Just a side note - as previously mentioned, I'm an Aussie. I doubt it would come as a shock to discover that our tape measures actually don't have inches on them...

Here's a weird question that has always bugged me: why is HERO schizophrenic with regarding to measurements? All of the "in game" measurements are in both imperial (ie "1 inch...") and metric (ie "... equals 2 metres"). What's that all about? Being an Aussie, I obviously am more familiar with metric (although who am I kidding - I've been gaming for over 20 years, and HERO is one of vanishingly few systems that use metric at all), but I wouldn't really care that much if it was consistent. If the system were brand new I'd speculate that it was because "battlemaps" typically have 1 inch hexes or squares, but I don't believe that they were around way back when Champions 1st was released. Anybody know?

Re: New Mechanic: Killing Attack It's been suggested that lowering the amount of STUN KAs do on average wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, though, and your suggestion is inarguably less complex than mine.

Re: New Mechanic: Meta Defense AmadanNaBriona/Christopher's idea extends it to other kinds of defence as well, though. It's for character ideas like the following: let's say you want to create Light Dude, master of the electromagnetic spectrum. You've already worked out his attacks (ho hum), standard defences (booorrrriiinnng!), thrown in a movement power (are we there yet?) and given him some decent stats (right, wake me when it gets interesting...) But you want to reflect the idea that Light Dude is essentially invulnerable to light based attacks - he can manipulate the EM spectrum on a near-omniscient level so that it doesn't harm him. Traditionally, you buy 75% Resistant Energy Damage Reduction with the limitation "only vs light based attacks" and you're done. And frankly, if that works for you, great. But the thing is, you're not really done. Flashes will still affect you. So you buy some flash defence with the same limitation. What if someone comes up with some sort of light based hypnotic strobing effect, and the cunning fiend defined it as Mind Control? Well, now you're going to need some Mental Defence as well. Or perhaps they induce epileptic fits (defined as DEX drain)? Bummer, that's Power Defence too. Of course you can buy all this individually - and frankly, you might well be able to convince your GM that your Damage Reduction would apply to all these effects as well. On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice to have a defence power that was perfectly applicable to this sort of situation?

Re: New Mechanic: Killing Attack