GAZZA

Re: New Mechanic: Killing Attack My campaign's version is similar: I count a 1-5 as 1 BODY and a 6 as 2 BODY, while the STUN is calculated with any 6 counting as if it was a 4. That way the averages are very close to the "standard" Killing Attack mechanics. You have to give some thought to a few things when you tinker with this: What does Penetrating do? For my version, after some thought, I decided that the 6's count for BODY for Penetrating attacks, so every 6 you roll will do at least 2 BODY (except against Hardened defences, of course). On average, again, this works out the same as a standard KA, and it's fairly easy to remember. What does Increased STUN Multiplier do? I ruled that it does what it intuitively suggests - all of the dice count as if 1 higher for STUN purposes (so a 1-5 counts as 2-6 STUN, and a 6 counts as 5 instead of 4, and so forth for higher levels of the advantage). Again, this works out fairly close to the averages for "real" KAs. STUN lotto is bad, m'kay? I was shooting for something relatively easy to count, with averages similar to the averages for "real" KAs, and in my opinion (obviously) I achieved it. But now that you bring it up, I think your way of counting STUN is better than mine, so I will probably adopt it.

Re: Points Equality Man, if that's you ranting, I can only imagine what a polite argument sounds like. (snippity snip!) (and a snippity snippity snip!) Unfortunately this is not as uncommon as it should be. You could explain it historically (as RPGs originally descended from wargames, and were mostly about fighting - even such "ahead of their time" games as RuneQuest were not immune to this) or currently (a certain "Cloisters and Cinder-makers" game still awards XP primarily based on combat - perhaps you've heard of it? ). Heck, nobody is saying that you should avoid combat (especially not in Champions, and probably not in most other HERO genres). But if it's all about combat, you might as well be playing Munchkin or Talisman or something - less effort for the GM, and (in moderation) can still be fun. You have my deepest sympathy, and if you ever find yourself in Perth Western Australia you're welcome to join my group.

Re: Points Equality I would imagine that the sort of person who wants to play a character based on a fictional source (whether that be Xander or Galactus) does so from the desire to play someone that they think is "cool". So if you have a person in your group who thinks Xander is cool, and prefers X to Buffy or Giles, then you're not likely to have any real arguments about power levels. I'm of two minds about this. I want to say that I personally don't really see the appeal of playing "someone else's character", but if I'm being realistic, I probably create characters that merge "cool" abilities from various sources (even if it's at an unconscious level), so I don't really think I'm that much more original than the guy who wants to play Wolverine. So while I personally don't get the appeal of Xander, it clearly does exist (given how quickly Wesley was written out of Buffy, I think Joss has a pretty good handle on fan opinion - and the Wesley in Angel was barely recognisable as the same character). I still think Firefly avoids most of these issues though - I can find a reason to play any of those guys.

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic Not that I'm weighing in with support for 100% DR, by any means, but every successive level of DR gives you the exact same benefit: it knocks of 25% of the damage you would otherwise take. For example: you are attacked with something that does 40 STUN after defences. 0% DR, you take 40 STUN 25% DR, you take 30 STUN (10 less than 0%) 50% DR, you take 20 STUN (10 less than 25%) 75% DR, you take 10 STUN (10 less than 50%) Whether that goes from 0% to 25% or 75% to 100% is exactly the same relative result - you take 10 less STUN - so there is a fairly compelling argument that the difference in cost between 25% and 0% should be the same as that between 100% and 75%. After all, the difference in cost between 50 DEF and 40 DEF is the same as that between 10 DEF and 0 DEF.

Re: New Power: Scalable Immunity Mm. It looks like we've been talking at cross purposes here. Basically, my position is this: I think the idea of a "sfx based defence" is an excellent one. I think it would be cool to buy (say) "electromagnetic defence" and have it apply as ED, Flash Defence, Power Defence, or even Mental Defence (if appropriate) against any electromagnetic attack. The cost would obviously be based on how common the attack was. What I don't see is the need to make such a defence apply against the dice of an attack, when it could just reduce the result. I'm not saying that I don't see a use for the idea - just that I think the proposed implementation of that idea is (only IMHO) inferior to just borrowing the current mechanic for how defences apply against damage. So yes, we could certainly use a "defend against all attacks of a given special effect" defence power; but no, I don't think it needs to work in the fashion you describe. I see now that it seemed as if I was saying that it's "easier" just to buy the appropriate PD, ED, Flash Def, Power Def, and/or Mental Def with an appropriate limitation; that wasn't my intention. (Of course you can do it that way, but it seems like a useful enough idea to warrant a new power).

Re: Points Equality Anyway, screw Buffy. You want to talk good Joss stuff, let's talk Firefly.

Re: Points Equality Buffy is not really any different from something like DCs Justice League, Marvel's Avengers, or virtually any other superteam. Let an author dictate what will happen, and Captain America won't always be overshadowed by Thor; hand them over to individual players and change the medium to a roleplaying game and there's no guarantee that Batman still gets to have fun in a group containing Supes. But there's no guarantee that he doesn't, either. Depends very much on the group. Yes, if player A has a low point total and player B has a higher total, then it is possible for player B to buy "everything player A can do, only better". If you have that player B in your group, then this idea is not for you.

Re: New Power: Scalable Immunity Given that most characters tend to have PD and ED fairly close or equal to each other, and that bases and vehicles do just fine with a single characteristic for both, I'd go as far as to say that even PD and ED are not that tied to sfx. A 6th edition that merged the two into DEF (base value [sTR + CON] / 10) wouldn't exactly shock me; if you really want someone who is more resistant to energy than physical, you can obviously get it with limitations the same way ED "only vs fire" (eg) is done now. I'm not sure what you're getting at. Your suggestion is basically to have an immunity that applies on a sfx basis (correct me if I'm wrong). Since the suggestion is that X points of defence removes X dice, we're clearly talking about an attack power. I'm not really seeing why you wouldn't just use the standard defence mechanic to implement this idea. Now, you could argue that all defences should be changed to this sort of mechanic - so instead of 5 points of PD blocking 5 points of STUN/BODY from a physical attack, it instead reduced any physical attack by 1 die. There's nothing clearly wrong with that approach, and it is the logical extension of your idea. I'm merely arguing that defences should protect in a uniform fashion - whether the current "reduce the result of the attack total" or your suggested "reduce the dice in the attack", it should be consistent unless there's something that each can do that the other clearly cannot. And in the interest of "backwards compatibility", I obviously favour the current method, but YMMV. That wasn't my impression. Indeed, someone specifically asked if they could copy that suggestion to the Ultimate Energy Projector, IIRC. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to silence you. I just personally don't see the need for a new mechanic here - your idea can be expressed within the limits of the existing mechanics. My bad, I see above when you say "regardless of advantages" you intend only to suggest that advantages do not affect whether or not the defence applies, not that they do not reduce the effect of the defence appropriately. You do have a slight issue here in that it's not clear that all advantages should "count". Many GMs would argue that applying 0 END to a power does not increase the DC of the attack even though it does increase the Active Points. Most would say that Autofire, Armour Piercing, and Penetrating always increase the DC. The more controversial ones are things like Indirect, No Range Penalty, and so on. It's certainly simpler to use a "one size fits all" approach (whether that be ignoring advantages or counting all advantages), but it's questionable whether that's actually appropriate. The more complicated approach is to list some examples of which count and which don't. Like I say, fiddly. No dramas, if that's your thing. It's not that I don't like doing those calculations (and I've played many VPP characters over the years as both player and GM). I don't mind doing any calculations; I have on my machine as I type this several quick scripts I've written to calculate various probabilities for (mostly) Champions related questions (eg "How much average damage does an xd6 attack do against defences of Y? What about if it were a killing attack?" and so on). That said, I'm not a fan of complexity when there is a simpler solution. For example, I observe that most people can more swiftly do addition than subtraction. For that reason, the following house rules exist IMC: Skills are altered to be "high is good". In general you subtract your HERO calculated roll from 21, and now you want to roll that or higher. (EG a familiarity becomes a 13+ roll instead of 8-). Activation rolls and so forth are adjusted the same way. Instead of situational bonuses adding to the number you need to roll less than, you just add them directly to the roll (thus if you have a +2 modifier, you just roll 3d6+2). I add 10 to everyone's DCV. Then when you roll to hit you roll 3d6 and add your OCV, trying to equal or beat the (adjusted) DCV to hit. The probabilities are identical, but it's easier to teach a novice (especially a d20 convert) that "high is always good" (whereas in standard HERO you want to roll high for damage and low for everything else). Having said that I'd never suggest that these should be the standard rules - the way HERO has always done it works fine, and I wouldn't want to alienate everyone that loves the current system. I guess the only reason I'm "moaning" is because I think the idea of sfx based defences is a really good one, and I'd hate to see it drown under the weight of (what appears to me) an unnecessary and complicated mechanic when a perfectly good one already exists.

Re: Defences in 5th edition: Changed Premises Having thought some more on this, I really think these suggested defences are way too low. Here are my reasons, both good and bad: I'm not sure how much "backward compatibility" is valued, but these are (as previously noted) way lower than they were in 4th edition, making most 4th edition Champions characters essentially unusable in a 5th edition campaign without considerable conversion. Agents in a 4th edition campaign would quite possibly have more than the 12 DEF suggested for low powered supers in 5th edition. This is not a show stopper of course, but all else being equal it would be a tie breaker, and in my opinion it's not even close to being "all else equal". A 10d6 attack would not be at all unusual in a low powered Champions game. Average STUN roll is 35. You're looking at characters that are going to be taking over 20 STUN, which has two knock on effects:Most characters are going to have to have high CONs to avoid being Stunned by any attack that hits them. Otherwise, whoever goes first will often will often win the fight, since the other side will never get "unstunned" long enough to fight back. That leads to a "sameness" of character design that is rarely desirable. Most characters are going to have to have high STUN in order to avoid being KOed by one lucky attack (certainly any attack that happens to hit even a x1.5 Vulnerability is going to be almost a surefire knockout blow to a non-brick type). The consequence of both of these is that you now have a character design where points that used to be efficiently spent on DEF are now inefficiently spent on STUN and CON, but with much the same result. Just as well the standard Champions campaign hands out an extra 100 points over 4th edition... [*]The reason that 4th edition made that recommendation was that if your DEF is too low then the only viable defence is not being hit. Now, in a game where most characters have a DEF between 2x and 2.5x the average attack DC, you can build a viable character with lower defences if you compensate with a higher DCV. But if everyone has lower defences, then this is no longer viable - everyone will buy up their DCV, then buy up their OCV to hit the villains that used the same tactic, and then arms race will average out with about the same difference between OCV and DCV that you had before, except that now everyone has to have a high DEX and/or plenty of combat levels to be viable. It just seems an all-around bad idea to me. Does anyone use these recommendations as listed and violently disagree with me? Or do most people not really use them at all? Putting it another way - how much DEF does the average brick have in your Champions games (assuming a 10-12 DC average attack)?

Re: New Power: Scalable Immunity Which really begs the question as to why you want to invent a new "knock off DCs" mechanic rather than just make a defence that applies to all powers of a given special effect (whether it be mechanically against PD/ED/FD/etc). That way, IMHO, you get the (good idea) of a defence against a given special effect regardless of attack, but it's still mechanically the same as other defences. I just think it's too fiddly. If you ignore advantages (as you seem to imply), then an 8d6 AP EB is unfairly discriminated against compared to a straight 12d6; if you don't ignore them, an 8d6 AP Energy Blast would lose 2 dice for every 15 points of your immunity, but how many does it lose for 5 points? However, YMMV.

Re: Defences in 5th edition: Changed Premises Oh, I wasn't suggesting I was following it (I set all the guidelines for my campaign before I'd finished reading 5ER); just wondering why it was done. Sounds as if my suspicions were correct.

Way back in the distant past of 4th edition, there was this cool section on character creation for Champions where they laid out the suggestion for DEF. The reasoning was that most characters should have a DEF somewhere between 2x and 2.5x the maximum DC of attacks; the reasoning was that much more than 2.5 and most attacks will do very little STUN (so everyone goes for AP, NND, and so on) while much less than 2 and most attacks do so much STUN that the only good defence is not being hit (so everyone has a high DCV). In 5th edition this philosophy appears to have been changed significantly. According to 5ER pp28, the "Low Powered" (roughly what 4th ed starting characters were) has about 10DC average but only 12 DEF suggested as the usual level. That means that the average attack is going to do more than 20 STUN if it hits - definitely into the "only good defence is not being hit" area, since at that level most hits will stun most victims. I'm wondering why this change was made? Was it because combats were taking too long or something?

Re: New Power: Scalable Immunity Or alternatively it is slightly worse since you're paying 5 points to remove (on average) only 3.5 points of damage.

Re: Points Equality

Re: Points Equality

Re: Scaleable immunity Actually, I'd argue that most Life Support immunities do one specific thing: they make you immune to appropriate NNDs. That implies that most forms of environmental damage are in fact No Normal Defence attacks, or at the very least have a limitation "not vs someone with appropriate Life Support". Realistically, that's how most Life Support comes into play. NNDs are the big "all or nothing" power for Hero, and Life Support often how you turn the "all" into "nothing".

Re: Points Equality If you decide to pursue that, I'd certainly appreciate letting me know how it goes. A few other pointers: Activation Rolls, Side Effects, and so forth are not appropriate limitations for Master level characters. Master level abilities should be reliable. Activation Rolls are quite appropriate for Novices and Veterans, and Side Effects are very appropriate for Veterans (and Novices to a lesser extent). Requires a Skill roll abilities are OK for all of them, but Master skill rolls should be such that their powers would rarely fail under most circumstances. Things like Skill Levels, Penalty Levels, Combat Skill Levels, and so forth are not appropriate for starting Novices (though gaining such things along the way to Mastery is very appropriate). I would personally recommend that the DC limits for Veterans are about 4 higher than for Novices, and that defences are correspondingly higher as well. Having said that, this is a "Champions" perspective more than a Hero perspective, to some extent - you could quite reasonably play that Veterans simply have more abilities rather than qualitatively better abilities. Novices should probably have a lot of skills at the Familiarity level, and should probably not have any Skill Enhancers. Veterans should have lots of skills, but comparatively low physical (and maybe mental) characteristics, at least as they get older. Nothing too dramatic there.

Re: Points Equality You wither away. The idea is that a Veteran is past his best, and while he starts off better than anyone else (in terms of both depth and breadth), he has to face the fact that he's only going to get slower, weaker, and older while his younger companions are improving. That of course implies that whatever points a Veteran starts with is the maximum points that any PC will ever have. Adjust as you see fit with that in mind.

Re: Making Growth power Inherent Well... the problem is that if you buy Always On Growth it's more expensive than just buying the benefits unless you're really big. Every size doubling of Growth (0 END Persistent Always On) costs 20 points and gives you 15 points of STR, 3 points of BODY, 3 points of STUN, -3" KB, and x2 Reach. 15 points of STR, 3 points of BODY (which gives you the STUN as well), and 3" of KB resistance costs 27 points - 7 points more - but it gives it you 16.5 extra points of figured characteristics not counting the Leaping bonus (which you don't get with Growth, because your mass has increased) and no penalty to DCV or PER rolls against you. However, high levels of Growth (because of that x2 reach) eventually becomes cost effective since Stretching has a linear cost - however, I think you're looking at somewhere around 60-75 points of Growth before that becomes worthwhile, and that's going to break most campaign limits. Someone who is big is (generally) at a disadvantage compared to someone who is equally strong but small, based on the DCV and PER rolls. It shouldn't cost more to be at a disadvantage, right? Unfortunately the "physical limitation" method is very coarse and doesn't by any means compensate for the DCV loss let alone anything else.

Re: Points Equality I once ran a PBeM Champions game where there were no points limits (but I still had campaign guidelines); basically you could build whatever you liked as long as you stuck to a certain DC level and so on. I was wondering if anyone would pop up with a cosmic VPP and tricked out stats, but nobody did. Only lasted a couple of sessions, but that had nothing to do with the points situation. I've also had a desire to run a type of Hero game for a while. The idea is that of the "Hero's Journey". I was going to allow the players to select one of the following options: "Novice". Start on 100 base points plus up to 100 points of disadvantages. Earn XP at 5 times the normal rate until you reach "Master" level. "Master". Start on 250 base points plus up to 50 points of disadvantages. Earn XP as normal until you reach the "Veteran" level. "Veteran". Start on 400 base points plus up to 50 points of disadvantages. However, you now lose experience points at 5 times the rate that you'd normally gain them. (For example, you might lower the DC of an attack, or you might apply an Activation Roll to it, or whatever). The idea being that you could have a party consisting of Luke, Han, and Obi-Wan at the start of the adventure. I've never actually run it, though, because my players (cynically, but accurately) pointed out that they might as well play Veterans, with the likelihood that the campaign would end before they lost enough to fall back to "Master" level or below. Which misses the point, but that's my lovable powergaming buddies.

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic You know, I'm about convinced that DR as a whole doesn't really need to be there at all - 25%, 50%, 75%, or whatever. In most campaigns it's not cost efficient for PCs to buy (you're better off with just spending the appropriate points on defences directly), which leaves the "master villain" angle (you want PCs to be able to hurt them, but not quickly put him down) - and for master villains (for whom the point total is irrelevant, as an NPC) as Sean points out you can just give them a large STUN total for the same effect.

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic Actually, I'd place the whole idea of the "Affects Desolidified" advantage in the same boat as Power Defence, multiple levels of Hardening or Armour Piercing, and so forth: that is, they are mechanical constructs that can be difficult to justify in sfx terms.

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic

Re: Analysis Thread: Synergistic Advantages Nasty. Useless against Force Fields and Dive-For-Coverable, but still.