GAZZA

Re: Ogre NND Question Lots of 5s? How tough is this 3 year old, anyway? I would guess that the average 3yo is probably packing a STR in the -5 to 0 range, so that means if he hits you he actually does negative damage.

Re: Master List of Scales in HERO Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious here Phil, but surely the fact that +6 DEX gives you the ability to hit things twice as far away with the same accuracy suggests that there is an exponential component to OCV? Though granted if you ignore range and size the other aspects of it are certainly linear.

Re: Ogre NND Question Yeah, all good points. Suppress REC, Drain STUN and END. That's probably the way that is most consistent with the suffocation effects described in the main rulebook.

Re: Ogre NND Question

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement Quoting from FRED pp 184: (in essence, HA is just a Limited form of STR). Of course you are correct (you get advantages for free on STR, in effect, while using HA), but on the other hand it doesn't add to HKAs the way STR would, nor do you get the Leaping ability... I'm not sure that HA at 5 points per die costing END is really worth listing as a separate power. In a 12 DC game, if you want an 8d6 Armour Piercing physical attack, buying 30 points of STR "No Figured Characteristics" and then Armour Piercing for 40 STR costs 40 points. Buying 10 points of STR and 4d6 AP HA also costs 40 points. Granted the latter costs only 5 END instead of 6, but that's not really enough to offset the disadvantages of HA compared to STR (IMHO). We could try adding 0 END to that; that makes it cost 60 points for the STR and 50 points for the STR + HA, and that's starting to look a little better. (shrug) I dunno, the whole structure of the power seems weird to me. It's the only case of a power that has a "built in limitation", so effectively it has a unique rules construct all of its own. I'm just not really convinced that HA really deserves that sort of attention, but YMMV.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement (rest snipped) You raise an excellent point. I hadn't thought of it like that before, but looking at lifting capacity as the equivalent of non-combat movement (sort of) does make a certain amount of sense.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement Ah, Hand to Hand Attack... In 4th edition it used to cost 3 points per die, which was way too cheap. In 5th edition, it costs 5 points with an automatic -1/2 limitation, which leads me to wonder why anyone would ever buy it? Just by STR with No Figured Characteristics - same cost, much more applicability. Now if it was No End by default, we'd have something... But yes, you can do it that way.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement Yes, one can certainly do that. I'm not advocating that position in invalid, just that it is not my position. Yep, movement is by far not the only hole in the system; I just think it's relatively easy to patch. Yes, good point. Guess that shows why I'm not a game designer. It's logically consistent for it to work like this, but I doubt anyone has argued that STR is too expensive recently. Not really sure how to balance that. Perhaps if we considered a leap Move Through to be a basically uncontrolled impact, so that only your mass (and not your STR) counted for damage, it might work, but I dunno - I'm just an ideas man, the details are for better men than I. My reasoning was that Teleport should stay phase based because there's no velocity involved, and a casual glance at Leap suggests that while there is velocity involved, it is not sustained velocity. If someone can run at 10" a Phase and has a SPD of 6, then presumably we're not supposed to assume that they run 10", stop, run 10" in a couple more seconds, stop again, and so on - we're supposed to assume that they run continuously, and the fact that the movement is abstracted is a game convenience... ... you know, that strikes me a pretty reasonable reason to stick with the system as written. You could say that combat movement is "run, stop", while noncombat movement is the sustained velocity. Hmm. Anyway, what I was getting at is that it looks like Leaping is a series of discrete leaps similar to teleport. Since your velocity at the end of a leap is zero (you've landed), and since all (combat) leaps take exactly 1 second, your SPD characteristic doesn't seem to affect your absolute leaping velocity (only how many times you can leap per Turn). As with my paragraph above, though, it is feasible to apply that logic to other movement powers. Damn you! The range chart is already there, surely? Lots of players (not including me) prefer charts to simple math anyway; I use quite a few trivial house rules for Champions to make it consistently "roll high is always good", "no subtraction required to work out what you need to hit", and so forth. I didn't mind working out the time to travel intersystem given the G force of your maneuvering thrusters in the old black book Traveller system, but I wouldn't consider myself a typical case. Running has no turn mode anyway, and it's only a +1/4 advantage to Flight to remove it. My suggestion was intended to give the feel that "limited Flight as Running" type speedsters have a similar level of control over moving really fast as they do now - but if you don't think that's appropriate, by all means use the normal turn mode rules. I need to give this some more thought. Still don't like Megascale though.

Re: Master List of Scales in HERO I was all set with a big thread about how Mental Powers at the cosmic scale were gimped because of this... but when I actually did the sums, it doesn't actually work out that way. Assume a 350 point Mentalist has EGO 25, spends 5 points on Mental Defence (so MD 10), and has a 10d6 Mind Control power. Against his opposite number twin, an average roll gives him a minimal success ("target will do something he is inclined to do anyway") with a 14- breakout roll. If we assume a 700 point cosmic version spends twice the number of points on these core abilities, then he has an EGO of 40 (spending 60 points on EGO instead of 30), has a total mental defence of 18, and a 20d6 Mind Control power. Now an average roll gives him EGO+22; for the same level of effect, the breakout roll is now 13-, so he's actually gotten better. The issue here I think is that EGOs don't increase as rapidly as the attack does. You'd see the same results with the relevant chances of a brick STUNning another brick, since the mechanic is similar (STUN through DEF > CON) and CON costs as much as EGO. Of course, if cosmic heroes spend their points more defensively than their non-cosmic counterparts this argument falls apart, but a brief glance through Galactic Champions last night suggested to me that there's still plenty of low EGO targets for a cosmic mentalist to play with.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement Range Modifiers. I would assert that they are not the only example (I think damage is, as previously stated), but range modifiers are the least controversial way to rebut this.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement I assume you mean "strong". Obviously STR and movement are not the same thing; I'm not advocating that someone with Flight should be able to deadlift a tank. But both are used to bash people, and their use in this fashion is inconsistent. If you don't use the velocity based damage rules, then you get very strange results: the higher your SPD stat, the less damage you do on a Move By even if you hit them at exactly the same (real world) speed. For example, let's say you can move 60" in a Turn. If you have SPD 6, that's 10" of (say) Flight, or +2d6 on a Move By. If you have SPD 4, that's 15" of Flight, or +3d6. That's the sort of nonsense that the velocity based damage rules address. But once you use the velocity based damage rules, you run into the issue that doubling your movement speed is (often) much more expensive than the extra +2d6 damage you get is worth. The majority of powers add +2d6 if you spend 10 more Active Points; why does movement not work this way? Correct; leaping would work with the same doubling mechanism that other powers do if my proposal were adopted. Arguably that is twice as much harm. Abstract numbers and all that; if STUN and BODY are on an exponential scale as well, +1d6 damage can feasibly look like twice as much harm. (Move along, nothing to see here - yes, this is handwaving, but it does appear that this is how we're supposed to interpret things). My suggestion above was that we have Flight cost 10 points for 20"/Turn. I didn't specifically address other movement powers because they are a variation on the same theme, but for what it's worth I'd probably suggest 20"/Turn Running and 5"/Turn Swimming, though I have no particular axe to grind with the exact figures. Leaping is a bit trickier; you could make a case for saying it should work like Teleport and still be per Phase. You'd either set 2"/Phase or 8"/Turn as the base Leap speed (depending on whether you want leaping to be like teleportation or running), and then every +5 STR doubles it. I'm not sure this would be a particularly common complaint, given that the overall effect is almost always to make the movement cheaper than the current case. Yes, it should. It's often been pointed out that it's quite difficult to smash your opponent into orbit in Hero. Knockback is easy, though - just take the knockback inches from a normal roll, and backreference the Range Modifier table to see how far back they go. Already done. The velocity based damage rules at the back of the 5th edition book have this information already (including throws and falls, which is relevant for Knockback damage). Arguably. Acceleration/deceleration is no problem (you can currently accelerate your full combat movement in a single phase, and I see no reason not to keep that as a default). Turn modes perhaps get out of hand if they are still based on a linear fraction of total movement, but a simple replacement would be that your turn mode is 2 + 1 per doubling. That opinion I have absolutely no problem with - although evidently I disagree with it.

Re: Master List of Scales in HERO OK, I think I see where you're driving with this. STR is an exponential scale; double the STR stat and you get (often) way more than double the real effect (how much you can lift). You're suggesting that DEX is on the same sort of scale as STR. I would agree with that. There is evidence to back it up. +6 DEX, for example, allows you to accurately shoot twice as far as you could before (range modifiers are exponential). On the other hand, though, +5 DEX doesn't double your ability to use a DEX based skill effectively. The difference between 10000 DEX-dude and 10030 DEX-dude's Combat Driving skills is going to be completely negligible in just about any conceivable circumstance. It looks like DEX has some linear and some exponential characteristics, if my understanding is correct.

Re: Master List of Scales in HERO Warp9: would it be fair to characterise your position as less that the OP is wrong, and more that you don't feel that a 10030 DEX should dominate a 10000 DEX (to pick one of your examples)? I think the OP's use of the terms linear, exponential, and geometric are definitely mathematically correct.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement I've never used the velocity based DCV rules, personally, but given that most high movement characters are going to speedsters with high base DCVs from a high DEX anyway I'm not sure that the problem is all that bad. What's a reasonable DCV on the galactic champions scale? There were published 250 point starter heroes for 4th edition that had a base DCV of 10; it doesn't seem that unreasonable to me (considering combat levels and so forth) that even a "normal" Champions character might get a DCV in that sort of range. YMMV. Of course the simple answer to this question is the same answer to the question, "How can the brick defeat a martial artist with a DCV 5 points higher than the brick's OCV?" - use attacks that bypass that DCV. Area effects, mental powers (not for bricks, obviously...), or just some good old combat skill levels.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement Call it 2000 metres/second, or 500" per second, 6000"/Turn, or a VLF of 17. +17d6 damage on a Move By or Move Through. A lot, but that's not something I would imagine breaks things at a galactic champions scale. The proposed change I'm making would make this cost 10 points for the first 20"/Turn, and you'd need about 8 doublings. So this is a pretty reasonable indication that +5 for doubling the speed might be too cheap; if you make it +10 to double it, then for 90 active points you get about 5000"/Turn Flight that can do +17d6 damage (compare to 90 active points of Energy Blast that does 18d6 damage). Seems workable. Every +10 active points of movement gives you +2d6 from the VLF, which is comparable to the +2d6 you get from attack powers. Now, of course you want to keep an eye on STR here; fast, strong guys are going to be dealing out some pretty good damage. But there are other powers that add to STR damage as well - just make sure you keep the same eye on movement as you would for HA.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement You're quite possibly correct that some cases of Move By might increase a bit in damage; Move Throughs usually decrease, though, and Move Bys are already (generally speaking) on the low end of most super attacks so an extra d6 here or there is no biggie. Of course if you switch to buying movement powers on a per Turn basis rather than per Phase you can make this go away completely, but that's (to some extent) a separate though related issue.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement Range modifiers are (as Sean points out) already based on the doubling mechanism, and frankly I strongly disagree that Move By/Move Through are in any way the least important things that can be done with high movement. Most bricks will try it from time to time, at least in my experience. Even if you were right, though, I'm sure you're not suggesting that rules that only break when you actually test them are OK. As far as the "STR is too cheap" threads, that's not by any stretch a new argument, but the way you've presented it above is a straw man. If all STR did was give you extra dice in damage and lifting capacity nobody would complain; the issue is that it gives you 11 points of figured characteristics for every 10 points of STR (excluding the free Superleap). Fundamentally: I've played many supers games (as I mentioned at the start of the thread), and Champions is by far the best. However, it is the only such game I've played that felt the need to treat movement in such an artificial manner. If this were the DC Heroes boards and I was complaining about the gadget rules being broken, I wouldn't be accepting arguments along the lines of "but if you let it work all the time it would just completely break the genre", since I know Champions doesn't have that problem. This is the same argument, effectively. HERO is a great system, but if it were perfect we would be on 5th edition revised, right? Nobody seriously believes that 5th edition is the last word, surely? If you don't believe that characters should be able to move really fast with the sort of control combat movement implies, that's fine - we'll agree to differ.

Re: need help on a mobile base I also wouldn't get overly concerned about the point cost; I've never really seen the point of giving PCs extra experience points just to pay for stuff that they've been given. If the point total of a character was a meaningful indication of the relative power of that character (compared to NPCs), I could see the point, but it pales into insignificance compared to things like defences, DCs, and so on.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement You're missing my point. I'm well aware of what noncombat movement is, and I'm well aware that Megascaled movement is also noncombat. What I'm saying is that the entire idea of "noncombat movement" is - IMHO - a kludgy rules construct designed to breach the controllability of movement in combat (so it doesn't leave the map) and the massive speeds of some of the characters in the genre. There's no such thing as "noncombat Energy Blasts" for destroying buildings out of combat, or "noncombat Senses" for seeing further while there's no combat situation occurring - it's only movement that has this funny idea. And yes, of course you can buy extra dice of Energy Blast "Only for use out of combat", or whatever, but that really begs the question of why movement isn't done that way. If a brick must pay +5 points to double his STR, why can't a flying speedster pay +5 points (or whatever number is felt to be balanced) to double his movement? Why is movement on a linear scale when STR (and by implication other attack powers) are exponential? Remember movement is an attack power in the same way STR is - Move By and Move Through ensure that.

Re: Alternatives to Megascale for movement So basically the reason that movement is restricted is so that it fits on the battlemap? I had a feeling that was going to be the position. But it doesn't really work for me. I should point out right now that I'm using Hero for Champions; if you're playing FH, Star Hero, or whatever, then I doubt there would be much in the way of an effective difference anyway. But so long as we're talking Champions, and as long as we're acknowledging that Flight is going to be the most common movement power (even speedsters typically buy limited Flight instead of Running, after all), then surely the "so it fits on the map" is already suspect? You have two choices when there's height involved: you either start stacking dice underneath your figurine (and hope nobody sneezes), or else you make a rough note next to the figure as to how high he is. If you accept the latter, why not extend that concept to the other two dimensions? There will often be fights contained in buildings and so forth, but if you get the chance to fight in an open plain, why not let the speedsters do what they do best? The reason I dislike noncombat movement is as above - it's a kludge. It's basically there to try and bridge the fact that combat movement is way too expensive to move at superheroic speeds while not allowing fast moving characters to run right off the map. I rarely use maps anyway, so the latter reason is not convincing to me. Sean: as far as Move Through/By damage goes, there was an old velocity based house rule that did the rounds for 4th edition which appears to have been included almost verbatim in the optional rules section of the 5th edition handbook (no idea if it's in Revised or not; I assume so).

Re: Ogre NND Question So therefore, how should suffocation attacks be done? Assuming that it is felt there is a problem with them, how do we improve this? Some sort of Suppress for STUN, and Drain on REC, perhaps? (Aside: I assume if I drain STUN I'm draining the current value instead of the maximum, so your normal REC recovers it - is this wrong? I hope so, because if I'm right about this Drain STUN is a spectacularly inefficient power). That way you're slowly losing your ability to stay conscious (thanks to the silly but RAW way you can stack Suppresses) as well as finding it harder to take a breath (which REC seems to represent, as a sort of "second wind"). Does that look a little better?

I'm sure I'm not alone here in thinking that Megascale is perhaps one of the more abusable additions to 5th edition. The thing is, I really believe something like this is needed. All of the supers games I've played have something they do poorly: for DC Heroes, for example, it was the gadget rules. In 4th edition Champions I submit it was movement. The logic is this: buy +5 points of STR, and you're able to lift twice as much. Therefore, that extra +1d6 of punching/grabbing power presumably reflects the ability to punch/squeeze twice as hard. (Back on the old Champions mailing list, the previous statement was second only to the Great Linked Debate in its contentiousness, so to head that off: assume we're talking about some sort of automaton here so that you can't use arguments about different types of muscle groups to explain why that isn't the case). It seems reasonable to suppose, therefore, that a 10d6 Energy Blast is twice as powerful as a 9d6 Energy Blast - it's the same sort of scale as STR, after all. But this all breaks down with movement. Granted that it's fine for noncombat movement (+5 = twice as fast, as required), but why the artificial distinction? The whole concept of noncombat movement is a kludge, in my opinion, and probably inappropriate in the general case - I think if you want the sorts of restrictions that noncombat movement implies, it should probably be reflected with some sort of limitation on the power rather than be a standard feature. If you don't use the optional velocity rules, then Move Throughs and Move Buys don't work properly either (if we're going by "twice as hard = +1d6", then moving twice as fast should give you +1d6, which isn't the case with the standard Move Through rule). I'm wondering whether or not something like the following is a terrible idea: - Ditch the concept of noncombat movement. - For 10 points, you get 5" of Flight (the main movement power; substitute as appropriate for others). Assume everyone has 5" of Running for free. - For +5 points, you double that movement. Costs can be tweaked as necessary. Perhaps you could make it +10 points to double the speed, and introduce a standard limitation "noncombat movement (-1)". In fact, since we have the hood up (as it were), might as well switch to a per Turn buy for movement (so you get 20"/Turn Flight for 10 points instead) to "fix" the "problem" that a higher SPD increases your movement rate. Thoughts?

Re: What would be the effect of Extra Limbs, Useable as Attack? My opinion: it is true that the attacker can control the extra limbs, but extra limbs do not have the ability to perform any actions in and of themselves - they just enable the recipient to perform such actions. I totally concur with the other posters that TK is what you're after here. In fact I have rarely found a compelling case to use the UAA advantage; in most cases Transform seems to be a better way to build most UAA powers (the advantage of Transform being that it has a proper, scaled defence).

Re: Master List of Scales in HERO Addendum: technically, for the position on the scale to be irrelevant, an EGO + 40 roll should have the same chance of taking effect regardless of what the EGO is (right?) Which means that the breakout roll for the target should be the same. EGO + 30 effect against an EGO 10 has an 11- chance of working at the minimum roll (ie 40). To get the same effect against EGO 20 you'd need to get a roll of 60; against an EGO of 30 you need a roll of 80; against EGO 40 you need 100; and so forth. I suspect this still counts as linear though, right?

Re: Master List of Scales in HERO Not wanting to get in on the flame war; I do have an observation that I'm not sure is relevant or not with regard to mental powers. The supposition is that a roll of 150 against an EGO of 110 is the same as a roll of 50 against an EGO of 10. I submit that this is not actually the case, because before there is any effect from the power there will be a breakout roll. Let's say that in both cases the aggressor was attempting an EGO + 30 effect, so in both cases he succeeds by 10, imposing a -2 on the breakout roll. Against EGO 110 guy, this is inconsequential (base breakout roll is 31-, so still only fails on an 18) whereas against the EGO 10 guy it is not (base breakout roll is 11-; now it's only 9-). Even if we ignore the fact that the 3d6 roll is bell curved rather than linear, we still find that in order to impose the same penalty on EGO 110 guy (in other words, to make him fail on a 16 or more) would need an effect roll of 220. Does that not make it non-linear?