GAZZA

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? 1 point of a MP ultra slot activates 10 active points of power. Claim: defences are 8 times as effective as attacks => 1 point of an MP ultra slot for a defence is 8 times as effective as it would be for an attack => 10 active points of defence are as good as 80 active points of an attack. Since this claim is quite clearly wrong, that's obviously not the claim you're making. Let's try: Claim: defences are 8 times as effective bought in a multipower than they are outside of it. The obvious number to use here is "10 times" not "8 times" since 1 point in an ultra activates 10 active points. However, if you're factoring in the cost of the reserve, it's possible to jig the numbers such that "8 times" is correct - but it seems irrelevant to do so, since defences are get no more or less benefit than attacks (or for that matter movement powers) in a multipower. Now, as you explain below, this wasn't what you were getting at - fair enough (see below) - but where I got my numbers is not difficult to see (if not necessarily germane to your point). 10 points of mental defence outside a multipower neutralizes 29 pts of ego attack. 10 points of ego attack outside a multipower buys 1d6 ego attack which neutralizes 3.5 pts of mental defence. 29/3.5 = 8 times as effective. This is true whether you're in a multipower or not. The defence did not magically become more effective because it was placed in a multipower. Who said anything about getting the drop on them? PC A is SPD 6, and has a defensive multipower. Villain B is SPD 6 and has an attack multipower. I'll even spot PC A extra DEX so he gets to go first. So in phase 2, PC A attacks Villain B, does some STUN but fails to Stun him or knock him out. PC A guesses that Villain B will use his energy attack and sets his multipower to ED. But villain B decides to use his physical attack slot instead. PC A gets creamed. Oops. In the rematch, PC A holds his action to see what attack villain B uses. I'll ignore for the moment that if PC A can tell what attack is being used it is only fair that villain B would be able to tell what defence PC A was using rather than have to guess. Anyway, PC A sees a physical attack coming, and tries to win a DEX roll to get his held action and interrupt so he can get his defence up. He fails. Oops again. Let's pop villain B down to SPD 5. PC A gets an attack in on SPD 2, and sets his slot to physical defence. Then villain A launches a Drain at PC A, who has to either suck it up or else abort his phase 4 to switch the slot. On phase 5 villain A uses the physical attack that PC A is no longer defended against; PC A aborts his phase 6 to switch the slot again. There's no surprise involved. Someone with a defensive multipower is involved in the same guessing game as someone with an attack multipower, but the stakes are much higher. If the attacker guesses wrong ("hmm, I thought that guy was a brick, but my Ego attack just bounced...") he wastes an attack. If the defender guesses wrong, he gets pasted. Well, they think adjustment powers have too great an effect on defences. That philosophy is not borne out anywhere else in the rulebook. It may be that you believe this is inconsistent, or that it is an oversight - both are reasonable positions to hold - but to say that your position is supported by the rulebook is not precisely true.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Defences cost 1/10 as much; attacks cost 1/10 as much. 1 point in a defence is more powerful than 1 point in an attack in or out of a multipower. Multipowers lower the cost of defences by the same amount as they lower attacks. Here again, attacks in general require lots of points to be effective, defences don't, in or out of a multipower. 8 times as effective as what, exactly? Not 8 times as effective as attacks (unless you're suggesting that +10 Mental Defence is as good as +8d6 Ego Attack). 2 times as effective? +10 PD is not as good as +4d6 EB Physical. 8 times as effective as buying them outside the multipower, you mean? I would have thought "10 times as effective" was a more natural number (ignoring the cost of the reserve, which becomes a diminishingly smaller proportion of the cost as you add more slots). But attacks get the same benefit in a multipower. The ability to never act because he's too busy aborting his actions to activate his highly volatile defences? There are two basic arguments here. Firstly, there is the argument that against an attacker with a single form of a attack, a flexible defender will have the means to shut down this attacker. Most "single form attackers" are either brick/martial artists, or mentalists. Assuming the flexible defender is not able to achieve a significantly higher PD than most characters could, the brick or the martial artist is not going to be ineffective (and if they are able to get a much higher PD, then all bets are always going to be off - it is not unreasonable to assume that if a multipower defender is allowed to get a PD of 40, then a non-multipower defender is allowed to get at least that high as well, and "maximum DEF" has a habit of becoming "average" and eventually "minimum" DEF over time). Mentalists are always screwed against someone who has even moderate mental defence - it's an unfortunate consequence of the "all or nothing" nature of their powers, and the reason that most long-term mentalists branch out into at least things like Ego Drains if not exploring the TK route. Secondly, there is the argument that it is allowing a defender to purchase exotic defences much cheaper than normal. Even if you ignore the inherent limitations and contradictions in this (exotic attacks are cheaper by the exact same ratio; exotic defences that need to be switched on and off require you to either guess or abort, and to leave yourself open to others until your next phase, which arguably justifies the cost reduction in the same fashion as not being able to combine a flash, NND, and energy blast justifies the same thing with attacks)... even if one ignores that, how far does one take this argument? It boils down to "it should be hard to make exotic defences cheap", which calls into question whether or not sticking them in a Force Field Elemental Control is OK, or whether sticking limitations on them is acceptable, and so forth. To say that it's wrong to put them in a multipower but OK to put them in an EC is somewhat arbitrary, and is in any case a difference of degree rather than kind.

Re: Hero system complexity Presumably you're agreeing at least that you're probably not going to be creating your first character, though. Most certainly a newbie is capable of this in d20. Without question. If I never had to play or run another d20/D&D game in my life from this point onwards you could count me one *happy camper*. But the thing is you can always find a game if you're prepared to run D&D, which means: If you want to roleplay and don't know d20, you're seriously limiting your potential players. I'm not sure how much of a problem that is in the US, but in Western Australia the pool of roleplaying gamers as a whole isn't so large that one can afford to be too choosy. If you're teaching someone to roleplay and you decide not to teach them D&D, you're seriously limiting their potential games - and since you're probably teaching someone because they're a mate or family member, you're not really inclined to avoid giving them the best start possible. And so the cycle continues. In terms of complexity, D&D wouldn't be my ideal choice of first gaming system (FUDGE recommends itself as ideal, unless you happen to be teaching someone who is a fan of the Amber series, in which case I think Amber is an excellent introductory game since you'll never pick up any "arguing with the GM" bad habits), but Hero wouldn't either. But complexity isn't the only consideration.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? "Gobs" more? Hardly. 40 PD/40 ED costs 80 points. Multipower "Force Field" 80 pt reserve [80] 40 PD FF [4-u] 40 ED FF [4-u] ... costs 88 points. Granted, he can then proceed to fill it with the rest of the exotic defences at 4 more points per slot, but this is the same as an attack multipower buying extra attacks at a similarly cheap rate. If multipower dude is allowed to spend 88+ points on defences I'm not clear why non-multipower dude isn't allowed to spend 80 points on defences and thereby stand up to Brickman and Laserman. You need to have at least three example opponents before multipower dude has any sort of advantage - and even then, he still has to pick and choose. If you have a multipower of exotic defences and I have a multipower of exotic attacks, then yes, you must abort every time I attack. The fact that you're expecting it is irrelevant, since I'm switching slots as often as you are (indeed, you're switching because I am). Evidently you feel flexible defence powers are problematic because the possessor can defend himself against a wide variety of opponents. I'm not clear why you don't seem to see that flexible attack powers have a comparable advantage - and yet I haven't noticed blaster types dominating games. Or alternatively: 1 point in a defence multipower buys 10 points of defences (a savings of 10 to 1 over the normal cost). 1 point in an attack multipower buys 10 points of attacks (a savings of 10 to 1 over the normal cost). And attack multipowers do not suffer from any of the problems defence multipowers suffer from: Got blindsided? Who cares, your attacks aren't persistent anyway. Opponent seems to be immune to one of your attacks? Switch to another one when it's your next go. No time wasted there; by definition you never want to attack when it isn't your phase. And since you can only attack one person at a time it doesn't matter if the attack you choose is useful against person A but not against person B. If attack multipowers, which have been widely used for years, have not brought the system to its knees despite lacking the inherent limitations of defence multipowers, I don't see that it's at all intuitively obvious that the latter will prove to be destructive.

Re: Hero system complexity

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? In precisely the same fashion as anyone else having a 40 defence does. (about the need to abort...) Fair enough; I wouldn't be: You have to abort, and you can't always do so. Having aborted, you've just wasted a phase. So at the very least the attacker has avoided one of your attacks in return for attacking you, and if he rolls well he might even squeeze some damage through. Bonus! If he is as flexible in attack as you are in defence, then you will never be able to attack him (assuming equal SPD) unless you decide to not abort-and-switch-defences... at which point you're going to be taking the brunt of whatever he's throwing at you. If you're talking a many-on-many match up (not an uncommon situation) then every time you switch defences to avoid A's exotic attack you leave yourself open to B's more mundane attack (or perhaps you leave yourself open to energy while protecting against physical). Fact of the matter is that barring some sort of house rule there's absolutely nothing illegal about this construct - and it really doesn't seem abusive enough to me to require such a house rule. Err, no, the balancing point is that defences are supposed to be cheaper than attacks. Indeed, if the prevalence of exotic attacks was such that defences were no longer cost effective you would probably have to argue for a reduction in their cost. Then by inference if you don't have defensive multipowers, anyone using an attack multipower is exploiting this ratio in the opposite direction. My first 12d6 Energy Blast costs me 60 points; you can pay 60 * 0.7 = 42 points on defences to counter that. But then my second 12d6 Energy Blast (this one against Physical) costs me only 12 points (change the construct to a 60 point multipower with 2 6 point ultra slots), and yet you'd need another 42 points of defence. If the argument "But you can only use one at a time" is valid for attacks... then why not for defences?

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way?

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? And the other difference is that you have to take a 0 phase action to switch it on, which you don't have to do if you buy it outside the multipower. That, too, is a pretty huge difference: you often don't know you need mental defence until you're the victim of such an attack. You might be able to abort to switch it on, but you're taking a chance.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way?

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way?

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? I don't see any reason not to have variant defences in a Multipower. Of course the caveat is that they're less useful than attacks - when you're using an attack multipower, it is (by definition) your phase. It may not be your phase when you want to change your defence slot - you may have to abort, for example. But yeah, I can't see why that shouldn't be allowed.

Re: "Behind" in combat Thanks guys! I did check the 5ER FAQ but not the FRED FAQ - that'll teach me.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Just a side note: you aren't allowed to have partially Hardened defences (though you can have some hardened and some not, eg Hardened Armour and non-Hardened PD/ED).

Situation: two normal guys deciding to have a slugfest. Each of them stands in an adjacent hex. There are no penalties for moving around your opponent in Hero, so with their normal Running 6", they can half move 3" to the hex behind their opponent and punch them at 1/2 DCV. Then their opponent can do the same to them. Provided they don't run out of room, nobody need ever try and hit someone at full DCV. This looks absolutely legal according to 5ER, and it also seems absolutely ridiculous. Also, when it talks about Surprise Maneuvers (5ER pp 380-381) it mentions that if you have Defence Maneuver you are never surprised, yet Defence Maneuver itself does not mention this - instead, it says that no attacker is considered to be attacking from behind. I'm wondering if there's some sort of confusion here. It certainly looks more logical to disregard the DCV modifier for attacking from behind and "fold it in" to surprise, as well as making it much less necessary to track facing (you still need to do so for the sake of movement, though). Or perhaps I've misinterpreted something?

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Interesting. Posting on a message board isn't roleplaying, whether you post in favour or against. I suspect most people here aren't taking time out from a gaming session to post. So the two aren't really in conflict. You're absolutely entitled to your opinion, of course - and given that most people probably use the RAW, you are even probably in the majority - but why stomp on the rest of us? What harm are we doing?

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Or alternatively, rip the pillow case into shreds and braid them into a makeshift rope, wrap the rope around your intended victim's throat, and squeeze. Plenty of ways.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

Re: Hero system complexity

Re: Hero system complexity

Re: Hero system complexity I wouldn't regard the complexity of that as comparable, but YMMV. Depends on the player. From a practical perspective requiring a prospective new player to read a book hundreds of pages long before rolling their first die provides a virtually insurmountable barrier to acquiring new players. From an even more practical perspective, perfectly understanding the contents of the book first time through is, according to many long time veterans of both systems, essentially impossible. From the "practicallest" perspective of all, even if you did that doesn't help much because most games contain optional rules and most groups have house rules - two different groups of gamers aren't necessarily using the same rules even if they're using the same system. Some players are more interested in how the rules work than others. You aren't necessarily a worse player if you rely on the other players or the GM to answer your questions. (Without intending to be misogynistic, I've found few female gamers tend to be rules lawyers - but they certainly aren't any less fun to game with). Not everyone can be bothered reading the manual; some would say that the best way to learn a game is by playing it. Well, Rules Lawyers don't have a bad reputation in all groups...

Re: Hero system complexity Once you include optional rules for Hero, it's only fair to include optional rules for d20 as well. Those are legion, as you might expect. I'm not knocking the optional rules of either; it's just that if you're trying to compare one thing to another then simplifying the model slightly (by considering only core rules) seems fair. Unfortunately that argument - while completely true (I myself am often discovering subtle things all the time) - feeds into the "Hero is more complex" argument. If even decade-long veterans still get things wrong, then what real hope has a newbie got? The page count of 5ER and PH + DMG are comparable (I'm not sure which of the two is actually bigger, but there wouldn't be that much in it). However, a large percentage of the DMG (the thicker of the two books) is given over to magic item descriptions, while a large percentage of the PH is given over to spell descriptions; relatively little of 5ER is "example characters" or "equipment". A power description in Hero is, in effect, a rule; a spell description in the PH is more akin to a sidebar example in Hero. So even if PH + DMG comprises more actual pages than 5ER does, it has a lot less of those pages devoted to rules. That's why a veteran Hero player might have to look up what the standard value for the limitation "Skin Contact Only" is, and why some veteran Hero players don't know off the top of their head what the standard knockback rules are/whether Succor has a limit/the details of the Trigger advantage/whether you get +1d6 or 2d6 for violent Presence attacks/etc. D&D players look stuff up just as frequently, but they're looking up spell descriptions and the like rather than rules. Again, this isn't a bad thing - I personally don't see why one would aim for a game where the rulebook was rarely required at the table - but I can see why reasonable people would conclude that Hero was more complex. Agreed, except that evidently this complaint got back to Wizards so they introduced the "retraining" rules in PH2.

Re: House Rule: SFX Default For Adjustment Powers I can see two potential issues with this (but I must say at the outset despite these I provisionally agree it's a good idea): Non-Power adjustments normally work fine without sfx. I'm thinking of things like Gravity Increase defined as Drain STR, or Adrenaline Rush defined as Aid STR, Absorption that feeds STR, or paralysis that is defined as a DEX and SPD Drain. However, I guess none of those are show stoppers as all of them, as I've just defined, have a special effect that might not always be appropriate. Special Effects are a bit of an Achilles Heel in Hero for adjustment powers. There's no real consensus on how broad or tight a group they should comprise. Sometimes you'll see "Drain All Fire Magic", other times you'll get "Aid All Magic". "Drain Mutant Abilities" or "Transfer Superpowers". And more generally, if there are more Fire based villains around than Sonic based villains, then Drain Fire Powers is more useful than Drain Sonic Powers - there is no cost break for this, though Vulnerabilities to each have different values. It seems appropriate to bring this up for adjustment powers because it's there that this hole is most obvious. Were the core rule to be that adjustment powers worked against sfx, then some sort of guidelines for cost differentials based on commonality would be appropriate.

Re: Increasing Target Visibility It could be argued that it would reveal no more than the hex of the target, and that you'd still have to try and locate them more precisely with a non-targetting sense to avoid the usual penalties. At most, I'd say that unless you define it as a Dispel or Suppress, then all you're doing is removing the need for that non-targetting roll (ie you'd still have 1/2 OCV to hit, and be 1/2 DCV at range/-1 DCV hand to hand against them). This is assuming of course that you don't have an appropriate targetting sense that does see through it. Which reveals another means: you could build it as an enhanced sense that is UBO. This question can actually be more generalised - what penalties, if any, do you have to target someone that is Invisible but who has just used some power that does not have Invisible Power Effects? It's more or less the same question as giving them an aura (except that they have, in effect, given themselves the aura).

Re: Hero system complexity With the sole exception of Black Book Traveller, every game I've ever played I ran before playing (and I have run games of many systems that I have never played). I'm bright, but I'm not a genius - I doubt very much I'm the only one that's the "early adopter of RPGs" here. d20 vs Hero: I think there's a difference between actual complexity and perceived complexity here. Look at a character sheet for either, and you'll see mostly numbers, so it can't be the use of base 10 that upsets anyone. (In any case, that would bar you from a large number of systems - FUDGE would be the only semi-mainstream game that is defined without numbers, if I'm not mistaken). However, while Hero requires no arithmetic more complex than division, that's a step more than d20 does. The only arithmetic required for d20 character creation (which is where most people get scared in Hero) is addition, and that's only for assigning your ability scores (assuming you use point buy - which, come to think of it, many math-shy gamers probably don't) and buying equipment. And it should be noted that both of these steps are the ones that consume the most time in d20 character creation - especially if you're generating a high level character. Now, one can certainly rail against the requirement of 6 different types of dice and the whole "this is how you read a d100" stuff, but these are not difficult skills to acquire. In combat, you're usually rolling-and-comparing (no arithmetic required), rolling damage (often no arithmetic required - just reading off a single die - except for magic users, who have the reputation of being the more complex characters to play, though to be fair that has little to do with arithmetic requirements), or subtracting damage (some arithmetic required). Hero, on the other hand, has a "figure out what you need to hit" step, instantly giving "the big reveal" of the target's DCV (d20's roll and compare method means that the GM need not reveal the AC of the target), and after a hit you're adding up multiple dice to determine damage in two different ways (BODY and STUN). You have three "consumable resources" to track in combat (END, STUN, and BODY) compared to the single resource in d20 (hit points - at most, you could say that you have to track nonlethal damage as well, but that's really just a variant of the same thing). When you take damage, you have to perform two lots of arithmetic compared to one in d20 (first figure out how much damage you take by subtracting your defences, then subtract that result from your STUN and BODY). (Incidentally: I have a suspicion someone is reading that and thinking, "GAZZA's an idiot: here's how you do the attack rolls without revealing the DCV, and we never bother with END in our FH game, ..." - I'm not unaware of house rules to this effect, and use a fairly involved version of the former myself, but that's not the RAW that a prospective newcomer to Hero would see). I think it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that for many types of characters Hero is more complex than d20. The problem is when you proceed from that point to conclude that because Hero is more complex that it is therefore worse - even for newbies. That's where I'd take exception. The added complexity of Hero is relatively minor and largely "front loaded" (at character generation, to be precise). The reward you get for this is added options and increased consistency in the simulation. A lot of d20 combat comes down to "I miss, I hit for 4 damage, I miss, I miss, I get a critical for 8 damage, I miss..." Few Hero combats go that way. Champions tend to have lots more attack options and tend to use them; Fantasy Heroes have hit locations that make every hit unique. Granted you'll see a lot more of the difference here in combat than in social settings, but that's not really caricaturing either system; if you want a game that puts the same emphasis on roleplaying situations as combat situations, you generally won't find it in a simulationist RPG (HeroQuest manages it, but that's a narrative game). I don't see this as a flaw, personally - the genres I use Hero for feature combat as an important part (maybe the important part) and I'm happy to "wing it" for roleplaying, while anyone who says that d20 is a better system for roleplaying than Hero is using an argument that is either wrong or at the very least one that I'm not familiar with. I think the main reason d20 is more popular is the simple fact that it's more popular. You're a GM who wants to start a new group - pick D&D and you are more likely to find players than if you pick Hero, and if some of that group bring their newbie buddies along to learn, then they'll learn D&D and the cycle repeats. The same way that people can be famous just for being famous, I guess (cf Paris Hilton).

Re: Is this a reasonable NND attack?