Christopher R Taylor

In the comics, its also worth noting that knockback is reserved for extraordinary efforts or strength: huge hits.  Most of the time people don't really tend to go that far when hit.  So if your desire is to more closely simulate comics, its going to be the exception when someone is hit a mile, not the general rule.  If a campaign starts with the ground rules of people not being hit as far... there's no advantage or loss.  That's just how the game works.

There are many spells which are completely out of balance for their power level in D&D that don't convert in a linear fashion to Hero

Yeah D&D has always had massive imbalance issues with spell levels, which they try to address with saving throws and limits on how often you can cast them.  Doing conversions of them reveal a lot about the point values and equivalent power.  Someone is trying to simulate Sanctuary (a level 1 spell) with Hero and its really expensive to get the effect.

I don't actually mind the inconsistencies, because they match comic books.  Cyclops' blast is incredibly powerful but he doesn't very often use it to move hugely heavy things around or knock people hundreds of feet.  Havok's is even more powerful, same deal.  But the Hulk threw Fin Fang Foom like another state away.

APGII p. 69 says EGO is used instead of DEX for determining the initiative of mental powers.

 

Iirc in a prior edition INT was suggested for this purpose.

 

I prefer INT. To me it speaks to the speed of thought.

Since Ego is no longer coupled to OMCV this is a bit more attractive, since it is just shifting which stat you raise to be more effective in combat.

The problem I see is that you could have all-powerful mentalists who dominate with their willpower, who have 23 INT and 10 Ego.   Which doesn't really make sense to me.  Ego has been so detached from mental powers to begin with (on the offensive side, at least) that its a bit odd.  I can see the argument for OCV and DCV being separate from DEX, beyond just "more flexibility" but mental combat being completely separate from mental force just is odd.

Well I don't know why you'd do it, but its an interesting exercise.

AC in D&D is basically DCV, its avoidance.  If they don't hit your AC, they don't do any damage or touch you at all; touch spells require hitting a reduced AC, for example.  If the target is hit, they take the full damage (unless they have some sort of damage reduction, then its based on enchantment usually).

One of the things I appreciate about the Hero system is that people can adjust things and build things as they prefer.  The rules, in fact, specifically say for GMs to add, subtract or adjust things to fit their campaign concepts.  Almost everyone who plays this game has house rules - in fact, every game, even more simple designs like Savage Worlds.  That's a standard concept for all gaming, as I've known it since I started playing in the early 1980s.

This is really now just a heated debate between Chris and Surrealone 

I tried to agree with him and find common ground  I don't understand why he's so upset at a suggested concept.

Presumably in your world, then, Superman being able to lift a plane doesn't translate to being able to keep one from crashing since, you know, applying such force on just the wing, or the fuselage, etc. (basically in the limitated, tiny area where someone as small as Superman [compared to a 747] could apply that strength) ... would simply destroy that portion of the plane?

I make the case that being really strong doesn't necessarily translate into punching really hard and you interpret that as superman being unable to lift a plane?

Okay....

you know, if their body was up to maintaining its form and thus remain somewhat aerodynamic instead of exploding into a fine red mist, which is what would really happen

 

Well right, you have to wink at some of the physical effects.  The thing with strength is that while it can lift gigantic amounts, it doesn't apply that kind of force.  And an equivalent blast of 12d6 wouldn't move 100 tons, either.  Someone suggested in a different thread to peel lifting off of strength and make it an adder, but what I suggested in the 6th edition discussion forums when Steve was writing it was to split damage off entirely.  Make strength merely exertion: lift and STR roll.  Then you buy HTA if you can punch really hard, to simulate that, because something that can lift a lot doesn't necessarily mean they can punch that hard.

Scale has always been a problem with Hero System

You're right, and we all have to deal with that in our own way.  I've found my system works for me and my players.  The key to make it work is to not half the damage, so people take 1d6/m distant of knockback instead of 2m; the damage remains pretty similar, but people aren't bouncing around like popcorn in a bag.

Any other approach (e.g. ad-hoc tampering with one aspect without mucking with all of them) just skews things in favour of some character builds and not others -- which seems less fair than RAW, which as noted above, is at least consistent about being skewed toward absurdity when compared to normals.

A good example of what you're talking about is a game I was in where the GM decided if you took shrinking, you moved slower and had less strength.  It made sense, but it crippled the shrinking character tremendously.  All house rules have to keep this kind of thing in mind and playtest to see how they work out.

Delesgal

Ouch.  What did you do to the cost of the double knockback advantage to equalize?  

In practice, everything works out fine without needing any doubling or changes.

One of the things the 2m hex did was distort any concept of distance on a hex mat.  Everything was so theoretical that you kind of lost a feel for how long the distances were.  In converting characters I'm continually amazed at the gargantuan distances they were build to move.  30m running is incredible.  If you can run 30 yards in 3 seconds, that's immense.  Pace it out some time, we're talking speeds you'd associate with The Flash.  But that was tossed around pretty regularly on character builds.

An average 12 damage class champions attack would average around 10m of knockback.  That's about 32 feet.  Check that out some time in the real world, to see how far people were bouncing around.  And that's on average, like pinballs.  Turn that into 5m and its not so excessive, but someone with double knockback gets a lot more.  More than 10m because of the way it works, the average with a double knockback attack is now 17m.

Hey it takes time for him to find and steal plots from people.

 And the average character has 10 body, not 15, so your comparison should be against a 10 body character.  And that means 4 hits averages 2-3 body per hit to take them down. 

So with this information a character you describe is down in 2 hits and spent 110 points for the privilege.  Plus, because so much more is spent on those defenses, putting even a small modifier on them is expensive.  Just making PD/rPD hardened is 16 more points.

 And don't forget to add in the 45-60 points it costs just to not take stun to begin with when you add up how much things cost.  That's the equivalent of adding at least 20 CON and 50 stun in 6th edition.  An automaton isn't automatically mindless, so the presence and mental stuff ooes not apply; no PC is going to be a brainless zombie.

So now its not quite so reasonable to triple defenses, is it?

In my experience in Heroic Games Ego Based Pushing is a very common thing. Same as Hit Location. I know that not everyone uses it, but the large majority of games that I have played in since the 80's had ego based pushing.

I typically will use that rule, but not in every game.  Pulp games, for instance, or a wild martial arts game there's no ego roll to push; its part of the genre to do that when you wish.

I liked the Captain America March over the end credits a lot more than the main theme of the first film.  Some of the themes are pretty forgettable, I agree.

Well if that's his story now, then its changed from back then.

I dunno, I guess the James Bond movies are the closest analog.  They've managed to keep a character going in films for 50 years with a host of different actors, sometimes doing terrible films, but always with good box office results.  The big difference with the marvel stuff is that they're using multiple franchises and interweaving them for a larger picture, so that's unique and certainly intriguing.  How this will turn out nobody really can even guess.

And they basically stumbled on to it.  That Avengers thing at the end of Iron Man wasn't meant to be part of some big plan, it was a fun thing thrown in for fans.  Who went nuts and Iron Man made more money than anyone expected or hoped it would.  So they started thinking bigger.  Now its become a monster that I don't think anyone can control or even understand, not yet at least.

There are quite a few interesting major characters they haven't touched on in the Marvel Universe yet (or, have done horrific jobs with) such as Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four, Hercules, Adam Warlock, Moon Knight, Namor, etc.  There are even a lot of avengers I like that haven't been introduced yet, such as Tigra, Black Knight, White Tiger, Quasar, Wonder Man, and there's even Captain Britain out there.

Cap is the biggest name out there, Iron Man was always a 2nd or 3rd tier character until he got a hilarious, fun film with Robert Downey jr's brilliant acting to make it work.  Its about who they cast, how they write, and what directors they get to bring it to life, really.  They struck out with Ant-Man in my opinion, but most of the time they do well.

Nobody even knew who the Guardians of the Galaxy were except hard core comic fans.

And this is the point upon which I disagree, and never has anyone ever provided an argument that has caused me to think differently.

This is true, you remain unconvinced by all the examples and information people provide.  The game's designers and most players here disagree with you.

I get the same sense, that they will be starting up other characters and focusing on others.  For one thing Cap and IM are too white and male for Hollywood trendy types, and for another, they rely heavily on actors who aren't getting any younger, although Chris Evans has a lot of mileage in him still.  Plus, I have always gotten the sense that Millar, et al never liked those characters anyway.

And all that does is reinforce adding the function of Presence Attack Defense to EGO helps even the playing field,

I agree, and it makes logical sense.

and DEX still isn't worth 2 for 1 over the rest.

There's a concept called "weighting" which understands that some abilities or results are of greater value than others.  If this  product wins 2 awards no one has ever heard of, and that product wins a nobel prize, then the one is worth significantly more than the two.

What DEX does is more game-significant than what, for example, what Intelligence does.

I really don't know why you keep talking about damage reduction.  Its like we're having two different conversations, in two different languages here.

My only point is that tripling the cost of defenses is too expensive for what it gives you, and doubling is closer to the real value.  And that some defenses such as DCV, flash defense, and knockback resistance ought not be included in this increase.  You're off arguing in Swahili about damage reduction.

I don't need to solve Bracing, or the distance of knockback (without changing how often it occurs), or any of the other super helpful suggestions

Good for you.

On a public forum, people discuss what interests them, related to the topic.  Not what you demand them to, but what piques their interest.

Take what you like, ignore the rest.

And, as mentioned before, lots of other uses for CON besides being stunned.

Work is ongoing with this project, and I plan on posting some things here to help give a glimpse into what the project is.

Essentially, the Field Guide is a book of the other stuff in the world besides monsters and treasures and player characters.  It is about the animals, plants, minerals and such that player characters can interact with to their advantage or detriment.  This includes poisons, trades such as blacksmithing and leatherworking, herbs of fantastic enchanted quality, and much more.

For example, in the world of Jolrhos you will find this:

Ultimate knockback