KarinsDad

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? I've ignored the rest of your posts because you talk at people instead of talking to them. I never stated that HERO said that 8d6 attacks are only supposed to be used on those with 16 PD/ED. That is your slant on what I said and one of the reasons I find you an unreasonable person to talk with. In this thread alone, you have twisted what other people say at least a dozen times as opposed to responding to what they actually write. I said that it is a guideline. It is the same guideline that has been in the game system for nearly 30 years. 1D6 averages 3.5 damage, so 2 DEF against that is reasonable. Obviously, it can be higher or lower than this, but a 4 DEF per DC is totally unreasonable. 2.5 DEF per DC is on the high side but still reasonable. 3 per DC is extremely high and borderline unbalanced. 3.5 per DC is ridiculous since the character rarely takes damage and can sometimes even recover whatever damage he takes with post 12 recoveries. Unfortunately, the guidelines on page 15 of the book are really bad with regard to DEF. Whoever wrote them was having a bad day because they are not a range that corresponds to the other categories. But using them, the DEF to DC ratio for average active points are 1.67 Standard, 1.79 High Powered, and 1.94 Very High Powered. A bit on the low side. They really should be closer to 2 for PCs. Note: If one considers those to be x Def + y rDef, then they are way too high: 2.5, 2.86, and 3.33. So, I suspect the authors meant Def/rDef, just like stat blocks have PD/rPD which means total and resistant. A better example is the source material that HERO Games releases. For example, CKC. The average PD/ED is ~22.8. The average dice of damage (or overall DC for attacks like AP or AF or Ego or NND) for damaging attacks are ~13 DC (not including all advantages such as charges or reduced End since those do not add to damage and ignoring entangle only NPCs). The DEF to DC ratio is about 1.75 which is what villains should have (i.e. slighty lower than PCs who should be in the 2 ballpark give or take on average). But, the 2.5 he wrote is just plain skewed to get the result he wanted. The math is the same regardless. Just take a ratio. His mistake was that he used a low damage, high DEF, high additional points value for that level of damage example. Would you add another 20 points to one area in a 100 point game? Isn't that overkill? 5 to 8 active points, on the other hand, is reasonable for a 100 point PC point total. Yes, that was a mistype on my part. It is implicitly stated in a few ways: 1) Adjustment points halve their DEF effectiveness. Both pro and con. The reason is that the 1.5 to 2.5 DEF per average DC is reasonable whereas 0.5 (or less) or 3.5 (or more) DEF per average DC in the campaign is not. 2) Campaign source books all over the place typically have a 1.5 to 2.5 average DEF to DC ratio for heroes and 1.5 to 2.0 for villains. Not usually higher. It's all about game balance. But from your earlier posts, it's pretty obvious that the math and game balance means little to you. You appear to just want to argue with everyone.

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? Except that you purposely skewed the data in 3 ways when you started. 1) 8D6 attacks are supposed to have 16 PD/ED as the base defense (as per the guidelines in the book). By upping it to 20 PD/ED for the base (i.e. stopping over 70% of the damage), it skews the results. 2) You also did not go by the guidelines for how much base damage 350 point characters do, hence, drastically improving the DEF outlook. 3) Finally, you effectively gave +10 to PD/ED and +4 DC to the attacks, but only +9 to the DEX (because you selected a break point where +10 was the same as +9), so you gave a lower boost to DEX. Hmmm. Redoing your example with the appropriate corrections: The starting DEX is irrelevant as long as they all have the same. The important aspect is the damage, and the damage/DEF ratio. For 350 point PCs, average max suggested damage is 12D6 and DEF = 24. DEX +10* = 20 Damage +12 DC = 12d6 DEF +24 = 24 PD/ED *I'm taking into account the amount DEX that goes to increase SPD Okay, we have four things, let's make 3 imaginary characters that with the above starting stats and an extra 18 points to spend. Character one we increase DEX by 9 points. Character two we increase Damage by +3.5 DC Character three we increase DEF by +9 Now, is any of these characters a clearly superior fighter when compared to the others? DEX vs Damage: DEX hits Damage with around 90.7% accuracy. Damage hits Dex with around 25.9% accuracy. Dex causes an average of 18 STUN to Damage on an average hit. Damage causes an average of 30 STUN to Dex on an average hit. Since they have equal SPD, we'll give 'em each, 10 shots. Dex deals an average of 90.7% of 18x10 (180) = 163 Damage deals an average of 25.9% of 32x10 (320) = 78 Conclusion: Dex is superior to Damage. Dex vs DEF Dex hits Def with 90.7% accuracy, and causes 9 STUN on an average hit. Def hits Dex with 25.9% accuracy, and causes 18 STUN on an average hit. 10 shots each: Dex deals 90.7% of 10x9 = 82 Def deals 25.9% of 10x18 = 47 Conclusion: Dex is superior to Def. Damage vs DEF Damage hits Def with 62% accuracy, and causes 18 STUN on an average hit. Def hits Damage with 62% accuracy, and causes 21 STUN on an average hit. 10 shots each: Dex deals 62% of 10x18 = 112 Def deals 62% of 10x18 = 130 Conclusion: Damage is only slightly superior to Def. So sure, you can make the math look like anything you want if you purposely do not use the guidelines in the book and start out skewing the data to prove your point. But, if you actually sit down and use the suggested guidelines from the book and then add the additional boost to each, it is much easier to see how easy it is for DEX to allow a PC to go nuts. No rock, paper, scissors at all. Dex blew out the other by a considerable ratio. Note: The other thing the game designers explicitly state is that DEF is something that should not be heavily boosted. They explicitly HALVE any adjustment powers to DEF because of how powerful that is as well. Unfortunately, they did not notice the same for DEX.

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? Then why did you bring it up? The 15 years of playing your PC was your "massive gaming experience support" for your POV, only it was misleading. Now suddenly, you are taking the position that how often you played is not relevant? Odd that. Can't have it both ways, either you have a lot of experience that proves (at least to you) the math wrong, or you don't. Did your PC actually start out with a 43 DEX at 350 points? Or did you embellish that as well? 43 DEX is 99 active points. That's a big chunck of 350. Doable, but still overkill IMO. I doubt many 350 Bricks have Str of 109 (which I would also find unbalanced at the 350 point total). Did the brick in your group have a Str around 109? Anecdotal evidence is all nice and well, but one has to look at the math too.

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? I noticed that you avoided the real challenge in my post. As skeptics of UFOs with visiting aliens say: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." 78 XP in 15 years? Guess you don't play her that often.

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? Uh huh. Regardless of your claim here, the math is still important. 3D6 results in a very small set of possible numbers and an even smaller set of likely numbers. And I bet they had to go out of their way to do it. Why don't you illustrate your point by posting the type of attacks, number of attack dice, OCVs (with average modifiers), DCVs, Defenses, and SPDs of all of the PCs in that group and let the readers here decide?

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO?

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? I think this has to do with pure game mechanics. For attacks, Dex and Ego are divided by 3 to create OCV, DCV, and ECV. For skills, Dex and Ego are divided by 5 and added to 9 to create skill totals. Dex or Ego 30 results in skill totals (without any other modifiers) of 15-. That's a 97.2% success rate for typical use of the skill without buying up the skills at all. Ditto for combat. Without taking skill and other modifiers into account, the Dex 30 superhuman character hits the best human Dex 20 character on a 14- or 90.7% of the time. For both attacks and skills, Dex/Ego 30 is already seriously pushing the envelope of what a 3D6 dice mechanic can already handle. But, many of the other stats (except PRE) do not use the 3D6 mechanic and hence, do not have that game mechanic envelope. Strength can go as high as someone wants and does not break the 3D6 mechanic (although it can break other mechanics). And even PRE is also used for number of dice (like Str), not just the 3D6 roll and hence, it is understandable that it might sometimes be higher than 30 (course, the same could be said of Ego vs. PRE attacks). But, 30 is a good game mechanics cap for those characteristics that use the 3D6 mechanic and hence, it makes sense that the Champions Universe would use it for the most part. I walked into a game a few months back with 350 point PCs and one of the PCs had a Dex of 41. That's ridiculous for 350 point PCs. That PC almost never misses and almost never gets hit. After one session, I just shook my head and never went back. Course, I left for a lot of reasons, not just because of that, but not having reasonable and consistent caps on game elements is just not fun IMO. In a game system where character creation (PC or NPC) consists of buying whatever anyone wants to whatever level one wants, there has to be limits or the game falls apart. And that is probably why Champions Universe does not have much in the way of mega-Dex or mega-Ego NPCs. It just makes game mechanics sense to not do so.

Re: Ogre NND Question Precisely. And actually, the writeup of Ogre in CKC does not have a Bearhug NND listed. Where is this SFX that people are talking about? Did they just make that up out of whole cloth from the OP's description of the NND? Or is there another writeup of Ogre somewhere else?

Re: This Seems Busted Because the normal character is 4 times his size and looks like a Giant to him. For the exact same reasons that -+ 2 DCV was added to the Growth and Shrinking powers in the first place. The range issue you bring up, though, is an issue. If one really wanted to model it, the example would be that Miniblast at 16 hexes would be +2 to hit (for size), but -2 to hit due to how far 16 hexes looks to Miniblast (64 hexes). Maxiblast would be at -2 to hit (for size), but +2 to hit due to how short 16 hexes looks to Maxiblast (4 hexes). In this example, if appropriate range modifier (based on size) rules were put in place (in addition to size rules), both Miniblast and Maxiblast would have the same chance to hit Normalla at that range. But, that requires more effort to create those special range rules.

Re: This Seems Busted Actually, I used that house rule since Champions 2E, more than a decade before DND 3E came out. It's magnitudes better than +2 DCV and -2 DCV which is just plain in error. Which is reasonable as well. However, it should still be both an OCV and DCV modifier for range, otherwise you still run into the exact same problem as the current rule (if you give +2 DCV per smaller size range only, the 18 inch PC is still at -6 to hit the 9 inch NPC at range). The mechanics of only modifying DCV is flat out bad. But, using the OCV and DCV modifier rule for both ranged and melee, or only using it for ranged, either way is preferable to the current rules. The reason Champions introduced the +- 2 DCV size rules it did was to reflect the Wasp flying around bad guys and hardly ever getting hit, but Giantman easily getting hit. But, the implementation of it was terrible. I think the +1 / -1 OCV/DCV rule adds in all of the flavor of what was being looked for with regard to comics, without having the glaring error of the math.

Re: This Seems Busted Precisely. That is what I did the last time I added the size modifiers to my house rules (which, btw, were practically the only modifications I made to my last Champions campaign). Then, get an old small tape measure and color code it (with permanent ink) for each range of changing CV (e.g. 3 colors away = -3 OCV or +3 DCV depending on which is easier). Never count out hexes again!

Re: This Seems Busted On the Growth / Shrinking issue, I too ran into this recently. It was more of a pain in the butt buying a series of powers (most of which could not go into a framework) that it was Persistent Growth. But, that is not my real issue with Growth and Shrinking. It is the DCV modifiers. The problem with -2 DCV for larger creatures and +2 DCV for smaller creatures is that the game mechanic itself is flat out broken. 9 inch tall attacks 18 inch tall (one size larger creature) and is at -4 to hit 18 inch tall attacks 3 feet tall (one size larger creature) and is at -2 to hit 3 feet tall attacks 6 feet tall (one size larger creature) and is at 0 to hit 6 feet tall attacks 12 feet tall (one size larger creature) and is at +2 to hit 12 feet tall attacks 24 feet tall (one size larger creature) and is at +4 to hit 18 inch tall attacks 9 inch tall (one size smaller creature) and is at -6 to hit 3 feet tall attacks 18 inch tall (one size smaller creature) and is at -4 to hit 6 feet tall attacks 3 feet tall (one size smaller creature) and is at -2 to hit 12 feet tall attacks 6 feet tall (one size smaller creature) and is at 0 to hit 24 feet tall attacks 12 feet tall (one size smaller creature) and is at +2 to hit Instead, it should be that a smaller creature is +1 DCV and +1 OCV per smaller size, the larger creature is at -1 DCV and -1 OCV per larger size. Then it would become: 9 inch tall attacks 18 inch tall (one size larger creature) and is at +2 to hit 18 inch tall attacks 3 feet tall (one size larger creature) and is at +2 to hit 3 feet tall attacks 6 feet tall (one size larger creature) and is at +2 to hit 6 feet tall attacks 12 feet tall (one size larger creature) and is at +2 to hit 12 feet tall attacks 24 feet tall (one size larger creature) and is at +2 to hit 18 inch tall attacks 9 inch tall (one size smaller creature) and is at -2 to hit 3 feet tall attacks 18 inch tall (one size smaller creature) and is at -2 to hit 6 feet tall attacks 3 feet tall (one size smaller creature) and is at -2 to hit 12 feet tall attacks 6 feet tall (one size smaller creature) and is at -2 to hit 24 feet tall attacks 12 feet tall (one size smaller creature) and is at -2 to hit Course, the DCV size rules have been screwed up for many editions.

Re: Ogre NND Question

Re: Ogre NND Question In real world terms, it's different because blood has oxygen in it, even if someone is not breathing. You pinch off the blood supply from the artery and very little if any blood at all gets to the brain. You prevent someone from breathing, their brain still gets a blood flow and hence an oxygen flow, even if that blood starts losing more and more oxygen over time.

Re: Ogre NND Question Not for that SFX. No. The fact that SFX does not drive the game at all is a weakness of Hero's. Internal SFX consistency must be driven by the GM, the system does not have internal SFX consistency with exceptions being rare. Instead, exceptions to comic book SFX are the rule. Iceman's ice armor does not melt in great heat unless he writes it that way. Magneto's magnetism does not affect opponents in ferrous metal armor more than non-ferrous composite armors unless he writes it that way. The Human Torch's fire does not disappear in a vacuum or with a fire extinguisher unless he writes it that way. This is a game system weakness. It forces either non-plausible events (i.e. where suspension of disbelief is lost), or GM adjudication where none should be needed. If SFX drove the game system as much as game mechanics (as opposed to just game mechanics) where characters could still have exceptions to those SFX (i.e. purchased with advantages or limitations, e.g. Iceman could have super cold ice armor that never melts), it would minimize the "weird stuff" that sometimes happens in a game. Just because something can be built in a given way (stretching one's suspension of disbelief) does not mean it should be. You yourself admitted that the defenses for the NND were wrong. But, you somewhat contradict yourself with your own opinion because you also stated "He's specifically bought "enough force" by purchasing this specific Power. Says so right on his character sheet that he has enough force." According to you, if he buys it on his character sheet, than he has it. So if you can disagree on the defenses of the power even though it is written on his character sheet and hence, he has that power as written, than I can disagree with the NND aspect of the power. Otherwise, the "he has it written on his character sheet" argument of yours should take priority over your opinion that the defenses are wrong. I only allow game mechanics that closely match a SFX, not ones that seem to jar with the SFX. I do not allow every possible game mechanic for a given SFX, just because the game system allows for it. For me, SFX is the key, not game mechanics. It appears that you do not hold that same opinion.