Daeger

I'm getting involved in a campaign that's running HERO System so I figured I'd look at how some other characters have been built. I was looking for the thread that statted out all sorts of things like the characters from Megas XLR, Darkwing Duck, and stuff like that, basically whatever anyone could think up. But I searched the forum and couldn't find it. I remember it to be one huge megathread, and now it's gone. What happened to it?

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game Nngh. Game's today and I haven't really found much that'll work besides making normal defenses good for STUN. There was also a suggestion in the combat handbook for halving the STUN everyone takes into two parts and applying defenses to them seperately, which I think might work better than the normal defense thing I came up with. The problem is, BODY is really such a small number when you think about it and trying to balance it is a very delicate process. We're dealing with something that has a base number of 10 and throwing d6's at it, after all. The STUN to BODY thing didn't really work out because all it did was tip the scales further in the favor of STUN. Combat Handbook couldn't have said it better: "Most Heroic characters have relatively low defenses — Normal Characteristic Maxima caps their natural PD and ED at 8 (assuming they buy that much), and the heaviest body armor (which characters often don’t have access to) only adds about 13 DEF. Many Heroic characters also have fairly low STUN scores. On the other hand, just about everyone does have access to fairly powerful weapons. Between weapons, STR, Combat Skill Levels, Martial Maneuvers, Haymakers, and other options, many characters can get up to the point where they dish out seven or more Damage Classes’ worth of damage without too much trouble. The result is large STUN totals applied to comparatively paltry defenses — which leads to lots of characters getting Stunned and Knocked Out." I feel as if I'm fighting a battle I can't win at this point, I've been really racking my brain on a solution and I'm almost wishing that HERO used a system like HP in D&D, with lethal and nonlethal damage, so this problem wouldn't be so prevalent.

Re: Timing is everything I don't see how this would solve the move and attack problem.. there are maneuvers such as charge that have the FMove quality. Plus, this'll really screw up any character who relies on some velocity damage. I think a more effective and simpler solution would be taking turns for half-phase actions within the same phase. That means Blaster will take a half-phase action, moving over to him, Stoat will go, and then Blaster and then Stoat again. And of course, if either of them does an attack action, they don't get their second half-phase. This would, in effect, force Blaster whether to do some sort of move-and-attack maneuver to make sure he lands the first blow, or not waste his second half-phase action and do something else, but is taking a risk because Stoat will take an action before he gets his next.

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game Well, I don't know how serious you plan to be taken if you're going to provide advice about our house rules without even reading them first, but I will say that we have enough experience to know what we're doing.

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game Ah, didn't notice there was a third page. Woops. That's not a bad idea, although I think 3 STUN to 1 BODY is a bit too low of a ratio, it fits in very well with changing normal defense to be simply STUN-only defense against both normal and killing attacks. I'll try to see what I can come up with. Actually, maybe that ratio could stick if killing attacks did less STUN.. hm. Still though, I wish there was something I could do to make killing attacks more unique from normal attacks. They're way too similiar.

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game There is no clear definition in HERO on what DCV is. To me, the DCV that armor gives in our game represents that not every blow landed against the armor does any sort of damage to make a difference, not that wearing the armor makes the person harder to hit. The acronym is Defensive Combat Value. This is rather broad, as other things that have the word defense in them are things like Physical Defense and Energy Defense. Natural armor certainly can have DCV bonuses, but PD and ED are also very generalized, undefined terms in HERO (much like everything really). If the thing with natural armor needs to reflect that its natural armor is actually as effective as armor at stopping blows, then DCV bonuses can easily be added. But it can also imply things like simply damage reduction, too. Trolls aren't exactly the most difficult things in the world to slice through, but they're difficult as all hell to really injure. Since natural armor is a very broad category, there are no guidelines for this. Ultimately, it's up to the GM to decide what's appropiate. I hope that explains the logic behind the system. As for the gambeson.. call me crazy, but providing some free physical defense does bias in the favor of energy, don't it?

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game Again - it's not like the DCV is free, you have to pay in points, and there comes certain disadvantages for wearing armor, much like the weather and how effective you'll be when you need to sneak around (not to mention swimming). DCV is only applied to armor that you wear (which only goes up to defenses of 10, 10 being things like dwarven mountain plate). This means, at best, you can only get 5 DCV through armor. Natural armor doesn't get it - it does get the inherent advantage for free, however. We decided this when we found it weird that say, chain for instance (4 Defense) would just keep blocking a mere 4 damage every time it was struck, which isn't like real armor at all. Armor makes it a lot harder to land a clean hit, so when you miss an armored opponent, there's a good chance it bounced off his armor. The heavier and bulkier the armor, the harder it is to find a way to hurt the person (we tend to get creative with our flavor text sometimes).

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game Well, we have yet to do the shield rules - we're not going to do them as Fantasy Hero or the core book does, and instead of presenting guidelines to building them we're just going to present them as-is and have point costs next to them. They might end up being a little more expensive than DCV levels actually, because Missile Deflection for arrows and such are probably going to be a part of them. But anyway, it's apparent that we need to lower the DCV cap (I'm thinking 14) as well as the overall cap.

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game If the intention was to nerf the nimble unarmored light fighter, we wouldn't have left the whole mess of different limitations you can apply to armor in. I don't see a problem with the inherent factor - you still have to buy it with points, al beit you take it with a -1/2 limitation (-1/4 representing the fact that it's part of the armor, another -1/4 to reflect that it can be reduced and such). Is your argument against this the limitation seems to be too many 'free points'? All primary equipment has to be paid in points (sidearms are usually allowed for free out of the book, like if Mr. Swordsman wants a bow or if the crossbow guy wants a shortsword). Now, looking at your Armor Proficiency power.. that seems to be an even bigger nerf to the light fighter. You stack a lot of limitations there (by the way, STUN only is -1/2), and end up with something that only costs 9 points for a big benefit. I prefer house rules over having certain people to take certain powers to reflect what combat should be, personally.

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game No offense, but you're coming off a little elitist here. I already recognized the defense cap was a little too high (the intention was to make the defenses cap a little higher than the offense cap, but we underestimated the difference between 12 OCV and 16 DCV). The DCV bonus to armor indeed reflects the D&D aspect of wearing heavy armor makes you harder to hit. Remember, though, that the DCV bonus from armor suffers from a unique limitation - it's halved (rounded down) if someone uses find weakness or armor piercing, and doesn't even apply if the armor is somehow bypassed. Anyway, I think I'm leaning toward the idea of redoing the hit location table to make killing attacks to have larger body multipliers than normal attacks (since body is multiplied after you calculate armor, after all), and have the STUN multipliers be lower as well. It sounds like the best way to do it and should give variety when compared to normal damage attacks. That, and the normal defense to STUN idea should give me what we're looking for as far as combat goes.

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game There are energy blasts and such too. Yeah, that's something I had in mind. (Edit: Also, is there a power I can use for adding normal defense other than characteristics? It seems to me like doing characteristics is an expensive choice.) Well I don't want to do that either, it takes out a piece of randomness from combat, and I haaate doing that. I think with the normal defense thing I got going, I can make STUN not as much a problem anymore - but I'm still trying to figure out how to make killing attacks deadlier without making it overpowered. One idea that comes to mind is tweaking the hit location table to have a new, seperate column for multipliers to killing damage, seperate from the normal damage body. Meaning, attacks that do get through the armor'll do some more damage than normal damage attacks - and I'll lower the STUN damage killing attacks do as well.

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game The values for buying armor aren't as high as you think. Full plate is 29 points - this gives you 8rPD/8rED, and +4 DCV - which is definitely not a bad deal. It was just too cheap beforehand with all the limitations you could apply that made the best armors next to nothing, leaving little room for concepts that don't wear armor. Anyway, I'm having second thoughts about my Killing Attack change idea (although the normal defense to STUN idea still sounds good to me). It sounds like far too much BODY damage.. though I do think something to killing attack has to be done to make it more distinct from everything else. But one of the problems is this we don't plan to run into a whole lot of 'mooks.' The playstyle for this campaign has always been very strategic and epic, not picking barfights in fullplate. And hired minions are likely to come prepared with armor of their own or something. I guess the real question now is how should Killing Attack be made deadlier without making it imbalanced?

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game Thank you for the compliments. Yes, like I said, I am aware the defense cap was set a little too high, and that did cause some problems. But I don't think defining character build is going to fix this problem. The problem is that it's remarkably easy to not kill someone. In D&D, you took penalties for doing nonlethal damage with your weapon, so if you wanted to capture someone alive, it took a bit of extra effort in most cases. Even with the bleed rules, it's still easy. Killing damage and normal damage of the same damage class also seem to be remarkably similiar in both damage and stun, except killing does slightly more BODY while normal does slightly more BODY. I find this a problem because it brings little variety to the powers and goes against the concept of what a 'killing' attack is supposed to be. Now, what I've been thinking about is changing the way normal and resistant defense work. Instead of the way it is now, Normal defense is STUN-only (and works on killing attacks and such) and resistant defense is both. This would actually give use to normal defense again and would help alleviate STUN issues in combat. This, and changing Killing Attacks to 10CP per 1d6 (using the 10-point column of the Damage Class table) and lowering the amount of STUN it does, may just give us the effects in combat we're looking for. I'm still mulling this one over, however. I'm pretty confident in my change to normal defense though, I'm surprised I didn't think of it earlier.

Re: Damage Absorbtion: Help our game We want combat to be a bit more deadly for both parties involved (and we're not carrying over resurrection, no. We are doing healing though). Bleeding is a good idea, but not quite what we're looking for. As for sectional defenses, well, see, if you'll read the rules, we have special rules for armor - it's design your own, you pay CP for it, and you don't have to take sectional defenses if you don't want to. I think we might double STUN and do something to killing attack to make it do more body damage and less STUN, as well as restrict certain maneuvers like club weapon with OCV and Damage Class penalties. Your thoughts? Edit: Maybe reducing Killing Attack to 10 points per d6 (using the 10-point damage class column of the damage class table instead) and have it use the N STUN multipliers on the hit location table.. that would do the trick I think..

Re: Killer Damage and Stun Damage That was my understanding, too.