Massive Metakine

Well, with the real-life hobbits, scholars agree that they were a subspecies of humanity.
 
I think it's probably best to think of them like that for gaming purposes since they, as a culture in fiction, behave more like human civilians than like dwarves or elves.

Sounds like an excuse for a new power advantage
 
Auto Hit
 
The character with this power advantage will automatically hit unless the victim can make a roll of DCV + 3d6 - Attacker's OCV - 11. The victim only gets to roll if he is somehow aware of the attack or is taking basic defense stances. This is a +1 Advantage, with an additional +1 Advantage if the power also has an area of effect, Indirect, and/or Invisible Power Effects advantage, or is a mental power.

Perhaps:
 
"Yes, I can't grasp the concept that bigger is not always better"
 
"No, if people can figure out high is better in bowling and low is better in golf, they canl manage this too"

The reason you should care about this is that it's hard to find players that will shift from D&D to other game systems. They aren't 'stupid', we should just be looking for ways to make the transition from D&D to Hero as easy as possible.

Not at all unlikely.  Power skill is gonna ROUTINELY exceed 18 because there's a consistent penalty.  (No, not all VPPs will need one, but many will.)    Contortionist may well exceed 18 because every point of success adds a die to the breakout/escape roll.  Granted this isn't *real* likely,  IIRC, Acrobatics has a similar aspect.  
 
 

I agree, With the x or less notation, it gives the feeling that there is a cap to skills etc. With a skill being a bonus to the roll, it feels more open-ended and not constrained

More importantly, I think it's clearer and simpler.  Building a character doesn't have to be complex if the player's not trying to squeeze out every dime.  (I will grant that having help with scale considerations, until you're used to them, is VERY useful.)  It takes more mental effort to work through the X-...most of us have simply gotten used to it so it feels reflexive, but IMO it isn't at first;.  When you have to think about the mechanics...the mechanics have problems.

Depends:
 
Do you play for serenity, or do you play for adventure? 
 
Seriously, though:  
 
No.  There are multiple instances where you roll high for success, and where you roll low for success.  As a general-- but not absolute-- rule, Players rolls are roll high; GM rolls are roll low, but there are exceptions to both.  As I sit here, I recall the instance some years back where the target number was 10+, but rolling a 12 exactly was bad-bad-bad.
 
What do you call that?  Roll right here?   
 
I suspect we have just inadvertently demonstrated how unimportant it is that we roll one particular way: it's a game that I still play and don't give rolling under or over enough thought to find a way to rename the rolls such that they all come across as one or the other.   
 
You guys want to roll over because you don't think D and D players are clever enough to adapt, that's fine.  I don't do it because i have yet to see a reason that it's important.  There are a lot of memes and jokes about the attraction to "the colored math rocks," but the only things I've ever round related to which way we must roll them is right here, on this board, generally defended as important for variants of "this makes it more like D&D."   You want to do it, it's all fine with me.  I don't care; I don't have a dog in this fight, and went out of my way to say that.
 
We all made, as very young children, the transition from color-coded cards to spinners and to dice when we moved from Candy Land to anything else, and never once had trouble doing anything more than popping the spinners together without tearing the paper.   I have absolutely no doubt that anyone capable of reading the name of the skill on his character sheet will not get terribly confused by the idea of having to roll high or roll low.  
 
Pick whichever one you want, and have fun discussing it and the math involved (I do like following the math), and we can even continue to carry on as if one or the other was better, but let's not continue the line that it's important so that we don't confuse people who are playing a different game.  I am pretty sure that we all play at least one different game, and haven't gotten confused yet.
 

Mine is simpler than that.
 
Mine is "why?"
 
That's my whole argument.  The answer tends to come back is "it makes it more like game X."   Ultimately, that's just not a motivation for me.  I am nowhere near as well-rounded as those of you fortunate enough to live near gaming stores or in areas with strong gaming communities, and while I can honestly say I don't remember all the games I've played at least once, I'm also wiling to be that the actual number might be as low as a dozen; I am sure most of the other folks here have dabbled with way more than that.  Of those games, though, Traveller and D&D were the only two "roll high" games I have played that I can actually remember being roll high games-- and even then, probably only because these threads bring up D&D so often, and because I still play Traveller.   I am not a particularly gifted person, but I never had any difficulty playing one game because it was different from another, so I never got worked up about which way was the best way to roll any more than I get worked up about not being able to make multiple jumps in Chess even though the board looks a lot like Checkers.  At the end of the day, I can loan a rule book to a new player and be pretty certain that he's going to read "roll this or less," so why bother changing it if we're all on the same page already?
 
However, I find that I invariably enjoy the math conversations on these threads, so I follow along when they come up.   
 
And as far as MM's ideas, they are pretty simple; he is just suggesting changing Skill notation more to what Traveller uses: Vacc Suit: 8+ would indicate that you need to roll an 8 or more on your dice for success.
 
The only issue I can see, really, is those occasions where a character's Skill exceeds 18, though I suppose a Skill of 22  ( I know: very unlikely, but it still happens, particular for themed supers) could be written as -1+, or perhaps (-1)+.  It wouldn't take more than one explanation to grasp that, though finding it in a long list of 6+, 8+, 4+, 9+, etc, it would probably be self-evident to most people.