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WhiteShark

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  1. @Duke BushidoYou raise an interesting point, but I wonder if your version of the Rule of X wasn't quite a bit more restrictive than the version upon which we are working. This isn't hard limits or traditional campaign maxima and should be able to turn out characters that deviate quite a bit from the baseline, provided they pay price elsewhere. I'm also surprised to hear that combat became as predictable as you describe. The outcomes of 3d6 obviously tend toward the middle but not radically so. Is it damage rolls you found too normalized? Even supposing that damage rolls were completely average and predictable, tactics can determine who gets to attack and under what circumstances, which can make or break a tough fight.
  2. Hm... I've realized a flaw in my average STUN/BODY damage formula. With Normal Damage, for example, I was doing DC * 3.5 - DEF. At first glance that looks alright, but then I realized a problem: average damage shouldn't actually be zero if DEF is higher than DC * 3.5. Even if DEF is higher than the mean roll, there's still a chance of rolling higher than DEF, and a proper damage average would take that into consideration. Therefore, the proper calculation should be: SUM(MAX(each possible damage roll - DEF,0) * probability of that roll) But that requires knowing the probability of each possible roll on Xd6... and the formula for finding that requires expanding a polynomial, something I don't think is possible on a spreadsheet. Applying this by hand, I found that, for example, the average STUN of DC 2 vs DEF 6 is actually 1.56, not 1. My plan is tomorrow to try and code something to find the real averages for any given DC since I don't think it's possible on a spreadsheet without entering a bunch of tables by hand. The current averages on the progression table I gave you probably aren't off by too much, but they will tend to be low.
  3. Ok, I've worked out a ratio. I wasn't sure where to put it on the Google sheet or whether it even belonged there so I'm uploading it here. In actual play you'll have to round the values but going into decimals was the only way to make the progression regular. The rDEF ends up much lower than your suggested 40-50%, (edit: I miscalculated, the growth rate is exactly 40%) but I think that's ok; the way the 400 point characters are built makes BODY damage a rarity, which seems more like a genre convention for superheroes than a real baseline. The starting row doesn't quite match a 0 point character because that wouldn't produce the desired Hits to KO and Hits to Dying ratios; that said, it's only a little off. Let me know what you think. I believe this will be a useful tool for working out baselines at other point values. DamageDefenseProgressionTable.xlsx
  4. Book NPCs are... not really helpful, it seems. Some seem in line with our progression, some invest nothing in combat stats. Some are meant to have equipment and thus have little built-in DC. Some are villains built with thousands of points but do proportionally far less DC than the 400 point heroes do. If I threw out all the """outliers""" like a statistician with an agenda all I would be left with are the ones that mostly fit the characteristics progression I already have in mind. At this point I think we have no choice but to be somewhat arbitrary. It may also be the case that different genres will necessitate modifiers to the baselines, but I hope not. Anyway, that's all from me today. Haven't had much opportunity to work on this the last couple days but hopefully I will get more done this week.
  5. I'm still working through the changes, but I'm curious why the weightings have shifted toward defenses (and EGO). It does seem like it's easier now to make a zippy glass cannon without deviating much from X, something which subjectively pleases me. I definitely agree with the reduction to BODY. I spent some time this morning checking out example stats for NPCs in the Normal tier to see if I could extrapolate a smooth progression of characteristic values from the character creation base values to the ones we've (mostly) settled on, but alas, it may be more difficult than I had hoped. While a smooth progression would have a 0 point character start with 20 STUN and gain 1.1 STUN per 25 points until reaching 30 STUN at 225 character points (our chosen value), the example "Skilled Normal" 50 point character from the book jumps straight to 24 STUN, and the example "Competent Normal" 100 point character... goes back down to 22 STUN. My goal for today is to create a regular progression for DC, STUN, and DEF based on example characters from the various books. I'll be entering their characteristic values onto a spreadsheet and then averaging the ratio of characteristic increase from base to total character points. Ideally I am able to find a progression in which Hits to KO remains at approximately 2.5 across all character point values, like it currently does with the 400 point baselines. I've concluded that 2.5 HtKO is my preferred level of (non)lethality for a mirror match of balanced characters, and I find a pretty similar opinion among my friends and users on other forums. After that I'll think about BODY and rDEF. By the way, the new additions to the sheet look really good. I didn't even know you could make graphs like that on a spreadsheet. Very cool. Hopefully I have something to contribute of my own later today.
  6. @Doc Democracy I think your method looks useful, and I don't think it would be hard at all to encode that in a spreadsheet. You said that you run the strawman fight three times for each character, but I'm not sure I see the point in that. Speak not the averages for themselves? E.g., if the offense strawman does an average of 8.5 STUN per attack (50% hit chance * 17 STUN average), then you know that he will KO his opponent after 4.7 (opponent STUN of 40 / 8.5 STUN) attacks on average. I'm of a similar mind, but I'm curious how short is short to you. If you had two perfectly well-rounded characters fighting against each other, how many hits do you think it should take for one to down the other? What about two offense-focused combatants? I realize that you said you picked the numbers off the top of your head, but supposing I placed two of your offense strawmen against each other, one would KO the other after 2.3 hits / 3.6 attacks—so in reality, four attacks. That seems high to me for two characters that are supposed to be offensively oriented. That's actually the key thing I'm considering right now: what average hits to KO etc. should the baseline values promote? Unfortunately I think this may vary based on setting assumptions. For example, I'm a big fan of guns being deadly, so in my military sci-fi game, I want to keep that average pretty low. Even more so, if two glass cannons went toe to toe, I'd want them to be nearly, perhaps actually, taking each other out with one of their (very powerful) average hits. P.S.: if you'd like to learn very basic coding, spreadsheets are a fine way to start. There is a lot of easy to understand documentation out there and generally it's only as complex as using some math functions and possibly a few if statements. I'm not a coding expert by any means but encoding this sort of math on a spreadsheet is pretty simple once you get the hang of it. @sentry0 would you prefer that we henceforth continued discussion here or in the file thread? I see that it is possible to upload files in both places, so I don't mind either way. I'm going to ponder the average attacks/hits to KO/dying question some more today before I personally make another revision.
  7. At the start it was by points, but that will likely change as they acquire new stuff in game. I'm not 100% sure how I will handle that transition, but that's neither here nor there. Yeah, that makes sense, but I'm still not clear on whether I should also be adding that value to OCV/DCV/DC. If I'm not adding it in those places, maybe it should be given a higher weight, perhaps matching the CV weights. CSL has the drawback of only applying to certain attacks but can also be flexibly allocated, unlike the others. I'm thinking the following: heigher weight for CSL (possibly 3 to match the CVs or 2~2.5 to account for its limitations) DON'T add it to OCV/DCV DO account for it in maximum DC Sound good? Also, the DEF value already includes rDEF, right? I'm assuming I don't need to add them together to find the real Normal Defense. If I do need to sum them, then the stuff below is probably all wrong, but that seems unlikely. I've changed no formulas in this version. I added a minor clarification on the dAP line about including expenditures on DEF. More importantly, I added a calculator to the right on the top row. It shows average STUN, BODY, hits to KO, and hits to Dying for both Normal and Killing damage. I'd be pleased if you took a look at the numbers there and gave me your thoughts on what ratios of DC, STUN/BODY, and DEF/rDEF would produce the desired average hits to KO/Dying while best matching the power level. Under the current numbers, it seems Normal STUN is vastly more efficacious than Killing BODY. I'm thinking BODY should be tweaked down to a baseline of 10, among other things. rule_of_x r2.xlsx
  8. That sounds great. I am pleased that you're still interested in this even five years after uploading. Good idea about the tabs. These are the averages from the table on 6E1.35 followed by the same on your spreadsheet (unrounded for clarity): 300 points: CON/DEX 20, SPD 5.5, CV 8.5, DC 9, DEF 13.5, rDEF 8 400 points: CON/DEX 25, SPD 6.5, CV 10, DC 10, DEF 22.5, rDEF 15 spreadsheet: CON/DEX 20, SPD 5, CV 8, DC 12, DEF 24, rDEF 17 You can see how the values range from matching low-end 300 point book averages to exceeding even the 400 point book averages. Hm, this is a bit tricky. You're right that the book weaponry generally has lower DCs than what I proposed; at the same time, the book weaponry (both sci-fi and modern) also tend to have mods that result in oAPs much higher than what you proposed. For example, the Gauss Rifle "only" does 2d6 Killing Damage (6 DC), but it has Autofire 5 and Armor Piercing and apparently totals to 71 oAP (67 when I recreated it myself, but I might have done something wrong). Likewise the around-225-point creatures tended to have DCs that were pretty high, many of them at least 10, though there were a few that all but ignored offensive stats, such as the Flesh Golem. I think we need to at least raise the oAP baseline. Consider the Modern Assault Rifles table on p78 in the Equipment Guide. These are typical military weapons and, aside from one outlier, they're all in the sixties or higher. If we assume that those mods are worth their points, then it should follow that raw DC without those mods should be of equal value, so it would then also make sense to raise the DC baseline. That would mean that it would be easier to get away with doing more raw DC with a power than using a weapon, but again, assuming that Autofire etc. are worth the points, that should be of roughly equivalent value. Another balancing factor is that if a PC does spend a bunch of points to do more DC than a piece of equipment, that's a lot fewer points he has to spend on other useful stuff. /shrug The baselines proposed in the 225 point revision create a pretty different dynamic than the one in the original 400 point sheet. In the original sheet, the average STUN for a Normal Damage attack is 18 after DEF, which means an average of 2.2 hits to KO. WIth the proposed baseline changes in the 225 version, the average STUN is 8 and the average hits to KO is 3.75. Personally I prefer the ratio on your original sheet: I think on average it should take, at most, three hits to down someone. Consequently, I think it were best if we adjusted the DC baseline upwards as per above, and if not, at least lower the DEF baseline. Fiddling around on the spreadsheet, I found that a baseline of 10 DC and 22 DEF produces an average STUN of 13 and 2.3 hits to KO. I adjusted rDEF slightly, too. I had another question in regards to both this and CSL. When you calculate dAP, are you including purchases of DEF/rDEF, or is this purely for other defensive powers? Likewise, with CSL, are you adding it to OCV and DCV for the purposes of obtaining their maxima, or does it only apply in its own column? Finally, I was wondering about the absence of BODY from the spreadsheet. My military game has much in the way of Killing Damage and Armor Piercing, so in some situations it seems like BODY may be more relevant than STUN. Do you think it ought be included? --- By the way, I noticed that you poked around with Mizuki's stats a little. She's a boundary-pushing glass cannon build; not sure yet how it will go in game. I see now that reducing her OMCV to 0 was a mistake. I saw a creature in the Bestiary that had 0 OMCV so I thought it permissible, but foolish me didn't realize that was only because it was a zombie... rule_of_x 225-r3.xlsx
  9. It's complicated, but I'm running a military sci-fi game at 225 points for the main characters and a still undecided lesser amount for companions/allied side characters. My questions are: How to calculate baselines for a given point value For what point value your baselines were calculated The baselines seem to vary between the numbers 6E1.35 gives for Low-Powered Superheroics (300 points) and Standard Superheroics (400 points). What rules/assumptions undergird your calculations For example, it looks like it takes about three Normal Damage hits (after reduction from DEF) to break through the baseline STUN on your original sheet. Should I take that as a standard around which to recalculate? By referencing the Character Ablity Guidelines Table, tweaking downward, and comparing to 225 point creatures from the Bestiary, I've arrived at some baselines for 225 point characters. Attached is the edited spreadsheet. I'm curious what you think. I was especially uncertain about the recalculated DEF/rDEF baselines; at first I based them on the aforementioned Guidelines Table, but that seemed low, so instead I made them proportional to the (slightly) lower DC baseline. rule_of_x 225 ー.xlsx
  10. Do you have any tips or guidelines for deciding the baselines? Should I just average the ranges given on the Character Ability Guidelines Table (6E1 35) for the campaign's power level?
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