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Re: The NEW Champions of Vancouver -- What Would You Like To See? Vancouver, hrm? It's getting awfully close to 2010, and the Winter Olympics. This could be a minor theme element (especially considering the various protest groups, international angles, etc.) There are a number of significant RL crimes in the current and recent news in Vancouver and area -- from one of the most serious acts of terrorism ever to several of the world's worst serial killers, to the mysteries of the 'Highway of Death' that are specific to the setting, and which could contribute to background. The waters near Vancouver vary from mighty rivers and tributaries to the gateway of the Pacific ocean, with seagoing vessels of commerce, luxury, exploration and defense plying their waters. Countless islands are a short distance from this city -- from small private sanctuaries to the huge Vancouver Island, seat of Canada's westernmost provincial government. The threat of tsunami, flood, earthquake and other coastal perils is oft discussed by locals. Inland, BC has soaring mountains (a few volcanoes, too), incredible natural resources and rugged, remote terrain. It also has infestations of alien species, forest fires that stagger the imagination, long-running land disputes, and legends of more than just the Sasquatch. Oh, and not too far from Vancouver, driving south past Tsawassen, is a border to another country. I hear they even have a tradition of costumed heroes of their own, over there. (I think they call them 'baseball players?') Vancouver has exciting parks and wilderness zones, from Stanley Park to Grouse Mountain to Burns' Bog, where coyotes have apparently learned to mimic the sounds of police sirens, and cougars are sometimes sited. No Vancouver setting is complete without its Chinatown, or other enclaves of exciting and distinctive cultures - Greektown, Indiatown, Hollywood North... Also, Vancouver is a center of technological advancement in such pursuits as fuel cell research, genetics, immunology, and video gaming. I'm very impressed by your choice of location. Have fun with it.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks?

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast Er.. You're saying Risk is measurable Uncertainty, which in turn is the term meaning unmeasurable probabilities? I must've taken a wrong turn somewhere in your post. For me, Risk is measurable probability. Uncertainty applies where some element is unmeasurable. Each result from any one killing attack is fully measurable. The outcome of an iterative process of many dependencies and factors, however, rapidly transits into the realm of unmeasurables. If you're diligent and time is no object and you're good at estimation, you may be able to approach a few phases of combat probabilistically. After a few more, stochastic models will begin to break down, if conditions and ratios are right. Killing attacks tend to more strongly favor those conditions and ratios of chaos. This is what I mean when I claim KA's lead to Uncertainty. And.. this is all a tenuous and somewhat irrelevant digression, which has so little to do with the topic of the thread that I'll gladly apologize for bringing it up, and move on.

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast Forgive me. I'm using risk and uncertainty as technical terms, with narrow technical definitions taken from the fields that study them. I can't begin to deal with broad nontechnical conventions about how they make people using them want to feel, in a mathematical discussion. I'll capitalize them in future when I mean them technically. The jagged distribution described above is part of how KA generates Uncertainty. In any single dice roll there is Risk. When that dice roll has a chance of determining whether there will be a next dice roll, that creates dependence. (e.g. If you're CON-Stunned, you lose your attack, or if you're *plinked* during a recovery action, you gain your Recovery in Stun and have effectively more Stun to counter the effects of the attacks against you.) Independent dice rolls only generate Risk. Dependent dice rolls can generate Uncertainty. Aesthetic arguments about how much prettier one distribution chart looks than another, I'm uncertain about how to address... I haven't watched enough Fashion Television to comment on them.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Assuming single combat: A regular 4d6 KA has 70 possible Stun outcomes ranging from 4 to 120, averaging 37.3 before defenses. At x2.25, there's only 21 outcomes, between 9 and 54, averaging 31.5 before defenses. But look at the two DEF comparisons of 20 and 30, with a 'moderately high' CON of 25. At DEF 20, you only average 11 damage per hit after defenses, but you do damage 85% of the time. Even at DEF 30, you still do some Stun 45% of the time. This is slightly more reliable than a Normal 12d6 attack for doing damage, but much less likely to CON Stun the target (3% of the time for 20 DEF, never for 30 DEF). This is not superior to a regular 4d6 KA, or a 12d6 Normal attack, overall, but it's better than you would expect of an attack that averages so much less Stun. At x2.5, you do 15 damage to the 20 DEF target, and retain or slightly improve on your reliability (90% and 56%) but now you also CON Stun 10% and 1% of the time, which is approaching the odds of being CON Stunned on the regular attack, but with the advantage that only 1/10th to 9/20ths of the time will the target get a Recovery under attack without additional damage ruining the recovery. In iterative simulations, this is enough to make the fixed multiplier attack superior to the regular KA at x2.5, but not at x2.25, all other factors being equal. (That process, I must leave to you to reproduce, as I no longer have access to the software package I ran this on a decade or so ago.) At x3 fixed multiplier, you CON Stun one third to one sixth of the time you attack, and you do some damage 97% to 76% of the time. Congratulations, you've built a machine that seldom loses in head-to-head combat. Of course, this is all theoretical and approximate and built on assumptions and bound to be affected by play style and house rules and game circumstances so much as to make precision impossible to claim.

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast Here's the trade-off, as I see it, of KA's: o Non-mechanically -- other attacks may be associated with a bad reputation depending mainly on how they are used; KA's will always have a bad reputation with many populations based on their intentional nature. o Mechanically -- other attacks are more certain in their effects, but for the same cost their long-term trauma to living systems is less spectacular; KA's are much more traumatic to their targets some of the time, but they are unreliable in any one instance. Everything after that, up to your personal opinion. Are you part of the population that finds guns and swords in the hands of masked vigilantes a bad idea? Up to you. Do you think the chance to hurt someone _really_ badly in one shot is worth the risk of them being able to ignore the damage you're trying to do them, perhaps forever? That's your call. Do you think giving people these choices, in these ways, is wrong? That, too, is up to you. Me, I don't see it that way. Well, no. Dice represent risk. If you roll 3d6 and are at all familiar with math, or good at estimation, you have a clear sense of the risks of that one roll. There's no uncertainty in a single roll -- the odds are certain. In Game Theory, the value of the wager can be calculated. You can establish statistics, expect equilibrium outcomes, and manage expectations, where there is risk without uncertainty. Repeated random, dependent, cumulative intermediate steps with unknowns are what creates uncertainty. After enough steps, outcomes are truly unpredictable, and the value of wagers cannot be determined by any formula. Your system can be broadly parameterized, but is -- or may be (even that is unpredictable) -- truly chaotic. People are generally much more tolerant of risk than of uncertainty. It's not for me to read the minds or second-guess the motives of everyone discussing KA's vs. EB's, but it is a remarkable coincidence that the arguments so broadly and closely mirror the relative ratio of uncertainty and risk in each game mechanic. At least, to me. If you go back to the first edition of Champions, (and yes, I know not all Heroes is Champions.. just the Heroes that includes the most aspects of Powers in the game, and therefore is the most convenient for broad discussions of the game mechanics of Powers, to my mind) you may find the rationale for KAs stated in the Powers section, explained better and more clearly than I can. That original definition of KA's is the basis of my views on KA's, and why I refuse to treat them as a pure mechanic. Sure, Cyclops can punch a hole through a mountain with a single Optic Blast, while Wolverine can barely erode a bit of cliff face in the course of a morning workout. But metaphorically, Cyclops represents control, discipline, minimal use of available force to achieve an effect and the Boy Scout aspect of the four color hero, while Wolverine struggled with berserk, murderous, uncontrollable rages, blood-vengeance, mayhem, pain and angst. (Personally, always thought Logan was better written.) Do I build batarangs as low-damage KA's? No. Can you? Sure, and I have no problem with that. Batman's original appearances and many of his most outstanding stories have depicted him as more than a little murderous. If you want to tell the story of the Dark Knight who terrifies the superstitious, cowardly lot of criminals he hunts, then his penchant for flinging animal-shaped razors is not among his most fearsome aspects. The guy appears out of nowhere. He _knows_ things. He finds you no matter where you are. You can't escape him. You can't scare him. You hurt him, he just comes back stronger. The cops can't stop him. The crime bosses can't stop him. He hits like a ton of bricks. He disappears into thin air without a trace. The things he says -- they go right to the bottom of your soul, and chill you. And oh, yeah, he leaves paper cuts, too.

Re: Three Heroes to Save the Universe 1. Dr. Destroyer. For reasons others have already posted. 2. Mechanon. Maybe he'll tell me his secret origin during the adventure. 3. Dr. Destroyer. - If one is good, two is better.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Okay, here's my list of solutions to the KA problem, and my comments on them. It's far from complete or fair-seeming, I'm sure. Attack Fixes: Armor Piercing - overall does less body for the same AP to anyone except people with high DEF, when KB is counted. A great way to model sharp stuff and destroy foci. Except when combined with other advantages or when applied to KA's, not an especially good substitute for KA's if the point is to be more lethal. Reduces total dice of the attack, so outcomes get more, not less, variable (one of the objections to KA's). Penetrating - does more Stun, not more Body. Piercing - an abandoned advantage from an earlier version of the game, epitomizes the problems with advantages meant to simulate 'more lethal, less stunning'. Works like Penetrating, except does Body instead of Stun. Seems like a good idea, until play-tested. Or thought about. Usually combined with mass-fire options (Autofire, Trigger, high SPD, agents, duplication, AoE 1 hex) to increase lethality, especially in campaigns set too near to Oz. Normal attacks with 'Reduced Stun' limitations - One of the better mechanics, 'Reduced Penetration' (-1/4) doesn't shave a lot of points, does not result in KA's becoming much less dangerous, does let High DEF types wade into gun-wielding mobs without fear. More complicated to do the math, since it adds a few steps to determining damage taken, and not worth the extra steps for my money, but overall harmless. Fixed Stun Multipliers - mathematically, one of the worst solutions. Any fixed multiplier above x2.25 makes KA's more reliable, removing the high *plink* ratio that is their natural balancing factor. Many propose x3 (or higher!?) Stun multipliers, which leads not only to higher Stun on average, but more reliable attacks. Doesn't address most of the usually cited objections to KA's. A really poor 'solution'. NND does Body - See Piercing. AVLD does Body - See Piercing. Buying extra body for normal attacks - Fuzzy schemes adding levels of complexity, usually without playtesting or much statistical support. These usually add fixed Body to the damage for fixed cost. A good way to get most of the weaknesses of other 'solutions' with none of the advantages. Buying 'death pips' - Much like hit location tables (so adding levels of complexity and accounting), only built on characters earning 'death points' they can assign to other characters. When a character's accumulated enough pips assigned by others (or in some cases, them-suicidal-selves), they die by GM-contrived deus-ex-machina. Not my cup of tea. Power Destruction: Body - See Piercing. Transform, cumulative: to Dead - See Piercing. Nerfed KA's - The GM reduces KA lethality by limiting them to 5 DC or less. A very good solution - simple, clean, consistent. Defense Fixes: Really HUGE DEF - PD/ED of 100+, in games with 60 AP attack caps. Uhh.. No comment. Really. Death as a special effect - Death, regardless of rolls, is treated as a special effect. You encounter something that 'should' kill you, and regardless of your Body or DEF, you can simply die -- no game-mechanical effect -- because the genre dictates that you ought to. Won't prevent your ghost/revenant/etc. from carrying on, but you're 'dead' by spfx. Death a GM-fiat-only effect - GM decision is the only factor. There's no game mechanic for death. Negative Body is only a guideline for healing times. Stun "de-Multiplier" skills, powers, or talents - Can be workable and justifiable for certain concepts. One example is a Con-based skill. For every 5 points you make the roll by, you reduce the Stun Multiplier of a KA that you have taken by 1. Not sure of the balance, and does add moderate complexity to the game. Overall the best solution from my point of view, since it is the least intrusive and the closest to current mechanics, while addressing the issue that _some_ people feel they ought to take less Stun from KA's. (Well, who doesn't want to take less damage from attacks? ) Now, a campaign setting without KA's, I'm perfectly glad to see. In the world as it was when Champions first came out, the popular imagination was much less drenched in killing attacks. Outside of some professions and sports, handguns were on the order of one one-thousandth as common three decades ago as they are now, I would guess. Those guns that there were had much less power on average. Blades, too, were pretty primitive and small compared to today's weapons in movies, books and games. A better world? I don't know. But it's a perfectly playable one. As is a game where everyone brings a KA, and it's up to the Heroes if wading in blood is the only way to solve their problems.

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast A killing weapon is a thing purposefully, wilfully created with the specific end of taking a human life. Philosophy and religion aside, it is a fundamentally antisocial artifact and in comic book emblemology, intrinsically anti-heroic. Various elements can partially expunge this moral stain on a hero's character: Wolverine was implanted with his KA's against his will. The Punisher learned his gun skills as a legitimate soldier doing his patriotic duty. The Lone Wolf was the official state executioner. These angst-dipped dark antiheroes, for all the BG and psych. lim. balancing factors of their stories and personae, remain killers, not heroes in the four-color mode. Even if you proudly practice precision use of your killing weapon to exploit its power to also induce incapacitating trauma, you remain to the objective observer who cannot look into your heart or mind, a person who has chosen to take up the tools of a killer. Even if they can generate quite lethal effects incidentally, by happenstance instead of design, your teammates and their accidental radiation exposure-induced bodywide mutagenic changes, their alien physiologies, their versatile power suits with normal rays remain clearly set apart forever from you and your grisly image of a determined killer. That's what the K stands for, in my opinion. It's a perfectly acceptable way for a dark antihero, or a grim and serious hero, to be, to my way of thinking. If it's what you enjoy, go for it. Separating these factors from the mechanics is like separating the lung disease from cigarettes. Sure, you can leave that part out of your advertising, but then you're not looking at the whole story.

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast Long ago, in a gaming convention far, far away, there was a Champions session with two brilliant GM's, a half dozen outstanding roleplayers, an elegant and delightful original tournament module, and, sadly, yours truly. I say sadly because about a third of the way through the module my character, the brick, displayed his frustration at being caught in a deathtrap by taking out some petty aggression on a little floating mechanical drone 'monitorbot'. The GM's looked at each other, rolled up the combat maps, and began packing up without a word. As I had taken the last action, I assumed I'd somehow offended them, and we all spoke up, asking what had happened? "Nothing. You've won," they explained. "When you threw the villain's monitorbot into the sound amplifying deathtrap room and slammed the door, you won. We never counted on anyone doing that, and it hit the master villain's vulnerabilities and susceptibilities. He was listening to the monitorbot from his master control room; he's at deep negative stun. You win." So, yes, believe me I understand the disappointment of the big bad getting taken out too soon. It doesn't take a KA to do it, but KA's do present that possibility. I'm sure the big bads also would be disappointed at being captured 'easily'. And, having Int scores above 6, > they also generally have fallback plans, or their bases present interesting perils that can't be solved by lucky shots, or the bad guys suck it up, go to prison, and plot their revenge like grownups. KA's highlight the factors of risk and uncertainty in conflict. Most people are able to cope with risks if they know the odds at the outset. Many people, however, are terribly averse to uncertainty. Sooner or later the Stun Lotto will hit, representing the deep and profound forces of trauma on a living system which deadly force can generate, if you roll KA damage often enough. That's risk. But will it happen before the slightly more efficient normal attack takes out the killer character? You never know for sure, or even how likely it is to happen. That's uncertainty. The 'uncertainty averse' may not even like it when it works in their own favor. I believe this is the real root of most objections to the mechanic. KA's force players to recognise that random factors can change everything, and no matter what you do you can't get powerful enough to control it all. All you can do is stand by your own values and hope for the best in the face of an unknowable destiny. But, seriously... disappointed to win? What's that about?

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? I can respect thought, and effort (and sometimes, even people). Still, a lot of 'problems' have been the center of vigorous debate for much longer than this "fixing" KA's discussion. The 'problem' of phlogiston lasted hundreds of years before measurement, experiment, reason and education led most of the world to conclude there was no such thing as phlogiston. When I roleplay, I really do prefer to just play a game than to learn new house rules, hear someone self-flatteringly extol the many virtues of his fixes of the flaws in the system, or endure the numbingly dull and inevitable situation of them and their players -- myself included -- coming face to face with the brokenness of their ill-conceived fixes. Sure, the KA and its mechanic has evolved and grown more sophisticated, with the refinement of MA DC rules and so on, over time. It may evolve more in the future. I have no issue with the game growing and changing. I hope it thrives and expands. I just don't see wasting a lot of time turning inward and 'fixing' working core mechanics when the world outside the game is growing and expanding with or without us, and looking outward and forward can be so much more rewarding. Not that I'll stand in your way if you want to navel-gaze. It's your navel. Enjoy. Me, I'll be over here with the people who've moved on to the next topic.

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? Thanks for coming back to the table. It's too good a discussion to not hear from strong proponents of all persuasions. In one 250 pt campaign, I played the sidekick-like 250-pt 'Rook', who was 'entirely normal' except for a 53 Dex, 12 SPD and some salvaged VIPER agent gear. (Even sold back some running so his total running per Turn was within 'human normal' movement.) Rook ('Rookie') was a 'newly powered super' who the heroes were teaching the craft. While it wasn't my most successful character, I can't recall any problems that the game group (after a period of initial skepticism) didn't work around easily. I think the biggest problem was acting every segment, which slowed combats if I didn't stay focused. Enough of those actions were taking Recoveries that the problem wasn't significant. A CV of 18 drops awfully fast when you're diving for cover, grabbing for foci, Flashed, stuck in Darkness, Stunned, Surprised, Cowed or concentrating on First Aid. Maybe you could name the problems you expect? o Too combat effective? Didn't happen in this case. o Too much attention taken away from other players? Didn't happen. o Dominates noncombat activities? Didn't happen. o Upset the other players? Other than mild initial doubt it would be very playable, not so much. o Made it hard for the GM to come up with challenges or run scenes? Not according to the GM. I've never played a game without damage caps, though I've heard of a few. From the point of view of the heroes when we were losing combats, I'm not sure I never heard the line, "Gee, if only one of us had a 30 DC attack, we could turn this fight around." That was more wishful thinking than character concept, though. Again, I need to know what the problem is? Not the situation, (i.e. a 90%-25% lopsidedness on hitting/being hit) but the problem. Why is it bad? What harm does it do? Where is the injury to the players, GM, or the game? Limits that are narrow and based on reasoning that hasn't been thoroughly examined is to me in all situations a questionable thing. The apparent outcome is homogeneity, not fairness. The apparent mechanism is intolerance of difference, not love of equity. Until I know in crystal detail that I can follow step-by-step why I'm being asked to reject diversity in any thing, I remain suspicious. How bad of a problem are we talking here? Is it cats and dogs living together serious? Is it biblical serious? Is it bribe the GM and other players with snacks serious? What exactly will the problem lead to? Will the next step be Rock and Roll music? Tattoos? Puns? The nature of the objection escapes me so far. Please clarify.

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Someday I'll catalogue all the 'fixes' for KA's I've seen and their pros and cons. Armor Piercing normal attacks, Penetrating, Piercing, Normal attacks with 'Reduced Stun' limitations, fixed Stun Multipliers, NND does Body, buying extra body for normal attacks, buying 'death pips', Power Destruction: Body, Transform, cumulative: to Dead, treating death as a special effect or a GM-fiat-only effect... All of them come down to one thing. There's a mechanic in the game that works and works well, despite Lottophobia and Trauma-denial. Then there's all of these also-rans that are more complicated or less balanced or simply needless ways of doing the same thing. I go with the general rule that if there's already a power that works for a game effect, use that power. As bad as the KA-munchkins may be, the patches I've seen or heard of invariably end up with more unbalanced or less widely-accepted. Not that I object to games without KA's. If that's the campaign you want, go for it. I recommend using TFOS rules.

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast The game universe is generally somewhat less lethal than the real world. Jumping out of tall buildings, being hit by speeding vehicles, exposure to radiation .. these all don't come across quite as deadly in the game mechanics as they do in real life. That's where the roleplay challenge comes in -- to treat game dangers with the degree of fear appropriate to people who _don't _ know that they're unlikely to really kill. Resistance to KA's? Not trivial in my experience. It has to be bought and paid for with reasonable justifications in the character's concept. That's not trivial for me. It's the same section where the character comes from and what they are. The fabric of their being and their reason to exist are treated with similar seriousness, so I don't discount the price. KA's 'kill' in the minds of the people who reside in my campaign worlds and in the roleplay reactions of the best players I've seen. And yes, I will repeat it once again -- KA's *plink* very often, and even when the average damage taken per attack is higher, the number of attacks expected before damage is taken at all is also higher. Betting you hit a high damage roll before you get taken down is the price of using a KA, and that bet is far more costly than most Stun Lotto discussions I've seen recognize. I have no answer for this. It's a religious argument. I've played this game for a quarter century and run simulations and done math and never been able to present the -- to me -- clear evidence-based results in a way to shake the faith of True Believers that KAs do too much Stun. It's a matter of the attitudes people hold dear, and I don't expect it will change. The attitude has some basis, and some merit, but not strongly enough to convince me to meddle with a mechanic that -- if it were broken -- still doesn't work terribly overall. BODY and STUN are game mechanics. In reality, they model but do not equate to what really happens when a bullet enters, transmits its energy to, travels through and otherwise interacts aggressively with human flesh and bone. Calling direct destruction BODY, and disruption to living systems STUN, is as close as I can get. And that disruption - trauma - is what endangers most people who die of injuries, not the direct destruction. If Spiderman got tagged by a gun he would be in serious danger, but I'd argue that's because of the bullet tearing his innards to shreds (BODY?) and his system going into shock and trauma (Stun?). I've found that not letting the bad guys get off a shot in the first place works pretty well, too. Sure, KA isn't perfect. But for me, to paraphrase Churchill, KA is the worst way to do killing damage, except for all the others.

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast When did people who post to discussion boards get so much cleverer? When I GM'd, I didn't restrict KA's to killer villains. Only to killers. As, well, that's what the K stands for. My mileage does vary on the scale of wading into mobs of gunmen, but perhaps not by so much as I seem to indicate. A mob of gunmen with 1d6 to 1.5d6 KA's, my tough heroes would be well-justified wading into confidently. However, I'm not playing the Last Son of Krypton, or the Green Goliath, on the scale of summer blockbuster movies. If I were, I'd give them DEF enough to handle KA's at higher levels. And even at the much lower levels of the heroes I play, the chances of coping with four normal agents with 2d6 KA's favors me, not them, unless I'm tactically incompetent.

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? Sorry you're not posting this thread, because you've left me with questions I can't answer without your input. Characters with an ability WAY off the charts compared to others don't have to cause problems, in my experience. Maybe there's something different in your approach, if it often does for you? With an even semi-thoughtful GM, a halfway decently designed campaign, villains that aren't just shooting gallery targets, and somewhat teamly allies, the uses of extreme abilities generally turn into high points of gaming sessions I've been in. I still laugh, for example, at the time someone's PC used his super-Concealment skill and shadow powers to hide a thug so well he was never found again. And yet from time to time the thug's voice would be heard calling out, "Hello? Where am I?" at random for months afterwards. Sure, it was a you-had-to-be-there thing, but we all thought it was funny. Isn't abilities that are way off the charts one measure of super? I don't see the point of a game that can only handle people who are all super in similar ways to similar degrees. If all of your Bricks, EBs, MA's, Speedsters and Mentalists are just subtle variations of the same thing, their powers are only DEF and attack, and that's all your interpretations of Champions allows you to use, you may have missed most of the game's best features, for my money. What is it about the way you game that makes characters with off-the-chart abilities so much of a problem?

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast My own old boken isn't more than a dozen feet away from me at the moment. So, for the moment I'm talking only about boken like mine. Of course, I don't pretend to be a Super, so the fact that I don't believe anyone could really chop down an oak tree or demolish a concrete wall with one in the six or seven swings of a 2d6 KA the Object Body and DEF tables suggests is irrelevant. 2d6 KA with extra Stun multiples, high CV, high SPD, built as a blunt bit of wood weighing under a couple of pounds. As a GM, I'd likely strongly steer a player bringing this to me toward a different attack power or a different special effect, because I frankly don't find the justification convincing on its face. It looks to me so much like a near-munchkin trying to abuse the game mechanics that I'd worry it would sour the fun for myself and other players if I didn't take extraordinary steps to dispel that -- I'm sure -- misperception. OTOH, if he had a magic boken, special boken chi skills, a vibro-boken or some such that integrated well with his background.. sure, why not? Nothing seriously game unbalancing about the power itself. He's still a guy walking around with a weapon purposely made specifically for killing people, however game-mechanically he's reduced his chances of actually achieving that result. He'll be perceived that way by everyone who sees him, in my campaigns. He'll be treated that way by the police and the courts. His personal views, his own moral justifications, notwithstanding, he's the one carrying the _killing weapon_ and trained to use it to kill wilfully. His teammates are merely people with potentially lethal powers, however he sees them.

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast This makes some very good points. It's not a 'fair' comparison, 20 DEF (good on the scale of 40+ AP attacks) is pretty high on the scale of 30 AP of attacks -- but who said killer villains fight fair? (In effect, you've coincidentally hit the DEF level that makes over half of all normal 6d6 attacks *plink* while still including some of the commoner KA damage outcomes. Drop that DEF a little, and the normal attack suddenly dominates the KA for average Stun damage.) It does represent a good factor to keep heroes on their toes against mere agents and thugs. It's easier to be someone who hurts than to be someone immune to harm. Killing Attacks are dangerous and frightening. While their point is to kill normal people and seriously injure those without resistance, if their game mechanical efficiencies make them scarier, and support the sort of player respect for the danger of the situation that roleplay ought to have anyway, how is that bad for the game? You could get rid of KAs entirely, and have the same impact with swinglines. Four agents with 15 Str and 30 AP of swinging can pick up and drop an awful lot of hostages from a great height before the hero can get to them. Or they can swing along and break windows, dropping sharp glass onto the heroes from the skyscrapers above, for example. It takes a lot of time to set up combats where this goes on; on the whole, I'd rather my GM just roll the KA's, as they're mechanically faster than other contrivances which are just as cheap and just as dangerous. This is not to mention coordinated attacks, surprise attacks, agents who've been instructed in the hero's disadvantages, using vehicles, agents using deception or circumstances in their own favor or employing innocents as agents by mind control or misleading them. Isn't the point to model situations that challenge players? Isn't a group of gunmen a standard, classic, element of the genre? KA's are more frightening, but ultimately less versatile and in some senses less efficient, than normal attacks. They're less predictable, and have associations with villainous motives and morals. In other words, they model well what they are -- the preferred attacks of bad guys who in the end are hurting their own cause. The presence of KA's in a campaign tend to darken the mood of the game. In a game with more than one character in five having a KA, you're likely into the grim and gritty genres because of it. In a dark enough setting, almost everyone could have KA's.. but then, how do the heroes know they're the good guys?

Re: KA Vs Energy Blast I've seen this debate before. And it's curious how the same -- to me -- bad math keeps getting applied to it by people who claim to be reducing an imbalance, yet always come up with fixes that overall increase that imbalance. Forgive me if I seem to be criticizing people, that is not my intention. I do not mean to seem insulting or to belittle. Both sides on the debate raise valid and meaningful points well worth examining. It's just where the 'facts' people state don't match what some simple first year college statistics that I refer to. At the 60 AP level: a) EB averages 42 Stun before defenses KA averages roughly 37.3 Stun. If you want a fixed Stun multiple, anything above x2.25 is making your KA more dangerous. The commonest Stun result for 4d6 KA is 14, at 4%. The second commonest, 60, at 3.9%. You could flip a coin: heads=14 Stun, tails=60 Stun -- and have a far superior mechanism for avoiding Stun Lotto than the fixed multiplier 'patch'. Max damage on a 4d6 KA happens once in 7776 rolls. That's 24 Body, 120 Stun. While it's a big ouch, most of the tough heroes who stand in the way of 60 AP attacks can survive that (though they should be unconscious from it). Even if you look for the half-dozen or so highest rolls, they happen less than three percent of the time. Targets also could easily suffer far worse from the KB damage, and the chances of that (assuming a solid structure within 21" and no KBR) are more likely than the Stun Lotto. The dominating factor in Stun Lotto builds isn't the average damage, but the chances of getting in at least one big hit before being stopped. Every KA has roughly a 50% base plink factor (chance of Stun damage being less than max Body). Again, most tough heroes who stand around sucking up 60 AP attacks will have defenses that can handle this level of damage, and then some. KA's will *PLINK* harmlessly up to 75% of the time, statistically, for the toughest characters, and another 20% of the time will not do enough damage to Stun the target for the phase. (They still can be knocked down or knocked back, which is overall the KA's most significant impact in most combat phases.) What follows is an explanation of how a munchkin's mind works, so if you find exposure to such things painful, skip the section. ================================================== Assume a character with 36 DEF and 33 CON. The 4d6 KA will *PLINK* 70% of the time, and will not do Stun exceeding their CON 90% of the time. After two successful hits, plinking falls to 49%, and odds of being Stunned almost doubles to 19%. After three hits, plinking is only a little more than one third likely and there's a 28% chance of having been Stunned at least in one round. Here's were KA's shine. If you can last until you've Stunned your target and then press your advantage while they're down, there's no one you can't knock out. But on average it takes six successful hits to do this, all the while doing fairly poor Stun overall. It's a dangerous game. If you're building like a munchkin, you make sure your SPD is at least 50% higher than your expected opponent's, or your CV exceeds theirs by at least two in total, to ensure you get those six chances. Most GMs won't see these as unreasonable in your build. "A 25 Str, Dex 29, SPD 6 MA with a 2d6 HKA and a couple of Martial DC's? Sure, why not?"* The more attempts compared to your opponent's chances to stop you, the better your odds of hitting the Stun Lotto - even if it means reducing the DC to get autofire. ================================================== But even with all of these factors skewing things to make the KA more likely to knock out the target, it still only can approach the efficiency of the equal-priced normal attack at doing Stun damage, statistically. The real edge is that the risk of being Stun Lotto'd can make targets treat the KA with more respect or fear... which isn't a bad thing to my mind, considering it's a Killing Attack. My conclusion, after watching the Stun Lotto myth wage across Usenet and discussion boards and so on for a dozen years or more is, "KA is not broken. It doesn't need fixing. Leave it alone. If you want to patch something, patch the school system, it's not teaching math skills." *There are some perfectly non-munchkin builds that look exactly like this, but they also have useful martial maneuvers that get used instead of whacking away with the katana every action.

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? If raw DEX scores are causing all this disputation, I can't imagine what sort of issues Shrinking, Invisibility, Ranged Skill Levels + Distance, or "let the Mentalist deal with Jack B. Nimble" would cause. I've never experienced an insurmountable issue with widely divergent Dex's or even CV's. Sometimes, GMs set caps. Sometimes, GMs and players just use the obvious differences as reasons to alter their tactics and make more use of settings, circumstances, and noncombat actions to generate more interesting stories. Case 1. Up against a NPC enemy with 53 Dex? Could switch to AoE's, and hope their Dive for Cover isn't enough, or use some other specific power in your character's current build. Or, you could back off and try to negotiate -- Speedsters are typically fun people who are easy to get along with if you're nice. (Except when they aren't.) Could lure them close by playing possum and catch them off guard. Expand your character's repertoire by roleplaying how they cope with something a little out of their league instead of just trading punches. Sure, tricks and avoiding confrontations you're sure to lose can only go on for so long. But by the time they do, if you're lucky, you have the XP to spend on something to more reliably cope with the unexpected. Case 2. Allied with a 33 Ego Mentalist, and worried that every session is going to be just "Watch Professor M fry the badguys from his armchair while the rest of the team is still getting into tights," except when "NPC Mentalist fries the rest of the team and Professor M saves the team in solo combat?" That's just as (un)likely to happen with a 20 Ego Mentalist, and there are plenty of ways to roleplay and actions to take that contribute to the well-run campaign even if you are in a group that includes at least one Pro from Dover. Figuring them out for yourself or with the others in the group is part of the challenge and the fun, I believe. Case 3. You are the 60 Dex character, and your nearest rival (enemy or ally) in agility has a stat in the mid-20's? Use all those extra CV points to add some dash, show, and hopefully team-assisting flare to help set up your allies to get better results in combat. Don't hit the enemy every chance you get, if sacrificing a sure shot means giving a teammate a better opening, helps draw enemy fire from the more vulnerable members of the squad, or weakens the bad guy's position in some way that helps move the campaign forward. I've seen excellent players of high Dex characters skip combat actions entirely and use stealth to sneak around and investigate during the combat, or get into position to rescue anyone who got unlucky in the fight, or mostly to deliver knockout blows to stunned enemies. One had the motto, "The only good fight is one no one knows I was even in." This sort of activity typically requires sacrificing enough CVs to still keep the actual give-and-take of battle interestingly balanced. Sometimes, it's not all about winning or losing. My best GM always made combats a matter of tradeoffs -- you could win the fight, but you may lose the clues if you fought only to win. Gambits needed to gain clues from combats meant you would need to give up CVs for maneuvers, give up combat actions for noncombat ones, know when to surrender or flee or even let the bad guys get away. And sometimes villains don't fight fair. It doesn't matter what Dex the bad guy has if he's demented. In one hand, Gobbie holds Spidey's girl high over a chasm; in the other, a mittload of innocent children. Can't save the both Spidey. (Well, unless you take a -6 penalty to grab both, plus adjustments for range, plus make an impossible acrobatics roll.) The only stat in the game that comes with a mechanical cap is SPD. (I've seen a build that went above SPD 12 which, while I'm sure is not to everyone's taste worked for the group who played with it.) If going capless is good for you and your players, I see no reason a mature group with diligent GMing couldn't make it work. Caps are an option, albeit admittedly a very convenient and helpful one.