jtelson

Re: Do opposed skill rolls work? No, you're correct the system's set up to favor whoever's resisting an action (It's 1 skill point easier to defuse a bomb than to 'fuse a bomb, etc). Unfortunately for actions where it isn't as clear who's acting vs resisting it can become a question of who goes first (generally I let the PC's 'resist') although with gambling or other situations where 'push' is a valid outcome, I have both parties roll and ties are a no loss/gain result.

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales You've hit upon the thing that I love about Hero. Very early on (mid-80's) the people that I play with realised that we didn't care for how the sample characters were built so for our group the baseline shifted down.

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales A lot of this discussion seems to be predicated on the belief that stats are almost always superiour to alternatives. I don't buy the premise but I don't think that's what this is about. We're talking about scale, my groups' campaigns have generally been scaled around trained human heros existing near the NCM's softcap. Other builds scale around that; No one is taking a 'handicap' based on concept. I suppose everyone is taking the same 'handicap' based on our play style. There isn't a right way or a wrong way to do this(So no one is smarter, dumber, more or less mature for their choice). As with almost everything with Hero character creation it's really about making sure that the players all feel they're starting out on a even footing. As to the original original topic, I would scale the bad guys up or down based on if they were fighting Batman or the JL and keep the characters on the same scale. Generally I'd prefer the headache of scaling the villians vs the headache of tracking character variants since one is my headache and the other is everyone's headache.

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales Well first off the costing isn't so cut and dry that you can say Skill Levels are more expensive than Dex. +10 Dex and 3 Overall Skill levels (I guess really 2 with Speed) cost the same but are differently valuable. While Dex does apply to both OCV and DCV always, OSLs can add to anything not just OCV or DCV and the same points can get you +6 (or 4) w/ HtH or +10 (or 7ish) w 3/ Maneuvers. Also characters with NCM have 20 points less of other disadvantages.

Re: The cost of killing damage I'm comfortable that my math is up to date, I have to use it pretty regularly and I'm certain that the only text book reference I've made has been to suggest some light intro reading to someone far earlier in the thread. Our fundemental difference here seems to be that I expect the value of an attack to be it's expected value and you expect it to be something that happens every couple of hundred attacks. So I'm having trouble believing that it's my math that's shoddy.

Re: The cost of killing damage

Re: The cost of killing damage 1) Actually it will, Your preference to target charaters with Killing Attacks over Characters without Killing Attacks can change the matrix radically. Every participants' preferences should be included in a valid decision matrix. Among other things, it means you are more likely to pass over vulnerable or exposed targets in preference to those who have particular types of attacks. 3) Yeah, that's an argument that's going to make me stop believing in math.

Re: Villains named after Santa's reindeer? Olive should have duplication. 'Olive the other reindeers used to laugh and call him names'

Re: The cost of killing damage 1) Once you decide to discuss Game Theory you can't ignore participant preference. It's the foundation to Utility particulary when you're referencing Decisions under Risk and utility is one of the pillars of Game Theory. 2) A single participants' preferences effect their choice of target, skill level distribution, movement, use of aid powers vs. attack powers, defensive power settings etc. and can obviously have a considerable affect on the decision matrix of any participant in the conflict. The GM controls the participant preferences for all NPC's. I generally expect a GM to recognize that not all NPC's should have the same preferences as there are many rational and tactically sound preferences rather than one blanket preference. Non-GM participants should be reacting to the NPC's preferences and not the GM's. If the GM does decide that a single tactical option is the only valid one, and I noticed it, I would either stop playing (two dimensional conflicts bore me) or take advantage of the information since I would now be making decisions with greater knowledge of other participants' preferences. 3) If we decide to expect the value to be the expected value rather than a value that occurs half as often as it's opposite (Minimum damage) then we won't be irrationally expecting it to be the maximum value and can make decisions based on that.

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales My group and I are clearly in the minority on this one. Humans generally have NCM so Batman being the absolute pinnacle of trained humans might have a 5 speed or a 23 dex but would likely have paid double for the last of it. That's not to say he wouldn't have dozens of skill levels. This allows reasonable scaling of speed and other stats through the mid to high ranges. It does densify a bit at the lower end but Hero's always tended to be a bit tight at the bottom.

Re: The cost of killing damage

Re: The cost of killing damage And once again we've swung back to participant preference. What makes this whole thing really amusing is that in any game where Comic is a participant it is actually in his best interest (Should be considered to have a high utility) for him to behave as he has descibed. Not because the math supports it (It just plain doesn't) but because out of the set of choices presented to participants in conflict he has clearly stated he will target participants with killing attacks. Participants with KA's will become aware of this and it then becomes in their best interest to remove Comic from the conflict, thus making it in Comic's best interest to continue targeting them.

Re: The cost of killing damage Almost all decision making as far as Hero combat is concerned is 'under risk' (rather than 'under certainty' or 'under uncertainty'). So you've pretty much nailed one of the key components to determining the relative utility of strategies by participant. As far as KA's go, only very conservative participants are likely to place a high value on removing KA's from play (Expected Value/long term damage capability is less than that of a comperable normal attack), but since a KA is twice as likely to do minimum damage than maximum damage even moderate risk takers are likely to place a low value on removing them from play.

Re: The cost of killing damage Games & Decisions: Introduction & Critical Survey by R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa is a pretty light introduction to game and utility theory and even if you can't follow the math the ideas are well presented with a nod towards the lay person.

Re: Transform on 0 Body things Due to the relatively low usefulness of such an ability, if I opted to allow it at all, I'd probably call it a transform of the target (Thus using their body) and require it to be transdimentional (creating the effect in the past).

Re: The cost of killing damage Your point on genre is very well taken. On those rare occasions when I run standard four color-ish supers (To my players that may be reading this, yes it has happened), killing attacks are very rare, most guns are modeled as EB's (Major Mayhem's Luger is a KA, His Agent's rifles are EB's).

Re: The cost of killing damage I've got to stop doing this stuff in my head, it's 3.111 x number of damage classes. Doesn't change the point, just makes me seem like a dufus.

Re: The cost of killing damage That'd all be well and good if the KA expected damage wasn't 2.67 x number of damage classes

Re: The cost of killing damage

Re: Question about Nonpersistent Or stunned, stunned is a big one.

Re: The cost of killing damage And rightly so, when I re-read my original post it confused me.

Re: Desolid and Strength According to 5th Revised just the strength, martial maneuvers and physical skills come part and parcel.

Re: Constant duration AoE, UAA issue

Re: Constant duration AoE, UAA issue I don't have the book in front of me but generally AoE changes how target is defined (From a person to an area). Although I vauguely recall something in UAA about dropping an AOE on a person.

Re: Clinging, UAA Nearly every example of UAA is flight UAA, followed by the advantage text telling you that Flight is a build of dubious legality. Including a rule about using it isn't the same as saying it's ok to use. It's one of the infuriating thing about toolkits, if theres a left handed spanner in the box everyone's gonna want to use it whether or not it's the right tool.