GeekySpaz

Re: Setting Campaign Limits Oops. Not sure how that happened. Must have copied the wrong HTML tag when inserting responses between quotes (is there an easier way to do that BTW?).

Re: Setting Campaign Limits That's a very good point. One problem I've always had with damage in HERO is that there is no defense that applies only to STUN. If you buy enough defense to keep the stun totals low then you have ridiculous amounts of defenses against normal body. As a modification to my idea I could increase the cost of resistant defenses to 2:1 rather than 3:2. Then using the same example, instead of 10rPD 16pts would buy you only 8rPD. Then from a 12d6 normal attack you would take 21 STUN, 0 BOD or 20 STUN, 0 BOD. Against a 4d6 KA you take 7 STUN and 14 BOD or 14 STUN and 6 BOD. With no house rule at all the damage is 21 STUN, 0 BOD or 28 STUN, 0 BOD vrs a Normal attack. Not sure if that really improves the situation because the advantage remains in favor of the resistant defense. However I do want to be sure that every character has a reason to buy some of both non-resistant and resistant defense. I also want to favor killing attacks over normal attacks. Not strictly balanced but gives combat the edge that I desire. Otherwise characters may do what I would do if I played in a game that used the house rule I described before that applied stun multipliers only to the body that got past the target's rdef. If playing in such a game I would buy a large normal damage attack and a small KA. Then I would bludgeon opponents into unconsciousness and then coup de grace them the small KA. That's definitely not the feel I want combat to have in this game. So I definitely want normal attacks to be at a distinct disadvantage against armor so that the characters will default to using killing attacks.

Re: Setting Campaign Limits When using an CV cap, how do people handle combat skill levels? Do they count towards the cap on CV or can characters use CSLs to exceed the caps for a limited range of attacks? For my campaign I would ideally like to encourage all characters to take some CSLs. I like the flexibility that they offer, so that a character can, from phase to phase, focus more on offense, defense or damage. I haven't noticed too many of my players buying them, preferring to raise their base CVs. One idea I have would be to put one cap on base CV and another cap on total CV including base CV+CSL+Martial Maneuvers, but excluding other situational modifiers. But I'm struggling to determine specifics or come up with a better approach.

Re: Setting Campaign Limits So as one guideline for overall attack power what about a rule of X, something like this (I haven't fully thought this through, I'm just throwing it out there so please be gentle ): There are 5 general categories of attack: physical, energy, mental, flash, and power (I don't think I'm missing any, am I?). For each of them the rule of X is that the most powerful attack in that category + the resistant defense in that category must = 28 or less. In addition the two most powerful categories (such as physical and energy for most characters) must add to 48 or less. The three remaining categories have a rule of x of 16. In all cases the absolute Maximum rDEF is 16. Absolute Maximum attack is 16 DC.

Re: Setting Campaign Limits Yeah I need to rethink that grouping assuming I even stick with that concept at all. SPD needs to be grouped with something more important. Ideally I'd like to more emphasize that characters shouldn't be so stingy when it comes to REC but to do that it would be better to group it with other stats that aren't that important. If I went with the rule that resistant defenses count twice against the stun of normal attacks then a character who choose 12 def and 12 rdef would get 36 points against STUN. If the average 12d6 attack does 42 STUN then even an average character with 10 CON could take an average hit without being stunned. If the attack were a 12 DC KA (4d6 KA) then it would do an average of 14 BODY 28 STUN so the same character would take 4 STUN and 2 BODY. I think that works pretty well at a first pass. My thought is count defenses normally against killing attacks and count rDEF twice against the STUN of normal attacks. I actually would prefer the opposite. Killing attacks should be the norm. This campaign is intended as a superheroic power level but a fantasy theme. Combat should therefore have an edge to it. To fit with the Exalted theme (where the PCs tend to heal fully from all but the most severe of wounds) I had intended to make sure every PC had some minimal amount of regen even if that meant making it an everyman ability for the PCs (since so far nobody's bought it). If I go with what I described above and left killing attacks alone I think that would get to the balance I'd like. But I haven't considered every angle yet. Its just more a matter of drawing their attention to it. It gives them the hint that I'm likely to throw flash attacks at them from time to time (which I will ) so they don't want to ignore them completely.

Re: Setting Campaign Limits I came up with that one when the STUN multiplier was still 1d6-1. I tried an experiment last night with the 1/2d6 6E stun multiplier and found that attacks usually do less STUN than body with my rule such that the character takes a point of STUN for every body because that's the minimum. So with the current stun multiplier that rule may not work as well as it used to. However I still think its appropriate for normal attacks that do 3.5 STUN per BODY on average. So a better rule might be double resistant defenses against the STUN of normal damage attacks.

Re: Setting Campaign Limits Actually the 21 was not a typo which just makes your point all the more valid. The guy who's helping me with this played in a HERO game a few years ago that used a house rule that he has strongly encouraged me to use that I completely disagree with but I think explains his preference for high DC low DEF games. In that game killing attacks were generally favored (more by concept than by mechanics I think). They implemented a house rule where the stun multiplier only applied to body damage after defenses were applied. So the body of the killing attack had to exceed the defense of the target in order to do any damage. This made defenses much more effective in their game. I also think it tends to diminish killing attacks when compared to normal attacks when it comes to how quickly you can remove a target from combat. So with that in mind I'll probably have to reduce the max DC of the campaign. I tend to aim for around a 1:1 ratio between DC and rDEF, which many may consider too low as well. More on my thought process on that later. I actually really like the idea you have there. So are Average Man's stats actual the campaign averages or more of a suggested ceiling? I generally like to tweak my combat rules such that KOs are not the norm unless I'm running an actual champions game. The main tool I use for this is to count resistant defenses twice against STUN damage. That tends to really increase the BODY:STUN ratio, especially for killing attacks, and tends to make the bad guys go down dead or dying more than KO'd. END will play more of a role in this game than in most HERO games I think. END is a very important concept in Exalted (representing Essence) and players need to know to use it sparingly. I've ruled that for the most part reduced END is not allowed for any powers the characters purchase, which makes END a very valuable commodity. As a GM I've always considered Flash attacks one of my favorite tools to make the PCs lives exciting, partly because nobody ever seems to take flash defense . I saw listing it up front in this way as a good way to hint to the players that they might not want to overlook it this time .

Re: Setting Campaign Limits I'm an engineer. I tend to do that. My instincts are to try and establish limits based on some sort of consistent formula so that none of the limits seem too arbitrary. Though this may be one of those times were an empirical approach is better, and I base things on the experience of those more experienced in the HERO system than I am. But it is a hard habit to break.

Re: Setting Campaign Limits The system my group and the local game store owner helped me come up with is a bit more complicated. The 17 characteristics, and 4 defenses, were broken down into categories as follows: Characteristic; (High/Middle/Low); Selections Category 1: STR,DEX,CON,INT,EGO,PRE,BODY; (35/30/25); 1 high, 2 middle, 4 low Category 2: OCV,DCV,OMCV,DMCV; (12/8/6); 1 high, 1 middle, 2 low Category 3: SPD; (6/4/3) REC; (16/12/8) STUN; (100/80/50); 1 high, 1 middle, 1 low Category 4: PD, ED; (16/12/8) END; (70/50/30); 1 high, 1 middle, 1 low Category 5: Flash Def, Power Def, rPD, rED (16/12/8); 1 high, 1 middle, 2 low I have this all laid out in a nice table in office but I can't figure out how to post that here. A character sets the cap that they may buy the characteristic, or defense up to, by choosing high, middle or low. Within each category each a number of high middle and low choices are available indicated by the letters in the far right column. For example H-M-L-L means one high, one medium, and two low selections. The defenses do not include mental defense. The store owner recommended eliminating mental defense seeing it as a cheap way to get around the cap on EGO. Upon further reflection I don't really think I agree with him on that one. In addition to the above powers are capped at 60 AP and attacks are capped at 21 DC. I'm not really happy with this set of limits. But I can't really put my finger on exactly what's troubling me about it. I like what I've done with the basic 7 characteristics but the others I'd like to put more of a "Rule of X" type limit on them. My general objectives are this: Each character should be able to be better than the others in at least one area and those areas should not overlap much between characters. No character should be able to outpace the other characters by too much even in their specialty areas (how much is too much? I don't know). Caps on powers and characteristics should increase as character's earn experience. One of my concerns is that once I establish my limits on characteristics and powers, that each character will buy the abilities they care about most up to those caps (not a problem yet) but then as they earn experience and can't raise those abilities further they will go back and fill in the gaps until all the characters start to look alike. So I want to preserve each characters ability to better than the others within a narrow scope of specialty while not allowing any character to become over-specialized. No glass cannons, and no nerf packing tanks.

Re: Setting Campaign Limits So for the champions game I ran, began it in Oct 2007, ended in Feb 2010, the limits I established were as follows: Characters were built on 150 pts with 100 pts of disadvantages. The primary characteristics were capped at 20, but each character could buy 2 of them up to 25 and one more up to 30. The figured characteristics were capped as follows: PD/ED 10(12), SPD 4(6), REC 11(12), END 60(80), and STUN 56(75). Any of the figured characteristics could be purchased up to the value outside of the parentheses. One characteristic could be purchased up to the value in the parentheses. Resistant defenses were capped at 12. Powers were capped at 50 base points (before advantages or disadvantages) and 80 AP. For each 50 xp each character earned the caps on the primary characteristics went up by 5, the base point cap on powers went up by 10 and the AP cap on powers went up by 15. I also had a system for how the figured characteristic caps went up but its a bit long to post here.

So I'm starting a new campaign soon that is an adaptation of White-Wolf's Exalted into HERO 6E. I've sat down with most of my players and started building their characters and we've even completed a couple of them. But I'm not all that thrilled with either of the characters we've come up with. The character concepts are fine but the final builds are leaving me a bit troubled. One character is a bit of a glass cannon and the other is a reasonably efficient tank. A couple of my players, the owner of my local game store, and I sat down and hashed out a set of limits on characteristics and power that at first I liked but as I see characters taking form I'm less happy with. I would like a set of limits similar to what I used, to good effect, in the last champions game I ran which was a 5ER game. I'm having trouble adapting those ideas to 6E and to the power level of the game I'm developing. The champions game was a low powered superheroic game while I planned on making this one a standard superheroic game. A big part of the problem I'm having adapting the previous limits I used for my champions game is the removal of figured characteristics from 6E. Under 5E it was easier to set effective limits on the figured characteristics based on what the limits on the primary characteristics are. In 6E it doesn't seem to be quite so strait forward. In a bit I'll post the specifics on what I used in my champions game and on what we came up with initially for this game. I have some other things to do first. Any advice people have would be appreciated.

Re: Open ended damage I HEREBY DECREE THERE WILL BE NO INFECTED WOUNDS IN MY GAME. SO SAYETH... ME Yeah I wasn't even planning to go there on that one. Though on the point with the Vampire, I would consider that if a vampire is wearing thick enough armor, the heart cannot be struck by arrow from a given bow. So since the heart is fully protected from that attack the vampire is essentially fully protected. However the vampire is a supernatural/undead creature. Most of the points I've tried to make regarding anatomical vulnerabilities are intended towards humans and other natural creatures (I've tried to be clear on that but maybe I haven't been). So the vampire might be safe but a human knight is not. He might be well protected but he's far from invulnerable. The vampire can only be killed by an attack to the heart, so if the heart is fully enclosed by a thick steel shell there really isn't too much you can do.

Re: Open ended damage That's generally what I like to do. Skill based increases in damage (Weapon Master, Martial DC's, Martial Maneuvers, CSLs, etc.) are not capped when adding damage. STR can only add enough to double the base damage of the weapon. And this really brings up a point I hadn't considered as much as maybe I should have. With CSLs, and Weapon Master and such, a player can build a character who has enough skill to slip through the chinks of the armor, and to hit the vital spots. Its doesn't allow for luck to achieve the same result but I'm not thinking I'm going to be able to achieve the real open ended damage that I would ideally like. I think I have to give up on that part for now, but just to complete the thought: Any time a roll is made with 3 or more dice the results fit a normal distribution rather nicely. However its a truncated normal distribution that chops off the tails (above boxcars or below snake eyes). Ideally there would be a way to add at least the high tail back on but without changing the mean or the variance. But I don't think its achievable, and all the ideas I've seen/thought about to make damage open ended either change the mean or changes the variance too much. A Poisson or Binomial distribution would be open ended in only one direction, and could maybe keep the mean and variance close to what they are. But I don't think there is a simple (and I do mean simple) way to model that with a handful of d6s. But I'm still not ready to give up on the idea of replacing hit location with a more abstract system. See my most recent post for my thought process on that one. In fact I think I'll go back and edit that one a bit. I think I can articulate some of my ideas a bit better.

Re: Open ended damage Let me expand on my feelings on hit location a bit. If I were to use a hit location system I would want it to represent all of the different locations that can be hit and the effects of them. I want to see not just locations for the head and the chest and the arms, etc. I want to see locations for the eyes, the throat, the jugular, the femoral artery, the kidney etc. I want to see stabs to the chest divided into the heart, the lungs, the aorta, the liver. And I want mechanics for the effect of each. Or instead of all that how bout just defining hit location as a special effect for the amount of damage done, and possibly for wound penalty determined as a secondary effect of the damage. Since it takes a better attack roll to hit a more devastating location, and a more devastating location is represented by more damage then, better attack roll = more damage. That's the paradigm I'm working from. Its an easy one to implement in a dice pool system but difficult in other systems. But I have to believe I can achieve something similar in HERO as a substitute for the standard hit location system. To an extent what I'm discussing is present in the hit location system as it is in HERO. A character with a high OCV can make called shots more reliably. If you use the adjustable hit location system in the APG (which I always do if I'm using hit location) then high skill characters are definitely hitting the head and the vitals more often. To go more into why I don't like HERO's hit location system: One, the biggest increase in damage that can result is x2 to the BODY that gets through armor. I don't think that's sufficient. Much greater wounds are possible in my opinion. Two, the hit location system does not account for chinks in the armor, except when dealing with sectional armor. But if you are wearing a full suit of armor there are essentially no chinks. You could add an activation roll but I prefer a mechanic where finding the chinks is more a function of the attack roll than a fixed probability. Plus an activation roll is all or nothing. What about locations where the armor is a bit weaker but still offers some protection.

Re: Open ended damage I also like to tell a story when I GM. To me the biggest impediment to telling my story is when the mechanics of a system tell me that something absolutely can't happen. I prefer mechanics that allow for anything to happen but that achieve a measure of predictability by heavily weighting the probability towards the average. Where this particularly bothers me when it comes to damage mechanics is that, in systems like hero, damage has such finite limits. If a character has a weak weapon someone with strong armor is invulnerable to that attack. This doesn't make sense to me on a philosophical level. Strong armor does not make you invulnerable, it makes you well protected. Every armor has chinks. It may take extraordinary skill and/or extraordinary luck to find the chinks but the are there, and I want my damage mechanic to reflect that. I also feel as a balancing factor that the more protection a suite of armor provides (represented by the rPD or rED of the armor) the harder it is to find those chinks. The HERO model seems based on the assumption that if the defense armor provides is greater than the maximum damage an attack can roll on the dice then the target is 100% protected from that attack. Its that 100% certainty that I'm objecting to. Similarly if the maximum damage an attack can inflict is less than the BODY of a character then that character is 100% guaranteed to be able to survive at least the first hit from that attack. My contention is that unless you are beyond superhuman (BODY 31+), and possibly even if you are, any attack (at least any killing attack) has the potential to kill you if it hits in the right place. The tougher you are the less likely it is that a given attack will drop you, but the possibility is always there. As a storyteller I can always rule in favor of the heroes. If anything is possible I can always give my PCs and my major NPCs a way out. I can include a mechanic (such as HAP) to allow a player to say "No! My character is not going out like that." But I prefer that the story, and the player save the character, rather than the mechanics simply define that the character absolutely cannot die under these circumstances. I generally work from the following assumptions. The skill of the attacker is represented more by his ability to hit a target, than by how much damage the attack normally does. An attack is more devastating depending on exactly where it strikes an opponent. The normal damage of an attack represents the power of the attack. An attacker can make that attack more effective through skill by being able to reliably strike in more devastating locations. Luck can achieve the same result as skill, as I've described here, but much less reliably. It seems to me that damage is not as representative of a character's skill as it is representative of the power behind the attack (the raw power of the weapon and the strength of the wielder). Any weapon is therefore more effective in the hands of a skilled wielder since, not only does it hit more often, but it also hits where it counts more often. Some of this can be represented by martial maneuvers and talents like weapon master. However I still think that a lucky enough attack can achieve the same result as an attack enhanced with weapon master or martial maneuvers but with much less reliability. That's why I tend to favor mechanics where the damage roll is tied to the attack roll.