Doc Democracy
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Posts posted by Doc Democracy
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Have been following and while my instinctive response to Massey's statement about underlying theme was "really??!" but thinking about it, the mechanics of the system do not support an underlying theme. If you drain a slot, other slots are not drained, unlike Elemental Controls (or unified powers).
Doc
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7 hours ago, ToddWat1 said:
I am building a character whose main power is teleporting. As I want him to have some offensive abilities as well, I want to make him good with blades (he teleports in, stabs you, teleports out, etc). I'm confused on how this all works, though. Do you have to buy a Hand Killing Attack to be able to use a sword? Martial Arts with a Weapon Element, plus at least a Martial Strike? A weapon familiarity skill? All of the above? If all, can you combine a HKA with a martial strike or is it one or the other? Could you just have martial arts with a martial strike and have a sword without the HKA power? If someone is willing to walk me through it, I'd sure appreciate it. (I'm using Champions Complete, by the way).
All of this comes down to how you see it playing in the game. You can have teleport, the character moves, they attack, they move again. One big issue with this is that there is a rule against moving (or acting) after you have moved.
You could buy your teleport with a trigger that makes it go off after you attack with a blade etc. But all of this gets pretty messy mechanically.
You could simply buy the teleport in, attack, teleport out as a ranged killing attack. The special effects of that are that the villain teleports in, hits, teleports out again. If you were to do that you could even limit the costs of the RKA. According to SFX then you would trigger (and take) any damage shield effects around someone if you hit them with this ranged attack. Your attack might be restrainable (someone might wait and disrupt the attack) it should also be able to be blocked, like a melee attack, though you might give penalties to the blocker in the first couple of rounds unless they have danger sense or something. You would also restrict the range of the ranged killing attack to be the same as the combat distance of your teleport.
My inclination is for simplicity. You do however have to make sure that you do not simply rule that noone can catch him, that would not make sense. If the players come up with a decent plan to catch the villain as he teleports in, then you should allow that to happen - the attack has been disrupted and the villain is caught - you should not make this easy though, the mechanics do not support it and unless you limit it further, the villain has not opened up that potential except through SFX.
Doc
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Thanks for the comments, I didn't actually pick up any negativity.
When I throw soething like this out intot he ether it is exactly to gather up the issues that people might see.
I agree about the difference in KA attack dice versus normal dice. However, you are not adding dice per se. The 12D6 blast, if you blow lots of black dice to add 3 dice to your roll means you roll 15 dice and pick the best 12. A different prospect from adding stuff. I think in many situations it would be better value to add a killing dice to the pool but in BOTH cases it is probably more value to add to the to hit roll than the damage roll.
As for no defensive uses - you can use a dice to add to the GM's to hit roll - then the GM rolls 4 dice and takes the worst three. You can also add a dice to the GMs damage roll and instead of rolling 12D6 he will roll 13 and take the worst 12. There is the possibilty of rolling the dditional dice separately and then replacing one of the GMs dice with the bonus but I think it is better to ad it and make the roll better or worse as a pooled throw.
I am inclined to use this as something after chance to abort is declared. It should be the last thing and have effects. I think there will be fewer dice added than you think - for every dice you use, you are giving the GM the chance to counter. If there are three players then the total dice pool will be 9 dice (black and white). If it is ALL white then the players have a huge advantage - it means they can really go for it and do heroic things, knowing they have a chance to push the vagaries of chance. When they have used that pool then it is likely that it is all black and they know the GM will have the same chance to hurt them and will have to be careful or begin pulling in complications to turn some of those blacks to white. It is here that I see some of the value come into the narrative as the players are incentivised away from directly hitting the main issue head on.
As for the complication thing - I am inclined to be generous to my players. If they pull in a vulnerability then that is fine. I reckon the Starts all fights with a Presence Attack "Fighting solves nothing, let's talk it out!" and an Abort to Block is likely to add dice to the pool at the start but I am not going to add dice every time it comes up because it IS so common. That is not the player bringing a complication into the story, that is a complication that is already front and centre. There will be a bit of an art to this and I need to think it through but there should be a difference between the complications that contribute to the starting pool and those that are brought in by players. If it changes the way players buy their complications then I reckon I am fine with that. At least they will be doing more consideration of them mechanically and during play.
As far as player dynamics go, I am content to play with that. We have played with a couple of shared pool concepts and my group is pretty consensual. I have even been known to switch a black to white when a player forgoes using a dice to allow one of his team-mates to benefit (as long as the narrative is suitably heroic).
I think that is the key to it all. Accessing the pool requires some kind of heroic narrative. I want the players to justify using their heroic power pool in narrative terms rather than in simple mechanical ones. I really want to drive that narrative from the players.
I do like your idea of the team coming together to get over the top results. :-)
Doc
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I have always wanted the plot (and complications) to be something players brought into the game.
I propose having a dice pool in the middle of the table made up of black and white dice.
I will add one white die to the pool for every complication I have included in the session, and will add another each time a player chooses to introduce their complication. I will also allow such things to remove black dice from the pool.
I will add a black dice each time a player asks for some narrative boon. Want to just find the clue, know of a useful person? Sure! Add one (or more) dice to the black pool.
The mechanics? Well, players can use the white dice. They add the dice to an attack (or damage) roll by either the hero or the GM and it can replace a dice to change either the to hit or damage roll to the benefit of the player. Black dice work in favour of the GM.
In general, only one die (either white or black ) can be used in a single roll. To add a second die, you need to add a die of the alternate colour to the pool. To add a third die you need to add two additional dice of the alternate colour to the pool. So for a player to add two dice to a hit roll, trying to guarantee a good result, they will need to add three black dice to the central pool.
I think there needs to be a limit though. I am inclined to say the dice pool cannot exceed the number of players time three. So when it is maxed with black dice the players cannot access it until those dice are used by the GM.
I think this might encourage a bit of narrative meta-play with the players incentivised to bring in their complications and seek to highlight the complexities of their characters (and reward players that do).
Thoughts?
Doc
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For people looking for a useful way to present the data, this graph of UK deaths shows the impact of coronavirus quite clearly.
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If they want access to all their STR before they grab the person (who knows how much they weigh), they pay the full END.
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I have no idea if this is RAW (because I am lazily not opening the books almost 8 feet away from my desk) but I would expect the player to tell me how much STR they are using in the grab before they see whether or not they are successful. If the grab is successful, they can exert that much STR.
It would be like the player telling me they are going to punch someone and then waiting to see if they are successful before telling me how much STR (and so how much damage) they intend to apply. 🙂
Doc
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On 4/23/2020 at 2:18 PM, IndianaJoe3 said:
Depending on the campaign, you might want to redefine, "dying." The rest of the characters might have to go on a resurrection quest (accompanied by the spirit of the dead character). The character might be captured and need rescuing, or otherwise out of action for an extended period of time.
This is my favourite solution to death and sticks to comic book tradition. It may even require a "radiation accident" with a significant shift in the characters powers.
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8 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:
Well, it's only a 1d3 multiple in 6e, instead of a d6-1...
Yeah but ScottishFox was using STUN multiples there...
😄
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On 5/8/2020 at 5:40 PM, massey said:
I have debated eliminating killing damage completely for 4 color games. What we consider "killing" attacks might be better represented by either the Armor Piercing advantage, or by 3rd edition's Piercing, which just removed X amount of Def from the target (or both).
So let's say Batman has 20 PD. The Joker grabs a tommy gun, 7D6 Energy Blast, Armor Piercing, 8 points Piercing, Autofire x5. He shoots at Batman and hits 3 times. The 8 points Piercing lowers Batman's PD to 12. Batman isn't hardened, so it's reduced again to 6. The Joker will inflict about 1 Body and 15 Stun per hit past defenses to the Caped Crusader. Visually, Batman is grazed by the bullets and it hurts a lot, but he's okay. His costume is torn and he's bleeding.
A normal person hit by such an attack would full damage from each attack. Even a tough normal person (8 PD) would have all that stripped away. On the other hand, Superman (40 PD, hardened) gets reduced to 32 PD and the bullets still bounce harmlessly off of him.
I have decided that Massey's schema is the one that suits the game I am building. I will exclude both killing attacks and resistant defence from the game.
Done.
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On 5/11/2020 at 1:07 AM, BNakagawa said:
isn't that just 7? (and also not just under 5?)
Oh, I get it, you think the average on a d3 is 1.5
it's 2.
I was weirded out by the numbers in the original post about a d6 of killing damage doing just under 5 stun and couldn't figure out how that would work.
7 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:I must be missing something here.
1d6 averages to 3.5.
1d3 averages to 2
STUN on average would be 7.
Magnify my embarrassment why dont you...
🤕
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I think the danger is that the numbers have not dropped to close to zero. You see how quickly it went from one death to LOTS. if the virus is still in circulation then the infection rate could spike VERY quickly once distancing measures have gone into abeyance.
We really do need some kind of prophylactic measures and treatments before we can go back to normal...
Doc
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Ha! You are right. I know my numbers, it is embarrassing to get that wrong...
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30 minutes ago, BNakagawa said:
how does 15 points of killing attack average just under 5 stun?
1D6 BODY * 1D3 = 5.25 STUN on average.
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I think you can get a free OneDrive account? Teams would also allow notes, pictures etc to be shared and organised via Teams.
Would definitely not be a terrible solution.
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where does the 2.7 deaths per 100, 000 come from?
That is probably 100 times lower than the low end mainstream estimate. I do not think that it will be 1% mortality, I think it may be substantively less.
However, people are calculating in a number of different ways. Go look for David Speigelhaulter talking the statistics. He is very understandable.
What is true is that in America on 6 May 2019 - 2500 people died of COVID-19. That, since the first death, an average of 912 people have died EVERY day.
The September 11 attacks killed 3000 people on US soil which triggered the biggest change of western society in my lifetime - the security lockdown, the checks at airports etc the infringement of freedoms, data and movement were immense and we went to war several times over it.
The US is seeing a casualty rate equivalent to the September 11 attacks every day right now. And you think that having an impact on food availability is too much to consider?
Doc
- Hugh Neilson and Lord Liaden
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11 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:
My group has been having great success with roll20.net. Nobody's paid a cent and it works quite smoothly. Could be made better, even, we haven't touched some free features.
Our big problem has been that we've got a couple players with zero access to the rules and are not really sure how to go about bringing them up to speed short of telling them to show up half an hour early for a rules crash-course. "Just hand them the rulebook" has become illegal.
One of the big issues with virtual tabletops is that folk get carried away with what is possible and the bells and whistles without considering whether that enhances the gameplay.
If you are/were a group that heavily invested in maps and models then you have a reason to consider investing that time in the electronic versions.
If you were more narrative and sketched maps etc out on dry-clean boards or on scrap paper then you can do a bit better than that on the free to use Roll20 with very little prep time.
What is important in cooperative story-telling is being able to communicate and to add in that game element you need to have a decent way to share your dice rolls etc. You could achieve this in Roll20 without access to the paid storage, the icons etc and the fancy integrated character sheets.
I was an early adopter of Roll20 and have become increasingly dissatisfied with the way (not the fact) that they monetise the platform. It remains however a decent platform to access voice, video and a shared gaming environment.
Doc
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4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:
So let's run the math.
Normal gets hit with a 10d6 Normal attack, and takes an average of 8 BOD and 33 STUN after defenses. If it's a KA, they take 10 BOD and 17.5 stun.
Another Super gets hit with a 10d6 Normal attack, and takes an average of 0 BOD and 14 STUN after defenses. If it's a KA, they take 5 BOD and 15 stun. I am thinking KAs wil be pretty deadly to average Supers, and they are clearly superior at that defense level.
A high rDEF super, with 10 rDEF, takes 0 BOD or 14 STUN from a Normal attack, but 0 BOD and 12.5 STUN from the KA.
So the KA choice means I kill off most opponents, and do more STUN, at a slight cost if my target has exception rDEF.
I suggest the math fails.
Yup - there is an incentive to use a deadly weapon. I want it to be dangerous and so the math, for that purpose, does work.
My only issue is the similar (and in places) better STUN damage. A 15 point PRE attack is not massive but will come into play enough to be interesting but not sure it is worth the STUN damage being better.
Back to the drawing board. 😞
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1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:
Get wiggy with it:
Killing Damage is 10pts per die.
You can add the +1/2 Advantage: Range
Or the +1/2 Advantage: Add STR bonus.
Or, for +1 (twenty points per die), you get both.
I am beyond wiggy. I am putting a wrapper round the mechanics and leaving the players a limited amount of choice to facilitate them getting from picking up the book to playing the game. Everything will be properly costed but as far as the players will be concerned it will all be black box stuff.
Now this is a departure from rules as written but I think it will make for a lower barrier to playing the game. If people liked the game they would eb able to homebrew it by buying the main ruleset and going to town...
As such, your suggestions are too detailed for the game (they offer too much detailed choice)...
🙂
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29 minutes ago, massey said:
I have debated eliminating killing damage completely for 4 color games. What we consider "killing" attacks might be better represented by either the Armor Piercing advantage, or by 3rd edition's Piercing, which just removed X amount of Def from the target (or both).
So let's say Batman has 20 PD. The Joker grabs a tommy gun, 7D6 Energy Blast, Armor Piercing, 8 points Piercing, Autofire x5. He shoots at Batman and hits 3 times. The 8 points Piercing lowers Batman's PD to 12. Batman isn't hardened, so it's reduced again to 6. The Joker will inflict about 1 Body and 15 Stun per hit past defenses to the Caped Crusader. Visually, Batman is grazed by the bullets and it hurts a lot, but he's okay. His costume is torn and he's bleeding.
A normal person hit by such an attack would full damage from each attack. Even a tough normal person (8 PD) would have all that stripped away. On the other hand, Superman (40 PD, hardened) gets reduced to 32 PD and the bullets still bounce harmlessly off of him.
An intersting alternative but I have not yet decided if I am using armour piercing - but if I do it might indeed be the option to think about.
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1 hour ago, Grailknight said:
More information is needed to make any analysis.
What is the ratio of defenses to attack going to be on average? My answers will be much different for a campaign with average defenses at 1.5x DC(low) vs at 2x, 2.5x or 3x or higher. Will you be using Hero generated "real world" weaponry and equipment and how much threat is it supposed to pose?
Will you be using Hit Locations?
What is the general tone of the campaign going to be? Street level, standard, or high powered? Gritty or cinematic?
I see you want to trend to four color, but British and American comics have slightly different takes on that.
So wrapped up in figuring numbers that I have obviously missed stuff off here.
It is truly four colour. Any weapon with real weapon limitation will do half damage after defences. The heroes are going to be running at 10D6 attacks and 21 defences on average. Resistant defences will be 5 on average and few characters will have more than 10.
It is Golden Age, with all that entails.
Doc
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We have had MANY discussions on these forums about killing damage and normal damage and what is right or wrong.
I am currently engaged in writing a game based on HERO as a lockdown project. I have had to face the issue of normal versus killing damage.Now, 15 points of normal damage, averages 10.5 STUN and 3 BODY. 15 points of killing damage averages 3.5 BODY and just under 5 STUN.
So we accept that the 15 points in killing damage is worth an extra 0.5 BODY and gets less STUN but acts against a more limited type of defence.
I am inclined to simply allow players to declare their attack as normal or killing. Killing attacks work against resistant defences but STUN damage after defences is halved. I am inclined to treat all STUN inflicted as a free PRE attack. I intend for the game to be more four colour and for killing attacks to be rare and notable.
My intention is to eliminate a different way of generating damage and replace it with a different way of applying that damage.
See any problems??
Doc
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Pretty stark reading about racial differences in survival here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52574931
Why NOT use a multipower for magic?
in Fantasy Hero
Posted
Yup, you added it, got a discount for it. All I was saying was that the multipower did not have that requirement, it needed a disadvantage to create that "unified-ness" because that fitted the power you were designing.