Balancing Power Levels: Defense

[Aversill]

I am at a loss on how to balance Defense.  My campaign (Fantasy Hero) has a basic, unless-I-give-you-a-thing, limit to power levels at 55 points.  That's been fairly helpful in figuring out what is, and what is not, an effective attack.  In any case, the wizards are testing the limits of this especially as regards defense. 

 

1.  Do people find that limits, when they are in play, work the same between offense and defense.  If people are throwing around 55 points of offense, should others be defending, generally, at 55 points as well?

 

2.  When calculating how much defense someone has, what goes into that?  Normal PD?  Resistant PD?  What about things like Damage Negation, DCV, or Damage Reduction? 

 

3.  Assuming I'm looking for a big total (you can only have 55 points between these powers, X, Y, and Z), do things like Life Support generally get added into that?  What about Desolidification, Invisibility, Damage Shields, or for that matter, Power Defense, Mental Defense, and Flash Defense.

 

I'd kind of like to not be blind-sided in combat, and I realize that there are no hard rules for any of this, but I'm at a loss to figure out the basics of what I should basically set down as the ground rules in order to establish fair fights.

 

As it's Fantasy Hero, I'm also running into the PD/ED problem where 90% of the stuff does PD and so, why buy up ED?  I've already had to outlaw allocatable as an advantage because it basically broke the system.

 

Thoughts?  Advice?

 

Thanks.

[Ndreare]

This is a topic that comes up often. Do you have fantasy Hero and 6th Ed 1? If so I suggest using the guidelines in 6th Ed 1 on page 35.

 

If your players are in agreement not to break the system then all should be well as long as you follow a couple of the following.

 

 

1: Ask yourself do you want combat Fast or Slow?

 a: If you want combat fast set maximum defence equal to 2x damage class

 b: If you want combat slow and lasting set maximum defence equal to 3x damage class.

 

2:  Ask yourself do you want combat Deadly or Safe relatively?

 a: If you want combat deadly set maximum resistant defenses to 1/2 damage class

 b: If you want combat relatively safe set maximum resistant defenses equal to damage class

 

 

At 55 points you are looking at damage class 11 so for fast and potentially deadly combat your maximum defense would be 6 resistant and 22 non resistant.

 

Lastly players should not build every character at 55 active points and maximum defense on everything. Normally whatever your maximum is for offence and defense should be only for the extreme characters and the players averages should be about -2 to -4 DC.

 

If the players are encouraged to set all their abilities at the maximum then you will find even major fights get pretty boring. As everyone is the same, my players normally take on roles, I set a "expected level" as the exact middle of the table shown on page 35 of Hero 6th Ed volume 1 and then tell the players they can/should have about 25 to 50 points of outliers (usually equal to the AP limit of the genre). This lets the tank have the defenses higher than the others and the blaster have the big blast and so on without cookie cutter characters.

 

As a comparison think of what a D&D game would be if every character had the Full Defender defense, the full striker offence and the full Controller utility. It would get boring IMHO.

 

PS: There are a few that have great advice on balancing, but I like to keep it simple.

[Tasha]

I am at a loss on how to balance Defense.  My campaign (Fantasy Hero) has a basic, unless-I-give-you-a-thing, limit to power levels at 55 points.  That's been fairly helpful in figuring out what is, and what is not, an effective attack.  In any case, the wizards are testing the limits of this especially as regards defense. 

 

1.  Do people find that limits, when they are in play, work the same between offense and defense.  If people are throwing around 55 points of offense, should others be defending, generally, at 55 points as well?

 

2.  When calculating how much defense someone has, what goes into that?  Normal PD?  Resistant PD?  What about things like Damage Negation, DCV, or Damage Reduction? 

 

3.  Assuming I'm looking for a big total (you can only have 55 points between these powers, X, Y, and Z), do things like Life Support generally get added into that?  What about Desolidification, Invisibility, Damage Shields, or for that matter, Power Defense, Mental Defense, and Flash Defense.

 

I'd kind of like to not be blind-sided in combat, and I realize that there are no hard rules for any of this, but I'm at a loss to figure out the basics of what I should basically set down as the ground rules in order to establish fair fights.

 

As it's Fantasy Hero, I'm also running into the PD/ED problem where 90% of the stuff does PD and so, why buy up ED?  I've already had to outlaw allocatable as an advantage because it basically broke the system.

 

Thoughts?  Advice?

 

Thanks.

I generally tell players to have 2x -3x the Average Dice of damage for the campaign. Around half of that should be resistant PD and ED. If you go to much heavier defenses, you will find that everyone will be bouncing too many attacks. Also notice I set this at Average Dice of damage for a campaign (BTW this is Normal Dice, Killing Damage ~= 3 Dice of normal damage). I expect that there will be outliers for this. People who do less damage and some who do more damage. Keep in mind that the more armor/Defenses your PC's have the heavier the weaponry your villains and mooks have to carry to be scary. ie DC 7 (2 handed sword and 2 levels into DC), would set your defenses to 14-21. At those levels a long sword (DC 4) would do 5 body and 15 stun on a Chest Shot and only cause 1 stun damage. If you set the Average DC to 5 then the same attack goes up against 10PD and does 5 stun. Which is better overall for the campaign.

 

Usually armor takes care of itself in Fantasy Hero ESP if you use the encumbrance rules. Using those will keep your Rogues and Mages in Lighter armors and Allow the Heavy Fighters to go higher. I believe that like in D&D there should be a range of Defenses it makes the game more interesting.

[Aversill]

I want to point that I'm playing FH, which means that almost everyone uses Killing Attacks.  So, getting the number a little off can easily result in character death.  Not a real change in how everything works, but it does up the stakes.

[Grailknight]

11 DC( 55 pts.) is on the high extreme for FH.  I realize all PC's are relative but the defenses needed in such a campaign are on par with those required of a standard Champions superhero. The system can handle it fine but the feel of the campaign will vary. 

 

You can go for defenses inline with 11 DC.  This will get you superhero style slugfests against the main villains but the PC's and their foes will run roughshod over normals.  8-16 rDef, 20+ PD/ED total

 

You can keep the offense high and defenses only sightly greater than standard armor. This will result in a lot of dodging and blocking as combat will often be decided by the first blow. 6-10 rDef, 12-20 PD/ED total

[Hyper-Man]

An optional house rule I've seen others suggest on here can give a GM some wiggle room regarding lethality while also keeping overall defenses a little lower. 

 

Allow multiple levels of Combat Luck but don't let it stack with other defenses.

 

It's not a trivial investment that all character types will want to take.  However, if you are using the LTE Endurance rules for Armor then that's not an option for all characters either.

[TheRealDeal]

11 DC is the campaign limit, not the average, so it would be more helpful if the OP could give us some idea of the average DC he expects in the game. Perhaps that 55 AP limit also has an additional DC limit (say a DC limit of 8). This would mean you could get the 55 AP with an 8 DC (40 AP) attack by adding Armor Piercing (making an 8 DC cost 50 AP) or other advantages onto it. So can the OP clarify if there is any DC limit as well as the AP limit of 55?

 

The Great Axe is a standard weapon in the game and has 2d6+1 K which is 7 DC and is the highest damage in the weapon list just for some reference point.

[NuSoardGraphite]

When it comes to fantasy hero, dont worry about the active points so much. those can fluctuate considerably depending on what you are trying to do or simulate.

 

You want to look at the actual damage class vs the actual defense number.

 

As Ndeare pointed out earlier, a very good and balanced guideline is resistant defense (armor) is equal to damage class. normal defense should be about double the resistant defense.

 

The armor statistics in the fantasy hero book is very well balanced for a campaign setting with an average damage class of around 6 DCs.

 

With a 2D6 killing attack (6 DCs) the average damage is 7 body. with an average defense of 6, thats 1 body damage done per hit...on average. this leaves wiggle room. minimum damage rolls will bounce off armor. however damage rolls near the maximum (12 body) will still do a good amount of body damage. thus, good damage rolls are rewarded with a nice effect in combat.....which is as things should be.

 

With that sort of dynamic, it is going to be undesireable to be hit in combat....a reasonable assessment. this brings us to combat value. this is a seperate consideration and calculation from defense, though they can be related.

 

Determine what the average combat value will be for your campaign. most heroic level campaigns average between 5 and 8. DCV and OCV should be fairly well balanced, but this depends on the characters roll in battle. in general, more heavily armored characters can get away with a lower DCV becuase they can take more hits than lightly armored characters. this is often mitigated by an armor's encumbrance factor, if you plan to use that in your game. if not a good guideline is that heavily armored characters can safely fall 1 or 2 points below the average DCV, medium armored characters should hover near the average and lightly armored characters should be at least 1 or 2 points higher than the average.

 

When it comes to combat value, a 1 or 2 point difference is noticeable. 3 points is significant. more than this skews the odds dramatically. sheilds are incredibly effective form of defense in hero, adding directly to DCV. your party's fighter types should not ignore them. (They can also help compensate for the DCV penalty of heavy armor)

 

The point based nature of hero makes it difficult for people to wrap their heads around balancing for heroic level games. just remember, in heroic level games, the balance is in the actual dice of effect vs the relevant defense, not in the actual point costs. The only way to balance DCV is to know the average OCV that the PC's are going to face. exotic defenses are only useful against exotic attacks (flash, power defense, mental defense etc) so only worry about this if exotic attacks appear frequently in your game.

[Aversill]

Well, there's a number of weird things that go into my FH game.  Most attacks do 1 1/2d6 killing or 2d6 killing.  I think my long sword is 2d6, the two handed sword is 3d6, and the short sword is 1 1/2d6.  All of these have minimum strengths that don't add in to damage between 8-12.  That being said, magic weapons do 1-3 DCs higher than normal, and a lot of the characters have martial arts with their weapons (+2 DCs, generally).  The 55 AP has a lot to do with spells.  

 

The problem is that HKAs get bigger.  So, a 45 AP power (3d6 hka) could get as big as 6d6 hka (yikes!).  If I set the resistant at DC (9), the 6d6 HKA is going to slaughter people.  If I set the Resistant Defense at 18, the short sword people will never hurt anyone (they'll max at 19).  And that's at resistant defense=DC.  Now, very few people have 3d6 HKAs.  Actually, most people are on the lower end of the spectrum with 1 1/2d6 and 2d6 HKAs, but most of those double through Strength, MA, and skill levels.  So, if I set the resistant protection limits, do I set them at DCs after Str, knowing that there's then a range of damage between 1 1/2d6 KA-6d6 KA...and then what about RKAs which, at 55 AP, will max at 3 1/2d6?

 

I'm fine with saying that people really ought to dodge a 6d6 HKA and/or concentrate on taking that guy out first, but then there are the spell casters who can throw up to 55 points into defenses (I do spells through power pools).  In other words, I have to limit the amount of resistant protection the wizards can buy or they'll pump 55 points into rPD, get 33 points of it, and turn themselves into juggernauts, and that's even with a 6d6 HKA, but if I limit them to 18 rPD, they're still pretty much juggernaughts against everyone except the people carrying the two Handed Swords.  

 

It seems more reasonable to set the Resistant Max to 12 or even 14 (which is where I'm leaning), but then there's that uncommon 6d6 killing attack out there or  more.  

[Aversill]

If it helps, I've included the HDCs of what I have so far.  

Hand-to-Hand Weapons.hdc

List of Armor.hdc

[Hyper-Man]

It might help us help you if you could explain your reason(s) for bumping up weapon damage over how it was done in the core books.

[Aversill]

Really?  Why? 

 

I don't think that matters, but if it does, part of the decision had to do with balancing weapon damage against spells.  I made my own there too. 

[Tasha]

Well, there's a number of weird things that go into my FH game.  Most attacks do 1 1/2d6 killing or 2d6 killing.  I think my long sword is 2d6, the two handed sword is 3d6, and the short sword is 1 1/2d6.  All of these have minimum strengths that don't add in to damage between 8-12.  That being said, magic weapons do 1-3 DCs higher than normal, and a lot of the characters have martial arts with their weapons (+2 DCs, generally).  The 55 AP has a lot to do with spells.  

 

The problem is that HKAs get bigger.  So, a 45 AP power (3d6 hka) could get as big as 6d6 hka (yikes!).  If I set the resistant at DC (9), the 6d6 HKA is going to slaughter people.  If I set the Resistant Defense at 18, the short sword people will never hurt anyone (they'll max at 19).  And that's at resistant defense=DC.  Now, very few people have 3d6 HKAs.  Actually, most people are on the lower end of the spectrum with 1 1/2d6 and 2d6 HKAs, but most of those double through Strength, MA, and skill levels.  So, if I set the resistant protection limits, do I set them at DCs after Str, knowing that there's then a range of damage between 1 1/2d6 KA-6d6 KA...and then what about RKAs which, at 55 AP, will max at 3 1/2d6?

 

I'm fine with saying that people really ought to dodge a 6d6 HKA and/or concentrate on taking that guy out first, but then there are the spell casters who can throw up to 55 points into defenses (I do spells through power pools).  In other words, I have to limit the amount of resistant protection the wizards can buy or they'll pump 55 points into rPD, get 33 points of it, and turn themselves into juggernauts, and that's even with a 6d6 HKA, but if I limit them to 18 rPD, they're still pretty much juggernaughts against everyone except the people carrying the two Handed Swords.  

 

It seems more reasonable to set the Resistant Max to 12 or even 14 (which is where I'm leaning), but then there's that uncommon 6d6 killing attack out there or  more.  

 

I think you hit on why all normal weapons have Strength Minimums. It mitigates some of the additional strength bring KA's up to the stratosphere.

 

The Numbers I put above still work 2 -3x the Damage Class (BTW a 6d6 HKA is a 90point attack, AKA Damage Class 18) so you would need 36- 54 PD/ED and 12-18 rPD/rED to keep the attacks dangerous. Con scores would also have to be big enough to not be Stunned on an average hit. You are getting to the power level that the system starts to get a bit creaky. The system's sweet spot for power is DC 8-14.

[Aversill]

Thanks Tasha, I think the key to this is AVERAGE.  The guy with the 3d6 killing attack only rarely has enough to pump it 9 more DCs to max it out.  The average dice of damage is generally around 8 or 9 DCs (2 1/2d6 or 3d6 killing).  One player routinely gets up to 3d6+1 but that's what he does.  If I use your math, though, I get the Max defense at, say, 24, and resistant at 12.  Getting hit by an enormous killing attack would be very dangerous, true, but it isn't like everyone can use the big weapons (I've upped the Str mins on big weapons).  It's much more common for people to use Short Swords, which I have doing 1 1/2d6 killing.

[Steve]

I didn't see it mentioned above, but also be aware of the value of hit locations and called shots. With 6E, Killing Attacks use a half-die multiplier, so a STUN maximum of 3x the BODY rolled. However, with hit locations, a head or vitals shot will do an even greater amount of STUN damage. Vitals shots are a bit more likely to occur than a head shot, so it is good to have your heaviest armor on the torso and head when encumbrance can be an issue.

[Aversill]

That's funny.  I thought that was a mis-print, since the game clearly gives the stun multiple range of 1-3 and the to-hit location table goes off the old 1d6-1, which by the way they were smart to change because it made KAs way more powerful than normal damage.  Who remembers the 4d6 penetrating killing attack that could stun you without getting through your armor? I always liked it best when it was autofire.

 

Probably the subject for another thread, but if you can get a x5 stun multiple by being 8 levels of offsetting a called shot penalty, nobody in your game ought to buy anything but killing attacks.  At least they did away with the increased Stun Multiple advantage.

[TheRealDeal]

The killing attack multiple issue is not so much the multiple itself, but rather the increased odds for an extreme result. A 3 DC normal attack does 3d6 (3 BODY, 10.5 STUN) while a 3 DC killing does 1d6 K (3.5 BODY, and assuming a x3 multiple, 10.5 STUN). So you can see that the x3 gives the exact same STUN as a normal attack, assuming average rolls.

 

Those hit locations with x4 or x5 STUN also give Normal attacks a x1.5 or x2 STUN on the after armor STUN. So it may be more effective to use normal attacks than killing in some cases for STUN, depends on the armor to damage ratio. Here are a few examples of this:

 

Assume a 6 DC attack: 6d6 N and 2d6 K. Average STUN damage N (21 STUN), K (7 BODY, assume x5 multiplier = 35 STUN)

So hitting the head (x5 killing, x2 normal STUN), Here is how much damage each does based on total PD of the target (adds rPD + PD)

PD (High): 18 - Normal (21-18=3 x 2 = 6) Damage of 6 STUN, Killing (7 x 5 = 35 - 18 = 17) Damage of 17 STUN

PD (Mid): 12 - Normal (21-12=9 x 2 = 18) Damage of 18 STUN, Killing (7 x 5 = 35 - 12 = 23) Damage of 23 STUN

PD (Low): 6 - Normal (21-6=15 x 2 = 30) Damage of 30 STUN, Killing (7 x 5 = 35 - 6 = 29) Damage of 29 STUN

PD (Zero): 0 - Normal (21-0=21 x 2 = 42) Damage of 42 STUN, Killing (7 x 5 = 35 - 0= 35) Damage of 35 STUN

 

At the low and zero defense range normal attacks come out ahead for STUN, while killing do better against higher defenses.

 

One of the main complaints seems to be the fact that killing attacks use fewer dice to obtain their base damage values, leading to greater chances for extreme results, while normal attacks use 3 times more dice, leading to much more average range values and extremely low chance for extremes. This allows a lucky killing attack to score high STUN. For normal attacks, due to the x3 dice factor, luck plays a much lower part, the statistics do not allow much variation when you have many dice, the bell curve is just too constraining. 

 

One house rule I allow is a bonus to Roll with the Punch against killing attacks. I give a bonus to this maneuver equal to +X OCV where X is the Stun multiplier of the location you were hit in. I also allow it to be used against ranged attacks and I allow the use of the maneuver even after the damage and location were rolled (since we roll all of them at the same time, attack, damage and location). This leads to people being more willing to soak up the loss of their next action if it can blunt a nasty killing hit. Also tends to require more tactical play, if facing a foe who has a powerful killing attack, making sure you are able to Abort if they attack you. This gives a slight disadvantage to killing attacks, but also can spice up combat by seeing the use of Roll w/ Punch much more often. Rather than do lots of damage, it tends to make lucky killing attacks cause the loss of the target's next phase (since they Abort) and a -2 DCV (due to the Roll w/ Punch). If this is not enough for your game, you can create a martial maneuver that basically improves Roll w/ Punch from a -2/-2 to a 0/0 so it is much more likely to work against killing attacks and imposes no DCV penalty.

[Tasha]

That's funny.  I thought that was a mis-print, since the game clearly gives the stun multiple range of 1-3 and the to-hit location table goes off the old 1d6-1, which by the way they were smart to change because it made KAs way more powerful than normal damage.  Who remembers the 4d6 penetrating killing attack that could stun you without getting through your armor? I always liked it best when it was autofire.

 

Probably the subject for another thread, but if you can get a x5 stun multiple by being 8 levels of offsetting a called shot penalty, nobody in your game ought to buy anything but killing attacks.  At least they did away with the increased Stun Multiple advantage.

Increased Stun Multiple is part of the Killing attack writeup it's on pg 73 on Champs Complete.

 

We never allowed people to buy 8 Skill levels for Head shots. It's just too powerful. Heck 3-4 Skill levels with called shots are bad enough. (a +1 Stun Mult weapon hitting constantly in the Chest does good stun)

[Vondy]

 

I don't think that matters, but if it does, part of the decision had to do with balancing weapon damage against spells.  I made my own there too. 

 

The tendency for flashy combat magic to run into higher DCs and thereby push hand-to-hand types to invest in ways to up their own DCs is one of the reasons I tend to prefer campaigns that don't feature that kind of razzle-dazzle instant effect magic. I tend to build worlds that leverage ceremonial, ritual, and cultic magics that take longer to use and have less obvious effects -- but can still influence the game in powerful ways. Good examples of the kinds of magic in my FH games would be conjuration, voodoo, some sorcery spells, and witchcraft from the Grimoire. I've also turned the dream and mental powers sections from the Powers book into spells.

[NuSoardGraphite]

I actually like the Razzle-dazzle big effect spells.  But they should be rare and costly.  Take a long time to cast (minimum Full Phase, often as long as a Turn or more) and require concentration etc.  They'll be easy to disrupt for that fighter who's vigilant for such things.  

 

And I completely understand for those fighters and rogues who want to buy abilities to put them on par with magic users spell casting capabilities.  i've been doing it for decades without throwing off the balance laid out in the Fantasy Hero book.

 

The Active Points are less important than the Damage Dice vs Defense numbers.  You could have a 60 Active Point power that only does 1D6k or 2D6k, but the advantages push it to the higher active point range.  This is fine.  This allows a fighter or rogue to extend their normal damage counts (2D6k/6D6N average) into an Area of Effect, or adds Autofire or becomes Armor Piercing or Triggered.  These advantages give the fighters attacks more utility, but do not make them deadlier.

 

It's when the fighters start developing abilities that place the damage into the 4D6k/12D6N category where the problem comes in.  This is fine if its a "finishing move" type of attack....costs a lot of END, takes a full phase, drops DCV by 1/2 or some other limitation.  If it's the kind of attack that is only used sparringly, it would be fine.  But if the characters regular attacks hit this damage level as the Base Damage, there's a problem if everything else isn't rebalanced to match.

 

I was one of the few that advocated using Powers to construct custom Talents for Fantasy Hero characters WAAAAY back in the days of the 4th edition.  However in general, I limit them to 30 Active Points to keep them well within the balance for standard Fantasy Hero.  This way, Fighters get to develop crowd clearing attacks (Area of Effect), thieves can become invisible in darkness, Bards can mesmerize people with their music.  Rangers can communicate with their animal companions, but none of these effects destroy the game balance laid out in the basic Fantasy Hero book.

[Vondy]

I actually like the Razzle-dazzle big effect spells.  But they should be rare and costly. isible in darkness,

 

I think those kinds of spells are appropriate for flashy high fantasy games. I even enjoy that kind of game every so often. But that's only one fantasy sub-genre, and I tend to prefer sword and sandal, low fantasy, swords & sorcery, and "fantastiques." If you are running the high-fantasy FRPG that most gamers traditionally play, I think the rest of your post represents a workable approach to dealing with it. Its just not the kind of fantasy I prefer to run, or play in, as a steady diet. On the other hand, one of my favorite fantasy characters to play is -- believe it or not -- the first character I ever played. He miraculously survived and was played on and off from the age of 7.5 to 23. I'm pretty sure that was the last time I played him -- he topped out as a 20th level AD&D razzle-dazzle power to scare the gods type wizard. So, I'm not constitutionally against it.

[TheRealDeal]

In general, I suggest always pairing hard DC, Defense, and CV caps with Active Point caps. The hard caps keep powers within reasonable ranges and the Active Point cap keeps advantages within reason.

 

So do not just say the cap is 55 APs, also say: 8 DC, 8 rDEF with 16 DEF total (e.g. 8 rPD & 8 PD, or 4 rPD & 12 PD, etc), and 8 CV. Those are just for discussion, not suggesting you use those hard caps for your game. But if you do this it keeps the expections clear and helps with balance. You can then allow limited powers that cannot be used very often or reliably to break these caps. So a Full Phase action only if 1 ally is flanking the target with you and only if you hit the target on your last phase grants a power with a DC of 10 for example, 2 over the above cap.