Doc Democracy

I do think that the way to make magic special is for it not to be affected by the things that should affect it. So magical fire is not extinguished by the traditional methods of cooling and smothering. Magical water does not disperse or necessarily flow downhill. These things might require specific issues at the time of build but they may simply be matters of in game description and special effects. I think it would be easy to come up with a set of stuff where we expect things to happen if you do a specific thing. With magic, that cannot be expected. Paper does not necessarily burn in a fire. A ball thrown in the air does not necessarily fall to the ground. Milk in the fridge does not necessarily stay fresh. As I talk I begin to think that there is a campaign rule whereby the casting of magic brings into being a magic field and in this field lots of these kids of things happen. it is a change environment area effect that probably fades over time but may cause havoc for a while on anything that relies on the exploitation of physics to function... The generation of these fields is a free by-blow of casting magic and the precise effects may be connected to the type of magic cast or may simply be a chaotic remnant that the GM rolls on a table for effects. They could be good or bad for the caster, though you would imagine that the caster should be able to clean this up (at the cost of some time and energy) if they are properly trained. Doc PS: it would also mean that the normal impacts of gaming the special effects of a power would not work unless they were known to be magic. So no getting a bonus on a sonic attack on underwater opponents etc. :-)

Well, as GM I would not apply the accuracy pool to an AoE unless there was a requirement to target individuals within the area, nor would I use it with the accurate advantage, indeed, I might not allow it in the same campaign. I am not too worried here, I think the balance can be achieved through a Rule of X

I get it. You are not building a dice pool and choosing the best ten dice, just adding damage to 10D6 with a cap of 60 STUN and 20 BODY. Got it. :-)

This is another easy solution that gives the players a little bonus when they roll well.

So 2 OCV give you one DC (3.5 STUN and 1 BODY) In my proposal for a 12D6 attack (where 1 dice for each one the score was made by was an off the top of the head simple application rather than the result of careful balance analysis) the first two dice provide 3 STUN, the next two also provide 3 STUN. That is not too far off but obviously my proposal has the advantage of not reducing the actual chance to hit. So it does indeed provide a damage bonus for higher OCV. I think it would have to be used with a very carefully balanced Rule of X system that balanced increased OCV against DCV, defences and STUN. Doc

Hmm. why would you set the dice? If you were buying additional dice to make your attack a pool then you are going to increase the average attack. You do not however guarantee an increase as if buying two straight dice. Setting the dice makes the additional dice about 40% less useful than freely rolled ones. The big question is what size of limitation are the dice worth?? My stats on the original thread in Fantasy HERO gives you a clue about the added value of each dice in the pool. Maybe come to a decision based on that?? Doc PS: will come to the rest of the comments soon. At work.

Yeah - small changes in the location roll can have pretty big results. :-) That is the issue when you begin moving along a bell curve with a linear addition. It should not be the same moving from 10 to 11 as it is 3 to 4. Indeed it should not be the same action to move from 3 to 4 as it is to move from 4 to 3... Not sure there was a LOT of thought put to the hit locations beyond making it kinda look like a 1D6-1 multiplier.

I know this has been talked about many times but I wanted to explore an option that is new to me. I have been talking about it over on the Fantasy HERO forums but this is much more about system generically. (post with calculations here) The idea is that when you hit by more than you need (and you are not using hit locations - the built in option for giving more damage to more accurate fighters) then you generate a dice pool. If you normally do 12D6 damage then you add one dice for every one you roll better than you need. You roll the pool and count up the best 12 dice, so damage is capped to the maximum you have bought. I kind of like it in principle, it does shift the balance. With 12 dice, even CVs and defences of 25 the average damage through defences is (I think) increased from 17 through defences to 22 through defences. Shifting the balance is not necessarily a bad thing (as long as you are not doing it in the middle of a campaign) just something you have to bear in mind as a GM when eyeballing characters. It may also require a bit of thinking about the price of CV and skill levels. A +1 skill level bumps average damage more than +1D6. That IS significant. I might (in initial testing not allow skill levels to add to the damage pool - though I have no good reason beyond cost balance for doing so). It should however allow a fast, low damage class martial artist to fight a brick without skewing the build to ensure the martial artist can do enough damage to get through defences. Thoughts?? Doc

Still looking to parse Tholomyles' anydice calculations. In the situation he posed DC: 12 OCV: 9 DCV: 9 PD: 25 The average result on a hit is 42 STUN - 25 PD = 17 STUN. The average result on a miss is 0 STUN. :-) With the new system the very best that can happen is that you roll a 3, eight fewer than you needed to hit and so you roll 20 dice and take the best 12. If AnyDice is working the way I think it does then a three would provide you with 55 STUN (or getting 30 STUN through as opposed to the usual 17). that means the following 3 - 55 STUN (30 through defences) 4 - 54 STUN (29 through defences) 5 - 53 STUN (28 through defences) 6 - 52 STUN (27 through defences) 7 - 50 STUN (25 through defences) 8 - 49 STUN (24 through defences) 9 - 47 STUN (22 through defences) 10 - 44 STUN (19 through defences) 11 - 42 STUN (17 through defences) so rather than a vanilla 17 through defences, average damage through defences ranges from 17 to 30. By my reckoning (adding how many times each result is likely to come up in 1000 rolls and averaging out) then the old system with even CVs, 12DC and 25 defence gives an average of 17 STUN through defences and the new one gives an average of 22 STUN through defences. That is not insignificant but not hugely unbalancing to my mind. (this may be Outsiders +1.5 damage class which probably means he was interpreting the numbers from Tholomyles' calculations better than me!). It should also deliver more variation in results (so combat is less predictable and little bit more dangerous) and provide rewards to players for good rolls (which I think they like!). I think it does make eyeballing balance in characters a bit more difficult but it does mean I dont have to find ways of more human level martial artists be equivalent to their brickish counterparts - martial artists can expect to do almost maximum damage an so do not need to have as many damage dice... Doc PS: link to AnyDice graphs of each dice result and results can be found here. I also now think the conversation is more System than Fantasy HERO and so will take this strand of conversation over there...[link]

Not sure what you are saying here. I was not talking about allowing more dice for changing the stun multiplier. I think that is what you are saying?? I am really not following the numbers here ( you may have noticed!!) :-)

Tholomyles, please explain what I am looking for. I am reasonably numerate but for some reason failing to parse what each of the anydice stuff is doing to get its profiles. I have always hated that while HERO let me throw lots of dice, the more I threw the less variation I saw in the results. Probability, thou art a boring witch!! I have also always hated rolling really well and then throwing lousy damage dice - it is a visceral disappointment... I would be interested in looking at the numbers and understanding what it says - then it can be modified - perhaps an extra dice for every two below? By "provides about 1.5x the average damage" do you mean that if a character ups their OCV by 1 in this system it has 1.5 the damage increase that you would expect over the RAW? Obviously +1 OCV increases the number of times you hit while in the proposed system +1 OCV increases the number of times you hit AND adds a but of damage when you do. However, every extra dice you get should add less damage than the one before - you are less likely to roll a high dice and less likely to have a one to replace (these are not extra dice as such, just a chance to roll a bit higher on any particular dice) and it caps out at the maximum damage roll - 6D6 will never do more than 36 STUN no matter how well you roll. However, would appreciate you walking me through your cool probability tool - it is something I would not mind learning to use.... Doc

I am looking at the whole idea of hitting and damage. This advantages accuracy over damage. I am also thinking that I might allow those with a mightier arm to shed damage to increase accuracy. If you launch a mega attack and dont roll so well, drop sixes to determine if you can achieve a glancing blow. This means those with bigger damage capacities can achieve small glancing blows against their more agile brethren. There is likely to be a different dynamic between CV, damage and defence caps that you might apply. As a GM I am always managing superhero stuff and judging what I would allow Fantasy characters to have.in the way of armour and stuff. In Fantasy Hero I think that it begins to make unarmoured fighters more attractive as they can use their better movement to get round the armour - though I do not think I would use it in conjunction with a hit location system (I think they are mutually exclusive).

My take on this is that changes, to feel different, force players of magic wielding characters to make different decisions in combat. What you need to do is seriously think how you want that to look in your game. You need to think how the super-mage approaches things differently in narrative terms and then build your campaign settings to enforce that. When you can describe your vision to us, we can help with mechanical suggestions... :-)

You know, I have always wanted to add increased damage due to accuracy and it is indeed a route to bureaucratic madness. I have however possibly had an insight. Dice rolling is good, players LOVE rolling the bones. Instead of increasing damage or off-handedly sometimes allowing a bad damage roll to be re-rolled due to a good to hit, why not add a dice for every one over the required to hit? This gives you three options: 1 - count them all!!! 2 - count them all but cap damage to a maximum of what the original roll would have delivered. Excess over maximum damages the weapon or hand that delivered the blow. 3 - if the original damage was 7D6, only count the best 7 dice. The joy of this one is that a brick fighting a normal might choose a lot of fives, rather than sixes to maximise STUN while keeping BODY low. I am now very interested in trying this... Doc

Hmmm. Obviously one option is for team-mates to build powers that negate the effects of the darkness generating person. The other option is to build in a back-door to the power. Obviously this provides for anyone that knows the weakness to exploit it but it is far less onerous for team-mates. The question is, what to make the power. You could make the power (not versus anyone wearing OptiLenses +0) and simply have small focii that you give out to people. Those could be stolen or replicated by nefarious villains. You could make it not versus a low cost power that team-mates could buy (and so avoid having to spend enough to negate the whole power). The whole question is how you want to go about it. Doc

Hmm. Came across a few character sheets I made a couple of years ago for a birthday weekend game. These were a series of characters from different systems that each player particularly associated with. I jammed them all together in a game based on HERO. I wanted everyone to focus on the characters and the game and everything simply worked towards what seat each player got in a game of poker (and how many chips). The game was rigged and I had five decks of cards - four of them with pre-determined hands so that I would know what each player held and likely which player would gamble and which player would win. The only trick was in switching decks at the right time (absolutely the most useful a GM screen has ever been...). Anyway - here are the characters in a very stripped down way. Doc http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/337-%7B%3F%7D/ http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/261-%7B%3F%7D/

Tholomyes, the cat needs to be able to kill to eat. 1pt HKA is what it needs to kill birds and mice efficiently (unless mice and birds have so little defence that enough normal damage leaks through from normal damage attacks). Doc

I mean that the SPD chart tried to do something new in Roleplay systems and provide a very structured tactical mechanism into the combat. It works if the players think about the structure rather than just waiting to be called for actions. Golden Heroes also tried, basing it around frames (like a comic book). That is 1.0 thinking on it. It has never been tweaked or evolved beyond that. I want someone with real game design skills to look st it and see how the core principles might be evolved to deliver more of that tactical stuff onto the gaming table in a more elegant fashion. Something that does not require you to be a numbers geek but gives a feel of using SPD to influence the combat beyond having more shots....encourage mixing up play and actions and enlivening combat which can get tedious sometimes as players just whale on their opponents relentlessly.

I would go for Soul Masks

Ohh! I wouldn't even think about the commonality of a drain on the powers involved. I think it is very much whether you are willing to take the risk that your attack and defence powers linked in this way are vulnerable to, for example, an INT drain. I think the limitation is for making your powers susceptible to a broader range of drains, transfers etc than they would otherwise be... Doc

Hmm. I think when you say the point of points is balance, you need to really carefully think what you mean by balance. If you simply mean that if I spend 450 points, without any rules or guidelines, on five characters will they all end up equally effective? Then the answer is, obviously, no. I think the key problem with HERO in the marketplace (and this is not a unique insight, it has been expressed many times on the board) is that the GM has to do a LOT of upfront work if the players are going to have a coherent, consistent and mutual appreciation of the game with the GM. The GM needs to set out the basic conceits of his or her game, how powerful he will allow attacks to be, how high she will allow defences to creep, his attitude to absolutes, how poisons or disease work (for example) to make anti-poison and anti-disease powers effective across the board. Thus gives every GM the ability to make a game truly their own, with its unique feel and unique perspective on things. It also means the GM is responsible for putting in those guidelines that enhance and effect balance between the characters and set their effectiveness in the game. Doc

I do think that for game balance, you want tightly defined powers and rules; for maximum game fun you want mechanics that provide dramatic tension. I often despair at combat in so many systems as, due to balance considerations, you get into prolonged bouts of attrition style dice rolls. What was dramatic can often become humdrum. As such, for such occasions, I like to look for ways I can use mechanisms to increase the drama while working in the system constructs to allow players some influence. Obviously this kind of occasion might happen when PCs have relevant powers or where the GM had it planned and put a mcguffin into the hands of the PCs to allow them to do something. It may also happen out of the blue. In the last case the GM needs to deliver something better than asking the players if they have anything that can interface with the power structures designed without this situation in mind. This is not terrible, HERO, contrary to popular belief, is very flexible, it has a huge number of things a GM can hang seat of the pants play on. In this case there is a power construct, there is a time constraint, there may also be opposing sides. So what would I do? I would look at the power for the portal and convert it into dice based on 1d6 per 5 active points. I would then tell the players that I was going to roll the dice every minute and remove from the dice pool, every dice that rolled 6. That gives us a variable time for the collapse of the gate. What I need is a way for players to extend the size of the dice pool and for their opponents to prevent that. To that end I ask the players how, narratively, they want to engage with this, for example, the gadgeteer knocking up a focus to allow the energy blaster to stabilise the portal. I might allow the EB to roll his normal attack, adding his a dice to the pool for every six he rolls. However, this opens up his powers to feedback from the portal, each time the EB adds dice he needs to roll for burnout, possibly 8 or less with a +1 for every six rolled by the portal dice pool. I would also begin ramping up END costs for doing the addition to reflect the increasing strain of opposing the natural order. If you made the original portal dice one colour and the dice added by the EB another, you might heighten the tension by indicating that, if the EB burns out, all the added dice vanish. A catastrophe position. What about opposition? Opposition might take the form of piling power in to destabilise the portal - using a power to cause portal dice to vanish when they roll 5 or 6, possibly even 4, 5 or 6; it might seek to prevent the EB adding power, so perhaps a power versus power roll to see if they can prevent dice being added; it might seek to increase the burnout in some way. I am sure, with time, I could think of ways for everyone to get involved all of them influencing the diminishing dice pool. Doc

However, I do not think there is a huge problem with a players guide - though these would need to be genre specific I think. There is so much that you can focus on and worry about as a player, it would be useful to have something that gave you permission to focus on stuff and how to lever the best playing experience from your game. As a player in a superhero universe what should I be thinking about. What should I be looking for the GM to give me and how should I approach the design of a character (not the actual build stuff but more about roleplaying a superhero). There are so many differences between superheroes and other genres that it is almost stupid to expect players to get themselves up to speed. My biggest concerns as a player are whether my powers are cool and I get a chance to do the cool things I imagined in my head. I want some story-time where I accomplish things and I want my contributions to be significant to the game world (though that might be specific to me!) The player type thing could be repeated and expanded - the intro to superhero worlds from the Champions genre book - some general guidance on key aspects of the game to think about and how to think more creatively about powers and skills. How to make complications a positive thing in game enjoyment terms. How to think about and use the speed chart. How to benchmark your character and define a niche for him in his team. How to ensure you cover the bases in terms of getting the spotlight. How to think about advancement - slow cover of discovered weaknesses or big radiation accident. I think this could be a positive thing, potentially be of value outside the HERO ghetto, and something that all players might want to buy even if they dont spring for the rules. Would also be the opportunity for HERO to produce something narrative and fluffy and rather than hard and gamist. :-) Doc

I think I am somewhere in the middle. If you have a fire generated by a player's power, then treat the fire like fire. Use normal real world physics to deal with normal real world phenomena. If you the fire is the player's power (or possibly even is the player) then it is already not acting like a real world phenomena (control, fuel and oxygen requirements etc) and should probably not be subject to real world physics. Real world understanding should show some effect - messing around the edges stuff that is mentioned in varying game effects due to specifics of power special effects. I would have no problem with a fire based damage shield doing less damage if the player puts on some asbestos gloves (added ED for example) but it would not be hugely significant. What you are doing is going beyond that and giving the power some real limits and I think there is kudos there as it allows the players to proactively effect what is going on in the game by having good ideas. Absolutely!! Just make sure you don't have a drop down, drag out argument with yourself during the game...I find that really makes the players feel uncomfortable... Doc