Superhero RPG

[ShinHakkaider]

The real problem with being taken out in a battle isn't the KOd issue, but rather the "stun lock" problem. If you fail by 5 or more, you're stunned for the next round. Once that happens, it is likely that you won't ever get to act again. The character I'm playing right now is at PL 8, and he has actually gotten to act in only one out of the last three combats due to the fact that he was constantly being stunned. Assuming you're at the same power level in terms of attack and defenses, the odds look like:

30% Defender takes no damage
20% Defender takes a bruise
25% Defender is stunned
25% Defender is stunned plus staggered

Those numbers are just too harsh for me. If you're the GM running an opponent, there's basically a 50% chance he's not going to be able to do anything for the next round every time he's hit. Now as a player I have the chance to spend a Hero Point to shrug off being stunned like that, but Hero Points are a relatively rare commodity. As a villain, the only thing the GM can do is invoke GM fiat in order to give his character an action, which awards the characters a Hero Point.

So that's my take on it, and why I'm ultimately becoming less a fan of the system. Of course the game I'm playing in is amazingly fun, so I don't groan about it too much. I can see the GM's frustration on the other side of the screen, however, as once we decide to team up on one of his villains, he's going down, and there's nothing much he can do about it.

--Steve

the above is exactly why I dont run M&M anymore. My first real experience running the game was full of instances like this and as a GM they dont sit right with me. the game just really seems skewed in the favor of the PC's. I know some people here have rebuttled this in the past but my experiences have been consistent. I keep the books for source material but the next supers game I run will definitely be HERO, provided that I can find players...

 

[Krolik]

the game just really seems skewed in the favor of the PC's.

I believe SteveC's point was that the game isn't skewed in favor of the PCs. If it was his character wouldn't be getting stunned all the time.

 

[Fedifensor]

Let's put it into Champions terms: Nighthawk, someone I'd consider around PL 8, has an 18 pd. If he gets hit by the average 12d6 punch he can do he will take 42 stun. 42-18=24. He has a con of 20. Guess what? He's stunned. A 10d6 energy attack will stun him if the damage roll is 2 stun over average. So in Champions you have a Nighthawk who will stun himself with each hit and knock himself out after 2 hits. In M&M if you a Nighthawk who has a 50% chance of being stunned or worse and a 50% chance of taking no or minimal damage. In general I'd say Nighthawk has a better chance of surviving a fight with his "evil self" in M&M then in Champions.

One of the few problems I had with the Champions book (and 5E in general) is that they went for a higher damage to defense ratio. In 4E, one page near the back of the book listed the results of a poll they did of superhero campagins, where the average attack was 11d6 and the average defense was 25. That seems about right to me. In 5E Champions, the average attack is more like 12d6 with an average defense of 20. This changes the game considerably, giving superhero battles more of a 'gunfight at the OK corral' feeling.

HOWEVER, you can set the campaign boundaries wherever you want. And since my campaign world uses characters I built over the last 10 to 15 years (mostly in 4E), I've just left those boundaries the same as they were back then. Sure, superhero fights take a little longer...but they're superheroes.

By the way, I mentioned in the GURPS versus HERO thread that the big disadvantage of HERO is setup time - to the point where we're currently playing a D&D campaign instead. However, once you get the prep work of designing a character (or designing an adventure, for the GM) done, there's very little referring to books in play - everything you need should be on the character sheet. I do a LOT less hunting through books in HERO than I do in D&D, which leaves more time for roleplaying and action-packed combat scenes.

 

[SteveC]

I guess I'm not seeing the problem considering you can immediately spend a Hero Point and shake off a stunned result. If you're not taking actions it's because you're rolling poorly and/or you're not using your Hero Points to your advantage, IMO. You have a 50% chance of taking a bruise or no damage. You have a 50% chance of being stunned or worse. It really just depends on which way the linear die flops.

Yes, as I wrote earlier, you can spend a Hero Point, but Hero Points are relatively rare commodities and not something you just spend anytime you're attacked. It's my opinion that having to spend a rare commodity (my current character went into his last major battle with two Hero Points) every other time he's hit if he wants to act. And if I'm the GM, that's not an option that I even have.

Let's put it into Champions terms: Nighthawk, someone I'd consider around PL 8, has an 18 pd. If he gets hit by the average 12d6 punch he can do he will take 42 stun. 42-18=24. He has a con of 20. Guess what? He's stunned. A 10d6 energy attack will stun him if the damage roll is 2 stun over average. So in Champions you have a Nighthawk who will stun himself with each hit and knock himself out after 2 hits. In M&M if you a Nighthawk who has a 50% chance of being stunned or worse and a 50% chance of taking no or minimal damage. In general I'd say Nighthawk has a better chance of surviving a fight with his "evil self" in M&M then in Champions.

Here I'd say that your experience with Champions is lacking and that Nighthawk is a terrible example of a Hero System character. I suppose it's only fair considering how bad the Costumed Adventurer is in M&M. Nighthawk has lower than average defenses, and should have a correspondingly higher DCV to go along with that...but he doesn't. In M&M terms he's made a trade off lowering his toughness, but really hasn't improved his defense. The bell curve should be helping out Nighthawk avoid getting hit to begin with. Beyond that, the turn sequence in HERO also gives more flexibility: a character with a high speed can lose actions defending himself and still get in an attack now and then, which is something that you don't have in M&M.

Even beyond that, getting stunned in Hero is not necessarily the same problem as it is in M&M. If Nighthawk gets stunned and he has a higher speed than his opponent he can recover and then take a more defensive action to stay in the fight. In M&M if you're stunned by someone with a higher Initiative than you...you're out of luck.

I would liken the damage system in M&M to using only killing attacks in Hero: very random, very all or nothing. You can fix some of the my issues with M&M's damage save by switching to 3D6, but I still just flat out don't like the all or nothing aspect to it, and find that it doesn't match up at all with my idea of how a comic book battle actually runs.

Just for the record: until the election comes in 2008, my gaming tastes are not a universal rule of law in the US so I'm aware that we're pretty much talking personal taste. What I'm trying to explain to potential players and GMs for M&M is that this is an issue...you might like it, you might not. The True20/M&M damage system is very different than most other games, and that is a design decision that some people like and some don't.

Now frankly, if it were just me, I'd chalk it up to my own peculiarities, but the other players in my group tend to more or less agree, mostly from a standpoint that they find a lot of the combats we've been in to be a lot less fun this way than in some other systems.

The ultimate reality of it is that our GM in the current M&M game is new to GMing, and I don't know if he could get his head around running HERO at this point. He runs a VERY good M&M game, but I think if you asked him, he'd say that the system is giving him problems getting the results out of it that he expects.

And that's the bottom line (or something like that...)

--Steve

 

[SteveC]

I believe SteveC's point was that the game isn't skewed in favor of the PCs. If it was his character wouldn't be getting stunned all the time.

Well yes and no: the game is skewed in favor of a group against a lone individual. I happen to be the guy that gets shot at the most, so I get the hits. The point where it gets skewed in favor of the players is when you have 4-6 players going up against one lone villain. Unless that villain is essentially immune to most of the group, and has area damage, he's going to get stunned, and basically never going to act.

--Steve

 

[Krolik]

Here I'd say that your experience with Champions is lacking and that Nighthawk is a terrible example of a Hero System character.

See, this is the problem. You're not playing Champions. You're playing your own pseudo-rules version of Champions. Nighthawk is a perfect example of a starting level Batman-like character in HERO. He is built to the exact same specifications of every like-hero in Champions: His Damage is completely average, his DCV is slightly above average, his PD is only 2 pts below average, representing losing about 1/2d6 of defensive potential, his Speed is above average, etc. You might be playing 33 Dex, 25 Defense, 7 Speed Nighthawk in your game but that's not what Champions is representing as a "correct" character within the example universe that currently have over 500 superheroes and villains written-up in it.

I really see this issue come up a lot. Everyone plays Champions at their own power level, and then they somehow think that their chosen power level is representative of the game itself. It's not. You can tweak the game to your own needs and desires but the examples it's showing you are there for a reason. Any game can be tweaked to your own personal desires. You can tweak M&M just as easily as you can Hero. Give M&M characters 3 more Toughness just like you would Champions characters 5 more PD and most of your stunning issues are solved.

Even beyond that, getting stunned in Hero is not necessarily the same problem as it is in M&M. If Nighthawk gets stunned and he has a higher speed than his opponent he can recover and then take a more defensive action to stay in the fight. In M&M if you're stunned by someone with a higher Initiative than you...you're out of luck.

And if Nighthawk's Speed isn't greater then anyone else's he's out of luck too. And in HERO he doesn't even have the option of shaking it off with a Hero Point.

As for your Hero Point issues, they're not supposed to be that rare. Read through the example solo battle in the Beginner's Guide. Hero Points seem to fall out of the sky. Our players generally get between 4 and 6 per session. This generally includes 1-2 from dealing with personal life Complications and 3-5 coming from combat situtaions: unlucky rolls that lead to quick Stunnings are grounds for a Hero Point in the rules.

 

[SteveC]

See, this is the problem. You're not playing Champions. You're playing your own pseudo-rules version of Champions. Nighthawk is a perfect example of a starting level Batman-like character in HERO. He is built to the exact same specifications of every like-hero in Champions: His Damage is completely average, his DCV is slightly above average, his PD is only 2 pts below average, representing losing about 1/2d6 of defensive potential, his Speed is above average, etc. You might be playing 33 Dex, 25 Defense, 7 Speed Nighthawk in your game but that's not what Champions is representing as a "correct" character within the example universe that currently have over 500 superheroes and villains written-up in it.

I really see this issue come up a lot. Everyone plays Champions at their own power level, and then they somehow think that their chosen power level is representative of the game itself. It's not. You can tweak the game to your own needs and desires but the examples it's showing you are there for a reason. Any game can be tweaked to your own personal desires. You can tweak M&M just as easily as you can Hero. Give M&M characters 3 more Toughness just like you would Champions characters 5 more PD and most of your stunning issues are solved.


And if Nighthawk's Speed isn't greater then anyone else's he's out of luck too. And in HERO he doesn't even have the option of shaking it off with a Hero Point.

As for your Hero Point issues, they're not supposed to be that rare. Read through the example solo battle in the Beginner's Guide. Hero Points seem to fall out of the sky. Our players generally get between 4 and 6 per session. This generally includes 1-2 from dealing with personal life Complications and 3-5 coming from combat situtaions: unlucky rolls that lead to quick Stunnings are grounds for a Hero Point in the rules.

Sigh. Of course, I must be playing HERO at some strange power level other than the norm. Tell you what, go take a look at the other members of his own team and come back and say that again. Nighthawk has the same DCV as Defender, but his defenses, Stun and Con are significantly lower. Heck he has the same DCV as Ironclad, the brick. His attacks are also lower. It's a bad writeup. The only thing he does have is a 6 Speed, which is higher than the other members of the team. I think that Batman type characters always get the shaft in point based systems, since they spend many points on things that don't come into play often, leaving them with only a few options in combat.

It's also nice that your players get Hero Points raining down from the sky, too. It would be extra awesome if they didn't have to spend them to, I don't know, actually take an action in a combat. Yep, that's very HEROIC. "What did you spend your Hero Points on last session, Bob?" "Saving someone from being hit by a truck, how about you, Joe?" "So I could actually act in the battle." "Oh...sorry about that...I'll try and get attacked by one of the villains next time so that you can do something."

If the odds are 50/50 of being stunned each time you're hit, it's not lucky rolls, it's, to my mind, bad game design. It's one of the very few parts of M&M that's not designed very well, but with all the combat you see in a superhero game it's also a gaping flaw (again, this is just my opinion we're talking about). Is the game still fun? Yes, but it's fun despite this problem.

--Steve

 

[Mallus]

Yes, as I wrote earlier, you can spend a Hero Point, but Hero Points are relatively rare commodities and not something you just spend anytime you're attacked.

In M&M 2e? I disagree. Your Hero Point total resets every session, they're capped at PL/2, so at the standard PL 10 you can have up to a base of 5, and more importantly, the GM is supposed to hand out more during play, one for each use of GM Fiat, and once each time a characters Complications come into play. Which should happen in almost every fight.

It's my experience that multiple Hero Points get used in every combat encounter, unless you're fighting nothing but mooks. Hell, they get used in non-combat encounters as PC's use Power Stunts to emulate abilities they don't usually have. And the system works terrifically. But you do need a GM who understands the need of feeding a steady stream of additional HP to the players.

The ultimate reality of it is that our GM in the current M&M game is new...

Are they new to M&M as well? That could be your problem with the system right there. It's not the most complicated set of rules out there, but there are some nuances to play that take a while to figure out.

 

[WayneLigon]

It's also nice that your players get Hero Points raining down from the sky, too.

Well, it's not 'nice', it's normal. If for some reason Hero Points are actually rare in your game then the GM is Doing It Wrong. How many do you get per session, on average? You said he's new to GMing, so that's probably the problem. He really needs to read, deeply, that part about how Hero Points are acquirred and used.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Well, it's not 'nice', it's normal. If for some reason Hero Points are actually rare in your game then the GM is Doing It Wrong. How many do you get per session, on average? You said he's new to GMing, so that's probably the problem. He really needs to read, deeply, that part about how Hero Points are acquirred and used.

Additionally, there's the Luck feat that grants you an extra hero point per session with a limit of starting hero points equal to the PL. That's 1 pp per Hero Point with a max of 10 at the standard PL.

There's almost no reason you shouldnt have hero points if you really need it. They're NOT supposed to be a hard to aquire resource.