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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5827236" data-attributes="member: 5143">It's not just the risky powers that are the problem, however.  If you use some of the premade villains from the books because you don't have the time or inclination to spend all your time designing villains....well, now you have to figure out what the baseline is.  Do all of them average 10d6 energy blasts or 6d6?  Are their defenses 10, 20, 30, or 40?  If an enemy has a 50 in a defense...is that unfair to the PCs who mostly have 10d6 EB?  It's very difficult to tell.And there's no real way to tell how powerful an enemy will be in combat simply based on point values.  Sometimes their powers are even deceptively powerful.  Someone with a 2d6 autofire, double AP, double penetrating attack and a speed of 8 doesn't SEEM that powerful compared to the guy with the 15d6 energy blast...but you soon see otherwise.The balance doesn't come from the point system, it comes externally from the GM.  The system itself doesn't create the balance.  The DM instead sits down and says "We're going to make characters based around a 10d6 energy blast standard.  35 damage will be the average damage rolled, so 30 should be the average defense.  You shouldn't take more than 45 in any defense, because that will make the average attack completely ineffective against you.  You also shouldn't go lower than 20 in your defenses, because otherwise the average attack will stun you."Which has the side effect of removing choice from all the characters.  Which is my point.  To balance something, you need to remove choice.  It becomes either the DM's responsibility or the system's.  I'd prefer it be the system's so that there is less work for me. You can balance D&D the same way, however.  You look at AC vs attack and HP vs damage.  You balance these two things and the game is balanced the same way that Hero is.You break that balance if you start providing too many options, however.  Allow people to take a -1 to their AC for a +4 to diplomacy and it's perfectly fine.  Allow people to take a -1 to their AC as many times as they want and each time it gives them a +4 bonus to a skill and allow them to permanently lose 5 hitpoints in exchange for a cool non-combat power....and you'll end up with characters who get hit 100% of the time and die when they get hit.Characters already end up like this in Hero due to too many options.</blockquote>

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