Champions RPG

[BkMamba]

This I still don't buy, though. But I stated why above, and don't want to keep getting the thread off track. Thanks for indulging me, Bk. Apologies again to the OP

This all started when I stated that M&M has a larger Damage Range then Champions. I will try and explain that here:

There is a certain minimum Damage which is required in Champions - and notice I am talking about Champions here as that is what this thread is about, not any other genre of HERO. In a standard 350 point Champions game that functional limit is 7d6 of normal Damage. 7d6 will allow you to do 4-5 points of Stun to an average 20 Defense foe - you do a little more to the 15 Defense targets and a little less, to none, to the 25 Defense targets. The top-side of the standard Champions game is generally 14d6; though many GMs limit the DC to 12. This gives standard Champions a functional Damage Range of 7-14d6, 7 steps (tough 5 steps with 12d6 is closer to the average).

In M&M the Damage System allows for +1 Damage attacks to have a potential to Bruise/Injure the average PL 10, 10 Toughness foe - a Blast 1 would have a 25% chance of hurting the target. There are no functional limits to Trade-Offs in M&M but many GMs limit it to 5 points. So against an average foe M&M has a Damage Range of 1-15. That is two to three times the Champions' Damage Range.

In Champions you tend to see all of the Damages grouped close together. If you look at the Champions team you see: Defender: 12d6, Ironclad: 12d6, Nighthawk: 12d6, Sapphire: 12d6, and Witchcraft: 6d6 Ego Attack. In M&M you would have a wider range of Damages. If we look at the Freedom League we see ranges of Raven: +4 & Bowman: +5 on one side and Daedalus: +10 & Captain Thunder: +14 on the other side.

That wide range is possible because lower Damage is functional in M&M but is not in Champions. That does not make Champions a bad game in any way. It just means that in M&M players who want their characters to only do +5 or +6 like Hawkeye do not need to feel completely overshadowed by characters doing +12, +13, or +14.

 

[BkMamba]

The 20 point limit that Buzz is talking about is indeed a limit, for PCs and for characters at a certain power level with an average DCV value.

As Buzz has already stated, there is no such limit in the game.

If you have a lower DCV or lower than average Speed, it is certainly possible to up your defenses, which is what you usually see. It's just like the tradeoffs for Toughness versus Defense that you have in M&M.

There is no mechanical association with DCV and Defense in HERO/Champions nor anything even close to Trade-Offs. There is only the limit of the number of points you have to spend. If you wanted to spend the points on it you could easily have a 15 DCV and 35 Defense in Champions. Only the GM could say no.

 

[Fedifensor]

There is a certain minimum Damage which is required in Champions - and notice I am talking about Champions here as that is what this thread is about, not any other genre of HERO. In a standard 350 point Champions game that functional limit is 7d6 of normal Damage. 7d6 will allow you to do 4-5 points of Stun to an average 20 Defense foe - you do a little more to the 15 Defense targets and a little less, to none, to the 25 Defense targets. The top-side of the standard Champions game is generally 14d6; though many GMs limit the DC to 12. This gives standard Champions a functional Damage Range of 7-14d6, 7 steps (tough 5 steps with 12d6 is closer to the average).

You forgot half dice, which makes that range either 10 or 14 steps. If you use the Increased Damage Differentation rule (I believe it was in the Ultimate Brick), you can also use d6+1 steps, which increases the range to 15 or 21 steps (an energy blast could be 8d6, 8d6+1, or 8 1/2d6, among other things). I see a lot of martial artists that end up with attacks like a 9 1/2d6 punch. Combat maneuvers also make a huge difference. Even a 5d6 attack can be haymakered to 9d6 (at a cost of being easier to hit), and a martial artist that can't do any real damage to a brick can still drop him with a legsweep.

This, of course, is excluding advantages - yes, M&M has the equivalent, but HERO does have more than M&M does. Which is both a boon and a curse - it's a more complex system. You have Armor Piercing, Attack versus Limited Defense, No Normal Defense, Penetrating, Area of Effect, Explosion...the list goes on and on, and you're not limited to one of them (as long as you stay within active point limits).

 

[Fedifensor]

There is no mechanical association with DCV and Defense in HERO/Champions nor anything even close to Trade-Offs. There is only the limit of the number of points you have to spend. If you wanted to spend the points on it you could easily have a 15 DCV and 35 Defense in Champions. Only the GM could say no.

All systems are balanced by the GM. Search for 'Pun-Pun' on the WotC boards...

 

[TarionzCousin]

As an aside, didn't Monte Cook work on the Hero Games system (2nd or 3rd Edition) before moving over to revamp D&D into 3.0?

 

[Glyfair]

As an aside, didn't Monte Cook work on the Hero Games system (2nd or 3rd Edition) before moving over to revamp D&D into 3.0?

A bit for ICE. His bio lists him has having worked on Champions in 3D (multi-dimensional adventure sourcebook, a Planescape precursor?), European Enemies & Champions Universe. In addition, he edited a lot of books during that period (most of them?).

 

[Fedifensor]

As an aside, didn't Monte Cook work on the Hero Games system (2nd or 3rd Edition) before moving over to revamp D&D into 3.0?

Yes, Monte worked on multiple HERO books (from 1989 to 1993, I believe).

For that matter, Steve Long (the current HERO owner and rules guru) worked on books for a lot of systems. He's done books for White Wolf (Storyteller System), Last Unicorn Games (Star Trek), Pinnacle (Deadlands), Decipher (Lord of the Rings), and even WotC (he worked on the Wheel of Time d20 game).

 

[SteveC]

As Buzz has already stated, there is no such limit in the game.


There is no mechanical association with DCV and Defense in HERO/Champions nor anything even close to Trade-Offs. There is only the limit of the number of points you have to spend. If you wanted to spend the points on it you could easily have a 15 DCV and 35 Defense in Champions. Only the GM could say no.

I am going to both agree and disagree with you here. You're right that Hero does not have a "Rule of X" like Fuzion does, but the guidelines on page 28 of the Revised Core rules are used by GMs for just such a purpose. An average character will have OCV, DCV and defenses towards the middle of the chart, just as an average M&M character has an average Attack/Damage and Defense/Toughness value. The Hero rules just give the GM more leeway in how this is applied, and mention it in more detail in the genre books. The assumption, however, is that there will be a range of values set. Here's a relevant quote from the Champions Rulebook:

The GM should have an idea of what the campaign standards for character power levels, CVs and DCVs, and other factors will be when the campaign starts. Th e PCs will be built or modified based on that estimation. Once all the characters are built, the players should have an opportunity to revise their characters if they are too far out of line, particularly if their DEX and SPD scores are well below those of their fellow players. Having a comparatively low DEX or a SPD that’s 2 or more lower than that of the other PCs leaves a player feeling frustrated and useless when combat occurs.

I would argue that this is the same sort of rule that M&M uses, but with two key differences: first, the GM sets the ranges, and secondly characters are evaluated in the context of the other members of the group in addition to the benchmarks set by the GM. I would say in the end the result you'll get is very similar to M&M, but more organic, and less restrictive.

But is that "organic" restriction a good thing? Well, I know that you've been around in Champions circles long enough to know that discussions of how "+1 OCV should equate to -XD6 damage" have been going on for years, really back to the beginning of the game. That was the chief reason for the "Rule of X" from Fuzion. Frankly, I think that the power level restrictions work about as well in Fuzion as they do in M&M, which is to say that I think they don't work particularly well. That's why I apply them in much the same manner as in Hero: as a range of results and as an art rather than as a precise science.

Again, still just my $.02...

--Steve

 

[SteveC]

In M&M the Damage System allows for +1 Damage attacks to have a potential to Bruise/Injure the average PL 10, 10 Toughness foe - a Blast 1 would have a 25% chance of hurting the target. There are no functional limits to Trade-Offs in M&M but many GMs limit it to 5 points. So against an average foe M&M has a Damage Range of 1-15. That is two to three times the Champions' Damage Range.

In Champions you tend to see all of the Damages grouped close together. If you look at the Champions team you see: Defender: 12d6, Ironclad: 12d6, Nighthawk: 12d6, Sapphire: 12d6, and Witchcraft: 6d6 Ego Attack. In M&M you would have a wider range of Damages. If we look at the Freedom League we see ranges of Raven: +4 & Bowman: +5 on one side and Daedalus: +10 & Captain Thunder: +14 on the other side.

That wide range is possible because lower Damage is functional in M&M but is not in Champions. That does not make Champions a bad game in any way. It just means that in M&M players who want their characters to only do +5 or +6 like Hawkeye do not need to feel completely overshadowed by characters doing +12, +13, or +14.

I would like to point out that this is a bit of an over simplification for both systems. A character running around with a +4 damage attack in M&M is going to be very frustrated in a power level 10 game, as he will be largely ineffective against most targets. He'd be completely ineffective against six of the 13 character archetypes in the M&M game book because of the "impervious" power. In a campaign that I ran, the comments "great job! Batman just caused another bruise!" were made derisively at the expense of on of the characters throughout the campaign. It really was pretty silly.

Low damage attacks in Hero can be quite effective against low powered opponents, but they are not useful in most cases against powerful villains. That was a deliberate decision made by the designers, and not a mistake.

The question I'd raise is whether or not you want an extremely low powered attack to have a chance of taking out a powerful character. A +1 damage knife has a 25% chance of causing some injury to an average power level 10 character. That's the lowest level damage effect you can model buy purchasing a power. Does that make more sense than the Hero system rule?

Now in practice, characters in M&M can use maneuvers like Power Attack to trade hits for damage, which is a common thing for characters that have a lot of accuracy but little punch, but Hero system characters can do the same thing. For those of you not familiar with Hero, it has a mechanic where characters can apply "levels" to either affect their chance to hit (in effect raise their attack bonus) or apply them to damage. Every +2 bonus to hit can become +1D6. This is something that characters can use to improve their weak attacks to respectable levels. I think this is an example of how both systems can get the same results, but get to it in a different way.

I like both Hero and M&M, and the reason for this is that both games are designed to to a variety of things quite well...they just do them in a different manner and approach them from a different angle.

--Steve

 

[buzz]

That wide range is possible because lower Damage is functional in M&M but is not in Champions. That does not make Champions a bad game in any way. It just means that in M&M players who want their characters to only do +5 or +6 like Hawkeye do not need to feel completely overshadowed by characters doing +12, +13, or +14.

I see your point, Bk. Still, I think that what's mattered in the games my group plays is simply that there are a wide variety of ways in which PCs can be built in HERO to achieve the combat effectiveness you're talking about. (One of the basic things I love about supers: bricks, aliens, robots, supermages, science heroes, martial artists... all in the same game.)

I do wish that my D&D group was more amenable to playing some M&M, though. I'd like to get some more experience with it under my belt, esp. since we've only played 1e.

Same with Wild Talents, and T&J, and...

So many games, so little time.