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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5615636" data-attributes="member: 21169">But where do the rules come from? How do we decide that Heimdall has a Perception value of +100, while Macavity, the world's greatest thief, has a Stealth of +60? Fluff. The values come entirely from the fluff. If I've already decided that Heimdall is much better than Macavity, on account of him being a god, I don't actually need rules. At least not rpg-style rules. In fact I do have a different kind of rule, there are 'world rules' inherent in the fluff. That said, it's not a bad idea to have precise rpg-style rules written down, to help keep me honest as a GM, amongst other reasons.The D&D rules actually handle a lot of these types of conflicts rather badly because they are full of binaries. Stuff just works, except when it's up against a defence or immunity, in which case it is stopped cold. For example a creature immune to fire isn't hurt by a fireball cast by the god of fire. Protection From Evil, a 1st level spell, protects completely against charm. So it would thwart a charm cast by Venus.Rules sets that give everything a value, such as HERO, are better at that kind of thing. Protection From Evil could provide a mental defence of, say, 10pts, which wouldn't be enough to stop Venus's 30d6 mind control.I encountered this problem in my last campaign of Mutants & Masterminds. I wanted to introduce an artefact called the Anti-Grail, the evil opposite of the Holy Grail. Just as the Holy Grail has incredible healing power, so the wounds caused by the Anti-Grail are almost impossible to heal. Unfortunately the way M&M handles this is with Incurable, which costs 1pt and Persistent Healing, which also costs 1pt, and allows the healer to heal Incurable wounds. By RAW, Persistent Healing cannot be beaten and, ofc, a PC in my game had it. I introduced levels of Persistent and Incurable to counter this, so I could give the Anti-Grail Incurable 50 or somesuch.</blockquote>

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