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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3326534" data-attributes="member: 4937">I have no idea what edition I looked at.  Looking at the system, I saw all sorts of problems.  Increasing your power exponentially required (IIRC, and this is all from years old memory) a linear not exponential exspenditure of points which basically greatly favored johnny one shots over broader 'batman' style builds.  This is a problem with RPG's in general, but its something I expect point buy systems to specifically address because its such a bad problem in point buys.  Basically, you built a character with a defensive power, a movement power, and an offensive power then could easily do anything you wanted with cheaply bought alternate uses of the power, some powers were just brokenly good (speedster ones in particular) for the cost, and so on and so forth.  The system gave the illusion of making everything playable, but certain powers were so useful you'd be almost nuts not to take them."What superhero RPG isn't a mix/maxer's paradise, if the player chooses to go that route? "One that would be interesting enough to bother playing?"Isn't that true of any superhero RPG? Or any RPG? Wait, make that any game...And you're just flat wrong about needing to pull punches...Not much.  Fortunately it doesn't play out like that."There are social conventions that are reasonable, such as 'don't cheat', 'everyone is here to have fun' and so forth.  There are social conventions which are explicitly supported by the mechanics of the game.   Then there are games which have mechanics which don't support the sort of game play that they are trying to produce - for example White Wolf's WoD and from my memory M&M.  The problem I saw is that the game would be extremely lethal if the bad guys just dropped the whole Bond Villian convention and played for keeps.  And the problem with the Bond Villain convention is that once it becomes obvious in the mind of the players, it becomes ridiculous and shatters suspension of disbelief and the enjoyment of the game.  One never gets the sense from the comic books that the villains are trying not to kill the protagonists, because if one did get that sense it would ruin the comic book for you.  The villains are willing to kill thousands of innocents, but they aren't really trying to kill thier greatest foe?  What's up with that?  It's worse in an RPG because then its a matter of the DM pulling his punches.  Yeah, the villain might have won if the super attack did lethal damage instead of non-lethal, but if that had happened then everyone would be dead.  So instead we'll just ignore the fact that villains might want thier enemies dead and we'll just bruise everyone instead of injure them.Yes, the meaningful difference is (assuming his AC is low enough that he can be hit), the horde of battleaxe wielding beserkers as opposed to the fist punching beserkes will do enough damage over the course of 10-15 rounds that he character with 100 HP will be wanting a significant heal.I didn't suggest that a damage save system needs 4 die rolls.  I could minimize it down to one.  What I was suggesting is that there are tradeoffs.Which doesn't change the fact that against even opponents, rolling a 1 is a very bad thing and the only thing you have to save you is your limited supply of hero points.First of all, read your Bible before making your Biblical points.  David didn't kill Goliath with a sling stone.  David killed Goliath with a coup de gras attack using a sword.   Secondly, you are making assumptions about the levels, feat selections, abilities ect. involved here.  If your assumptions are making the result impossible, its just as likely that your assumptions are wrong as the system is wrong.  Maybe David has a feat that lets him stun an opponent with a critical hit.  Maybe David has a feat which lets him forgo his iterative attack in order to make one single deadly strike.  Maybe Goliath just doesn't have as much hit points as you think he does.  Thirdly, when making a Biblical point, you are leaving out the fact that you potentially have a divinely guided missile fired by someone with divine favor.  Maybe David 'cast a divine spell'/'spent faith points' that upped the critical multiplier/damage bonus of his sling stones, so that one hit did 50+ damage.  Fourthly, as stirring as the story of David and Goliath maybe, its poorly suited for RPG play precisely because their is no indication that David is in any way physically challenged by it.  If you want to create a system for modelling Biblical play, then all the challenges involved in David vs. Goliath are spiritual in nation.  In effect, once David made his will save, the fight was already over except for the theatrics.   In RPG's you really don't want challenges without the challenge.Because 'Save or Die' situations aren't fun for either players or DM's.  Players can't avoid them via good play, and because they are solely luck dependent are pressured to cheat (far fewer players fail to record hit point loss as fudge saving throws in my 20 years of experience), and DM's in anything but a one shot don't really want the player to fail the saving throw and are just pressured to avoid the monsters that provoke them.   'Save or Die's make D&D highly dependent on access to 'Raise Dead', and that hurts D&D's ability to model literature and cinema far more than hit points ever have.That doesn't bother me at all.  David does his thing to incapacitated Golaith with a sling stone, walks over to the giant takes out the giants sword and cuts his head off.  It works just fine in D&D, especially with a bit of focus on making a sling a dangerous weapon.  (Did you know that in the Roman army, a slinger was paid more than an archer because the sling was considered the more effective weapon.  Unfortunately, good slingers only came from Sicily and Judea, since it took a lifetime to master the weapon (similar to the way that good longbowmen only came from Wales and England).)Because randomness ALWAYS skews in favor of NPC's rather than PC's.  The current crit system always hurts PC's more than it helps them.  It's only in because some players like that 'lucky shot' feeling, but even if PC's over the course of the game succeed in far more criticals than monsters do, the PC's will face more criticals than any one monster because monsters don't have to stick around (they are in fact designed not to) but PC's do (the game requires it).Depends on what you are trying to do.  Making mooks a little more threatening isn't bad, in the same way that wandering encounters aren't bad.  But making every combat a significant risk of death for the PC's will definately change the game and definately goes beyond 'a little more threatening'.There is very little in the way of emulation that can't be assumed to be a critical hit or a coup de gras attack.</blockquote>

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