Silver Age Sentinels (Tri-Stat) -- and Streamlining Hero

[Teflon Billy]

I'm holding out for Mutants and MAsterminds. the Demo I played at Gen Con was great

I was going to pick up Silver Age Sentinels, but the intro turned me off enough that I decided against it.

See, I like having angst-filled psychos in my game (or at least the option of them), and when an introduction goes on about how the system is "all things to all people", then in the next paragraph goes on to say "except this big part of the genre", I lose interest.

And, for the record, I think Champions was maybe my favorite game ever but it's combat played slow. M&M played nice and fast and seemed to have room for a Angsty Psycho

 

[JeffB]

Why do you feel like attributing me with exagarrated emotions to me?




Offended? Show me any words that sound emotive enought to justify that label.

God forbid that I express my preferences in a game...



Get a grip and stop mincing semantics. You should know what I mean. I would never seriously consider playing a tri-stat game.

You have made it quite clear in the D20 and a thread a few weeks back your disdain for SAS (any version).

Apprently though you have never played the system? (since you can't seriously consider playing it?)

I understand you have your preferences..you just come down pretty hard on a system you've never even played.

You don't like it, you don't like it....

Maybe it's just me, but I usually try something before I judge it.

 

[NLP]

You don't like it, you don't like it....

Maybe it's just me, but I usually try something before I judge it.

Would that were always the case. There is some guy on RPG.net who says he does not like the new Champions book because he skimmed it at the hobby store. I guess everyone likes to make leaps of logic like that. “I no like look of book from 5 minute skimming, thus book no good!”

I do have a feeling though that much of the hype about SAS stems from the look of the book (God it is beautiful!) over how good the game system is. The proof of the game system is going to come from the support product and how well the fanbase accepts it over the next two years.

I have played BESM in the past and never found it to be that interesting. The game requires too much GM/Player interpretation for my tastes. It is just a little too fast and loose. But to each his own. Play the games you like. That is why there is more than one game publisher (even if most of them are producing from a d20 mold).

 

[Psion]

You have made it quite clear in the D20 and a thread a few weeks back your disdain for SAS (any version).

Incorrect. I made no inferences about tri-stat SAS. A few weeks ago (actually more like last week), I expressed my disappointment at the approach taken by SAS's d20 version, but explicitly said that it was based upon Lizards statement and I reserved judgement until I got a chance to examine it more closely.

Incidently, I did get a chance to check it out, and I rest with my prior decision.

Not only do you insist on attributing emotions to me that I do not have, but now you attribute to me things I did not say. If you cannot meaningfully sum up what my thoughts are on an issue, I would ask that you refrain from trying. Having to defend myself from things I did not say is immensely irritating.

Apprently though you have never played the system? (since you can't seriously consider playing it?)

I understand you have your preferences..you just come down pretty hard on a system you've never even played.

You don't like it, you don't like it....

Maybe it's just me, but I usually try something before I judge it.

It obviously escaped your notice that I was criticising the practice of only using three stats, not saying all aspects of the game are junk. I can tell you from prior experinces with BESM and other stat vapid systems that I do not like such systems. Assuming that I won't like a game that shares traits with a prior game is a reasonable assumption. It's called deductive reasoning.

There are thousands of games out there; I have to have some method to determine which are worthy of consideration aside from trying every one. Especially considering I already have two systems that I consider to be excellent for supers.

 

[mmadsen]

Psion:

What, there wasn't enough hype over on RPGnet for a lifetime?

JeffB to Psion:

I am very curious why you so vehemently disllike SAS, regardless of whether it is the TRISTAT or D20 versions. Anytime someone even mentions it, you damn near seem to be offended...ESPECIALLY god forbid, when someone actually LIKES it.

Psion:

Offended? Show me any words that sound emotive enought to justify that label.

Perhaps, Psion, saying "What, there wasn't enough hype over on RPGnet for a lifetime?" doesn't strike you as "emotive enough" to "seem to be offended", but it certainly struck me that way.

Further, the whole notion that my review intro (that first post) was "hype" seems way off base to me, since I know I didn't come into it with some pro-SAS agenda. What was so hyped? That I said I'd heard great things about it?

 

[mmadsen]

I was going to pick up Silver Age Sentinels, but the intro turned me off enough that I decided against it. See, I like having angst-filled psychos in my game (or at least the option of them)...

While you may not have enjoyed the Astro City flavor of Silver Age Sentinels' flavor text (and its intro in particular), there's nothing about the game itself that keeps you from playing Wolverine, the Punisher, Spawn, the Dark Knight, or any other "angst-filled psycho".

Marvel Superheroes, for instance, did literally have rules against anti-heroes; they needed special rules just for Wolverine, so he could gain Karma (experience) despite killing people.

 

[mmadsen]

I didn't want to turn this into a Champions-versus-SAS thread, but do have a few points I'd like to make about Champions. As I said in my initial post, "Champions had many great ideas, but few of them required the kind of complexity the system's known for." I have a few fixes I'd hoped to see in Fifth Edition. (Note: I haven't studied Fifth Edition.) Deriving these fixes might not seem simple, but the end-user doesn't have to follow the derivation; it's the end result that's simple.

Champions' stats -- and its figured stats in particular -- are needlessly complicated. As I said before, "And who's the genius who thought we should round stat values for bonuses? So every character is full of stats like 13, 18, 23, etc. Ugh." Changing the rounding rules, a trivial change, would lead to efficient characters having nice, round stats: 10, 15, 20, etc., not 8, 13, 18, etc.

Many of the figured characteristics are stat/5, but some aren't:

PD = Str/5
ED = Con/5
Spd = 1 + Dex/10
Rec = Str/5 + Con/5
End = 2 x Con
Stun = Body + Str/2 + Con/2

OCV = Dex/3
DCV = Dex/3
ECV = Ego/3

(Also, skills use stat/5 for bonuses.)

If we change those to use stat/5 in all cases, we don't even need any stats beyond 5, 10, 15, 20, etc. For instance:

PD = Str/5
ED = Con/5
Spd = Dex/5
Rec = Str/5 + Con/5
End = 2 x Con = 10 x Con/5
Stun = Body + Str/2 + Con/2 (OK, this one needs some work...)

OCV = Dex/5
DCV = Dex/5
ECV = Ego/5

Moving Spd from 1 + Dex/10 to Dex/5 keeps the norm at 2, and can keep the "human max" at 4. Dropping OCV and DCV to Dex/5 puts them in line with Dex-based skills, and doesn't change the game in any material way; it just makes Dex a wee bit less of an uber-stat (perhaps offsetting any higher Spd stats).

(Aside: Champions' Spd stat has always been too granular at the low end for such an all-important value. Going from 2 (human normal) to 4 (human max) doubles your combat effectiveness. If you're already at "human max", it's still awfully tempting to spend another 10 points (out of 250) to go from 4 to 5 (or even 6) for another 25% to 50% increase in attacks (and moves) per turn.)

Once we've established that we only need stats that are multiples of 5, we can divide those original stat values by 5, making them the same as the figured stats we'd like to get to; we can eliminate the arithmetic.

We could have Str, Dex, Con, etc. scores of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. instead of 5, 10, 15, 20 -- or 3, 8, 13, 18. And figured stats might look like:

PD = Str
ED = Con
Spd = Dex
Rec = Str + Con
End = 10 x Con
Stun = 5 x Body + 5 x Str/2 + 5 x Con/2 (OK, this one needs some work...)

OCV = Dex
DCV = Dex
ECV = Ego

Then, if we decide to subsume multiple related stats under one heading (more like Tri-Stat, but not so extreme), we might get something like:

Body -- Str, Con, Body; separate Super-Strength power for pure lifting and punching
Dex -- Dex
Mind -- Int
Soul -- Ego, Pre; separate Attractive talent for comeliness, Intimidation skill for Presence Attacks

PD = Body
ED = Body
Spd = Dex
Rec = 2 x Body
End = 10 x Body
Stun = 10 x Body

OCV = Dex
DCV = Dex
ECV = Soul

If my explanation wasn't too convoluted, I hope you can see that we could have a much simpler Champions stat system, one a bit like Tri-Stat (without going "too far"), that changes almost nothing about the underlying system.

 

[Teflon Billy]

While you may not have enjoyed the Astro City flavor of Silver Age Sentinels' flavor text (and its intro in particular)...

Man, I loved Astro City for it's twenty-odd issue run

But didn't Astro City's "Silver Age" end with the fall of the Silver Agent? (his name was an allusion to that i thought).

If Silver Age Sntinels were to release an Astro City supplement, I'd buy that immediately, but I doubt they would. Such a brilliant comic, and it's wrtier abandons it to write friggin' Thunderbolts!

Stupid Kurt Busiek.

 

[Valanti]

My group actually PLAYED the game the other day (we usually play the old DC Heroes game, but our GM liked SAS and wanted to try it), so here are my thoughts:

Damage is wacky. Most normal weapons do very little damage, armor is cheap, so everybody uses Special Attacks or Massive Damage. Only that usually means that you take enough to fall over in just a few hits (or, in my case, ANY time I was hit).

We learned that the Defensive Value has to be capped around 15, since if it's higher characters rarely get hit unless (a) they're swarmed with more attackers than they have defenses or (b) the attacker rolls a critical which cannot be dodged. It also does extra damage, so you're likely to go down because of it.

Non-combat powers are fun and reasonable. We had a guy with the Teleport power, I had Telepathy, and someone else had an energy absorption power that made him tougher.

Combat powers are obnoxious. One guy had Autofire and Spread and was mowing down EVERYONE with abandon. But combat is very fast because of all these things (unless you have a lot of high Defensive guys).

No one minded having three stats (especially since there are options for making Body better for Dex than Str for instance).

All in all I preferred the old DC Heroes both for it's feel, the relativity of it's values (i.e. stat / power values are not absolute, but relative to what or whoever you're affecting), and Hero Points (for generating a measure of control over how much damage you take and how effective your powers are).

 

[NLP]

mmadsen,

No wonder you do not like Hero. Anyone who would take a simple process and convolute it to what you just wasted time writing really should not be playing the game.

You listed all these formuli, but what you forgot to mention is that is that those formuli are only used during character creation. On top of that, the information is all on the character sheet, you do not have to do those calculations during the game. For example:

OCV and DCV are written on the character sheet. You do not have to divide your DEX by 3 every time you attack with the character. You just look at the slot, just like you would look at the Armor Class total on a d20 sheet.

To play the Hero System you need to know 6 things: What your OCV and DCV are, How much damage you do, What your defense is, What your speed is, How much movement you have, and How many combat levels you have. All of that information is written on the character sheet. You do not have to do any calculations to get it.