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Message: <blockquote data-quote="swrushing" data-source="post: 1494769" data-attributes="member: 14140"></blockquote>Sigh, that was me trying to stick to your chosen "45 pts". value. Anyway, in 4e at least, it was common enough and published in numerous examples to have a half dice Eb for 3 pts. I really did not take the time to look it up to see if they changed that for 5e. maybe 5e has gone more granular. maybe they found the ability to buy an attack between 4d6 and 5d6 to be unbalancing?Anyway, the example would work much the same with 4d6 AOE 2" r vs 8d6 eb.So this seems a little trivial.would the words "character concept" be OK?besides... the 9d6 guy's attack WOULD BE EFFECTIVE at those values. Against the high end guys he still gets 11 stun thru per attack. Look at my for instance example...As an example, say he spend shis 45 pts on 9d6 Eb and +3  OCV for a total of 60 pts vs the guy who buys 12d6 Eb.Assume an opponent of average DCV and the 20 defense12d6 boy needs a 11- to hit and does 22 stun thru on a hit. Thats gonna average about 14 stun per shot (missing 38% of the time.)9d6 boy will hit on 14- (because of his three extra ocv) for about 11 making him about 10 stun per shot.Sure, 9d6 boy has a little less stun against the big boys and 12d6 boy has more of a chance of getting a con stun but he has some better accuracy to help compensate.besides, it not necessary in order to be worth your points that you build your characters to always be at the high end, right. The low end is listed at 8d6.But really... the question i am asking is NOT about 45 pts of attack vs 60 pts of attack.its about 45 pts of attack vs 45 pts of attack.basic viper agent has 10 def and DCV 5(HERO5 champions universe page 147 )assuming shooting between 11m and 16m of the agentsassuming a cluster of three viper agents in a 3 hex wide areaassuming neither guy has range skill levels...Assuming OCV of 8 for the good guysguys.area guy shoots... hits the hex (DCV 5) and to avoid spread issues i am going to assume he hits automatically...  his average damage is about 7 per viper guy... 21 total stun scores. The crowd goes wild.firebolt guy shoots... needs a 12- to hit. he spreads to 6d6 to get shots at all three... each hit scores on average 11 stun thru defenses. he hits 75% of the time. thats an average of 8 stun thru per viper guy, ~ 25 per "shot at three".So, against three  viper guys in a cluster at "medium range", the 9d6 guy spreading does MORE DAMAGE than the area guy on average. If we move closer, to within 8m, the numbers go even more in favor of the 9d6 spread guy.Again, at best, against clusters of threee Basic Viper agents, at normal distances, the 9d6 guy comes off as good or better than the area guy.if you add this to "and against real supers with defenses above 10, the 9d6 guy will do much better as the area guy finds his attack becoming unable tp penetrate at all"...i dont see the balance in effectiveness between those two attacks. they are perhaps balanced against clusterred viper guys, but not against more typical supers... which means for the same points area guy will sometimes be on par but other times be much worse off than 9d6 guy.is that what you call balanced? No.No.I am trying to challenge the assertions you make about the HERO system, more specifically about the relevence of the points to balance. I am using core rules, the point value your thru out, and SIMNPLE constructs (No NND, AOE only vs desolid faeires nonsense... just a firebolt vs fireball comparison... vanilla) to show its just not true that the points, rp cost in specific,  will even for this simple case mean balance.This is not really news. like i said, every so often on the HERo boards themselves someone asks about how to judge balance and IIRC no one (or almost no one) says "use total points." You are i think the first hero gamer to let his need to defend the system drive him that far down the road.In short, in my experience, and using the standard numbers, the 9d6 vs 4.5d6 aoe example is a dead spot on example of hero math failing to produce a balanced set of powers. In any game with a moderate distribution of bad guys, the 9d6 blast will do more damage more often and drop foes faster than the 4.5 d6 aoe because of the gross loss in damage after defensesthe system 'charges" to get a small area of effect.  Frankly, even the viper agent you tossed out still shows the 9d6 guy ahead of the game. What i had hoped for was a slightly different outcome. i had hoped for maybe you to say something with a little more consideration than "well i still think its mostly balanced" et al...For example, a more reasonable response IMo would have been..."Well, yeah, this example of AOE on the low end of things with normal attacks is an issue. The 4.5 wont play out balanced unless the GM spends a lot of game time with his heroes beating up street thugs. But the AOE value is an approximation. In HERo the same AOE value can apply to drains and NNDs and flashes and a whole slew of other attacks which all beypass standard defenses. For these attacks, the big difference between 4.5 and 9d6 wont be exacerbated by significant defenses. So the AOE value is pretty much balanced along the lines for those attacks and it really doesn't work out as well for standard damage attacks, especially at the low end of the DC range. HERO tends when it errs to err on the side of caution. This may be one such case."To me, something like the above, is a more informative than just "the points work, its balanced" rote defense. pretending the problems dont exist is not helping to propote the product. In my experience, no PC in a game i have run or have been in has taken as his primary attack or sole attack an AOE attack of the standard attack type (Eb or RKA) with AOE at +1. In my experience, plenty PCs in games i have run or have been in have take as their primary attack or sole attack a standard attack of the standard attack type (EB or RKA.) More than a few.Effectiveness vs cost was a noticeable consideration in those cases. They all figured it out. i am surprised you did not.[/QUOTE]

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