The issue of super strength

[JAlfredPrufrock]

Well, one thing I like about Vigilance is that it uses Heroism Points, spendable during play, to perform one time feats of derring do.

So, in our cammoaign, my GM will let us spend Heroism points to lift more if its to save someone trapped under rubble.

I guess Id assunme if a character lifted a LOT in a comic just once, that he had some heroism pts saved

 

[smkun]

SAS d20

I have this and really like it. We have been making characters and about to start a game.

Armor is DR. You also have a based AC and roll to defend (d20+base AC to avoid being hit)

Str and Dex do not add to your hit rolls, you have a combat skill that is not modified by an attribute.

A character that I made for example has a 56 STR, when he makes a melee attack he gets to do an additional 5d6+8 damage based off of STR.

Tough is an attribute that you can get it adds 1d8+con in HP. You should check out there quick start rules at www.guardainsorder.com

There are no feats, everything is replaced with Characteristic or Power attributes. (Power attributes are like super powers)

 

[The Sigil]

Here's my 2 cents...

This will make things slightly convoluted, but I would treat it thusly...

When an attacker rolls a d20 to attack, take that roll and:

1.) Add all modifiers as normal
2.) Add BAB, Weapon Focus, and enhancement modifiers only to the roll

Roll #1 has to beat the opponent's (normal) AC
Roll #2 has to beat the opponent's touch AC (10, modified by Dodge, Deflection, and Dex bonuses - and a few other types - but unmodified by armor or natural armor).

If both of the above conditions are satisfied, the attack is a hit. If not, the attack misses (subject to the normal "natural 20 always hits" rule).

Thus, you get a character with a +10 BAB and a +40 Str bonus going up against a nimble dude... with a +6 Dex bonus, a +2 dodge bonus, and a +4 deflection bonus (or whatever) wearing leather armor (+2).

Strong guy: +50 to Attack, +10 to Attack w/only BAB, WF, enhancement

Nimble target: AC of 24, Touch AC 22

Strong guy rolls an "8".

8+50 is 58. 58>24. "Normal to hit vs. Armor Class" requirement satisfied.
8+10 is 18. 18<22, so the "Modified to hit vs. Touch AC" requirement is not. The strong guy misses.

Similarly, strong guy vs. Tank (+80 natural armor, no other AC bonuses so Touch AC is 10) rolls an 8...
8+10 is 18. 18>10 so the Touch attack would hit.
8+50 is 58. 58<90, so the strong guy misses, not meeting the normal "to hit vs. AC" requirement.

It's an extra one-time calculation (per level) to compute your base attack vs. Touch AC, but it simplifies things incredibly and makes use of stuff already in the system.

Thoughts?

--The Sigil

 

[fuindordm]

This is a pretty interesting idea... I'd like to see you playtest it and get a report on how well it works in practice!

Comments:

#2 should also include dex bonus for ranged and finessed weapons.

People will be missing a lot more because you require two rolls to hit instead of one. If things are nicely balanced so that P1 hits P2's touch AC 50% of the time and armored AC 50% of the time, then under this system they would deal damage only 25% of the time.

--Ben

Here's my 2 cents...

This will make things slightly convoluted, but I would treat it thusly...

When an attacker rolls a d20 to attack, take that roll and:

1.) Add all modifiers as normal
2.) Add BAB, Weapon Focus, and enhancement modifiers only to the roll

Roll #1 has to beat the opponent's (normal) AC
Roll #2 has to beat the opponent's touch AC (10, modified by Dodge, Deflection, and Dex bonuses - and a few other types - but unmodified by armor or natural armor).

If both of the above conditions are satisfied, the attack is a hit. If not, the attack misses (subject to the normal "natural 20 always hits" rule).

Thus, you get a character with a +10 BAB and a +40 Str bonus going up against a nimble dude... with a +6 Dex bonus, a +2 dodge bonus, and a +4 deflection bonus (or whatever) wearing leather armor (+2).

Strong guy: +50 to Attack, +10 to Attack w/only BAB, WF, enhancement

Nimble target: AC of 24, Touch AC 22

Strong guy rolls an "8".

8+50 is 58. 58>24. "Normal to hit vs. Armor Class" requirement satisfied.
8+10 is 18. 18<22, so the "Modified to hit vs. Touch AC" requirement is not. The strong guy misses.

Similarly, strong guy vs. Tank (+80 natural armor, no other AC bonuses so Touch AC is 10) rolls an 8...
8+10 is 18. 18>10 so the Touch attack would hit.
8+50 is 58. 58<90, so the strong guy misses, not meeting the normal "to hit vs. AC" requirement.

It's an extra one-time calculation (per level) to compute your base attack vs. Touch AC, but it simplifies things incredibly and makes use of stuff already in the system.

Thoughts?

--The Sigil

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi all!

I have deliberated over the same problems many times in the past two years.

However, making one change has a tendency to spiral out of control.

Though we can still outline some of the 'problems'.

1. Strength in 3rd Ed. breaks down (quite badly) at high scores. I would like to think that something that could bench press a planet would do more than +200 damage (Str 410 needed to lift the Earth). Essentially the whole 'damage to lifting capacity' chart is broken.

2. Likewise Strength shouldn't really give a bonus 'to hit' - which of course opens up the whole Armour Class debate: since armour really should reduce damage (as well as deflecting attacks in some cases).

3. Strength also breaks down when approximated to size. This opens up the whole issue of what hit points really are (or should be). Annoyingly WotC have even broken their own damage rules in the Epic Handbook (Huge Prismasaurus Bite 8d10; Colossal Mu-Spore Bite 4d6).

4. Another related problem is the size modifier to hit. It should be -4 for an increased size category (-16 for two; -64 for three; -256 for four etc.). The reason for this is that the target area is now one quarter size.

5. For some reason hit dice makes a creature a more skillful combatant (again returning to the 'what are hit points' argument).

So really D&D (in general) makes a mess of the fast versus strong encounter (the Fellowship versus Cave Troll; or in this case Spiderman versus the Hulk). In D&D, Hulks Strength Bonus will make a mockery of Spideys Dexterity; though when he hits the Hulk will do relatively little damage (So there is some contrived balance).

Presenting a 'proper' combat setup requires these points to be addressed.

That said, working out such matters in a quasi-realistic format and you start to introduce big numbers really fast unfortunately.

ie. (In real terms) If a rifle bullet deals 2d10 damage, a tank shell would deliver about 10,000d10 damage! We know the Hulk can (just about) take a tank shell point blank (though it might stun him). So he must be akin to 50,000hp; DR 1000/- (25mm Cannon just annoys him); Fast Healing 1000 (He had his heart cut out by Wolverine and recuperated in less than a minute...ripping off Wolverines head in the process - Marvel 'What If')

Incidently, the Thing can press 85 Tons; the Hulk 100 Tons (increases with rage) and Superman 1 million Tons. Though as one of the previous posters mentioned such figures are ambiguous except to give a picture of 'who is stronger than who'.

 

[The Sigil]

People will be missing a lot more because you require two rolls to hit instead of one. If things are nicely balanced so that P1 hits P2's touch AC 50% of the time and armored AC 50% of the time, then under this system they would deal damage only 25% of the time.

I do like the suggestion that #2 should incorporate finessed weapons. Including both Dex and finessed weapons is somewhat redundant, though. I am loathe to simply use Dex as it makes finesse useless. OTOH, it raises the viability of Weapon Finesse as a Feat... but only for one weapon. :-/ I'll have to look at that one a little more.

I am not suggesting multiple rolls here... I am basically suggesting the following:

A character must (a) connect with his target and (b) hit hard enough to punch through armor.

I'm not using two separate attack rolls; only one. The "attack vs. Touch AC" represents that character actually connecting, while the "normal attack vs. AC" represents the character hitting hard enough to punch through armor - without turning armor into Damage Reduction.

What it works out to is not two rolls, but rather, one roll at the lesser of your chances to hit normally or through touch. Under these rules, in order to hit, a character needs to roll the greater of (TAC-Tatt) or (AC-Att).

For example, a character with a BAB of +10 and a Str bonus of +20 faces off with a foe of AC 30, all due to a blinding Dexterity (+20).

Under the rules as they are written, the strong guy hits every time (except a natural 1). Opponent's AC minus Attck Bonus is (30-30) 0. Under the rules change I presented, the strong guy needs a (30-10) 20 to hit!

Let us use a "strong guy" with a BAB of +4 and a Str bonus of +6. Normally, that's a +10 to hit. Now assume he is against a creature with a Dex bonus of +7 and an armor bonus of +1. Normally, that's an AC of 18. This means that our strong guy needs an 8 or higher to hit (AC of 18 minus Attack Bonus of 10). However, using the new rules, we find that our strong guy also needs to "touch" him - and for that he needs a 13 (Touch AC of 17 minus Touch Attack bonus of 4).

IOW, we roll a single die and here are the results (new system) - the number before the slash represents "normal" attack roll (needs to beat 18) and the number after the slash represents the "touch" attack roll (needs to beat 17):

less than 6 - miss (also a miss under the old system)
7 - 17/11 - miss
8 - 18/12 - miss (would have hit under old system, but Touch roll of 12 is < 17, the Touch AC)
9 - 19/13 - miss (would have...)
10 - 20/14 - miss (would have...)
11 - 21/15 - miss (would have...)
12 - 22/16 - miss (would have...)
13 - 23/17 - hit since both numbers are now higher than the target (18/17) (also a hit under the old system)
14+ hit

Hope that makes a little more sense.

IOW, if you have a 50% chance to hit normally and a 50% chance to hit with touch, you still have... a 50% chance to hit.

If you have a 95% chance to hit normally and a 30% chance to hit with touch, you have a 30% chance to hit.

If you have a 60% chance normally and a 30% with touch, you have a 30% chance.

Does that clear things up?

--The Sigil

 

[CreatorOfWorlds]

Well, I don't have either the time or the patience to sort through all of these posts (they are very numerous), but I think I can handle the topic of "The issue of super strength".

I, personally, don't know how the creators of many d20 Super Powers games are handling the use of strength in combat, but I do know how Wizards of the Coast handles it. If the creators of Dungeons & Dragons had have done things right, they would have reduced the value of Strength in melee and hand-to-hand combat.

In my games, I've started using touch attacks first and foremost. Not just for spells cast by characters, but for fighters who engage the enemy in their face. The way ranged spells work is that the target's AC is only comprised of 10 + its dexterity mod + any dodge bonuses it may have + size modifier +deflection bonus. The sole reason behind this is that spells affect the target whether its wearing armor or not, like RAY OF FROST.

This is just to find out if the target is quick enough to get out of the way, and it's based on the attacker's DEX as well. This should be for front line fighters, too. They should have to make melee touch attacks using their DEX modifier instead of their STR modifier in order to find out if they are coordinated enough to strike a moving target.

Players in my campaigns roll 1d20 and then add the following:
attack bonus
DEX modifier
weapon focus bonuses

If this is enough to strike the opponent's AC vs. touch attacks, then the attack succeeds. This next bit is the part many people want to overlook. Attacking should always be a two-part gesture: connection & force. Once it's been determined that you have a good enough hand-eye coordination to put the weapon where you want it to go, you need to find out how much "oomf" you've given your weapon. How much impact or force you've put behind the blow.

This is crucial that you do it this way, because you CANNOT determine if you've hit something by sheer muscle. If you swing wide, it doesn't change the fact that you've missed your target by putting more power behind the strike.

Now that you've determined that you can strike your target, add the target's armor bonus and any natural armor bonuses to its AC. Now the attacker can add (on top of the total of 1d20+dex mod+attack bonus+weapon focus) the following:

STR modifier
Weapon magical attack bonus (or punch bonus -as I call it)

These two factors are added to see if there's enough power behind the strike to penetrate the target's defenses. Of course, if the melee touch attack by itself was enough to get higher than the target's AC, then it slipped right through the cracks and found a vulnerable spot and struck flesh.

This may be a lot of work for some game masters, but I find that it's a better way to handle strength in combat so that characters don't just automatically hit anything by having an unGodly high strength. That's not the way combat in real life works, either.

DJ

 

[Massawyrm]

The Whole Str/lifting issue

I've been working on a supers D20 adaption for my group for some time now and here are my ideas on the matter. First of all we did away with both the STR to hit bonus as well as the Armor AC bonus (turning it to Damage Reduction as is standard) which balanced out pretty well. Instead, we use the Dex bonus to hit (as with ranged combat) and that really gave the conversion a comic book feel. Sure, now Dex is a super stat, but we've also modified the lifting chart to balance STR's loss of utility and CON plays a large part in power selection (rather than a point buy system which I (and my group) strongly feel moves too far away from the D20 system and flavor to really warrent using) so there hasn't been a huge migration in my group to having heroes with insane amounts of DEX.

I have developed two lifting systems. One for use in my game (a more Marvel based system where 100 Tons is the upward range for heroes, and one for those of you who desire more bang for your buck and want heroes on par with Superman (DC in which 1,000,000 is the upward limit.)

In my system at STR 26 you can lift 1000lbs. At 27 1 ton. 28 2 tons. 29 3 tons. 30 4 tons and 31 5 tons. At 32 every STR bonus you receive an additional 5 Tons lifting max putting those that can lift 100 tons (The Hulk and Thor) at STR 68, pulling in a whopping +29 Damage which is not nearly even in the realm of killing or KO'ing a similarly leveled character.

For the DC based system, 26 allows you to lift 1000 LBS again. And 27 1 ton. But for every STR bonus after that this amount doubles. 2 tons for 28-29. 4 Tons for 30-31. 8 tons for 32-33 and so on and so forth. Making someone like Superman a STR 66-67 or a +28 Damage rating. Again, not out of the bounds of play.

Your preference between these two systems pretty much depends on how much car tossing and Aircraft Carrier bench pressing you want in your game, and neither really unbalances play.

Hope this is of some help to those of you tinkering with systems of your own.

best,
Massawyrm

 

[Massawyrm]

4. Another related problem is the size modifier to hit. It should be -4 for an increased size category (-16 for two; -64 for three; -256 for four etc.). The reason for this is that the target area is now one quarter size.

Actually, this system doesn't work. I strongly feel that the standard d20 system works just fine for this. Under your decreasing size to hit system, you, yourself in the real world, would never, ever be able to smack a mosquito (even feasting on your blood without it's dex bonus) because of it's size. This just isn't the case. Why not? becuase you're not factoring in the fact that you have a major size advantage to hit your opponant (the Mosquito) because what you're strinking with (your hand) is hundreds of times larger than the mosquito itself. This balances with the mosquitos taking up such little space. Also, because of the Mosquito's diminished size, it's move rate (it's ability to get out of the way of your hand) is smaller, making it togher for it to get out of the way. Now, because he's smaller he is harder to smack than say, your gaming buddy (medium) but that doesn't mean it's out of the realm of possibility to hit. While the idea to hitting a mosquito or fly with a sword seems far fetched, remember that people can do it (particularly martial artists). The standard system works just fine.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi there!

Actually, this system doesn't work.

I wasn't advocating it be used with d20. Simply stating a fact.

I strongly feel that the standard d20 system works just fine for this.

Agreed. Though only because many other factors are equally contrived (as I outlined above).

Under your decreasing size to hit system, you, yourself in the real world, would never, ever be able to smack a mosquito (even feasting on your blood without it's dex bonus) because of it's size.

Beyond a certain size difference (I suggest a 4 size category limit) your attack would become an area affect. Probably when the appendage used is broader than the creatures movement rate.

An alternative might be -3/-9/-27/-81. However I would always advocate a monster should still hit on a natural '20'.

This just isn't the case. Why not? becuase you're not factoring in the fact that you have a major size advantage to hit your opponant (the Mosquito) because what you're strinking with (your hand) is hundreds of times larger than the mosquito itself. This balances with the mosquitos taking up such little space. Also, because of the Mosquito's diminished size, it's move rate (it's ability to get out of the way of your hand) is smaller, making it togher for it to get out of the way. Now, because he's smaller he is harder to smack than say, your gaming buddy (medium) but that doesn't mean it's out of the realm of possibility to hit. While the idea to hitting a mosquito or fly with a sword seems far fetched, remember that people can do it (particularly martial artists).

On its own I certainly wouldn't advocate making such a modification - otherwise the necessary changes start to snowball.

The standard system works just fine.

It works, but too many elements don't make sense.

- Damage (bonus) is not properly consistent with high strength.

- Strength should not deliver a bonus to hit.

- Armour should (generally) reduce damage.

- Damage (dice) is not properly consistent with different sizes.

- Hit Dice should not increase BAB.

- Size modifiers to hit are not logical.