Thursday, January 14, 2010

Supers: Balancing the Scales

I've been thinking aloud about this whole scaling issue -- specifically, how to handle disparate power levels without climbing higher and higher on the ladder -- and I think I have an answer. Haven't really been able to bounce it off anyone but one loyal reader (at least, I assume you're loyal -- I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt on that one), so here it is for everyone else to take a whack at.

First thing we do is remove the Will mechanic. It's not that I don't like it, because I like it a lot, actually, but it doesn't really work with this new scaling thing. So out it goes, at least in its current incarnation.

Next, instead of three tiers of power, we have five -- 1 to 5, or 0 to 4. Either way. Names are important for flavor, but right now that's up in the air, so let's at least agree on Mundane for the lowest of them and, say, Cosmic for the top end. You get the idea. Like before, skills fit into these tiers and your skill pyramid simultaneously, with some skills designated as Mundane, some as Superhuman, and so on.

When you act against someone else, look at the tiers of your skills. Whoever has the higher tier notes the difference in steps (e.g., Tier 1 vs. Tier 3 means two steps) and replaces that many Fudge dice with d6s. Then roll as normal.

(Yes, this still involves swapping out Fudge dice, but I like that, and I've seen my players like it, so it's a perfectly fine design element as far as I can tell. If you don't like that sort of thing, this won't really work for you at all.)

The point remains to emphasize the difference in power levels between two parties, but still allow them to interact. The latter bit is where the earlier system kinda fell down. More tiers means it isn't easy to just buy up your Mundane skills to Cosmic without spending a boatload of points. How many points, I don't know yet, but it wouldn't be cheap, that's for sure.

So, with that mechanic in mind, look what else we can do. When someone tags your weakness aspect, it reduces your defense by one tier. If your weakness is defined as a "big" weakness (we need another adjective there, obviously), it reduces it by two tiers. Or more, maybe. Maybe it's two and four instead of one and two. The point is, it allows a regular human with kryptonite-on-a-stick to pose a danger to Superman in a way that's internally consistent and fairly elegant. It may even be that the weakness isn't an aspect, or at least not one in the usual sense, but I'm not going there right now.

Why would you have a "big" weakness instead of just a regular one? Because if you take that in conjunction with a super-skill, that super-skill starts with three trappings instead of two.

That reminds me, since I'm rambling anyway. There are three kinds of "negative" aspects: weaknesses, complications, and restrictions. A weakness is what it was in the last post, but complications are limited to things in your personal life -- DNPCs, enemies, secret IDs, and so on. Restrictions are constraints on your super-skills, like "Can't Affect the Color Yellow" or "Power Armor."

Complications and restrictions should have "big" versions, too, with the same extra-trapping trade-off. A big complication means that negotiations for compels start at two Fate Points instead of one. A big restriction is... I dunno. Still thinking about that.

The most shocking thing is probably that I'm thinking of including Diaspora-style stress tracks. Superheroes tend to batter each other a lot pretty casually; it'd feel weird to give, say, the Midnighter a consequence every time he's hit in combat (not that he can be hit in combat, but you get the idea). I like Diaspora's middle ground between SotC and hit point-style stress. It might mitigate some of the potential Authority-scale ultra-violence, too.

10 comments:

Robert Stehwien said...

I'm digging the change so that the tiers of power change the dice. With a d6 replacement or two, you will just win... period because of the vast differences in dice range and average.

Instead of replacing the Fudge dice with d6, how about adding more Fudge dice but you still keep the best set of 4. Keeps things in the same range but increases the likelihood of the more powerful winning. (a bit like the PDQ# techniques in that regard... I also eye a T&J+PDQ#+Fate merger on occasion)

This time I'm remembering to mark "email followups" so I don't miss out on a notification :)

Unknown said...

Probably because of my current focus on the Spirit of Greyhawk, this blog entry brings to mind some concerns I am having with translating nasty monsters & high-level NPCs from my source material.

Specifically I've been looking at the source material with an eye to creating some nasties that would really challenge my PCs in the campaign (along with some possible interaction with "name" NPCs).

The situation I keep coming up against is looking at the sheer multitude of powers, resistances, paraphernalia of these heavy-hitters in the source material and thinking to myself:

"This NPC's character sheet is going to be a mile long!! How am I going to keep track of all this?"

Perhaps stated more appropriately, what's a reasonable way to translate these characters into a form where we can continue to "play at the speed of FATE" and still have any hope of doing these characters justice?

At this point I don't have any real good answers, and I've been finding (from last weekend's session) that I need to start ratcheting up the bad guys in my campaigns, realizing just how effective SotC-level fantasy heroes are (I had tentatively estimated "2 levels / Hit Dice" per creation phase.5-phase characters at approximately 10th level, AD&D-wise).

At the end of the day, my basic goal is that if/when PCs have to face off against a dragon, that if they are fortunate enough to survive the encounter, they really feel as though they've achieved something.

Robert Stehwien said...

Guy - If skills/powers/etc were purchased in a similar fashion to Wild Talent powers and Kerberos Club skills, there would be even less to write down for the dragon. In WT you could price out "Dragon Powers" as one power and in KC you could price out Detective as one skill.

The more broad the skill/power the more it costs per "die" in WT (a dice pool system). In some ways it is like pricing out PDQ qualities so the more broad the quality the more it costs.

I've been leaning toward something like this for a Fate hack but haven't quite figured out how to do it (other than a blatant rip off of WT and KC with a Fate spin).

Robert Stehwien said...

I've always been fond of the PDQ and Risus broad quality/cliche for a light game as a GM, but have found that my players might take a bit of advantage and have hugely broad abilities (while one person is less broad and feels kinda left out).

Unknown said...

Interesting points!

And yeah, the effectiveness of that broad factor is definitely weighted towards the knowledgeable / experienced player.

Much in the same way as the combat in this sort of game provides a greater opportunity for the player who has combat experience themselves, (Martial Arts, SCA, Fencing, et al)

free hatani said...

Hmmm. Interesting direction. I would like to say, I prefer the three scale thing. Simple, clean, and easy to remember. I think the hang up with all FATE superhero hacks, is interaction between scales. Too little interaction, and why have super-teams at all. Superman can handle it all. Too much interaction and suddenly Silver Surfer has to watch out for handgun wielding thugs.

I like Weaknesses nullifying scale difference. The Will mechanic is a good idea, and maybe still has a place. But, FATE points work well as player and character currency.

I don't like a constant d6 die sub for scale difference. I think it runs into the same problem as a bloated scale. "I rolled a +15. What did you roll?" But in accord with your disclaimer, tastes vary. :-)

How about this? You can't attack a higher scale without tagging a Weakness, but you can place Maneuvers! Has to fit the narrative, of course. Those thugs won't put a scratch on ol' Supes without a really good Aspect or Weakness to tag. But can they make him "Disracted", have him "Entangled", or even "Irritate" him? You betcha'. In fact that is their purpose. Not to threaten heroes. To slow them down, to complicate things, and of course to fall down before them in great numbers.

In line with that, being on a higher scale doesn't necessarily mean you take out mooks any Faster than any other hero would. Rolling the dice should always be important. So Superman isn't rolling to see if he hits a mook. Of course he does. He is rolling to be able to narrate how he does it heroically. He could just Heat Ray a building full of them from orbit, or fly through them leaving only smoking fedoras behind, but he doesn't. He is a hero. He has to hold back , taking them down without killing, without turning into a monster. That is why you still roll +5 Superhuman Man of Steel against +2 Fair Thugs. That is why Batman could get by just fine fighting beside Superman. They both bring the same narrative take down power vesus lower tiers. Of course a moderate use of d6 sub dice would be fun. And that could bring your Will mechanic right back to fuel it. :-)

To sum up what I like in your approach:
o Buying skill trappings
o Three tier scales
o Tagging Weaknesses to avoid scale
o Save up spin, Will mechanic for bonus d6
o d6 sub dice if used sparingly

Anonymous said...

Have you looked at a game called Risus? The rules are a little closer to PDQ than FATE and it is very tongue-in-cheek. The relevant bit is Advanced Option IV:Funky dice. When you buy your Cliques (like a PDQ Quality or a combine Aspect/Skill in FATE) you can buy different dice (d8, d10, d12, d20) instead of the normal d6. Characters have a different number of points to spend on character creation depending upon whether they are normal, super-heroes, gods,...

It may also help to check out some of the discussion of the Dresden RPG about Freewill vs Nature (sorry, can't find a link). Purchasing supernatural powers reduces refresh -- the extreme case would be starting a session with 0 FATE points. That means the player has no FATE points to buy off compels on their aspects, making them slaves to their nature. "With great power comes great responsibility." Also, while a Normal who uses Skill + 4dF can mitigate a bad role with FATE points, a Super rolling Skill + 4d10 will have fewer FATE points to change an unlucky die roll.

Nick said...

I like where you're going, but I want to share the idea I had when you presented the problem. It's less crunchy, but I'm not sure it would have the degree of detail you're looking for.

Basically, use the original 3 scales and say that skills used for defense to not have a tier.

In other words, Superman's Super strength is always going to beat batman's Mundane Strength in an arm wrestling contest, but his Top Tier Superb Fists are equivalent to Batman's untiered Superb Athletics when Supes is trying to land a blow on him.

If anything this is more accurate to our conception of superheroes; the Hulk does a lot of damage (high fists) but he doesn't *hit* more often than batman.

If this added utility seems unbalancing, it's a simple matter to increase the cost of defensive trappings.

anyway, just an idea. Feel free to disregard it.

Anonymous said...

I had a thought. For simplicity I'll assume two tiers: normal and super.

Normal vs normal and super vs super are easy. They are the same scale so normal resolution mechanics apply.

Normal vs super could be handled in a couple of ways:

1) Aspects can overcome scale:
- Hit superman with a stick and nothing happens because they are different scales. Put some kryptonite on a stick and the kryptonite aspect overcomes the scale difference.
- In season 5 of Buffy. Glory always kicked Buffy's ass because slayer vs hell god are different scales. But in the final episode Dagon sphere + Troll hammer + slayer overcame the scale difference.
- In Star Wars, what good are snub fighters going to be against a Death Star? Got the Plans + Found a weakness + manoeuvre down the trench + use the Force and you overcome the scale difference.
- Don't fire your bazooka at the super hero. Instead fire at the wall behind him. Bazooka + collapsing wall overcomes the scale difference.

2) Brad Murry (Diaspora) had a suggestion on how to handle giant bugs in his blog that might work.

The really hard part is super vs normal. When superman punches a normal why doesn't the guy's head explode?

Mike Olson said...

When superman punches a normal why doesn't the guy's head explode?

The short answer? Because the author doesn't want the reader to hate Superman. When it came to Stormwatch and The Authority, of course, Warren Ellis didn't give a shit.

Looks like I picked the wrong day to go to the beach! Allow me to digest all of this and post something else when I get a chance. Thanks for all the feedback -- it's heartening to see such a lively discussion on the matter.