[Writeups.org] [3E] Old West guns, Gamble, Pit Bulls

[Ghostwise]

I've reviewed the discussion about deriving Expertises and the like from Connections -- AFAICT it's the oldest subject still in the air since we started pondering about more than 15 pages back.

The discussion was tentative and I don't think we have something solid enough to serve as guidelines. The link between contacts and activities is just too tenuous and every approach generates too many exceptions.

*Generally*, noticeable bodies of knowledge are marked by Familiarities and Expertises in the DCH entry (our crowning moment remaining Ms. Marvel's Expertise with her soup recipe, though it was mostly there for colour and slight humorous value), and between these and reviewing the professions that a character has worked in I think there's sufficient info to assign Expertises.

The one solid exception remains Connection (Street) and in some cases Connection (Underworld) mapping to an Expertise, since it was it what inspired the Connections -> Expertises line of thought.

But for the rest, the use of Expertise in Green Ronin writeup seems to be "assign an Expertise based on job, declare victory, and be liberal in allowing to roll under it when it comes to vaguely related subjects". Which I think is sound, since Expertises cost a fair bit and having a/ a broad interpretation and b/ few Expertises per character aligns well with what Player Characters built using points can afford. Yes, we don't quite care about points for NPCs, but let's not go completely off the reservation in that regard.

I think my point can be summed up as "look, if Batman only got a whole *two* Expertises...".

[Ghostwise]

I'll kill a bit of backlog (though not too much at once so we don't have pages me blathering about weeks-old discussions).

IIRC you have to specific a sense for Uncanny Dodge (in his case, radar)

That was the 2E version of Uncanny Dodge; 3E oddly doesn't require you to have a specific sense listed which I have to admit is odd. Maybe they changed it since people were using senses that couldn't really be countered anyway so the limit didn't really mean anything. I'll have to ask around to get an official answer as to why this was changed.

Fixed in the entries that were still following 2nd Ed. usage, thanks. Curiously Senses (Danger Sense) remains tied to a sense.

[Ghostwise]

Take the two highest INT-based skills. For these purposes, INT -2 counts as one or more skills. INT-based skills are: Detective, Gadgetry, Medicine, Military Science, and Scientist.

The problem with this is that there is a, uuuhh, desynchronisation between the Skills that are INT-based in DCH and modern definitions of INT and WIL -- those definitions being important since they're the ones reflected in the modern writeups.

The classic example is that having a low-INT, high-Scientist/Gadgetry character is quite coherent since it's the archetype of the absent-minded professor, with poor perception and no grace under pressure (in the sense of combat initiative and mental reaction speed).

But really, the issue isn't on the DCH side, since modern entries know what they do when they assign INT and WIL and we could derive coherent, solid Intellect scores from an average of those. The problem is that we have no solid idea of what the DCA Intellect does.

I entirely agree that it has a role as a skills-bearer (so to speak), but the problem remains that the scores given to the characters in the main book don't align with that.

However, with growing experience I am increasingly considering the possibility that the Intellect scores in the book might be based on very different versions of the character, explaining this disconnect. Essentially, that the rulesbook describes versions of Hal, Ollie, Diana, Kal, etc. who, as the song goes, don't know much 'bout history, don't know much 'bout geography and the like. I can't explain Batman's towering Intellect, though if Expertises could be used untrained Batman's Intellect 8 would be a nice fit (and would definitely explain what the heck Intellect does).

So a possible approach would be to cherry-pick a handful of Intellect score that "feel correct" within the framework of Intellect as the floor for academic skills, throw everything else overboard, derive an equation between this handful of scores and the DCH scores, and accept that for many heroes the scores aren't going to quite match with the rulesbook because we're not talkin' about the same version of the character.

[Ghostwise]

Basilisk

Not much I can say - the DCH writeup is very old and I have none of the research in mind no more, so I can't offer much expertise. DCA stats look good, though.

There was an attempt at redoing the entry, but it failed following disagreements about rewriting the Transmutation Power, IIRC.

[Ghostwise]

There are a number of reasons not to recreate Classic DC Heroes Energy Absorption, including have your best defense poop out on you, and the way DC Adventures uses big Hero Points instead of lots of little ways to spend lots of HPs. In short, I'm in favor of throwing Classic Energy Absorption overboard. Instead, just remove the Impervious, but use Second Chance. In this way, the character still reliably avoids minor damage, and indeed has a more robust effect against attacks in their own weight class. Meanwhile, the capacity of the power itself to absorb, fail, recover, and so forth can be abstracted into the character's own damage condition. Just make sure that Energy Absorption is recreated as a Sustained (or Continuous) effect.

Depends. In many writeups, the Energy Absorption is very purposefully used as a strong but brittle defence that's here to take care of minor damage but have the character be overwhelmed by stronger discharges. Which would be exactly an Impervious Protection, but not a big one (and Impervious Toughness, in some cases). The Burnout aspect is often hazy, though, and some writeups that should have a Bonus about Burnout being out of the picture don't have it.

Older writeups - such as Firebrand's, which is basically the Mayfair writeup with some notes attached - don't seem to use Energy Absorption as written, yeah. In a modern take they'd have something like Skin Armour that also works against energy attacks (+2) or made-up Immunity Powers.

Of course, from the outside it's impossible to tell how punctilious the use of Energy Absorption is - exact modelling of the capabilities, fair approximation to get rid of minor damage, or misuse that should be replaced by a RV booster. The solution is that there's a perpetual rewrite of old entries going on, but even at an ideal pace - say, three entries per week... well, you do the maths.

[Ghostwise]

Y'know your point about examples is important. Maybe someone should did an example combat between some of the converted characters to get the sense of how each character performs.

I'd totally welcome somebody doing this.

[Ghostwise]

I think I'm going to tackle the Human Torch. Before I do anything else, I want to try to get his Nova Flame sorted out.

The Nova Flame mechanics in DCH try their best to rob Johnny of his HPs, since there's no germane mechanic for him to emerge so drained from the effort that he's probably going to pass out.

The general idea - it's a serious commitment, he's pushing, and the harder he pushes the more likely he is to pass out and/or emerge weak as a kitten with no flame left. It's not *quite* represented by the writeup, since Peter tried to hit a sweet spot between accuracy and ease of play.

Note that it mostly represents Johnny in the 1980s - later on the nova flame became less of a balls-to-the-wall tactic and simply the sign that he's burning (heh) hero points.

[pawsplay]

Infravision already goes through objects.

I can't see an indication that basic Infravision would penetrate walls and the like to clearly see people and other sources moving inside. And this is not how infravision is commonly portrayed in comics and other fiction.

It's totally possible to make a barrier that is all but impentrable to IR that is nonetheless transparent to normal vision. As written, Intravision with Penetrates Concealment would let Batgirl see through a wall of raging fire, which is exactly what should not happen. Infravision natively penetrates a lot of barriers, just as sound does. Low-light vision is effectively Counters Concealment, but it's not as if without it, you can't see in dim lighting at all. I'm not sure what Infravision does, exactly, if it can't use normal temperature gradients as a replacement for normal vision. If you can't tell see someone with IR through a hanging sheet, you basically can't see them. That's what Infravision does, and if Batgirl's allows her to see through walls, then her version is correct and other versions are not. A character whose "infravision" is imprecise, short range, and poorly sensitive is probably better described as having Low-light Vision of some sort, particularly if they can't be "blinded" by heat sources. While Infravision isn't spelled out in much detail in DCA, in DCA it would lack Acute but be somewhat penetrating and have some limited Tracking capabilities.

[pawsplay]

Take the two highest INT-based skills. For these purposes, INT -2 counts as one or more skills. INT-based skills are: Detective, Gadgetry, Medicine, Military Science, and Scientist.

The problem with this is that there is a, uuuhh, desynchronisation between the Skills that are INT-based in DCH and modern definitions of INT and WIL -- those definitions being important since they're the ones reflected in the modern writeups.

The classic example is that having a low-INT, high-Scientist/Gadgetry character is quite coherent since it's the archetype of the absent-minded professor, with poor perception and no grace under pressure (in the sense of combat initiative and mental reaction speed).

But really, the issue isn't on the DCH side, since modern entries know what they do when they assign INT and WIL and we could derive coherent, solid Intellect scores from an average of those. The problem is that we have no solid idea of what the DCA Intellect does.

I don't see a big problem. It doesn't matter how the INT and WILL scores were derived, sine Skills don't have to map to them. The central philosophy to my approach is to synchronize and normalize Intellect scores on the DCA side. In the absence of INT-based skills, the use of INT on the DCH side is more tenuous, but it still maps to unskilled use. Whereas INT and WILL are both used for a variety of things, INT alone relates to skill use in DC Heroes. INT does two other fairly noteworthy things in DCH. First, it used for perception and to detect "clues." This is already built into our Perception benchmarks. Second, it is used for mental defense, to some extent. That is probably not relevant to Intellect, and therefore represents some small measure of taint.

My approach draws on less information from the DCH side because Intellect is less informative on the DCA side. It does three things. First, it provides a floor to skill ratings. Second, it used for unskilled skill ratings. Third, it is used for characterization. Although the third is weakest in the DCH writeups (as you noted above about the brainy scientist), it is stil present, and the other two map exactly to, first, skill ratings, and second, APs of unskilled use.

You are probably correct that we rare looking at different versions in many cases. So... the fact that I was able to get some conforming values suggests my approach is not that noisy.

I am ready at this point to advocate for using INT-based skills, barring Military Science that consists only of Camouflage, Danger Recognition, and Tracking, to derive Intellect. My INT -2 default benchmark may have problems but seems to work okay for many characters. Perhaps that could be settled by coming up three sets of comparisons, characters with two or more INT-based skills, characters with one, and characters with none. My suspicion is that INT alone will be our comparison for Intellect for characters with no INT-based skills. However, if that's a bust, perhaps we will find a small enough range to be able to eyeball some other guideline.

What is important about INT-based skills in DCH is not their relationship to INT in DC Heroes, but their relationship to Intellect in DCA. Intellect in DCA is purely a "brain" attribute, none of this stuff about observation and so forth, just skill use and tasks of raw reasoning ability.

[pawsplay]

Of course, from the outside it's impossible to tell how punctilious the use of Energy Absorption is - exact modelling of the capabilities, fair approximation to get rid of minor damage, or misuse that should be replaced by a RV booster. The solution is that there's a perpetual rewrite of old entries going on, but even at an ideal pace - say, three entries per week... well, you do the maths.

On the upside, my analysis of the OV/RV tables have convinced me that we can at least get in the ballpark, no matter, by just adding it to the RV. The progression of minimum RAPs across rows and columns follows very closely.

[Ghostwise]

Unbound by Destiny: Variable (Enhanced Traits and Ultimate Effort) 1, Limited 2 (Only when the PL of the series is temporarily raised), Action (free)

Cool approach, Ultimate Effort is a good call. I like it.

The triggering condition is a bit abstract - "only when the fate of the universe is at stake" or something along those lines might be more evocative.

[Ghostwise]

I'm thinking of converting the Jihad supervillain group being posted.

They're a pretty straightforward bunch, yeah. Straightforward is good.

[Ghostwise]

There isn't really a clear approach to using Improved Critical.

It's an interesting subject, BTW, due to this absence of guidelines. Let's see the official uses :

Green Arrow (Queen) - 1 Rank
Cassandra Cain - 1 Rank
Blackfire - 1 Rank with seldom used weapons
Chop Chop of the Blackhawks - 1 Rank
Captain Boomerang - 1 Rank
Cheetah (Ballesteros and Minerva both) - 1 Rank
Wing - 1 Rank
Deathstroke - 1 Rank with commonly used weapons
Doomsday - 1 Rank
Celsius - 1 Rank
Hawkgirl, Hawkman, Blood Eagle - 1 Rank
Hitman (Monaghan) - 1 Rank
Huntress (Bertinelli) - 1 Rank
Kestrel - 1 Rank
Adam Strange - 1 Rank
Bane - 1 Rank

Black Lightning - 2 Ranks
Lady Vic's katana - 2 Ranks
Bolt - 2 Ranks
Congorilla - 2 Ranks
Dr. Mid-Nite (McNider) - 2 Ranks
Guardian (Harper) - 2 Ranks
Mammoth - 2 Ranks
Fire - 2 Ranks
Doll Man (Colt) - 2 Ranks w/guns
Jonah Hex - 2 Ranks w/guns
Hawk - 2 Ranks w/talons
Tomcat - 2 Ranks w/Claws
Karate Kid - 2 Ranks
Katana - 2 Ranks w/unarmed and shuriken
Arsenal - 2 Ranks

Rocky Davis of the Challs - 3 Ranks
Copperhead - 3 Ranks with his tail

Captain Comet - 4 Ranks
Katana - 4 Ranks w/sword
Ares - 4 Ranks


I've left out Devices with one Rank of Improved Critical, since that's just like basic swords and knives.

The spread confirms the "normally one or two Ranks" I dimly perceived, plus a minor "scary attacks" theme like claws, fire and lightning. Usage doesn't seem very tight at a first glance, though - especially in the light of people who do *not* have Improved Critical, such as Batman, Black Canary or the Joker. And in some cases such as Katana, I get the impression of a build that strives to be as dangerous as it can for its PL - some of these Improved Criticals seem here to skew offence upward without raising PL.

We can prolly derive usage notes from this spread, but at first glance it chiefly suggests different writers with different approaches.

[Ghostwise]

Tough Break: Things just don't seem to go Killer Shrike's way. The first time in a session he rolls an odd number on a check, he becomes impaired (which can jinx his current roll). At the end of each round, roll a d20; on an 11+, the impaired condition goes away. Killer Shrike almost never benefits from the GM spending a HP on his behalf.

The trigger for Maddicks is not that random - it only occurs when he realises he's probably outmatched and he's gonna get thrashed again. Really, my suggestion does a fine job at simulating what happens in the comics.

He realises he's facing a more powerful opponent, his Complication triggers, he enters a death spiral when he becomes rapidly less of a threat as his bully confidence deflates and he panics, and if the GM allows NPCs to gain HPs from Complications (why not) then Maddicks burn it on something irrational like getting himself Improved Critical 1 or All-Out Attack for the rest of the fight as he gets less predictable and it has a slim chance of actually making him more dangerous.

The rest of the time, he's pretty damn dangerous.

[Ghostwise]

Cammi
Marvel Universe

From the Annihilation epic. Biography, characterisation, pictures, power description and the like at writeups.org



Abilities
Strength -2, Stamina 00, Agility 00, Dexterity 00, Fighting 00, Intellect 01, Awareness 01, Presence 01

Averaged PL 0.6

Powers
Child-sized • 3 points (Permanent - until she grows up, at least)
Enhanced Dodge 1, Enhanced Skill (Stealth) 2, Enhanced Advantage (Improved Defense)

Combat Advantages
<i>Improved Defense</i>

Other Advantages
Benefit 1 (Friend of Drax), Daze (Deception), Second chance 3 (Intimidation, Persuasion, Deception)

Skills
Deception 6 (+7), Insight 7 (+8), Perception 3 (+4), Persuasion 3 (+4), Stealth 2 (+4)

Offense
Initiative +
Unarmed +0, Close, Damage -2

Defense
Dodge 1, Parry 0
Toughness 0, Fortitude 0, Will 2

Complications
Quirk Sociopathic disposition
Exile Cammi no longer has any roots or living relatives and is lost in space



Power levels
Trade-off areas. Attack & Effect PL -1, Dodge/Toughness PL 1, Parry/Toughness PL 0, Fort & Will PL 1
Point total 22 Abilities 2, Defences 1, Skills 11, Powers 3, Devices 0, Advantages 5. Equiv. PL 2

Notes This entry illustrates the surprisingly squished scale for DCA social skills - the bonuses in the official writeups are normally in the single-digit range and we've followed suit.