Post by hakkonen on Oct 26, 2011 10:23:02 GMT -5
I've been thinking about possible house rules that might alleviate some of the wonkiness I noted in the OP. Note that I don't necessarily mean to implement all of these together; they're just ideas, more or less off the top of my head.
A) Double (triple?) the cost of passive defenses. The more I think about it, the more I see passive defenses as no-brainer options, at least as long as they follow the regular cost chart. They're incredibly good, so they really should be incredibly expensive. Naturally, this requires rebuilds of all existing PCs, but I'm prepared to live with that.
B) Give everybody free passive defenses. This also balances them out, I think, but in the opposite direction: instead of making them cost what they're worth, devalue passive defenses to make them worth what they cost. Everybody gets Toughness equal to their Durability. I may combine options A and B: you can buy extra Toughness on top of what you get for free, but its cost is double or triple what's shown on the chart, and starts at the level you already have. In other words, if your Durability is 4 and you want one extra level of Toughness, you pay 6w or 9w, not 2r or 1w.
C) Let characters regenerate their entire energy pool every turn. This is for both fluffy and crunchy reasons. Fluffwise, you never really see comic-book heroes needing to marshal scarce resources unless it's somehow important to the plot. They can go all-out for as long as they need to. On the game-balance front, giving characters more energy lets them hit harder and generally do more, tending to devalue passive defense. I probably would not combine option C with A or B.
Thoughts? Opinions? Torches and/or pitchforks?
A) Double (triple?) the cost of passive defenses. The more I think about it, the more I see passive defenses as no-brainer options, at least as long as they follow the regular cost chart. They're incredibly good, so they really should be incredibly expensive. Naturally, this requires rebuilds of all existing PCs, but I'm prepared to live with that.
B) Give everybody free passive defenses. This also balances them out, I think, but in the opposite direction: instead of making them cost what they're worth, devalue passive defenses to make them worth what they cost. Everybody gets Toughness equal to their Durability. I may combine options A and B: you can buy extra Toughness on top of what you get for free, but its cost is double or triple what's shown on the chart, and starts at the level you already have. In other words, if your Durability is 4 and you want one extra level of Toughness, you pay 6w or 9w, not 2r or 1w.
C) Let characters regenerate their entire energy pool every turn. This is for both fluffy and crunchy reasons. Fluffwise, you never really see comic-book heroes needing to marshal scarce resources unless it's somehow important to the plot. They can go all-out for as long as they need to. On the game-balance front, giving characters more energy lets them hit harder and generally do more, tending to devalue passive defense. I probably would not combine option C with A or B.
Thoughts? Opinions? Torches and/or pitchforks?