New Creation Option: Energetic Durability

[gothfather]

I've been noticing a lot of concern over the apparant lack of energy for characters such as Daredevil, Nightcrawler, and other bouncy, bundles of fun. I've been playing around with an "Energetic" option. When the player is purchasing Durability, instead of paying 3 times the cost and having their energy be 3 times their durability, they may pay FOUR times the cost for FIVE times the energy. This way, guys like Nightcrawler and Spidey are still tough to hit, but when they are, they're just not all that tough. Thoughts? Suggestions? Concerns?

[krym]

dunno, what I'm starting to understand is that MURPG is *totally* different than any other system out there.

One of the big differences that are screwing people up in their thinking is that most of us believe we have to participate in a fight every round. Marvel is set up to where we really aren't supposed to be *in* every page doing some kind of attack.

Once people realize that and start thinking of more situational modifiers amoung other tactics, I think the energy levels will become a lot more reasonable.

[ds]

Except that's not how the game OR comics are really set up.

Hell, a page in combat time is defined as 'every character has taken an action'.

And most comics have dialog occuring along with the fight.

The problem is that Marvel tried to 'realistically' create a world of comics to some degree- thus death spirals, no mechanic to simply encourage looking cool...

Marvel did a lot of things very right. But they also missed a lot of recent devolpments in games which would have proven useful.

[krym]

'every character has taken an action'


does not mean your character is always throwing a punch or shooting a beam.

It easily could be "getting ready to spring off of that wall there and hit from the side."

You see it a lot in comics where an entire page is showing 2 of hte people fighting and in teh background you see the other characters getting into position to do something.


I'm not real keen on the "lose regen points when HP's go down." That just makes the fights end even quicker when they go by pretty quick as it is.

[gothfather]

Not sure I agree with heroes "resting". I just read Dare Devil trade vol.2 and him and Echo were all over eachother, every panal, exhausting themselves, and yet could still (barely) carry on. But Echo isn't all that "tough".

[krym]

here's the other thing, and i'll take Gothfathers example there.

DD and Moth going at ea. other a bunch of times per page. Unless there are numbers there saying how much effort they're spending then we don't know.

THe same thing can be achieved via the game by spending no more than you are able to recover, or at most 1-2 more than you're able to recover.

That away you can fight in every panel or whenever it's your turn. Also, in the DD/Moth fight, how much of the enviroment did they use? Could alot of what they do be achieved via situational modifiers?


This game makes you think about your tactics alot more or in a totally new way, moreso than the majority of us players.. myself definitley included.

[i3ullseye]

Energy should almsot never be spent beyond the amount you can dierectly recover. And in the comics they rarely do. People complain about "In the comics they shoot 2 and 3 times, and in the comics they go forever" arguments.

Well, they split their stones. And they rely on modifiers to make up the difference and spend stones of energy conservatively. Some don't think this is the case, but if you read the situational modifiers, and really look at the numbers this is absolutely what is going on. I think people are trying to put fixes into place before actually understanding the nature of what they are trying to change.

Energy really isn't a problem in this game. Even the difference between durability/health based and intelligence based. I added the take a breather rule, but it need never be used in a game. I only add it so that both Health and Intelligence based characters can take a full recovery in a 2 panel span, but it is hardly neccessary.

Now many are going to disagrewe. They will argue and say I have it all wrong. They will say these are multiple full strength attacks in the comics. They will say that Daredevil goes on and on and never seems to get tired. But it just isn't so.

Daredevil has a 6 stone defense spending absolutely nothing. If he uses his acrobatics and his billy club (which he often does) he can spend one stone and have a defense of 11. Thats for ONE stone! Pretty conservative energy use.

So he attacks 3 guys in one panel. Again the billy club comes into play, he can spend JUST as much as he recovers...... Spend 3 and this results in 7 stones. With only 2 stones you knock out most normal thugs. Surprise? That should be +1 stone free for Sit-Mod. There could be various others also... but you are still looking at 3 attacks at 3 stones, 3 stones and 4 stones. All 3 thugs go down.

Cyclops? Each stone is double damage for him, it is even easier for him to do this. He uses blasts for defense too? Sure, slide a few into defense and then the effect of him shooting attacks down is there.

So I really don't think the system is as broken as many assume.

[krym]

"If he uses his acrobatics and his billy club (which he often does) he can spend one stone and have a defense of 11."

- Is this just doing nothing but defending?


"Spend 3 and this results in 7 stones.... you are still looking at 3 attacks at 3 stones, 3 stones and 4 stones."

- Thats 10 stones.

- Where did the other 3 stones come from if he spends 3+ billyclub (4).

[ds]

The problem with spending just what you will recover is that it presumes the other person will to.

Think of it like the Prisoner's dilimea. If your foe confesses and you don't, then he wins and you lose. If you confess and he doesn't, then you win and he loses. If neither confess, then you both really win. If both of you confess, then you are both screwed.

Replace 'confess' with 'burn all your energy in a single massive attack/defense'. If you've gone all out and your opponent hasn't, you'll probally knock off at least two white stones of health- more, if you've got a x2 or x3 attack. This is a Significant Advantage- although your opponent has more energy for the next panel, you recover notibly faster. If they retaliate all the way, then you can't block all of it- but they also can't probally take much more punishment period and you can just end the fight with a light tap, taking the injury (or possibly not if you act before them). At worst, you're both badly injured and still awake- the opponent who hoarded their stones early on is still slightly worse off.

I'm assuming, of course, that both opponents are equally adept at aquiring GP stones. Not that it matters, really- you can tip the balance from slightly uneven to even at best. More likely, it will still be weighted in the direction of the all out attacker.

And i3ullseye, I'm just gonna note- the book is ill layed out. That's the nice way of putting it. Rules are mentioned and not explained, specific examples are provided in a limited number of spaces. Most of the examples of using abilities are given in the character creation section, which deals exclusively with spending personal energy. It's not hard to miss stuff and find stuff- and the overwhelming first impression (and second, and in my case, third and fourth- that's after a playtest game) is that having Energy and a high regen rate directly translates to in game power.

The authors have a schziod view of Modifiers and GP stones- Modifiers are expensive because they give free GP stones- but you can also buy a kevlar, gun or a knife for virtually nothing to get the same bonus. The core mechanic as is explained in the player section (y'know, the part about Playing The Game) emphasizes the death spiral- as you lose health, you lose energy regeneration. It's only in the GM's section that sitmods get an even vaugely clear explanation- and there, primarily in a single table.

There's also no good simple feel for how powerful a starting level character should be, because the example characters are almost all at least 60w, sometimes more, and there's no in book guide to how powerful THEY are.

I like the game. I like the basic system. But the impression that the books leaves is that Personal Energy Is Everything, and there are a distressingly limited number of sources for such. That's not gonna go away while people are coming into the game- and it may not go away at all, given the Prisoner's Dilema-ness of energy spending.

[bluethunder2013]

i don't know, like deadpanbob said in another post just shift stones form your acrobatic's and such to defense to get the agilic feal, but i don't think im gonna use this system,

[krym]

"But the impression that the books leaves is that Personal Energy Is Everything"


It really isn't "everything" for a number of reasons. The biggest of which is that you should have a durability (and hence energy) that matches the character that you are playing. If I'm playing a guy that having a 3 durability would make the most sense, then I should only have a 3 durability and not a 6.

But that is up to you and your gamemaster... and your group since they can get pissed for you cheesing the system.


I personally would take Modifiers or Powers that would give me a bunch of free stones over a High durability.

[bluethunder2013]

you could just make an ability that helps people like that, name it hyper active or something, but you should put a requirment, so not everyone can take it. like they have to have speed of this number, or agility of this number or mabey must have acrobatic's, i dunno just an idea

[deadpanbob]

DS,

I can totally see where you are coming from. The first few reads I have of the game left me with the same feel. However, after running a couple of Face to Face sessions, and after having read the books another half dozen times, I'm leaning more towards Bullseye on this.

The book is REALLY, REALLY poorly laid out, and does lack a coherent example of play showing how situational modifiers ougt to be used.

Just to give one example, when I ran my second session of FTF play, I allowed a +2 GP modifier for any relevant specialty the player could bring into play. This alone was huge!

The person playing the game played their stones quite conservatively, and waited until they could reasonably claim a couple of additional situational modifiers before going all in with a full use of available energy panel.

I even threw a couple of high energy characters at him who tried just what you are suggesting, and chose early to throw everything at the character. But again, he judiciously applied his stones, making sure to take advantage of defensive situational modifiers, and putting a reasonable defense up. Did he take some lumps? Yep. But he also beat opponents built on 20% more creation stones straigt up with no fudging on my part because he played smart.

Cheers,


Jason

[ds]

If I stand corrected, wonderful.

And, in fact, if you are supposed to be able to get sitmod stones at the rates that seem to be suggested, then I likely do stand corrected. In fact, then the example breaks down, because you can an activation bonus, which acts like a functional multiplier on your actual number of stones.

But presently, it feels off. Take the specialities thing- the way the book is written, it seems like lack of a speciality inflicts a penelty, while having the spec just makes it the 'normal' difficulty. This would mean that specialties are useful, but not as useful as a maximized Attribute being added to the Ability, if said attribute was adding at least 6 levels- because in the Attribute added case, you'll get that extra edge to overcome any situation where having the specialty would have been helpful- in other words, absolute advantage to buying the Attribute.

If Specialities add free stones, however, then it becomes an absolute advantage to buy the Ability up directly- there's no additional resistance to difficulty to overcome, and the free bonus stones help in dealing with large difficulties.

This doesn't jibe with me for two reasons-
A) The example of Black Cat opening the safe. She has a Safe Cracking specialty, which would seem to apply here- and gets no bonus.
B) Buying the attribute add-on to an Ability is a +5 to the CL. That's a HUGE jump in price, and only begins to makes sense if specialities aren't relatively valuable.

Eh... I dunno. I guess with Modifiers having such absurdly high costs relative to Abilities, with the reason for this being that the provide free stones from the GP, I had gotten it in my head that stones from the GP come with a great cost- this lay in direct conflict with the prevelancy of weapons and armor that provide between +1 to +4 GP sitmods to a hero's attack and defense, especially with the totally-divorsed-from-creation section on equipment.

If free stones aren't meant to be such a big deal, then it seems like the price of modifiers (at least Claws, Toughness, Targetting, Reflexive Dodge and Luck) should be knocked down by one or two- now a character can buy them past what is 'normal' for such a modifier (Toughness can excede a Costume of Unstable Yada, etc) without breaking the bank.

[gothfather]

My group has been playing around with this...right now we're simply letting players use the system for useing Intellegence for Energy and applying it to ANY ability the player wishes...