Late to the party: Marvel Heroic Roleplaying ?

[silva]

Ok, now Im lost. So you just pay a fate point (or whatever its called) to change a fail into a sucess with complications ? Is that it ?

Example:

Iron Man is doing a system search to find traces of a certain villain. He rolls his Systems Expertise (or some other related ability) and fails. Now in your traditional game thats an end-of-line. But in Fate the player can pay 1 fate point for changing that into a success but with a complication ? Say, he managed to find the villain whereabouts, but at the cost of being detected and having a virus infecting his own system.

Is that it ? If so, it sounds pretty good actually. It solves the end-of-line issue of trad games just like AW do, only using a fate points economy instead.

[MGuy]

No. I don't think that's it. I don't know why you're stuck on that success at a cost thing. From what I'm understanding, you just pay the FATE point and you succeed. Not succeed but fail. In order to GET that Fate point (if I'm reading correctly) you opt to let your bad traits occur at some point in time to cause you trouble. So in order to succeed at some other would be failed attempt at something you have to opt to fail at some other thing when you would normally succeed. At least that's what I have gleaned from what people have said about the system.

[fectin]

Having extra rewards for good roleplaying is a stupid idea. In 30+ years of playing RPGs, I have never, ever seen anyone improve their roleplaying just because there was some kind of PC bonus at stake. Never. Not once. So what's the point? Bribing players into being good roleplayers just doesn't work.

I've seen it happen with Exalted and its stunting bonus. Granted, the incentive ends up being so stupid and painful that it actually hurts the game as a whole, but it has happened.

The problem with Exalted is that the stunting bonus (mote regeneration) is so incredibly important, that you either stunt, or lose combat. So everyone stunts every single dice roll.

That's half the problem. The other half is that Exalted somehow generated this culture where all stunts have to be incredibly spotlight-hogging and hammy.
So the literal, technical requirement to hit a two dice stunt is "more description than is mechanically required" and "refers to the environment."
"I attack" doesn't satisfy that. "I put my back to the wall and attack" is two dice. The stereotypical Exalted table instead seems to produce Moby Dick's whaling treatises as description, and that's where it becomes a problem, much more so than mandatory stunting to power Twilight Essence Reactors.

In fact, Exalted stunting is especially easy to clean up. Watch:
- Any description at all gives you a bonus die (and nothing else).
- Any description referring to or establishing a setting element gives you two bonus dice (and nothing else).
- Three-dice stunts are technically available and behave as core, but you will never earn one (so don't bother trying).
That's it! When you build the world, assume anyone with an active essence pool has a two-dice bonus on anything they care about.

[silva]

I dont get the math behind MHR. It seems its always more advantageous to pick 2D6 instead of 1D8 for example. Also, it seems the die size is more relevant than the amount of die rolled, so trying to obsessively increase your pool in each roll seems futile. But then Im not good at these calcs.

Can someone give me a hand here ?

[radthemad4]

I don't know the rules of MHR, but assuming higher rolls are good, 2d6 gives you an average of 7 (average of a d6 is 3.5 as that's (1+2+3+4+5+6)/6) whereas the average of a d8 is 4.5 ((1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8)/8).

[Laertes]

2D6 is also normally distributed rather than linear; therefore each +1 on it is incrementally less important the further from 50% the probability of success is. A +1 when you're trying to roll a 7 is worth 1/6 of a hit; a +1 when you're trying to roll a 4 or a 10 is worth 1/12 of a hit.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Ok, now Im lost. So you just pay a fate point (or whatever its called) to change a fail into a sucess with complications ? Is that it ?

You have three possible results:

Success with Style (beat the taret number by a difference of 3 or more)
Success (meet the target number)
Failure (roll short of the target number)

You spend a fate point by "invoking an aspect". This gives you the ability to add +2 to your roll (you can do this after you've rolled), or reroll the results (using a bell curve where -4 and -3 are unlikely possibilities, this is not a bad choice in some circumstances).

You are not spending a fate point to convert a "failure" into a "success with a cost". "Success at a cost" is not a mechanical concept. When they crop up as an example result within the source, it's because A) you have a stalement result on an opposed Overcome, or B) because the most obvious failure result is a permadeath that only the groggiest of nards would actually be satisfied by.

[John Magnum]

If I didn't fuck my math up, for every X the probability that a 2d6 will roll at least X is at least as high as the probability that a 1d8 will roll at least X, and they're only equal in edge cases where it's guaranteed or impossible.

[Stubbazubba]

MHR is roll and keep: you build your dicepool from 3-6 different sources, including anything from d4s to d12s, and roll. Then you pick 2 dice to add together to make your Accuracy, and from the remaining dice you pick 1 die to be your Effect, but you don't care about the Effect die's number, just its size. So, for instance, if you rolled 3d8s, 1d10, and 1d12, and got 8, 7, 5, 4, and 3, respectively. That's great, because you would take the 8 and 7 from the d8s and get a total Accuracy of 15. The d12 only rolled a 3, but that's perfect because for Effect, the number rolled doesn't matter. You keep the d12 Effect die and you lay some serious smack down (d12 is as big as it gets).

So 2d6 is not always better than 1d8 because those 2d6 don't stay together in the roll; you can keep them as individual d6s, either for your Accuracy or your Effect, but they don't go together into either. Splitting a d8 into 2d6 lets you hit more mooks, who can't take much damage anyway, but other than that is probably less useful than just keeping 1d8.

[silva]

Damn, and I thought old Shadowrun combat pool considerations were complex.

So overall it not much productive to hunt down for more dice as possible, but instead to hunt for higher faced dice. Ie: its better to roll 3-4 D8 dice than 6-7 D6, right ? The immediate effect is minimizing the need for obseessive dice pool building, instead only going for higher sided ones.

Further, it seems the Plot Points manipulation is even more important than dice pool building, because its through PP that you trigger the really powerful effects and maneuvers. Does my impressions holds ?

[Stubbazubba]

Yep. Bigger dice are generally better, and PP manipulation is where you can easily break the game.

[Laertes]

If I didn't fuck my math up, for every X the probability that a 2d6 will roll at least X is at least as high as the probability that a 1d8 will roll at least X, and they're only equal in edge cases where it's guaranteed or impossible.

Your maths is solid.

[Neurosis]

You don't "opt-in" to success at a cost in Fate.

Uh, yeah, you kind of do.

No. I don't think that's it. I don't know why you're stuck on that success at a cost thing. From what I'm understanding, you just pay the FATE point and you succeed. Not succeed but fail. In order to GET that Fate point (if I'm reading correctly) you opt to let your bad traits occur at some point in time to cause you trouble. So in order to succeed at some other would be failed attempt at something you have to opt to fail at some other thing when you would normally succeed. At least that's what I have gleaned from what people have said about the system.

Yeah, but if you DON'T Succeed or pay a FATE point (which gives you a bonus for an invoked aspect, it doesn't make you automatically succeed):

For the Overcome Action in FATE Core...

"When you fail an overcome action, you have two options. You can simply fail, which means you don’t attain your goal or get what you were after, or you can succeed at a serious cost.
When you tie an overcome action, you attain your goal or get what you were after, but at a minor cost."

And please, note that the above is WITHOUT PAYING A FATE POINT. If it COST a FATE Point, it might be less of an issue, because it wouldn't be a result you can have ALL THE GODDAMN TIME.

There's the word "option" right there. And your option, besides failing, is two tiers of success at a cost bullshit.

And that's the overcome action, which is NOT the one that might have death as a consequence of failure (that would be Defend).

You have three possible results:

Success with Style (beat the taret number by a difference of 3 or more)
Success (meet the target number)
Failure (roll short of the target number)

You spend a fate point by "invoking an aspect". This gives you the ability to add +2 to your roll (you can do this after you've rolled), or reroll the results (using a bell curve where -4 and -3 are unlikely possibilities, this is not a bad choice in some circumstances).

You are not spending a fate point to convert a "failure" into a "success with a cost". "Success at a cost" is not a mechanical concept.

Not to belabor my point, but you are quite wrong here.

FATE SRD

When you fail an overcome action, you have two options. You can simply fail, which means you don’t attain your goal or get what you were after, or you can succeed at a serious cost.
When you tie an overcome action, you attain your goal or get what you were after, but at a minor cost.
When you succeed at an overcome action, you attain your goal without any cost.
When you succeed with style at an overcome action, you get a boost in addition to attaining your goal.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

I was wrong, yes, I seriously took that passage to mean the GM was to adjudicate whether the result was failure or success-at-a-cost.

I mostly meant to contend the idea that you spend a FP to turn failure into success-at-a-cost, which was what silva was saying, not me.

[silva]

How do Events work ? Are they just a string of combat encounters, or do they provide opportunities for the heroes to deal with their milestones too ?

[silva]

Anyone know cool reimaginings of superheroes ? I have difficilty overcoming the dherr ridiculoudness of people wearing pants over cloth and other silliness ( Captain America is specially offensive here). Those old X-men undercover / everyday clpthes are ok for me, though.

Thanks in advance.

[silva]

Had a test session this weekend. Its much easier in practice than on paper. . It reminds me of melee combat in Shadowrun with its opposed rolls for everything. (btw SR meleee combat is the most interedting part of yhe system for me, dont know how it wasnt adopted for other parts). My friends are looking forward toplaying again.

The only thing that bugged me is that reacting looks more advantageous than acting most of the time. Has anyone noticed this ?

[silva]

Just a heads up:

For those finding it difficult to tap personal milestones in the fiction, try taking the steps as examples/suggestions instead of hard triggers. Focus more in the overarching theme of the milestones, and reward XP the more a given act / behavior jeopardizes the group or the very milestone continuity.

My group began playing this way and felt the whole thing got more natural / organic then.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I begin to wonder if silva is the same person who inhabits the Bloody Board (#5).

[Sakuya Izayoi]

I begin to wonder if silva is the same person who inhabits the Bloody Board (#5).

I would guess that there's some crossposting from http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?737 ... irst-timer

[Mistborn]

You know I would have posted here sooner but I realized that the crueler thing to do was to just ignore the smarmgargler. But screw it here's the obligatory bear anyway

[silva]

Hey bros, if anyone know where I can find deadtree copies of the MHR supplements (50 States, X-Men, Young Avengers) lemme know.

If someone here happen to have them and want to sell, lemme know too.

Thanks.