Damage numbers versus hit points

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1

I have grave concerns with how the combat damage numbers/hit points/chart interact.  Specifically, I am concerned that the damage ratio may be too high.

As the only example I have, Aurora has powers that raise her Health from 20 to 320 (not sure why that's not 240, but letting that slide for now).  Plus she has a force field that stops 256 points of damage five times.  So she's no slouch in the defense department.

Having nobody else to match her against, Aurora is going to fight Aurora, which seems to be as fair a fight as we're ever going to get.  So her base power and quick power are absorbed by her force field at GREEN level.  All well and good; with that much in defense, we'd expect her to shrug off early hits from herself.

If she power blasts, 128 of those hits get through, or she can knock herself out in three hits of GREEN.  Again, not a concern.

EXCEPT:

1/4 of those blasts are going to be YELLOW, or double damage.  Three normal fast hits TKO, one blast knockout on normal, and KO/AUTOKILL for the power blast (AUTOKILL only if her force field is already down)

11% of those blasts are going to be ORANGE, or x4 damage. Auto-KO on the fast attack, AUTOKILL on the other two.

1% of those blasts are going to just kill her outright, in spite of her defenses.

The above are risks PER ATTACK per enemy at her level.  Basically, an 89% chance that she is still alive after any round of combat, even though she's put about 2/3 of her powers (thus one guesses SP) into defense and survival.

As the rounds go through, these percentages are: 89/79/70/62.7/55.8/49.7, or in simple terms, about half the party is expected DEAD (not KO, but DEAD) if the combats go for six rounds.  Acceptable in a Super Squad game where every player has ten supers, and doesn't care about any of them, or if we're running hero-of-the-week meatgrinders.  

And I'm not saying that the courage the heroes demonstrate by facing these odds isn't appropriate for superheroes.  I'm just saying that it looks overly lethal from the rules and numbers that we have, and that's at equal power levels.  If Dr. Killsuit (+2AV above the heroes, and one presumes better damage and damage protection) is the mastermind for the night, then I can only imagine the numbers would drive me into apoplexy.  

Although I doubt it, is my math wrong?  What am I overlooking?  (Yes, I realize the numbers aren't FINAL at this point, but it's Autarch.  They do so many statistical analyses that I doubt they missed this.)  

Two solutions that came to my mind, but the eventual solution probably involves both to some degree: 

1)  Reduce the raw damage numbers.  This makes the CHART more important, as maximizing your AV roll increases those higher color categories that end the battle quickly.

2) Reduce the category multiples, say: Yellow x1.25, Orange x2.5, Red x5.  

 

I guess the numbers need to be set to a level that lets fights end in a reasonable amount of time, but not so high that you want two backup characters just because - fights are lethal, that's the hero biz.

 

But I've blathered on, and open the thread for comments/criticism.

 

2

Aurora can Roll with the Attack to reduce the color result to Green, at which point she's in no danger of being one-shot.

3

I apologize, I missed this.  I wait with both dread and anticipation to see what a level 3 roll-with-blow condition looks like.

4

[quote="Rhishisikk"] Aurora has powers that raise her Health from 20 to 320 (not sure why that's not 240, but letting that slide for now). [/quote]

Super-Stamina 10 raises it to 320 correctly.

 

Anyway, on the KS, Aurora has 14 SP of Aerial Combat, and she can use that as her DV against attacks. Assuming both Auroras are smart & flying around (ie otherwise Aerial Combat won't apply), that means it's 14 vs 14 on the CHART, so the RV is 0. Going by that row, on a 51 or higher roll, the attack will miss completely. Now, both sides can use Hero Points to bump up or down the RV. The cap on how many Hero Points you can spend on adjusting the RV is based on your RES score (specifically, RES/3, rounded to the nearest whole number, so 7/3 = 2.33 = 2). The Aurora attacking can bump the RV up to +2 (misses on a 99 or 100), but the defending Aurora can bump it back down to 0 again.

 

Then, assuming she's hit, the defending Aurora can spend Hero Points to roll with the attack, reducing it further, but at the cost of gaining one of three Conditions based on the number of colour steps reduced (up to 3, for red to green). The Conditions only last until that character's next round/panel, and basically act to reduce the number of actions you can do whilst it lasts (you can normally do 3 actions)... and can be ended early by spending more Hero Points. I think rolling with attacks happens before the damage is reduced by other means of protection too, so you can roll with an attack to reduce it to the point that your Forcefield can handle it, for example.

 

Finally, assuming the defending Aurora has been hit by enough damage to kill her, she can use "desperate damage reduction" to reduce the incoming damage, but at a very high cost in Hero Points.