Other than the initial gain of + to acc/dam... wouldn't that just mirror training?
But then again... it would be above and beyond that.
Not bad. But as the character progresses... they could become incredibly powerful (and lord knows with the right power combinations this could be downright lethal).
Though a characters I could see having this is Spider Man, Taskmaster, Daredevil, Captain America, Deadpool, Viper etc. all of whom are excellent at hitting and hurting but difficult to actually hit.

I think it has value.

G7

This needs a cap saying no individual bonus can exceed +/- 4-8 or whatever number your comfortable with.
Or you can pick one of the bonuses and assign a specialty. So in one score the character can increase his bonus to say 8 and the others are limited to 4. A guy who gets to level 15 and assigns all bonuses to defense and is running around with a -15 to be hit along with his other powers can be unbalanced.

I think the damage bonus is less powerful than a bonus to hit or to avoid being hit because it deals with a different point scale. Basically your value range to determine whether you hit your target is between 1 and 20. The amount of damage you need to do to incapacitate your opponent by depleting Hit Points can be anywhere from 10-multiple hundreds or thousands. So the damage bonus is scaled against a much wider range of values making it less powerful. However,the bonus to hit or avoid being hit is working on a relatively fixed scale. So a -15 to be hit for example is an overall 75% increase in defense. A +15 to damage is beneficial but it's effectiveness is not as reliable as other bonuses. If your opponent has 10 hit points a +15 is huge. Against an opponent with 200 Hit points it becomes less than a 10% bonus.

I think this is at least part of the reason why Heightened Attack is treated differently than Heightened Defense or Heightened Expertise which are static +4 bonuses instead of a value gain per level. Generally I think landing or avoiding a blow is just more valuable than how much damage you inflict. 

OK, after giving this some thought, and reading over everyone's comments, I've decided to cap this at a +/-8 bonus to any one ability. Hopefully that will balance this out. Plus, I'd really like to see someone test this out in a game, and let me know how it works for them.

I'd have to look at it on a case by case basis.  I've had a PC with Heightened Def X2, -8 to be hit, and it wasn't too bad, as that was his only defense.  Actually one of my worst combinations was non-corporealness and Invulnerability, almost never got hit, and when he did took no damage.  One tough cookie.

I do agree, when you combine it with other defenses, it could be unbalancing. 

That did make me curious.  I usually apply all defenses, taking the to hit down to 0, then apply accuracy the bonus.  This almost always results in a "chance" to hit, though sometimes a small chance...  Is that how everyone does it?

Hammer wrote on Mar 17^th, 2010 at 10:58am:


That's not how we do it (or how I've seen it done by other V&V players from around the world that I've met).

What we do is first add all bonuses.  Let's say the character has Power Blast (base 16) and they have an accuracy of +2, a Heightened Expertise of +4, and (later on in our example, due to Level) a +1.

We would write down (on the bottom of the character sheet) the following:

Power Blast - 22

That is the character's "Base Chance to Hit" (his or her base amount modified by accuracy and any bonuses; note that it does NOT have level bonuses factored in, because that changes every time).

When he faces a character who has Non-Corporealness (which takes Power Blast down to a 0) as well as a couple of Heightened Defenses (for a total of -8), I/we do the math like this:

Start with their 'Base': 22

Look at the combat chart and see what kind of minus to apply (Power Blast vs. Non-Corporealness is a subtraction of 16).

So now we're at 6.

From there you subtract the two Heightened Defenses (-8) to take it to -2.

But then (lastly) we add in +1 for level, which takes us to a total of -1.

The character now has a -1 to hit, modified by range (which hardly ever comes up) and facing.

In our example here, I would have my cheat sheet (prepared before we begin playing) that cross-indexes every attack and defense for every character.  For our example I would write:

-1 (15)

This tells me that the character can only truly hit the character (with N/C and 2 HD's) if he rolls a "1".  UNLESS he gets great facing on that character (such as above or behind), which adds a +4.  In that case, he is going to have a 3 or less to hit.

Note that in the above example, the reason I list both numbers is because of the way the defenses work.  If we go back to the basic example (and assume no facing bonuses), the character needs to roll a "1" to hit (which always hits).  If he rolls a 2-15 he technically HITS the target, but it is impacted by the Non-Corporealness defense (which means that his blast goes right through the ghost-like defender).  If he rolls a 16-20 then he just plain misses entirely (and you roll for a chance of an incidental hit).

Hope that explains things a little better.

Basically, according to the rules - you start out with the lowest number on the combat chart (which at the very minimum will be "0") and then build from there (adding or subtracting based on things like level, facing, etc.

Majestic wrote on Mar 18^th, 2010 at 5:25pm:


The last point about getting hit but ignoring damage could be a form of Willpower B. Soulburner in Pre-Emptive Strike has Willpower B as 12 points of Invulnerability.

dsumner wrote on Mar 18^th, 2010 at 8:59pm:


I've seen characters who rolled Heightened Defense twice. It makes them pretty hard to hit. If they evade as well, they're very unlikely to get hit by anything other than Force Field or Power Blast.

dsumner wrote on Mar 13^th, 2010 at 8:59pm:


Other than my note above, I'm not big on testing out other people's house rules to give them feedback. No offense.

Majestic wrote on Mar 19^th, 2010 at 6:52pm:


I wouldn't let everyone and their momma have it, but for a character like Deathstroke, or someone that was supposed to be a master Ninja, I think it would be the perfect fit.

dsumner wrote on Mar 20^th, 2010 at 10:05am:


Totally agree.

Majestic wrote on Mar 20^th, 2010 at 2:09pm:



I always figured Captain America and Deathstroke the Terminator have this version of this power.

Bump.