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