Giantslayer's Point Valuation System

[Giantslayer]

I am a newcomer to these forums, but have spent a considerable amount of time doing custom Marvel Heroscape stuff for the fun of it on my own before I found out about this forum.

My original goal was to fix the broken mess of random custom Heroscape cards my friends found from the internet to play with. Eventually, I had a pretty good point valuation system on my hands. Applying my system to the original ten Heroes, seven of them come out within a 5 point margin of the official values. The other three have somewhat questionable official values (Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Venom).

I put an awful lot of work into this for just making my own custom builds to play with my friends. After finding out about this community, I decided to polish it up a bit and share it. Please have a look and let me know what you think.

Here is a link to the PDF explaining the system.
Heroscape Custom Point System

Here is a link to a google spreadsheet version of my Excel calculator. You should be able to download it as an Excel file from the File menu.
Excel Spreadsheet

[Dysole]

I glanced at it and when I have more time over the next couple days I'll give it a closer look.

~Dysole, informationally

[lefton4ya]

Nice work @Giantslayer . Have you entered any official figures into the spreadsheet? If I had time I would do it. As you noted, the hardest part if figuring out the strength of each power, as it will significantly affect points and is kinda arbitrarily assigned in some cases. I think your formula is pretty good, the only think I would change is making Life a multiplier as the formula might break down on units with less than 3 lives, such as figures like Otinashi who have great powers but only 1 life would get too high a point value based on your system.

For those browsing this forum, I think this table needs to be visible without having to click on the PDF.

	Life	Move	Range	Attack	Defense	Powers
1	0	-40	0	-5	-5	5
2	5	-30	15	0	0	15
3	15	-20	20	5	5	30
4	30	-10	25	15	15	50
5	50	0	30	30	30	75
6	75	10	35	50	50	105
7	105	20	40	75	75	140
8	140	30	45	105	105	180
9	180	40	50	140	140	225
10	225	50	55	180	180	275

For those who are curious, the values of Life, Attack, Defense, and Powers are calculated based on a mathematical function where x is added to all its preceding integers (e.g. x=5 would be 5+4+3+2+1), then multiplied by 5. Essentially, each level increase costs 5 points more than the preceding level increase. The baseline value for Life was 1, and Attack/Defense had a base value of 2.

[Giantslayer]

Originally Posted by lefton4ya

Nice work @Giantslayer . Have you entered any official figures into the spreadsheet? If I had time I would do it. As you noted, the hardest part if figuring out the strength of each power, as it will significantly affect points and is kinda arbitrarily assigned in some cases. I think your formula is pretty good, the only think I would change is making Life a multiplier as the formula might break down on units with less than 3 lives, such as figures like Otinashi who have great powers but only 1 life would get too high a point value based on your system.

For those browsing this forum, I think this table needs to be visible without having to click on the PDF.

	Life	Move	Range	Attack	Defense	Powers
1	0	-40	0	-5	-5	5
2	5	-30	15	0	0	15
3	15	-20	20	5	5	30
4	30	-10	25	15	15	50
5	50	0	30	30	30	75
6	75	10	35	50	50	105
7	105	20	40	75	75	140
8	140	30	45	105	105	180
9	180	40	50	140	140	225
10	225	50	55	180	180	275

Thanks for the feedback. I'll update and put some of the info onto my post later when I have access to a real computer. The original characters are already plugged into that excel sheet. You can pull it up in google docs to look without having to download. I should also put that into my first post.

As for the Life thing... The game's creators either didn't use a multiplier or didn't use the multiplier at the end of their formula, as evidenced by Dr. Doom having an odd number point cost with an even number of life.

I agree this system does start to break down at very low values. I based it solely on Marvel Heroscape and don't know much about the other Heroscape stuff. I don't expect it to work well for low power/point value stuff.

I had to look up Otonashi because I don't know much outside of superheroes in this game. Dang, a 10 point unique hero. My system would definitely not handle that properly. I definitely have not cracked The Formula, rather I have made something that does a good job on Superheroes.

[Drewman-chu]

Giantslayer this a great resource and very impressive tool you have created. The research that you have put into this is excellent. I think you are right on the mark with Captain America and Venom's stats being off. The scales that you listed in your PDF are essentially what I have used to base my customs off of. Determining points is always tricky, but your system appears very sound. For example I entered a custom that I was working on and the points came out to be 95 and my estimate was 100. See the posted card below. A couple of questions if you don't mind? These were my power level estimates Phasing 3 Intangible 3 Phase Disruption 2, do these seem about right to you? How would this work for squads? Again great work, I will use this when creating customs.

[Giantslayer]

Originally Posted by Drewman-chu

Giantslayer this a great resource and very impressive tool you have created. The research that you have put into this is excellent. I think you are right on the mark with Captain America and Venom's stats being off. The scales that you listed in your PDF are essentially what I have used to base my customs off of. Determining points is always tricky, but your system appears very sound. For example I entered a custom that I was working on and the points came out to be 95 and my estimate was 100. See the posted card below. A couple of questions if you don't mind? These were my power level estimates Phasing 3 Intangible 3 Phase Disruption 2, do these seem about right to you? How would this work for squads? Again great work, I will use this when creating customs.

Thanks for the feedback!

3 dice with that Intangible ability works out to a 70% damage reduction. Given her low point value, an attack of 4 (average 2 damage) is probably a good baseline. 2*(1-.7) = .6, which is about what a 6 defense would get you on Sisyphus' table. 35 points to go from 3 to 6 defense, so Level 3 would be right. As a side note, I gave that exact same ability to my 265 point Flash build, and it was a level 4 on him because I based it off a 6 attack.

That Phasing ability... That one is a tough call. It has 4 effects. I would probably approach it as if it were multiple powers and add together instead of approaching as one big one.
Immunity to disengagement attacks: level 2
Pass through obstacles: level 1
Immovable: level 1
Can't be targeted by non-adjacent figures: level 2 or 3.
If we assume level 2 and add it all together, that is 40 points. Since the immunity to non-adjacent figures may be pushing it for a 2, I would be more inclined to round up and go with a Level 4 for the whole package.

That attack ability... It's really weak. It does .35 damage on average. Going by Sisyphus' tables, her base Attack 2 does .29 against a defense 4 and .15 against a defense 6. Increasing her Attack to 3 (at a cost of 5) would give her equal or better average damage than .35. As written, it is a Level 1.

If you adjust both power levels as I recommend, then it is a net change of +10.

I honestly don't know the first thing about squads. My friends have only had interest in superheroes, so all my Heroscape attention has gone there. I imagine they probably operate with much lower stat values than heroes. If I were to get into squads, I'd probably try to tweak the system for squads. I'm not sure when or if that would ever happen for me. You could try taking some existing squads and plugging it into my system to see how close they come out.

[Giantslayer]

@Drewman-chu , do you have a discussion thread for your Shadowcat build? I like where you are going with it and I have a few suggestions that may make it even better. I don't want to stray too far off the topic of point valuation on this thread.

[Drewman-chu]

I'd love to hear your input, just go to my thread that starts with the word poll and has Destroyer as the last card, that's where I be posting Shadowcat.

[Drewman-chu]

What power level would regeneration ie removing 1 wound marker at the end of every round? I was thinking 3 but could see it as a 4,too.

[Giantslayer]

Originally Posted by Drewman-chu

What power level would regeneration ie removing 1 wound marker at the end of every round? I was thinking 3 but could see it as a 4,too.

It depends on how much life the character already has. I usually shoot for whatever value will get me in between the cost of 1 or 2 additional points of Life for that character. On my Groot build with 6 Life, that came out to a Level 4.

If you have equal Attack vs. Defense (4 vs 4, 6 vs 6), it usually works out to around 1 damage per attack on average. If you figure on 3 hits per round, you will probably realistically get only one or two chances to get your regeneration in.

[Drewman-chu]

I have been using your excel spread sheet formula to evaluate costing of superhero cards and I find it to be very accurate and useful. It really elimnates the guessing and "theory scaping" step.

[FATSNACK]

Giantslayer, I have read this thread and look over your statistics. You really have really put alot of thought into this. If possible would you be willing to send me the spreadsheet that I could use. This looks to be a great tool.