Its all about your point of view and how you define defense.

I define it as the number needed to hit so it makes sense to me why Heroclix requires you to roll equal to or over the defense.

It seems you want to define it as the number that must be overcome.

There really is no right or wrong answer for this it all just comes down to personal interpretations.

My Destiny once crit-hit my opponent's Bane off a roof and K.O.'ed him.

Now true:

Destiny's damage had been Perplexed to 3;
Bane's Toughness had been Outwitted;
and Bane had already taken damage,

but DESTINY K.O.'ed BANE!


And that concludes my anecdotal contribution to the thread.

Exactly what I was going to say!

I've never understood why force blast sucks so much. I mean, in comics, it's pretty effective sometimes. But why give superman force blast in a game you have to ko people? He's just going to beat them over the head with a heavy object. I'd love to see it changed. But for now, it just eats up points on characters who mostly would never use it.

You're obviously doing it wrong. Force Blast is a highly useful power. KC Flash and Green Lantern never see it coming; throw a barrier up behind them, then Force Blast them into it. No attack roll needed.

::clap. clap. clap clap clapclapCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP!::

Nice.

In D&D 3rd ed on, the armour class became the number you needed to hit

Much easier to understand.

"What do I need to hit that AC 22 monster?"
"Why, little magic-user, you need a 22!"

There are those that still favour the old THAC0 rules but they are idiots so their opinion can be readily dismissed

If Heroclix was BEAT defence rather than MATCH, the odds of hitting drop precipitously (a 7 or more to hit is roughly a 58.3% chance to hit, an 8 or more drops to 41.7% for an 16.6% plummet (also note that 16.67% is a one in six chance)

New house rule: If you roll exactly the targets defense, half damage (rounded up) is done to the target, and half damage (rounded down) is done to the attacking figure as it sprains its arm.

Bah! Destiny KOd Superman in one of my early games. Admittedly, it was just Hypertime Superman...

Well, here's a couple things:

I wish Force Blast said, "After making a close combat attack against a single target character, using no other powers or abilities, after the attack you can roll a d6. The character who was attacked is knocked back from the character a number of squares equal to the result."

Also, I still haven't done it, but I want to do it eventually. How about playing Heroclix with a 12-side die instead of 2 6-side dice for all the attack rolls?

You could still use the regular d6 for Super Senses, Impervious, Leasership, Blades, etc, but use the d12 on all the other rolls.

It would really change how each game played out. There would be a lot more Critical Hits and Critical Misses for sure.

Maybe I can try this at home, or convince the local guys to play a scenario like that.

That's interesting! Equal probability of rolling each number.

Yeah, I still can't believe I haven't tried the d12 thing, and I know I've thought about it for years now.

It would make almost any character dangerous, and it would probably make a high defense less "scary" when you need 9 or greater to hit.

I understand all your points, except this last one, which missed my musings entirely. When they designed the game, they just as easily lowered all defenses by one and said that you have to exceed the defense. I'm not talking about changing the rule now, or changing the odds of hitting. I'm just wondering why they did it the way they did.

and as another aside ...
I love that there is no right answer here, and yet a number of people know the answer anyway.

ah, but there is. it is the answer every child knowa so well: Because.

I actually agree.

But then there'd be no knockback!