Suggested Point Caps

[mayapuppies]

Hello all,

I'm still developing my little game world and I've taken to thinking about what point level I want to run. I am currently debating three point levels; 150, 100 and 75.

What I was wondering is what do you folks feel would be good point caps for powers at those three levels?

[ApocalypseZero]

I am basing my Fantasy HERO game on a 100 pts Base +50 DisAds, with an Active Limit of 60. I plan on raising that possbily by 1 AP per 10 XP.

[mayapuppies]

My breakdown will be:

75+75
50+50
50+25

[John Desmarais]

Hello all,

I'm still developing my little game world and I've taken to thinking about what point level I want to run. I am currently debating three point levels; 150, 100 and 75.

What I was wondering is what do you folks feel would be good point caps for powers at those three levels?

When running Fantasy Hero I typically have characters built on a 75 point base plus disads. No Active Point cap at all (but I create or approve all spells).

[AmadanNaBriona]

For my part, I like characters with a loth of depth and diversity, with enough points left for a shtick or three. I also like PC mages that aren't completely gimped (or if they are, its by choice, from spending everything on a "more than adequate" suite of spells and magic skills).

So my FH games have almost always been with 100 base points, and either 100 or 150 in available disads.

Gives me a good LOTR/Belgariad powerlevel without getting gross, but then again, I stomp down pretty hard on abusive builds (Genre and setting determine what constitutes "abusive")

[Outsider]

I've never been that good at piling on the Disads on a Heroic level character, so I tend to go 50+25, 75+25, or 100+50 for the 'epic hero' types.

How they heck do you get 150 points in disads on a heroic character, ANB? Are they all insane circus freaks who have entire orphanages worth of kids as DNPCs?

[mayapuppies]

I've never been that good at piling on the Disads on a Heroic level character, so I tend to go 50+25, 75+25, or 100+50 for the 'epic hero' types.

How they heck do you get 150 points in disads on a heroic character, ANB? Are they all insane circus freaks who have entire orphanages worth of kids as DNPCs?
Here's a list of disads from a test character one of my friends made:
5 Distinctive Features: Karthinian (Concealable; Noticed and Recognizable; Detectable By Commonly-Used Senses; Not Distinctive In Some Cultures)
10 Dependent NPC: Squire Hansi 11- (Normal; Useful Noncombat Position or Skills)
15 Psychological Limitation: Code of Chivalry (Common, Strong)
10 Psychological Limitation: Religiously Devout (Common, Moderate)
0 Karthinian Characteristic Maxima
20 Social Limitation: Subject To Liege Lord's Orders (Frequently, Severe)
5 Rivalry: Professional (with Other Knights; Rival is As Powerful; Seek to Outdo, Embarrass, or Humiliate Rival; Rival Aware of Rivalry)
0 Distinctive Features: Fina Barony Heraldry (Easily Concealed; Noticed and Recognizable; Detectable By Commonly-Used Senses; Not Distinctive In Some Cultures)
10 Hunted: Karthinian Knights 8- (As Pow, PC has a Public ID or is otherwise very easy to find, Mildly Punish)

And then for another character (some of you should remember the paladin of the merchant god):
5 Distinctive Features: Sugan (Concealable; Noticed and Recognizable; Detectable By Commonly-Used Senses; Not Distinctive In Some Cultures)
5 Social Limitation: May Not Use Trade Skills For Personal Gain (Occasionally, Minor)
5 Social Limitation: Duty to Church (Occasionally, Minor)
0 Sugan Characteristic Maxima
15 Psychological Limitation: Devout (Common, Strong)
Notes: A character with this Disadvantage acts in accordance to his religion (or rather, in accordance to his own interpretation of his religion) at all times. He may (or may not, depending on the religion) spend time trying to convert his companions to his own beliefs, and will most certainly argue with people over the accuracy of his faith when the question arises (except, of course, when proselytizing and argument about faith are inappropriate for the character's religion). At the Strong level, the character must make an Ego Roll in order to purposefully violate one of the tenets of his faith.
10 Physical Limitation: Heavy Sleeper (Frequently, Slightly Impairing)
Notes: The character is very hard to wake up, once asleep. Loud noises, bright lights, changes of venue, he can sleep through it all.
15 Social Limitation: Held To A Higher Standard (Very Frequently, Minor)
Notes: Because of the character's profession or social status, he is expected to be more circumspect in his behavior than an average citizen. For example, a children's entertainer would be expected not to be publicly drunk, get into fights, use foul language, etc. Failure to live up to this high standard will result in bad publicity, scorn and possible loss of employment.
20 Psychological Limitation: Driven By Family History To Become A Hero (Common, Total)
Notes: A character with this Disadvantage is the descendant (usually son/daughter or grandson/daughter) of a famous hero, and feels compelled to follow the "family tradition" because of this legacy. At Total, the character is enthusiastically pursuing the "family tradition".
Overall it isn't too hard to come up with stuff for us.

[prestidigitator]

I find 75/75 usually gives enough points to play with, allowing some good uniqueness among characters without being extraordinarily excessive on the power scale.

[Outsider]

Overall it isn't too hard to come up with stuff for us.


Those are 75 point disad packages... I was talking more about coming up with 150 points worth.

Even with those ones, you're assigning higher values to some of them than I would, and a couple I would be pretty iffy about taking, or allowing, were I the GM.

[AmadanNaBriona]

I've never been that good at piling on the Disads on a Heroic level character, so I tend to go 50+25, 75+25, or 100+50 for the 'epic hero' types.

How they heck do you get 150 points in disads on a heroic character, ANB? Are they all insane circus freaks who have entire orphanages worth of kids as DNPCs?
I've never had a problem with it, truthfully.
Part of it is that I was weaned on a "Tragic Supers" game way back in the day that was 100+300 disads. After that its all downhill. In any case, I am usually not so uber dependent on the "supers only" disads for my characters, so I get used to non-linear thinking when it comes to creating disads, and I do use many of the more commonly "super" disads in weird ways (For example, my Epic Celtic Campaign modeled Gesa as a Suseptibility, with the frequency depending on the nature of the Bans or Taboos, and the effect as 6d6 Unluck.... break a geis and more likely than not you just set yourself up for sumthing BAD... Minor violations were rolled immediately and then noted, so you might be looking at a bad event in the near future.. or not, if you got lucky. Major Violations get the Unluck till GM's discresion.)

In addition, we usually allowed a slightly larger number of psych limits than other disads, tho now with Social Lims as their own category I may drop that.
IIRC, we allowed up to 40-50 points usually in each category, with around an extra 10 for Psychs.

[Fitz]

I'm currently running a 100/100 High Fantasy campaign, and finding that even 200 points isn't enough; the characters still keep getting the snot kicked out of them. I suppose I could lower the challenge of the various monsters and what-not they're up against, but I really don't want to -- I'm seriously considering bumping the base up to 200/100.

[AmadanNaBriona]

I'm currently running a 100/100 High Fantasy campaign, and finding that even 200 points isn't enough; the characters still keep getting the snot kicked out of them. I suppose I could lower the challenge of the various monsters and what-not they're up against, but I really don't want to -- I'm seriously considering bumping the base up to 200/100.

You might try 100+150 or 150+100 first... I've done the 250 pt FH level for quite a while, and it works pretty well. Bear in mind how much XP accumulation will be going on... Most of my players were of the "Hoard it for a major addition" camp, but you can see some nasty power boosts if that isn't the case.

[Rapier]

I can't add much.

However, I've always thought that the Disad points should be about half of the base points. But that's a lot of blow-back from Supers where you have so many Base Points and the Disads are hard to come up with (it's hard to come up with 200 points of Disads for a single character). FH isn't so hard considering the number of Disad points are so much less (normally) than Supers games.

When I was trying to think at what power my Fantasy players should start I built about two dozen, notable "PC-Power" level characters as NPCs. Since this was the power the PCs were going to contend with I figured it made sense to start there.

I then spent some time adding some Disads to those characters and figured out what I thought was a normal Disad load. When you convert from Supers its WAY, WAY easy to come up with 75 pts of Disads. Then I adjusted the Base Points to match.

I was very surprised to find that the Fantasy Hero character were pushing SuperHeroic point levels. FH relies a great deal more on Skills than Supers. Skills cost points.

I've used 75+75. But we much prefer the 100+100, the 125 + 125 and we are currently using the 150 + 100.

It all depends on what you expect out of your characters. It's the same question we are asked when we talk about power levels for DC or something else. Are they Normals? Talented Normals? Are they Heroic? SuperHeroic? How do you see the players? If they are a dime a dozen, 75/75 sounds right. If they are once in a generation characters 150 + 100 sounds more appropriate.

It's all up to you to decide. Build some enemies...build LOTS of enemies. Then decide what it would take in an average game to defeat those enemies and design the point levels for the PCs on that.

[austenandrews]

Those are 75 point disad packages... I was talking more about coming up with 150 points worth.

Even with those ones, you're assigning higher values to some of them than I would, and a couple I would be pretty iffy about taking, or allowing, were I the GM.
I'm with you. When I think FH, I think 75+50 or so. 250 point FH? That's my default for starting Champions characters!

[tgrandjean]

Note that I have neither run nor played in an actual FH campaign (pretty much just Supes) but I'm thinking that it would be pretty reasonable to allow ~1/3 to 1/2 the point level as an active point cap.
That way they can still have a pretty potent power but still be reasonably diverse. 75,50,38 or 50,34,25
However, IIRC the world that you're building is fairly low magic.
So you might want to lower the cap a bit more (45 isn't bad- allows a 2d6 RKA with a 1/2 advantage) or require some pretty hefty advantages; Extra time and the like.

[Markdoc]

I like to start around 100: sometimes a bit lower, sometimes a bit higher. That gives "stands out in a crowd" or "highly skilled" but not "master thief" or "legendary warrior". I have had player characters up to about 400 points, though, after a few years' play.

I don't do points caps. I design spells and magic systems for my own games and let players do what seems reasonable within those limits.

A lot of what defines what points levels are appropriate depends on how you handle skills. If a character has a background as a blacksmith, then PS:blacksmith is good enough for me - I don't require PS: Small business owner, KS: grades of charcoal, KS:Blacksmith tools, etc. If you like to see characters with 10 or 12 skills outside of combat skills, then you need to give more points.

cheers, Mark

[Rapier]

A lot of what defines what points levels are appropriate depends on how you handle skills. If a character has a background as a blacksmith, then PS:blacksmith is good enough for me - I don't require PS: Small business owner, KS: grades of charcoal, KS:Blacksmith tools, etc. If you like to see characters with 10 or 12 skills outside of combat skills, then you need to give more points.

I totally agree. There was a thread a while back about Perk: Right to Marry that went over a bunch of this.

Where we usually end up pushing the points for skills is AKs and Languages, along with all the Combat Luck and Skill Levels. Most of our starting FH characters spend more on skills than our starting Champions characters.

[austenandrews]

A lot of what defines what points levels are appropriate depends on how you handle skills. If a character has a background as a blacksmith, then PS:blacksmith is good enough for me - I don't require PS: Small business owner, KS: grades of charcoal, KS:Blacksmith tools, etc. If you like to see characters with 10 or 12 skills outside of combat skills, then you need to give more points.
That's a good point. I'm in your camp. A laundry list of sub-skills seems superfluous to me (unless the game specifically centers around the umbrella activity). That probably cuts out 15-20 points right there. Also I've only ever used Combat Luck as a magic power, never as a standard ability that anyone can have. As I think about it, FH does have a ton of weird abilities built from powers that I would rarely if ever allow in my game. If people are buying from that list as a matter of course, I guess the points can stack up pretty quick.

At these power levels, though, I'm beginning to see why people have to throw arbitrary limits on CVs and whatnot. A 200 pt swordsman can have every MA maneuver in the book and double-digit levels to boot.

[Markdoc]

That's a good point. I'm in your camp. A laundry list of sub-skills seems superfluous to me (unless the game specifically centers around the umbrella activity). That probably cuts out 15-20 points right there. Also I've only ever used Combat Luck as a magic power, never as a standard ability that anyone can have. As I think about it, FH does have a ton of weird abilities built from powers that I would rarely if ever allow in my game. If people are buying from that list as a matter of course, I guess the points can stack up pretty quick.

At these power levels, though, I'm beginning to see why people have to throw arbitrary limits on CVs and whatnot. A 200 pt swordsman can have every MA maneuver in the book and double-digit levels to boot.

Actually I do - and have for many years - allow players in FH to buy "powers as skills" - what are now "fighting tricks" but what I have found is that most players will buy one or at most two, which become their "signature attack" or special shtick. So Susano's ninja character had "climb anything" as her special power, while several fighters have had an unranged selective area effect attack defined as swinging their spear by one end or a flurry of blows. Brok Bloodspear had his "mighty Salmon Leap", while another character had his "unhittable dodge" and another had a type of combat luck (called toughness, unlike combat luck you always take the first point of damage, but it always works: the character gains a movie-hero style wound which bleeds and is - in theory - serious, but which doesn't incapacitate them). Many of these maneuvers cost 10-20 points, which is a significant chunk even from a 200 point character - especially since a character who built up from 100 or so points is likely to have accreted a lot of languages and ancilliary skills.

cheers, Mark

[Earen]

I guess here is where I mention that when I first started with the HERO system, it was when supers were built with 100+100 ... and we liked it! My recent FH campaign was heroic with 75+75 and no active cap ... though we threw out the first traditional fantasy characters (warrior, priest, archer) and restarted with circus performers ... to encourage a less combat-oriented style of play.

The traditional characters wandered through an entire cave complex and came out in decent shape. The circus performers were seriously challenged by a couple goblins and a hobgoblin ... but I think the players felt more satisfied with the win.

So I guess it depends on the players ... do they want to be facing down Balrogs their first adventure out? Or do they want to work their way up from relatively normal to something special?

[Curufea]

Actually I do - and have for many years - allow players in FH to buy "powers as skills" - what are now "fighting tricks" but what I have found is that most players will buy one or at most two, which become their "signature attack" or special shtick. So Susano's ninja character had "climb anything" as her special power, while several fighters have had an unranged selective area effect attack defined as swinging their spear by one end or a flurry of blows. Brok Bloodspear had his "mighty Salmon Leap", while another character had his "unhittable dodge" and another had a type of combat luck (called toughness, unlike combat luck you always take the first point of damage, but it always works: the character gains a movie-hero style wound which bleeds and is - in theory - serious, but which doesn't incapacitate them). Many of these maneuvers cost 10-20 points, which is a significant chunk even from a 200 point character - especially since a character who built up from 100 or so points is likely to have accreted a lot of languages and ancilliary skills.

cheers, Mark
In Dark Champions, these are called "Super Skills". You can find a list of the ones from the Dark Champions forum thread here-
http://www.curufea.com/hero/doku.php?id=resources:super_skills

And I'm tempted to put a list over in the Fantasy Hero section as well - I think it's a great idea for the more wuxia-like high fantasy games.

[Markdoc]

In Dark Champions, these are called "Super Skills". You can find a list of the ones from the Dark Champions forum thread here-
http://www.curufea.com/hero/doku.php?id=resources:super_skills

And I'm tempted to put a list over in the Fantasy Hero section as well - I think it's a great idea for the more wuxia-like high fantasy games.

Hey, do it!

cheers, Mark

[Curufea]

Your wish is my command :)
http://www.curufea.com/hero/doku.php?id=resources:wuxia_skills

Of course, it's fairly sparse at the moment...

[Vondy]

I run 100+100 with no point caps. On the other hand, I approve all spells or weird abilities, and spells are purchased as individual skills (no pens based on active points, but pens based on circumstances, which encourages them to purchase critical skills at higher that 9+STAT/5). I like well-rounded characters with depth and background. It takes points to make them them.