Scary Characters

[Cyberknight]

Sparked by reading a post in another thread.

As far as I can tell, there are certain archeotypical Champions characters: Brick, Energy Projector, Mentalist, Martial Artist / Speedster, Shapechanger. (Did I miss one?)

So...
Which type do you (As either GM or player) consider 'scariest' / most intimidating, and why do you have that opinion?

Cyberknight

[Monolith]

The classic archetypes, as they breakdown in Champions, are:
Brick, Energy Projector, Gadgeteer, Martial Artist, Mentalist, Metamorph, Mystic, Patriot, Powered Armored, Speedster, and Weapon's Master.

Now for myself I think that either Brick or Mystic has the most potential for being scary. My players can testify that there is few things scarrier than running into The Monster in a dark and misty night. And Mystics, well they just have that whole evil magic thing going. You never know if they are hellspawn or something else entirely and there always seem to be some type of sacrifice involved in whatever they do.

[Cyberknight]

I flat overlooked Mystic and Gadgeteer. Some of the others, though, I have to question as being Archeotypes, regardless of how the books label them. I never did understand how "Patriot", "Battlesuit" and "Weapon Master" got promoted from character concept or special effect to Archeotype. No disrespect intended (just ask the people who game with me. Patriotic is a trademark for my characters, and OIF - Power Armor is so common for me that when I *don't* have it, I get strange looks.)

IMO, Patriot is a psychological limitation, battlesuits are special effects / foci, and Weapon Masters are either Martial Arts types (if melee), or crack shots (if ranged).

[Doug McCrae]

Mentalists and bricks are the scariest. Mentalists can break your mind, bricks can break your body.

[Agent X]

Mystics are the nastiest. They can justify so many powers. If you ignore mystics it has to be mentalists but mystics often are mentalists with more cool stuff.

[TheEmerged]

They all have problems, IMO -- just varying degrees thereof. What follows are my opinion of the worse-case issues.

The brick tends to be very point-friendly, but tend to get very bland in play. "I move up to the bad guy... and punch them."

Martial Artists tend to suffer from "reverse brickness" -- if your MA has the out-of-combat skills you want, chances are you don't have the combat abilities you want. From where I type, that's a good thing, but players that want to start the game as Batman Year 33 find this infuriating...

Mystics, gadgeteers, and to a lesser extent mentalists have the "Black Box" problem -- it's possible to justify almost anything with these backgrounds. That makes finding a coherent character (as opposed to "neat stuff I'd like to do") concept troublesome.

Mentalists, unchecked, cause another problem that personally is the reason they bother me the most -- the capacity to destroy mysteries and/or subvert threats. Especially if running a villain/black hat campaign, nothing removes the challenge like general-purpose Mind Control.

Flagsuits tend toward stereotypes, and stereotypes are either going to offend or get boring.

Speedsters create an interesting problem: they can't be as powerful in HERO as players want them to be. Let's face it, superspeed is the ultimate cheese (even moreso than mentalists in my opinion). HERO's SPD mechanic actually does a good job of checking this -- at the expense of making everyone who wants to pull a Flash/Neo (attack 72 times for every opponent's attack) feel cheated.

[Rage]

Originally posted by TheEmerged

Speedsters create an interesting problem: they can't be as powerful in HERO as players want them to be. Let's face it, superspeed is the ultimate cheese (even moreso than mentalists in my opinion). HERO's SPD mechanic actually does a good job of checking this -- at the expense of making everyone who wants to pull a Flash/Neo (attack 72 times for every opponent's attack) feel cheated.

Its funny Speedsters can attack 72 times, just purchase the attack as an EB area of effect selective, (or buy extra HTH for repeated blows) and have the sfx as super speed.

[TheEmerged]

I know, Rage, the thing is they don't want to do it backhanded -- the kind of player I'm talking about wants to ATTACK 72 times more often than their opponents :rolleyes:

[Archon]

In my present campaign, nothing scared the other PC's more than when my mystic started doing things. They were constantly giving me strange looks.

[levi]

My answer to this thread's question would be...

Poorly Thought Out Characters

This is really more a problem with certain types of players than any archetype. I have seen characters from each of the archetypes mentioned played by people who are looking to play out a good story an people who are just looking to cause as much havok as possible.

Character Archetypes should be a matter of frameworks and special effects because when you get right down to it, 12d6 is 12d6 whether it comes from magic spells, plasma blasts or the fist at the end of a brick's arm.

If the characters are assailed by threats with varying types of attacks (physical, energy, mental, drains/transfers) they will adapt their characters through experience. As GMs we must do the same. The CKC was not etched in stone and in my campaign Grond may well have Mindless Rage: 30 points of Hardened Mental Defense if I had a PSI on the PC Team that could stop the bruiser before he could become a source of dramatic tension.

All to often RPGs become contests between the Players VS the GM instead of an opportunity for the group to work together to tell a story about their characters and the world they live in.

[Cyberknight]

Your point about the universe not being carved in stone is well taken, Levi, but the approach you mention in passing sounds like it could cause its own form of problem.

You mention giving your Campaign Grond 30 points of hardened mental defense, just in case your PC psi can stop him before dramatic tension is created...unfortunately, what you (or I, as GM) see as 'dramatic tension' can be (and often is) seen by the players as either the god-Villian syndrome, where the villian in question is immune to (or at least well protected against) anything the team can throw at him or it, or as 'picking on' a particular character. Mentalists in particular, in my experience, seem sensitive to the latter interpretation, and sometimes, rightly so. It's very tempting to say "I have a mentalist here, so everybody gets Mental Defense", but that's not always the best approach to the problem.

Cyberknight

[Gary]

Anybody creative with a VPP.

[Rechan]

I'm going to say Mentalist. Why?

Because a mentalist can do damn well anything to screw you over.

"Wait, where'd the badguy go?" Mindscan. With a powerful mindscan, you can locate anyone in a city.
"Who is that masked man, really?" Telepathy: BOOP, I have his secret identity, and where his base is located.
"He's kicking our butts!" Mind control: STOP RESISTING.

Then you get into major cheese, like a continous EGO attack that's area effect.

[Cyberknight]

Rechan, I feel your pain. There is one quick and dirty (and unsporting) solution to the Area Effect, Continuous Attack mentalist, though.

Competent Normal (Sniper Specialist) w/2.5D6 RKA, Extended Range, No range Mods (OAF Winchester .308 w/bipod and scope).

Heavy handed? Yes. OTOH, so is a continuous mental attack :)

[Balok]

Choosing from the archetypes -- I'd say mystic. Anyone that can take over the mind has real terror potential.

However, I think real *scary* comes from the character's personality, and transcends the type of character. A soul-dead psychopath, properly run, is terrifying no matter what the source of his powers.

[Insaniac99]

Originally posted by Cyberknight
Rechan, I feel your pain. There is one quick and dirty (and unsporting) solution to the Area Effect, Continuous Attack mentalist, though.

Competent Normal (Sniper Specialist) w/2.5D6 RKA, Extended Range, No range Mods (OAF Winchester .308 w/bipod and scope).

Heavy handed? Yes. OTOH, so is a continuous mental attack :)

nah you don't even need to do that, the city just happens to develop Psi detectors and little helmets that provide Mental defense, and then impose laws, and guess waht, the "hero" is now a villain on the run or in the courts. this can serve as a warning and then punishment if they continue it...

[Klytus]

The one villain that gave my players the heebie-jeebiez doesn't quite fit into any of the standard archetypes... though I guess hes best defined as a mystic.

The Elementals (in my campaign) are a group of ... wait for it... elemental creatures. They are lead by Void - an utterly silent creature who looks like a human silouette carved out of the fabric of reality. He has one mental attack, an Ego Attack where the SFX is filling your mind with emptiness. What makes him truly ugly, though, is that he is always Desolid, but his STR and Drains (one is a 5d6 Drain vs BODY, the other a 3d6 Drain vs All Powers of All SFX) can affect the Real World. Unless you have magical power FX (which most of our players do not) he's untouchable. I think it is simply the effect of the silent and unstoppable foe that creeps the players out.

[Rechan]

Originally posted by Cyberknight
Rechan, I feel your pain. There is one quick and dirty (and unsporting) solution to the Area Effect, Continuous Attack mentalist, though.

Competent Normal (Sniper Specialist) w/2.5D6 RKA, Extended Range, No range Mods (OAF Winchester .308 w/bipod and scope).

Heavy handed? Yes. OTOH, so is a continuous mental attack :)

People scoffed at me on the boards when I said I don't like using Mentalist villains. Seeing is this is a Dark Champions game, I would feel it'd be stupid *not* to play a mentalist like they're made, and therefore, they would go for the secret identity of this well hated vigilante, and then game over.

I kinda respect the drama and the players more, then doing that. :)

[Cyberknight]

The problem with mass-produced Psi detectors / Psi screens is that you've started a slow but almost unstoppable 'techno creep'. It's not hard to explain why VIPER uses laser rifles while the US Army uses cased projectiles (Cost, durability, organizational inertia)...but once you start making super-tech generally available, things can get out of hand even faster than they can with an overbearing mentalist.

I like your general idea though, and it's one that I actually did use...but the 'psi detectors' in this instance were telepaths for hire who acted as psychic bodyguards for the wealthy and / or influential. Where, you ask, did the 'talent agency' in question find so many telepaths? That, gentle reader, is a story for another time. :)

[Hermit]

I find mystics a lot more versitile, and therefore dangerous that pure mentalists... but all of them can be frightening. Like someone else said, it's a matter of attitude. ;)

[White Heat]

Originally posted by Klytus
SNIP ... Void - an utterly silent creature who looks like a human silouette carved out of the fabric of reality. He has one mental attack, an Ego Attack where the SFX is filling your mind with emptiness. What makes him truly ugly, though, is that he is always Desolid, but his STR and Drains (one is a 5d6 Drain vs BODY, the other a 3d6 Drain vs All Powers of All SFX) can affect the Real World. Unless you have magical power FX (which most of our players do not) he's untouchable. I think it is simply the effect of the silent and unstoppable foe that creeps the players out.

Void. I shudder to remember Void. You couldn't do anything to the man. He'd just stand there and let whatever you tossed at him sail on past -- or more likely through him -- and although he was silent, I always had the distinct impression that he was laughing at me. I hate Void, and it doesn't help to know that to him I am less than nothing -- a pebble on his path to conquest. Ick.

Then again, Klytus is good at creating bad guys. Devastator is a very serious take on The Tick (deadpan serious, but nigh invulnerable), the only way to knock him down is by moving him, and he had an obscene amount of knockback resistance. Ring Lord wears this ring, on which he has become dependent, that fuels his powers and his armor (his minions have similar, less powerful rings). Personally, White Heat herself is frightened of Whelm, a water elemental working with Void, or she would be if she had ever encountered her. There was this one character, Absolute Zero, who turned another of my PCs, Photon Blue, into an ice statue (yeah, yeah, she finally thawed out), and this absolutely freaked out one of our players, a character named Anaba (7' tall female Native American with Shaman powers of Bear, Deer, and Thunderbird, among others). Anaba was all for killing Absolute Zero, as I recall, but he escaped.

None of his NPCs are indefeatable, they just look it. Ring Lord, for example, after defeating Photon Blue and PsiLord, ended up in the local Stronghold after Photon Blue took strong offense at Ring Lord's putting her buddy PsiLord in the hospital. She took him down single-handed. Before you gasp, you gotta remember that Photon Blue's an absorber, and Ring Lord kept feeding her with energy blasts. Oh, well. Now, whenever he escapes from Stronghold, you can hear him yell across the city: "Where is she?!" PB always says to herself: "Uh oh, he's out again!" and the battle ensues. Personally, I think Ring Lord's hysterical. :D

[Cyberknight]

I personally like bricks. Yes, the basic brick tactic is fairly simple (close and engage), but the sheer power (and the ability to soak up damage if something goes wrong) allows a creative brick to do some really spectacular stunts. Toss your cute little plasma bolts all you want. I'll guarantee you that the 24' slab of solid muscle looming over the Villian of the Day will be the one making the big PRE attack :cool:

And if you get tired of being a pure HTH sort, you can always buy an EB (CHARGES, OAF - Large Ball Bearings), or just toss the occasional Buick :D

[death tribble]

I played one for the scare power and that was a mystic. After her soul was bonded with a demon's so that half was in her own body and half in the demon's, Cosmic Girl decided that her current name was not any good anymore. So she went the Batman route and took the name the Demoness.

Her powers were magic via a VPP. Basically she could do anything with magic. But she could transform into a demon and there was a red tint in her eyes. And when she went enraged due to her now demonic nature. One trick she did was touch the soul. If you did not kill or were not very evil, you were immune. If not she could inflict the punishments of Hell on the soul. Of course if you did not have a soul anymore you were also immune. This sort of stuff works.

Then on the opposition was Nightmare. Nightmare sold her soul for power. And one of her little tricks was a presence drain damge shield. She say BOO and off you ran. It helped that she could look like a giant manta ray in flight as well. Again this was a mystic.

[FogHat]

Nothing is worse than getting surprised by a charactor who is invisible. Your winning a fight and bammo your hit from behind by whatever attack they have. If it is ranged or hth your left trying to cover yourself rather than fight the other guys who can at the very least pull a recovery.

A subset would be an ALD Flash. Blind... I hate blind..

[Enforcer84]

Powerman, my Superman class brick; he of 100 str, 23 dex, 50 pd, and 5 spd. Was constantly derrided by my fellow players because he had a few "More Powerful" Hunteds that kept showing up and making him look silly.

Then, he was mindcontrolled. Taken over by the GM, He attacked the rest of the team. He KILLED the martial artist in one shot, and although the team (500 pt campaign) generally had equall defenses/attacks as Powerman, he was the Big Gun as far as combat went and he scared the crap out of them.

His Archnemesis, Zepplin (bad name, but...) was basically Powermanx2. When we, as a team finally managed to defeat him, one of the characters coup de graced him when the rest of us, mostly me, had gone to help with the clean up.