Player-Built Characters...

[Magmarock]

My character Zl'f is hands down the fastest character on our team, but she's also at the absolute bottom of the damage done list. We often end up fighting villains where her low dice attacks (8-10d6) simply cannot cause the villain harm.

Heh. Reminds me of the time I ran my speedster, Skedaddle. She was SPD 9 and could rarely do more than run circles around the villains and thumb her nose at them. Sure, Skedaddle had her autofire punch which worked great on agents, but against other supers she was no match. Then I discovered the solution: fire-extinguisher! Those autofire punches got a whole lot nastier after that.

Truthfully, if we had continued that campaign much longer, I would have had to pay points for this handiest of gadgets/weapons, which, I might add, were so easy to find as fire and health-code regulations require them in all pubilc buildings.


Mags
aka Skedaddle

[Dust Raven]

So the moral of the story is

Dont build characters who are exceptional, be average or else the whole universe is going to target your weakness every single game.

thats quites sad really

i feel sorry for juggernaught,hulk,flash...............

There is a difference between exceptional and grossly overbalanced.

But feel free to feel sorry for Juggernaught and The Hulk, as in both cases the whole universe does in fact consistantly target their weakness in every single story they are involved in.

The Flash is different, because he's not overbalanced. He's just really hard to hit (a bit different from being impossible to hit or being invulnerable).

[Trebuchet]

Heh. Reminds me of the time I ran my speedster, Skedaddle. She was SPD 9 and could rarely do more than run circles around the villains and thumb her nose at them. Sure, Skedaddle had her autofire punch which worked great on agents, but against other supers she was no match. Then I discovered the solution: fire-extinguisher! Those autofire punches got a whole lot nastier after that.

Truthfully, if we had continued that campaign much longer, I would have had to pay points for this handiest of gadgets/weapons, which, I might add, were so easy to find as fire and health-code regulations require them in all pubilc buildings.

I love that name (Skedaddle), Magmarok. That's a real midwest Americanism.

By "using" fire-extinguishers I'm assuming you mean using them as a club for extra DCs and not using the CO² or other flame suppressant? Zl'f is much less a speedster than she is a really fast Martial Artist, but she is pretty scary if she picks up a staff or sticks. In a recent adventure she picked up the staff of our team's other MA when he got KO'd and went to town on three supervillains. She's actually better with that weapon than it's owner, and she also does more damage with it than he does.

[GamePhil]

I have always gotten perfectly good results with allowing my players to build their characters without my supervision (I still need to approve them, of course), as long as they know the rules and really understand the setting. In fact, it has proven a useful tool to gauge how well they understand the setting by looking at the characters they give me.

However, the one area where I have had difficulty is if I allow other people to build characters for my players. The recipient in my experience never gets a good enough character, so I'll just build all characters myself for players that don't understand the rules, or discuss it with them.

[Vorsch]

There is a difference between exceptional and grossly overbalanced.

But feel free to feel sorry for Juggernaught and The Hulk, as in both cases the whole universe does in fact consistantly target their weakness in every single story they are involved in.

The Flash is different, because he's not overbalanced. He's just really hard to hit (a bit different from being impossible to hit or being invulnerable).

The hulk comics ive read tend to have the hulk fight other strong opponents not a continuous supply of NND, flash, drain, mental attack guys.

If there weakness are targeted its not usually by direct powers but enviromental uses, ie jugernaught trapped in concrete while fighting spiderman.

If i build a dex 45 spd 12 Ma the universe will now spawn AA entangle agents, if i kept it to dex 30 spd 6 it wouldnt. Hmmmm

The flash is quite overbalanced IMPO.

[Vorsch]

As to Zl'lf, your better with the other MAs weapons than he is in terms of damage and CV, i hope he has some other abilities cos you just stole his thunder.

[Trebuchet]

As to Zl'lf, your better with the other MAs weapons than he is in terms of damage and CV, i hope he has some other abilities cos you just stole his thunder.

Well, yes, he does. He's as much a "martial mystic" as a straight MA, and he has a number of unusual abilities such as Healing, Teleportation, Power Defense, and Mental Awareness plus his defenses are 50% higher than Zl'f's, plus he is a master of numerous martial weapons. Eagle Eye more than holds his own so far as "thunder."

Zl'f does not typically use weapons of any kind; she normally fights barehanded nor does she even carry a weapon. The incident I cited was a special case where the team had been ambushed and Zl'f was one of the only two PCs still standing (because they missed her due to her 15 DCV). Because she was facing several villains and needed to put them down before they could hurt her downed comrades, she grabbed the Stunned Eagle Eye's +4DC staff up and proceeded to clobber 3 of the 5 or 6 villains with it. She returned the staff as soon as Eagle Eye recovered from being Stunned. Since Eagle Eye is specifically designed to fight with weapons whereas Zl'f is not; she is very effective with the few weapons for which she has Weapon Element and Weapon Familiarity. So far those weapons include only staffs, sticks, and fist-loads. She plans to master sword fighting somewhere down the line as well, but that probably won't be for another year.

[Magmarock]

I love that name (Skedaddle), Magmarok. That's a real midwest Americanism.

By "using" fire-extinguishers I'm assuming you mean using them as a club for extra DCs and not using the CO² or other flame suppressant? Zl'f is much less a speedster than she is a really fast Martial Artist, but she is pretty scary if she picks up a staff or sticks. In a recent adventure she picked up the staff of our team's other MA when he got KO'd and went to town on three supervillains. She's actually better with that weapon than it's owner, and she also does more damage with it than he does.

Thanks, Trebuchet. I like the name, too. Skedaddle is a strawberry-blond, southern belle. Her costume even has a vague, "civil war uniform" style to it, like the cap she wears (don't ask how that stays on her head, I wouldn't know the answer). I posted a pic of her in the Superhero Images thread. My art starts on page 12. Just posted some new stuff, too. The special effect of her speed is she is ultra-hyper. She is also a mutant with a gun-slinger mentality. That got her in a lot of trouble.

As for the fire extinguisher, I never had a chance to use it for putting out fires. I normally would just trip a villain and then bash his face in with the butt-end of the thing (autofire) before he has a chance to get up. SPD 9 facilitates that.

Mags

[zornwil]

The approach first described by Etherio sounds fine enough by me though I haven't done it that way. Normally it's either me getting a complete PC that I need to review (and usually well before the games but once in a while just at the game start) or more likely going back and forth with a player on his PC.

PS/EDIT - I should add that I don't tend to have the players do much pre-campaign coooperation as I like the PCs to really feel like they are "meeting" or otherwise joining forces in a momentous occassion, and I think the surprise sort of helps with that.