JohnTaber Posted February 18, 2003 Report Share Posted February 18, 2003 Hi Gents, I am starting a new Standard Super Heroic (350 pts) four color Champions campaign with 4 players. My group is made up of mostly experienced Hero gamers but they have never played FREd. I ended up with two PC that are almost agents without too many off the wall things and two PC that are true 4 color hero types but both have questionable rule constructs. Keep reading. I ran into three interesting but somewhat unrelated issues... Issue #1 - The two agent level characters have powers but are Dex 20 SPD 4 types. One has Ego powers but the other does not. The other two PC are speed 6 and 7. I'm worried that these guys are too underpowered. Should I carry on? Should I reel in the higher powered PC a bit? Issue #2 - One of the PC is a martial artist. Is it me or is it really cheap to buy martial artists at 350 points? His PC seems MUCH grosser than the others? Issue #3 - The two more powerful PC have defensive EC. BOTH have an EC at 10 points full of defenses (Power Defense, Flash Defense, Mental Defense, PD, ED, Damage Resistence, etc). One also has an EC with movement powers AND an EC with Danger Sense, Spacial Awareness, and DCV levels. The special effects for these EC are actually ok. Should I let it go and see how it plays out? Whaddya think guys? Suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monolith Posted February 18, 2003 Report Share Posted February 18, 2003 Re: New Campaign PC Issues Originally posted by JohnTaber Issue #3 - The two more powerful PC have defensive EC. BOTH have an EC at 10 points full of defenses (Power Defense, Flash Defense, Mental Defense, PD, ED, Damage Resistence, etc). One also has an EC with movement powers AND an EC with Danger Sense, Spacial Awareness, and DCV levels. The special effects for these EC are actually ok. Should I let it go and see how it plays out? Most of the powers you have listed above are not legal in an EC, and most of them I would not allow. For example, all the Defense powers are not allowed in EC. This is because all those powers are very cheap in the first place, and should not be getting any cost breaks. The same for the EC with Danger Sense, Spacial Awareness and DCV. Those powers are not allowed in an EC either. It sounds like you have a couple of munchkin players there to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jhamin Posted February 18, 2003 Report Share Posted February 18, 2003 Re: Re: New Campaign PC Issues Originally posted by Monolith Most of the powers you have listed above are not legal in an EC, and most of them I would not allow. For example, all the Defense powers are not allowed in EC. This is because all those powers are very cheap in the first place, and should not be getting any cost breaks. The same for the EC with Danger Sense, Spacial Awareness and DCV. Those powers are not allowed in an EC either. It sounds like you have a couple of munchkin players there to me. If you have a bunch of experienced hero gamers at the table it is also probably very likely that they didn't read the section on ECs in FREd. The rules on what is and is not legal in an Elemental Control changed alot between 4th Ed and FREd. You are going to have to reread that section of the rules and then review the characters again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jhamin Posted February 18, 2003 Report Share Posted February 18, 2003 On issue #1 I have found that a three point spread in character Speed scores is pretty healthy, as long as the rest of the character is balanced for being real fast or real slow. The slower speed charcters should either be doing more damage, be alot tougher, or be much more accurate with their attacks than the faster guys if you want balance. If everybody has the same attacks and defenses but somebody has two more points of speed, then you will probably have trouble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monolith Posted February 18, 2003 Report Share Posted February 18, 2003 Just to sum it up simply for JohnTaber, a power which does not cost the character END cannot be placed in an Elemental Control. Every power which the character has listed above cannot be put into an EC because of that. Now as a the GM you can over-ride that rule, but if you do that you are setting a precedent which will lead to larger issues in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDU Neil Posted February 18, 2003 Report Share Posted February 18, 2003 Re: New Campaign PC Issues Originally posted by JohnTaber Hi Gents, I am starting a new Standard Super Heroic (350 pts) four color Champions campaign with 4 players. My group is made up of mostly experienced Hero gamers but they have never played FREd. I ended up with two PC that are almost agents without too many off the wall things and two PC that are true 4 color hero types but both have questionable rule constructs. Keep reading. I ran into three interesting but somewhat unrelated issues... Issue #1 - The two agent level characters have powers but are Dex 20 SPD 4 types. One has Ego powers but the other does not. The other two PC are speed 6 and 7. I'm worried that these guys are too underpowered. Should I carry on? Should I reel in the higher powered PC a bit? Issue #2 - One of the PC is a martial artist. Is it me or is it really cheap to buy martial artists at 350 points? His PC seems MUCH grosser than the others? Issue #3 - The two more powerful PC have defensive EC. BOTH have an EC at 10 points full of defenses (Power Defense, Flash Defense, Mental Defense, PD, ED, Damage Resistence, etc). One also has an EC with movement powers AND an EC with Danger Sense, Spacial Awareness, and DCV levels. The special effects for these EC are actually ok. Should I let it go and see how it plays out? Whaddya think guys? Suggestions? 1. If you are using the Speed Chart as written, the 4 SPD guys will be twiddling their thumbs and completely outclassed. If this is a super world, I'd encourage them to be 5 SPDs at least. (If interested, I have a very different way of using SPD that is simple and works using initiative. Low speeds and high speeds work much better together in my system. If you want to look into that, just send me a personal message.) 2. Yes, I agree that martial artists (especially mini-brick martial artists) are extremely broken in FReD. I'm running an all martial arts campaign right now, and it is VERY quickly spiraling into HUGE amounts of damage. Martial arts with DCs with STR with Hand Attacks, all backed by good DEX and SPD stats... very, very combat effective. 3. As Monolith said, those powers are not legal in an EC. Despite my hatred of ECs in general (I think they are the most abused framework in the game) they are sometimes useful. Less so, these days, when you get 350 starting points in most games. I would, personally, suggest trying to pitch ECs from your game all together... just to see how it goes... 'cause it might bring some balance to your predicament. YMMV Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattingly Posted February 18, 2003 Report Share Posted February 18, 2003 I'd recommend lowering the SPD 7 to a SPD 6, giving you two 6es and two 4s, which is a lot more manageable. That way, the PCs will all go, then the two fast, then the two slow, then the two fast; Repeat. Not that much of a difference. With Mental Powers, a SPD 4 is plenty. The ability to almost guarantee a Stunned target (20+ STUN from an Ego Attack), or to render a target useless (Illusions) or friendly (Mind Control) makes up for fewer actions per Turn. The one thing that might help him out is to buy Lightning Reflexes with mental powers, up to his EGO (which I'm guessing is greater than 20). That way, in combat order, he goes when his EGO turns up, not his DEX. For the Martial Artist -- well, sure, Martial Arts add up, but he could have been even more effective if he had put the same points into STR and DEX (or HA and CSLs). Plus, he's probably no use at range, and probably has low defenses. The EC powers have alreayd been addressed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Posted February 18, 2003 Report Share Posted February 18, 2003 Re: New Campaign PC Issues Originally posted by JohnTaber ... Issue #1 - The two agent level characters have powers but are Dex 20 SPD 4 types. One has Ego powers but the other does not. The other two PC are speed 6 and 7. I'm worried that these guys are too underpowered. Should I carry on? Should I reel in the higher powered PC a bit?... Being concerned about the enjoyment of the players is good GMing, but meddling without being asked it bad GMing. Talk to them about it. If they're not enjoying the game because they're so low-powered let them upgrade with a "radiation accident" or something. Also, more experienced players can get a lot more out of their characters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tamashii2000 Posted February 18, 2003 Report Share Posted February 18, 2003 Re: New Campaign PC Issues Originally posted by JohnTaber [ Issue #2 - One of the PC is a martial artist. Is it me or is it really cheap to buy martial artists at 350 points? His PC seems MUCH grosser than the others? Lot of it depends on exactly how the character is made, My current online group, For which I am recruiting (Shameless PLUG!) , has a brick/martial artist hybrid (wonder girl clone). Althrough on paper she looks pretty average, she has so far taken down ever single villian she's faught, then lost to 2 thugs with caddle prods.... go figure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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