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What point levels and why?


phydaux

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What point level do you start your PCs and, and why?

 

My gaming group starts PCs at 125+25.  At that level the PCs are good at their jobs, but they aren't UNSTOPPABLE.  Not every fighter has Deadly Blow, not every PC has Combat Luck.  An ork with a spear or a city guard with a short sword is still a threat.

 

I've been kicking around ramping the campaign up to Heroic, 150+25.  At this level the PCs will be more epic, and common peasants with daggers will not be a hazard.  But the PCs will have to adjust to the idea that nearly every "bad guy" NPC will have Deadly Blow & Combat Luck, and they will have to build their PCs and play accordingly.

 

What levels do you play at?

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I like lower starting point values for a lot of reasons, partly because it gives you more room to grow in, but mostly because it makes low end enemies a threat: guards, wolves, goblins, etc.  Anything more than that and you start getting enough points to buy stuff like martial arts maneuvers, lots of levels, and more skills.

 

I don't like, use, or allow deadly blow in my campaign.  If you want to hit harder you can get martial arts but the whole "I just hit harder because its a D&D feat" thing doesn't work for me. Combat Luck, only if your concept and character can make sense to me as a GM.  Not just "so I have better defenses."

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I have been considering starting the PCs as Low-Powered Superheroes at 300 points (240+60) in my next Fantasy Hero​ campaign. My reasoning being that I want to be able to focus more on epic adventures and grand quests, and less on petty tomb robbery and dungeon crawling. I've had about my fill of the latter from running Pathfinder. I fully expect the characters to be powerful entities right out the gate, but I am confidant I can still challenge them even if they do not have fear for their lives in combat against an orcish raiding party or the town guards.

 

As far as my house-rules go:

I use Fantasy Hero Complete as my primary rules reference, and Champions Complete ​as my secondary rules reference. All material from outside those documents is subject to my approval depending upon the nature of the campaign.

I always use Hit Locations (where appropriate), and I rarely use either Knockback or Knockdown (though to be fair its usually just because I forget it exists... too used to Pathfinder). I almost never use the other combat options (like Wounding, or Impairing & Disabling Wounds).

I typically disallow Combat Luck, Deadly Blow, Turn Undead, and Weaponmaster regardless of the nature of the campaign. Meanwhile I allow Ambidexterity, Lightning Reflexes and Striking Appearance unconditionally. All other Talents are subject to my approval depending upon the nature of the campaign.

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My group never has time to commit to a long campaign, we meet sporadically and cannot always guarantee the same folk. We switch systems and campaigns constantly.

 

The upside? Experience is not an issue. The characters are almost designed to be throwaway, like a convention game. As such they are designed and built for the game they play in. Even if I return to a particular set, I can ramp the power up (later in their career) or tamp it down (earlier). The players trust me not to screw them over and I always leave a bit of headroom for them to customise.

 

Like in comics, as I have got older, I have become less enamoured with continuity.

 

Doc

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The fantasy game I run started around 100 pts until one player didn't understand me so I bumbed everyone to 125-5th ed.

 

Speaking of weaker opponents, I got inspired to run another scenerio because I picked.up some.Kobold Champions from Reaper (Bones). I really got the evil Gm glean from it. I told my brother who is a player and said about he wants to face a tough opponent. The others were too weak. My dwarf can take it! All I hear is Challenge Accepted! And as a side side note, since Im using fifth, I could not use all.my martial art damage increase due to the soubling rules. So I bought something like deadly blow just the.mace can do full damage!

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Everyone in my Hero group had been playing for 20+ years so they just plain are not interested in starting another "level 1" character as we put it.

So we normally start fantasy around 175+50 (sometimes higher) and other settings are normally a little buffer also, such as Supers starting around 450+100. Normally these extra points do not get used for raw DC instead they get used on skills and diversity.

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It depends greatly on my vision for the campaign. I've ran everything from "Epic Everymen" (About 25 points plus Everyman skills) to just shy of "Supers with Spells" and just about everything in between. My preference, probably due to my D&D background, is "Zero to Hero" where the characters start out low in points but experience awards are generous. It allows me to have a hand in shaping the characters to fit within the boundaries of the campaign while still giving the players a sense of accomplishment.

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I started out a campaign once with 0+25 points in disads.  In my rebuild of the Aaron Allston AD&D adventure Treasure Island that's the point level I used for "0 level" characters.  It was fun.

 

In my experience any point levels work, but as you get to the extreme high end of the genre, it starts losing its charm for me at least.  1200 point superheroes have nowhere to grow, and challenges have to be so catastrophic as to become absurd in a campaign of any length.  OK what universe-destroying cataclysmic horror do we face this week?

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1200 point superheroes have nowhere to grow, and challenges have to be so catastrophic as to become absurd in a campaign of any length.  OK what universe-destroying cataclysmic horror do we face this week?

 

Yeah, that's the classic problem with Space Opera.  Last month Flash Gordon saved the planet.  Last week he saved the solar system.  This week he fended off a threat to the whole galaxy.  

 

"Whacha gonna do next week, Flash?"

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100+100, 125+100, and 125+75 are the most common point levels I've experienced in lasting (multi-year) games.  I tend to prefer darker, grittier games where PC's die, independent foci are lost,and (generally speaking) actions have consequences ... and these are point levels where characters are far enough beyond normal to kick ass, yet still experience other normals with weapons as very real, mortal threats.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Everyone in my Hero group had been playing for 20+ years so they just plain are not interested in starting another "level 1" character as we put it.

So we normally start fantasy around 175+50 (sometimes higher) and other settings are normally a little buffer also, such as Supers starting around 450+100. Normally these extra points do not get used for raw DC instead they get used on skills and diversity.

Ditto. I like to play actual heroes - not necessarily the Most Powerful People, but competent people whose actions make a real difference in the world. I get enough Ineffectual Normal in real life [rimshot].

 

For heroic games, I like starting at 200 or 225 (+50). I find, at least with my players, that giving them a few more points leads to more well-rounded characters rather than just more powerful characters. Less compromising of character concept because the player can't afford decent combat skills and [fun background bit].

 

I do think a lot depends on how long you envision the campaign to run. I used to like those long drawn out campaigns where you'd run the same character for years and years and have time to see them advance from zero to hero, and there's a certain satisfaction to that. But our games these days tend to be more self-contained with a planned endpoint - all subject to change of course, but the overall story has a destination. Our last campaign ran 50 game sessions; the one before that only 38. At 1-2 XP per session, that's barely enough XP to get you from Competent Normal to Standard Heroic.

 

I also wonder if part of it comes down to how much emphasis is placed on story vs character, and how much is placed on character advancement (ie XP) vs character growth? No a right or wrong answer, and of course the two aren't mutually exclusive. But I do feel like some players I've known get focused on XP advancement as a substitute for meaningful character growth.

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So for 6e I would probably go with 150+50. I HATE Zero to Hero. I have done it so many times as GM and Player. Probably an artifact of short lived campaigns. I like the PC's to start out as competent heroines/heroes. I like that in 6e you have fewer Complications so you can concentrate on the important ones.

I MAY someday run a Campaign at Superheroic levels. Basically the PCs would be the Iconic Characters that appear in the Forgotten Realms novels. Fighting Avatars of the Gods, Full sized Dragons etc.

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It works best if you hand out xps in delayed larger chunks, rather than a trickle over time.  I recommend giving more xps than the rules suggest as well.  3-5 xps a session rather than 1-2 means quicker buildup and that works well if you're doing a shorter run rather than an extended campaign.

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That means you're doing it right IMO. Also, that you have good players.

 

Yes, but some players (one I can think of is a prolific thread starter in the Fantasy Hero forum) can't get past the "start weak, get powerful, then get VERY powerful" trope ingrained into that other poly-dice game.  He doesn't want to play that poly dice game, he wants to play Hero System, but he ALSO wants 50 XP to produce that huge growth in player power level.

 

It's like when I had a player who had only ever played D&D and he was playing Fantasy Hero for the first time.  He said he wanted to play a Monk, so I helped him build a religious martial artist.  Later the party ended up on the wrong end of some poison weapons.

 

"Well my character is immune to poison, so I'm OK."

 

"What?  Your character isn't immune to poison."

 

"Yes he is.  He's a Monk.  Monks are immune to poison."

 

"D&D Monks are immune to poison.  We're not playing D&D."

 

"So this game doesn't have Monks?"

 

"This game has whatever you want."

 

"Oh.  Well, I want to play a Monk, and Monks are immune to poison."

 

Sadly this player was in his 30s and had a college education.  Sometimes I weep for the future of our nation....

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some players... can't get past the "start weak, get powerful, then get VERY powerful" trope... he wants to play Hero System, but he ALSO wants 50 XP to produce that huge growth in player power level.

 

I sometimes think that I have a real advantage having played Champions back in the mid-80s.  My regular game group back then noticed early on that you could have two super-heroic PCs built on the same number of points, and one of them could punch out main battle tanks and laugh off Hellfire missiles, and the other one would have a much lower relative power level.  Think Iron Man vs Daredevil.  

 

In a Super Hero game that's not that much of an issue, but it tends to be much more pronounced in Fantasy Hero.  If the GM expects every PC to have Deadly Blow and Combat Luck, and one PC has neither, that PC isn't going to last long.  Or if the GM expects that no one will have Deadly Blow or Combat Luck, and one PC shows up with both, plus chain mail and a two-handed battle axe, then that one PC is going to break the game for everyone else.

 

I find that to have a really effective fantasy level campaign I have to issue very specific campaign guidelines for PC construction.  Want to get fancy and creative?  No problem in a 400-point Champions campaign.  In a 175-point you have to spoon feed guidelines to the PCs or everything gets all pear shaped really fast.  

 

 

"Four PCs.  In relative power terms, are they four Iron Men, or four Daredevils?  Are eight Kobolds a good challenge, or is that too easy?  What about four Orks?  Two Trolls?  Will the munchkin with Deadly Blow and Combat Luck tear through them, leaving the other PCs behind?  Do I need to give the monsters Deadly Blow and Combat Luck too?  Or will that lead to a Total Party Kill?"

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can't get past the "start weak, get powerful, then get VERY powerful" trope ingrained into that other poly-dice game.

 

 

I'm kind of the opposite, I like to start small and... well, mostly stay small, because I like the adventures of less powerful characters more than people fighting gods and wading through dragons.  Although in Hero, given the limited stats you're still vulnerable to the city guard with a longbow because unlike say D&D you never get 120 hit points.  Even 20 body is huge in Hero but isn't going to keep you alive through a barrage of arrows.

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Yeah for me its more about the adventures and doing stuff than my character's advancement, and for me as a GM its about the adventures and the story, not getting everyone more powerful.  So the progression isn't particularly interesting to me.  In fact sometimes it gets in the way of the story.  Imagine Frodo starting out a little hobbit farmer and ending up Elric by the time he gets to the mountain?  All that time, all those battles and adventures, all that experience spent!

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Yes, but some players (one I can think of is a prolific thread starter in the Fantasy Hero forum) can't get past the "start weak, get powerful, then get VERY powerful" trope ingrained into that other poly-dice game.  He doesn't want to play that poly dice game, he wants to play Hero System, but he ALSO wants 50 XP to produce that huge growth in player power level.

Getting the player out of D&D is hard; taking the D&D out of the player can be even harder. Stuff like that is one of the reasons I quit playing fantasy altogether for about 10 years, and have only recently dipped my toe back in: I got tired of playing the same D&D tropes over and over, regardless of system.

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Or if the GM expects that no one will have Deadly Blow or Combat Luck, and one PC shows up with both, plus chain mail and a two-handed battle axe, then that one PC is going to break the game for everyone else.

 

 

PCs shouldn't just "show up" with this stuff.  The GM needs to make it clear beforehand what kind of characters are expected.  Assumption clash can happen irrespective of point totals.  On 125 total points, one player can be thinking zero-to-hero, and the other thinking "How can I cram my superhero into 125 points?"  Your player with the monk made me sad as well, but it was because of assumption clash.  

 

I think it's even more important to get everyone on the same page regarding character tone, power levels, and availability of Powers, than it is to have a fully realized magic system.  I wrote my Low Heroic Protocols document because of this; I tried to run an Urban Fantasy Hero game once, thinking I'd get, well, "low heroic" characters, and I ended up with players trying to build superheroes on 150 points.  I'd like to suggest everyone read that document (see my signature for link) even if you don't care for the power level.  

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This is an interesting discussion.

 

I'm all about character concept and history. I want my players to have a real grasp of who their character is and what motivates them.

 

I personally have stopped worrying about the physical number of character points being an exact match for every player. If one of them is playing a grizzled veteran and the other is playing a fresh recruit, there should be a difference in skill levels. I want them both to be happy and get the concept they desire.

 

I'm more likely to have a point range in mind rather than a specific number. The veteran may start with 175 points, while the recruit is around 125.

 

I do encourage all of the players to have a good balance between physical stats and skills. Like most games, HERO has the potential to min/max the physical stats to make all of your skills very high without spending points on skill development. If everyone has a 20 dex (doesn't happen in my games), all of their corresponding skills based on dex would have high starting values. I try to emphasize that training (combat skills, martial arts and maneuvers) can make you a deadly warrior just as much as being a huge, hulking stat-monster.

 

As a side note on character progression, I rarely allow characters to change their physical stats much after the initial character creation. Unless the character is physically immature and still growing, or forced to work in the slave quarry for the story, I don't see that it is very likely to dramatically increase their strength or other physical stats. Focusing on skill development and learning new skills from their fellow players or by studying (in the case of magic users) seems much more realistic to me.

 

This approach has worked well for me. It's made easier by the fact that most of the players are all older and have had lots of experience with a myriad variety of systems. They realize that character concept is more important than the numbers behind them.

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Agreed. Tho I don't have a problem with raising Characteristics, as long as it's done incrementally and justified in story.

 

One thing I also tell my players is that background skills are much harder to justify picking up "in game." If they have to scrimp at start on a Skill here or a point of DEX or whatever, fine, they can always buy that up with XP. But "I just suddenly became an expert in [KS]" or "Now I'm fluent in [LS]" or whatever is much harder to justify in mid-game.

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