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Fantasy Champions


Penthau

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I was thinking about starting a game of Fantasy Hero, but at a superheroic level. Instead of finding and/or stealing gear, they would pay for it with points. The magic system would be more freeform than the usual FH game. I see them as employees of a powerful patron or freelancers dealing with things that local soldiers can't handle.

 

Has anyone tried this? Are there any pitfalls to avoid?

 

 

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The closest I came to this was running fantasy games in Hero Games's The Atlantean Age, which is geared for this level of play. My only cautionary note would be that you need a setting that won't break when you introduce heroes of this power level. That goes beyond just a string of enemies for the heroes to fight. Super-powerful PCs in a milieu where few others are their equals or superiors, are inherently destabilizing . The PCs will become targets of fear and jealousy if nothing exists to keep them in check. If your plans for your campaign are for the PCs to eventually start carving out their own kingdoms, that won't be a major problem. If your campaign is focused on stopping some Big Bad who keeps throwing lieutenants at the heroes, again, the situation need not be problematic. Otherwise you'll want structures in place that can keep the heroes in check, either NPCs with equal or superior power (but some reason why they can't go deal with major menaces themselves), or armies or weapons which they can bring to bear on uppity PCs if necessary.

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I've yet to run a Superheroic Fantasy game, but there are numerous examples of it in cinema. The anime series' "The Slayers" and "Fairy Tale" for example (actually lots of anime falls into this bracket). The obvious pitfalls to avoid are that Plots based upon the acquisition of wealth. Wealth is meaningless to Superheroic PCs. It cannot buy them anything truly useful, and if they wanted it for whatever reason, 15 points isn't a significant investment to have as much of it as they want.

The characters need to have strong motivations for what they are doing, and the opposition to said motivations needs to be overwhelmingly powerful. We're talking ancient dragons and demon gods here. When they do fight mundane threats, they should be fighting huge groups of enemies (such as the evil king's entire royal guard vs. one Hero) and winning. Such play also works better if none of the PCs are designed such that they can have a significant impact on the nature of the world itself. Sure these people kill demon gods and overthrow evil kings on a daily basis, but they shouldn't be able to single-handedly advance the technological level of the setting, or solve world-hunger.

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The closest I ever came was a Mythical Greek campaign where the players were all demi-gods.  This put them at the low-powered superhero level rather than normal superhero. They couldn't go too crazy without risking the ire of one or more of the Olympians themselves (Athena might not take it kindly if you try to conquer Athens).  Their main purpose was to protect Greece from external threats.  Like the classic myths, their foes were other demi-gods, ancient monsters and the machinations of foreign (and occasionally domestic) deities.

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No, but I have thought out such a campain. The thing to do is think of the fantasy charecters in superhero terms. Like this

 

Bricks- Hercules, Atlas, Superman

Armored users- Man with the Helm of Hephaestus, Man with the Shield of Perseus, IronMan

Thieves- Any of the really agile but normal superheroes like Daredevil or Batman

Touched by the gods- Spiderman, Flash

Golems- any robot charecter

Energy blasters- Mages

 

As to pitfalls it depends I'd worry more about tone. If your thinking a sort of fantasy ages silver age superhero campain then the guy who wants to play a version of the mythical Hercules won't be happy.

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Of course it can be done, but you need to come up with equivalents in your settings to what you find in superhero worlds that constrain their activities.  In general, fantasy games run on a less enlightened plane of morality than modern superheroes, so either the campaign needs a higher level of moral elevation (Like Greece or some of Rome or early China.), or there needs to be power structures and limitations to keep the characters from turning the campaign world into their own back yard. this either needs to be rival powers, the oppositions or even limitations on their powers (ENDpowered by the worship by followers, that will tank if they do things the population doesn't like). It could be a fun campaign. good luck with it.

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I started a game like this, with a solo ~400 pt character running through a moderately high level D&D module (X4). Since it was a solo PC we targeted around 10th level equivalent elf, expert at both combat and magic. It is easy to sink that many points into a FH character, and he looks really good on paper, and fits my idea of what a high level character should be capable of. He is a good match for the larger monsters. He was able to take on a wizard mounted on a wyvern and three trolls simultaneously, and basically one-shotted a dragon. But the vast majority of fantasy monsters in the bestiary are far outclassed, not to mention entire armies. In practice that means either I rewrite them to be tougher (thus negating the "high level" effect), or fights with lesser foes become dull. Dull in the sense of the PC being virtually invulnerable, so it becomes an exercise in dice rolling with a predictable outcome (or being hand-waved).

 

One idea I considered was using Champions villains (from books or websitse) and re-skinning them as fantasy characters and monsters. That would save some effort in designing characters from scratch as they are already at a superheroic level. But this runs into a different problem, in that the PC is designed around heroic fantasy tropes, so certain aspects of the character (defenses for example) would be under-powered when facing an actual superhero built to Champions standards.

 

We may pick that game back up if time permits, and I think its salvagable, but it's more work than I expected because nearly all the foes need to be custom-built to be interesting, and the module is really not useful as written since everything must be redesigned.

 
So against suitable foes it works very well and is a lot of fun. But if you want a high-level D&D feel -- or if you want to make broad use of the bestiary and other resources -- then I don't think it does as well, unless you are careful to limit character power to stay within typical heroic parameters. Orcs can't whittle away at superheroes like they can in D&D because Hero characters don't have enough BODY, that level of invulnerability is necessary.
 
I guess the gotcha in my experience is that the Fantasy Hero resources are not applicable, and (at least in my case) the Champions resources are not applicable.
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I started a game like this, with a solo ~400 pt character running through a moderately high level D&D module (X4). Since it was a solo PC we targeted around 10th level equivalent elf, expert at both combat and magic. It is easy to sink that many points into a FH character, and he looks really good on paper, and fits my idea of what a high level character should be capable of. He is a good match for the larger monsters. He was able to take on a wizard mounted on a wyvern and three trolls simultaneously, and basically one-shotted a dragon. But the vast majority of fantasy monsters in the bestiary are far outclassed, not to mention entire armies. In practice that means either I rewrite them to be tougher (thus negating the "high level" effect), or fights with lesser foes become dull. Dull in the sense of the PC being virtually invulnerable, so it becomes an exercise in dice rolling with a predictable outcome (or being hand-waved).

 

[edit]

 
I guess the gotcha in my experience is that the Fantasy Hero resources are not applicable, and (at least in my case) the Champions resources are not applicable.

 

It looks to me that it's not as much that it doesn't work, so much as the assumptions between the two systems are so far apart (stun & body vs hitpoint mechanics). yes a fight between a high level Hero built character versus an army of normals may end up like the old Traveller warning about flying power armor versus cave men, but even in a champions game, agents with the right tools and tactics can take down a super if they are prepared.   on another note, a good FH campaign really does need to be built entirely from scratch.

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It looks to me that it's not as much that it doesn't work, so much as ... a good FH campaign really does need to be built entirely from scratch.

 

Agreed. When it is well balanced it is a lot of fun and works very well.

 

OP asked about pitfalls.

 

One pitfall is thinking you can easily mix heroic FH materials into a superheroic game. Not saying it can't be done, but that I failed to make it work smoothly. At this point I think it is a trap that looks easy but may be difficult or impossible. (And if folks here disagree, I would love practical advice on how to pull it off.)

 

Another pitfall is expecting it to work like "other games you may have played." There are few games offering "superheroic" levels of play. D&D scales smoothly, while Hero is more like two different games in one book. Both end up being a completely different game at high levels; the in-between is the gotcha, and how they work at high levels is different.

 

Anyway I wanted to not just name these issues but explain a bit about why.

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Our group accidentally wound up in that for a game - literal Fantasy Champions.  The GM had a similar idea while running Champions...  The San Francisco Sentinels were squaring off against Naga, a magical villain attempting to open a portal.  At the same time, one of our tech-based enemies activated an alien artifact.  And somebody rolled an 18.

 

GM:  Right...  Okay, for next week's session, come back with 150 point Fantasy Hero versions of your characters, as we travel to Saint Francis on the Bay.

 

Frostbite the Ice Blaster became the wizard, Moondrake our martial artist walked through almost unchanged, becoming the party Fighter.  As to my character Black Widow, he said, "We have the mage, the fighter, I guess that makes you the thief."

 

The session turned out to be a blast.  As a one-shot where we confronted the Storm King to break his power (and return us to normal) we didn't face the same challenges that a full campaign would.  But it is certainly doable.

 

Chris.

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My plan was to have them be more like superheroes than the classic murder hobo fantasy group. They wouldn't be running dungeons as much as assaulting a base of operations of the big bad evil guy. I want to get their feedback on what they would like to do, but either something like protect the kingdom from marauding demons or dimension hopping in a spelljammer ship to stop major threats. Their opponents would be in the same league as they are, evil outsiders, aberrations, etc., along with their hordes of minions.

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Not as a campaign, but I've run a couple of one-shot games where the PCs were 1000-point gods. The mechanics scale up to that level pretty well; you'll just have a little more work creating/customizing NPCs and villains. You will wall want to work out some kind of skirmish/mass melee rules so your heroes can wade through armies of normals.

 

The challenge, as others have already noted, is more with conflicts between superhero tropes vs fantasy (esp. D&D) tropes. So you'd want to have a serious conversation with your players before you sit down so that everyone is on the same page.

 

As for inspiration: when creating my one-shots, I looked to mythology - not the stories about the heroes, but the ones directly featuring the gods. Don't be afraid to go completely larger than life; my players still talk about that time when Thul, the God of Strength, wrestled a tornado...and won!

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I really like "The Slayers" as an example of a high-point Superheroic Fantasy campaign. The protagonist has a spell which can level entire settlements, and IIRC as early as the 3rd or 4th episode had slain a dragon and destroyed one of the four mythical arch-demons (ironically the very same one her 'best spell' is an invocation to).

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I was hesitant to suggest He-man but since you went there.

I thought of saying He-man...but seemed to mys-tech compared to she-ra....maybe it's just a me thing...it has been 20 years...I know what I will be netflixing this summer break...

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He-man is especially appropriate since he never actually kills anyone with that magic sword. It is obviously STUN-only.

 

The elves in The Silmarillion are absolutely champions-level superheroes, standing up to Morgoth himself.

 

The portions of the Thor movie that took place in Asgard and Jotunheim depict a fantasy champions world.

 

There is the anime interpretation of Dante's Inferno for inspiration. The comments on Youtube are priceless.

 

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