Anti Glass Cannon

[Mr. R]

I use the following benchmarks for my games

Attack 50 AP (65 w/ Advan)

Defense  50 AP (basically 25/25) [again 65 w/advan)

Dex and CV 20/7 (up to +3 w/ Skills)

SPD 5

 

Reduce on means you can add to another.  SO..... 

Att 70 (+20)

Def 50 (0)

Dex 17/6 (+2 w/ skills) (-10)

SPD 4 (-10)

 

I'd allow

 

Att 80 (+30)

Def 40 (-10)

Dex 17/6 (+2 w/ skills) (-10)

SPD 4 (-10)

 

Still good

 

Now to flip it

 

Att 20 (-10)

Def 80 (0)--- basically 40/40

Dex 17/6 (+2 w/ skills) (-10)

SPD 4 (-10)

 

A friend once described how this character (his PC) was a PITA to the villains because they couldn't hurt him.  In addition he had some LS, KB resist.  "I get in front of the bad guys and they can't get around me or hurt me"

 

I said if that was in my game it would last about five sessions before the villains began thinking of ways to get around him or even more totally ignoring him as he COULD NOT HURT them in any way.  Even Agents would quickly negate him.  He laughed and said how?

 

So that is my question..... HOW?

 

I'll start:

Entangle--- a 4def 4d6 attack will keep him out of action for the entire fight.

 

Next!

[Christopher R Taylor]

I made a character like that, named Captain Invincible.  But that was his power: being kinda dumb but nearly impossible to hurt.  He didn't do much damage, but he was just unharmable.

 

You can usually ignore guys like that though, they aren't very fast and don't hit hard.  A Flash will blind them, a mind control turns them on their friends, a presence attack can cow them, an NND can stun them, etc, depending on their defenses and build.  Dropping a non-flyer off a cliff can take them out of a fight.  Giving them someone to rescue preoccupies them. Giving them a really nasty, deadly bad guy to focus on can distract them as well.  And yeah, things like Entangle, or just being grabbed by someone around the same strength.

[Hugh Neilson]

1 hour ago, Mr. R said:

I said if that was in my game it would last about five sessions before the villains began thinking of ways to get around him or even more totally ignoring him as he COULD NOT HURT them in any way.  Even Agents would quickly negate him.  He laughed and said how?

 

So that is my question..... HOW?

 

I'll start:

Entangle--- a 4def 4d6 attack will keep him out of action for the entire fight.

 

Next!

 

Here is my question....WHY?

 

The player wants to run a character who is impressively difficult to harm, instead of being impressively fast, or doing impressive damage.  Do the villains in your game similarly look for ways to get around all of the other characters and frustrate their players by easily negating them?  If any character who deviates from the norm will be quickly shut down, why allow characters that deviate from the norm in the first place?  Challenging him, fine, but singling him out to shut him down would not be my goal if I allowed the character in the first place.

 

Why is his 20 Attack -10?  Wouldn't -10 be 40, rather than 20, such that the character is just a bit behind his peers in all respects, except having massive defenses, just as the guy with a massive 80 AP attack is just a bit behind his peers in all other respects?

[Mr. R]

8 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

 

Why is his 20 Attack -10?  Wouldn't -10 be 40, rather than 20, such that the character is just a bit behind his peers in all respects, except having massive defenses, just as the guy with a massive 80 AP attack is just a bit behind his peers in all other respects?

You're right!

[Tjack]

12 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Here is my question....WHY?

 

The player wants to run a character who is impressively difficult to harm, instead of being impressively fast, or doing impressive damage.  Do the villains in your game similarly look for ways to get around all of the other characters and frustrate their players by easily negating them?  If any character who deviates from the norm will be quickly shut down, why allow characters that deviate from the norm in the first place?  Challenging him, fine, but singling him out to shut him down would not be my goal if I allowed the character in the first place.

 

Why is his 20 Attack -10?  Wouldn't -10 be 40, rather than 20, such that the character is just a bit behind his peers in all respects, except having massive defenses, just as the guy with a massive 80 AP attack is just a bit behind his peers in all other respects?

    I agree that a GM working to negate a particular player because they’re inconvenient is a little too meta and wrong...But a tactically minded villain coming up with ways to incapacitate a hero or set of heroes is not only in character but a trope of the genre.  Hell, Batman even did it to his own team! (It didn’t work out well.)  

    If Capt. Invincible becomes a known problem for the bad guys then they will only naturally try to figure ways around him.  The GM on the other hand should NEVER plot against a character just because they don’t like him. If they have a problem with a concept then they needed to cowboy up and say a firm NO when the idea was first presented.

[Mr. R]

5 minutes ago, Tjack said:

    I agree that a GM working to negate a particular player because they’re inconvenient is a little too meta and wrong...But a tactically minded villain coming up with ways to incapacitate a hero or set of heroes is not only in character but a trope of the genre.  Hell, Batman even did it to his own team! (It didn’t work out well.)  

    If Capt. Invincible becomes a known problem for the bad guys then they will only naturally try to figure ways around him.  The GM on the other hand should NEVER plot against a character just because they don’t like him. If they have a problem with a concept then they needed to cowboy up and say a firm NO when the idea was first presented.

 

 

Sorry if I was coming off as adversarial, but the way this guy pitched his PC made it sound like the villains will spend the next 10 rounds trying to put him down.  He gets in front of the item to be stolen and will not be moved.  Bricks hate him because they can't beat him.  

 

I pointed out he can't hurt anyone either and casually remarked he'll by some MA to get around that.  

 

OKAY, your trying to play the system.  

 

So without seeming to adversarial I tried to point out how he can be negated.

 

Glass Cannons are nasty, but really have to buy into what their limitations are.  

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I didn't do this with CI but I should have, it is a classic for super tough bricks in early comic books: the Bonk mechanism.  Guys like Captain Marvel were literally immune to anything, the worst that would happen is that they'd be all dusty and dirty or knocked over.  But if you hit them from behind or with a clever surprise attack you could actually stun them for a little while, long enough for their hilariously outclassed enemies to get away.

 

Buying a vulnerability to surprise attacks can give enemies a chance, if they are clever, while not breaking the concept of the tough guy.

[steriaca]

Indirect on any attack. Sure, they stand in front of the villain, but when the villain's attack goes around them to hit the true target, smile.

 

Stretching allows the thief villain to steal that mcguffin he is guarding.

 

Still, if that type of character is ruining the campaign, then that character needs to be retried.

 

Just remember to not bleep up the character just because you don't like his power set. Remember, you approved of it in the first place.

[Tjack]

30 minutes ago, Mr. R said:

 

 

Sorry if I was coming off as adversarial, but the way this guy pitched his PC made it sound like the villains will spend the next 10 rounds trying to put him down.  He gets in front of the item to be stolen and will not be moved.  Bricks hate him because they can't beat him.  

 

I pointed out he can't hurt anyone either and casually remarked he'll by some MA to get around that.  

 

OKAY, your trying to play the system.  

 

So without seeming to adversarial I tried to point out how he can be negated.

 

Glass Cannons are nasty, but really have to buy into what their limitations are.  

 

 

    No problem.  Some players are the other side of the coin on this. They want to be “The Pro from Dover” as it says in Strike Force’s list of player types and sometimes they need to be shown that being a big fish in a very small pond isn’t as much fun as they might have thought. 
    Teleporters, Speedsters, Acrobats, or any team that uses co-ordinated attacks to hit a number of times during the same phase. Any of these can be used to get around one brick guarding something.

    Is this player going to be in one of your games and you’re asking for advice or is more of an intellectual puzzle for you?

[Opal]

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

The player wants to run a character who is impressively difficult to harm, instead of being impressively fast, or doing impressive damage.  Do the villains in your game similarly look for ways to get around all of the other characters and frustrate their players by easily negating them? 

Y'know, I suppose they would, if they were frustrating the villains' plans.  But the doing impressive damage/poor defenses character (the classic glass cannon) is dealt with just by hitting him, and when the impressively fast (and not much else) guy get's taken down my a martial throw, he probably stays down.  So they may not feel the need to look for schneeky ways around them.  

 

Overall, though, I feel like over-specialized characters aren't as fun as reasonably balanced ones that just have some personality and some meaningful Disads.  Rule of X, from Fuzion, I  recall had an issue with incentivizing specialization like that.

[Mr. R]

41 minutes ago, Tjack said:

  

    Is this player going to be in one of your games and you’re asking for advice or is more of an intellectual puzzle for you?

 

Intellectual puzzle.  

[Tjack]

23 minutes ago, Mr. R said:

 

Intellectual puzzle.  

   Cool. 

[Mr. R]

I like asking questions like this so when I do ever get to run a game I can be a better GM.  

[Hugh Neilson]

Compare this fellow - 40/40 defenses, 8 DC attack - to his counterpart - 20/20 defenses, 16 DC attack.

 

They have equal SPD and CV.  DefenseMan will roll an average 28 STUN, getting 8 past defenses. OffenseMan will roll an average 56 STUN, getting 16 past defenses.  I'd say the advantage is with OffenseMan, not DefenseMan.

[assault]

Also, DefenseMan is likely to be knocked back, putting him out of  his preferred position.

 

Like a lot of "clever" builds, "hit him very hard" is a viable solution.

[Lord Liaden]

Acrobatics can be a useful in-genre tactic. Is the unmovable character directly in front of something their opponent needs to take? Flip right over his head. The Champions genre book suggests allowing "appropriate unlikely actions" from things like Acrobatics and Combat Maneuvers that would suit the genre and be particularly stylish.   (See Champions 6E p. 55.) Optionally, relatively minor actions that would normally require an Attack Action can be performed as a Half-Phase action instead. So you'd be well within your rights to have an acrobatic opponent flip over "Captain Invincible," grab the item in passing, and land right back in front of him. You might even allow him to then toss the item to a waiting partner.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Mr. R

I’m just going to go with the cheesy Desolid UAA. Now the Hero is Desolid he literally cannot affect the Battle for a short time! Or T-port UAA and just blink him all over the place. Or even more sneaky Running UAA- he starts to run but cannot stop! Wait is there a brick wall in front of him? 😁

[Greywind]

Auntie Glasscannon: little old lady with a big attack.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Mr. R does your friend have any Mental Defense? I got hit by Plague once and the Mental Illusions kept me out for awhile. Also Ego Blast is a pain.

[LoneWolf]

There are numerous ways around a character like that.  I am assuming he also has significant mental power because otherwise any mentalist can absolutely ruin him.

 

Images can alter the battle field so when he goes to block the villain from getting the object he is actually protecting the wrong thing.  The same images can create false attackers so he thinks he is actually winning, but later finds out he was had.

 

Precognition/Time Manipulation is another good way around the character.   The opponent uses his knowledge of what the character is going to do to invalidate the character.  For example someone with precognition could easily steal the item and replace it with a fake before the character got there.  Someone with the ability to move through time could simply avoid the character by traveling back in time.

 

The classic creating a diversion always works.  Give the character a choice of saving a bunch of innocents or saving the item.  Are you going to stop me, or the bomb I planted in the middle of the crowded building?  Threatening his DNPC’s is another classic solution.

[dsatow]

So I had a villain like this all the way back to Champions 3.  The villain was based on Marvel's Diamond Lil.  In a 10-12 DC game she had a 1d6 AP HKA which she could pump to 1 1/2d6 AP HKA.  She was mostly annoying, so one of the brick players grabbed her and threw her up in the air (she had no flight or gliding).  When she came back down, he would catch her and throw her up again.  This would keep her in the air for about 2-3 segments.  Then one of the martial artists sync'd with the brick, getting the brick to do a pushed throw up in the air.  At which point the martial artist delayed until she was next to him and he martial threw her into the ground.  The result damage got past her impressive defenses and knocked her out.

[freakboy6117]

I usually refer to these as Nerf bricks they serve the same role as a classic brick soaking damage for others but unlike the classic brick they don't have the high strength to do high damage thus Nerf

[Pattern Ghost]

Another way to look at balancing basic defense levels (to attacks vs PD/ED) is to determine the number of hits from an average attack it would take to KO the character. If it varies too far out of the norm, bring it back in line. Let's say the average main attack for characters is 10d6 in the campaign, with some lower damage characters sitting at 8d6 and higher damage characters at 12d6. That gives average rolls of 28, 35, and 42. So:

 

Average Character with 25 defense:

 

At 30 STUN:

8d6 (28) Takes 3 pts per hit, 10 hits to KO

10d6 (35) Takes 10 pts per hit, 3 hits to KO

12d6 (42) Takes 17 pts per hit, 2 hits to KO

 

At 35 STUN:

8d6 (28) Takes 3 pts per hit, 12 hits to KO

10d6 (35) Takes 10 pts per hit, 4 hits to KO

12d6 (42) Takes 17 pts per hit, 3 hits to KO

 

At 40 STUN:

8d6 (28) Takes 3 pts per hit, 14 hits to KO

10d6 (35) Takes 10 pts per hit, 4 hits to KO

12d6 (42) Takes 17 pts per hit, 3 hits to KO

 

OK, I'm not going to run this for every level of STUN possible, but it's pretty apparent that 25 is a high average defense when the offense average is 10d6. This campaign is going to have fairly long fights. (Consider also that the first round happens on Segment 12, so everyone gets a post segment 12 Recovery after the first round, further lengthening the fight.) Contrast this with the Big Blue Book write ups, which is a "campaign" that has similar average attacks of around 10d6, with a few 12d6 main attacks and fewer 8 or 9 DC attacks. Seeker goes down in 2 hits from a 10d6 or 12d6 attack with his 15 PD, Obsidian can soak up ten 10d6 attacks and 4 12d6 attacks with his 30 PD (but only 4 and 3 with his 20ED), Quantum's 22 def and Jaguar's 19 def both soak up 3 10d6 attacks and 2 12d6 attacks, while Defender's 18 defenses soak up 2 from either, same as Seeker.

 

So, how does 40 DEF guy look?

 

Let's assume since he wants to be tough that he has at least 35 STUN:

8d6 (28) can't harm him on average roll.

10d6 (35) can't harm him on average roll.

12d6 (42) 2 pts, would take 18 hits to KO.

And since he's going further than usual off the average, some more:

14d6 (49) 9 pts, would take 4 hits to KO.

16d6 (56) 16 pts, would take 3 hits to KO.

 

So, unless he's facing the glass cannon, he's looking pretty good for achieving his goal of being nigh-invulnerable. Unless someone Entangles him and shoves him into a swimming pool. He's also going to be pretty ineffective with an 8d6 attack against an average character as seen above. But that's just the basic stats, what else is he putting on his character sheet?

 

Personally, if someone's pushing the base numbers very far out of the norm, I'd limit them somewhat in other areas to limit system abuse. For this character, I'd limit his exotic defenses to one or two (Mental Defense, Life Support, Flash Defense, KB resistance, etc.), probably one. So, he can have some Mental Defense so that mentalists don't just steamroll him and he can be an effective blocker, or have some KB resistance to help with bricks, etc. But his defenses shouldn't be allowed to cover every base. Maybe let him take some broader defenses but require a Vulnerability to compensate? Things like this should be considered.

 

A far as offensive effectiveness, let him take some Martial arts, but enforce the 40 AP limit. The various Martial attacks with a "target falls" effect will make him a more useful combatant, as will Grabs, etc. If you're using the expanded list, I think there are options that would help with body guarding. (I'm kind of fuzzy on the rules for taking a hit for someone else, but I'd look into those rules if someone was running a character like this, and make sure they understood them.) If his offense is coming from his STR, he could also buy a Brick Tricks MP at 40 AP, which would give a great deal of versatility.

 

What I wouldn't do is let him build a completely ineffective character. That's why I suggested limiting further exotic defenses above, then followed with beefing up his offensive capability. Letting the player dump all his points into various defenses while not putting any points into offensive (or movement) capabilities will make for a lot less fun character for both him and his team.

 

The concept isn't terrible, really. If he's running STR as his attack then it's not like a 40 STR character is exactly a wimp, is it? It just happens to look that way due to the high average defense values in the campaign. (If you analyze the BBB characters, it's basically a 10d6 average attack campaign, but 50 pts worth of PD/ED is brick level.)

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Personally, if someone's pushing the base numbers very far out of the norm, I'd limit them somewhat in other areas to limit system abuse. For this character, I'd limit his exotic defenses to one or two (Mental Defense, Life Support, Flash Defense, KB resistance, etc.), probably one. So, he can have some Mental Defense so that mentalists don't just steamroll him and he can be an effective blocker, or have some KB resistance to help with bricks, etc. But his defenses shouldn't be allowed to cover every base. Maybe let him take some broader defenses but require a Vulnerability to compensate? Things like this should be considered.

 

I think most GMs take this approach: the active point/stat limits are a general guideline, but you let schtick characters break it in their schtick if they are otherwise balanced.   Making Captain Invincible with 40 PD and ED fully resistant is okay IF he doesn't also hit really hard and have all other defenses at high levels.  Havoc from the X-Men is a great example: he has a GIGANTIC blast, but no real defenses or anything else.  Vulnerability against attacks you don't expect or from surprise is a classic Golden Age schtick: Captain Marvel was basically immune, but a sneak attack could knock him out for a little while.

[death tribble]

How about a telekinesis attack that just floats someone in the air . They can't hit anyone and people can move around them.