Agents vs Supers

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by Agent X

Here's an idea for agent plagued super groups. Always have a gadgeteer on the team. Always pick up whatever Viper tech you can find. Always use the gadgeteer for the excuse for the heroes to suddenly have similar tech and save your XP. It should get pretty interesting for the GM when all the heroes, regardless of character concept, run around with IR Goggles, Comm Units, Darkness Grenades, INT/DEX Drains, Area Effect Entangles, and the like. It should be interesting to see what the GM does when this crap is shoved right back at him or her.

The main problem with this plan is that it is utterly out of genre for most superhero games. If some agents succeed in blinding The Flash, he doesn't integrate their goggles into his costume forevermore. This strikes me as The Mechanon Effect (constantly trying to rebuild yourself to prevent the last thing that defeated you). It may be logical, but it simply isn't done in the source material.

 

There should be a tacit agreement between the players and the GM that the players won't use out-of-genre rationales for plugging logical weaknesses in their characters, and the GM won't ruthlessly take advantage of those weaknesses every single game.

[misterdeath]

Originally posted by Derek Hiemforth

There should be a tacit agreement between the players and the GM that the players won't use out-of-genre rationales for plugging logical weaknesses in their characters, and the GM won't ruthlessly take advantage of those weaknesses every single game.

 

And if the GM violates said unspoken agreement, what then?

 

That's what Agent X is talking about.

 

If every time out of the gate, the Viper hoards smack the hell out of the players using stuff that's tailored to spank the heroes, then it's time to be just as cagey as the villians.

 

Time to plug those holes in your defenses any way you can.

 

Or give up as supers, decide to use your powers to help your normal life, and become Construction Workers.

 

Or, find a new GM who'll run a game more to your liking.

 

D

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by misterdeath

And if the GM violates said unspoken agreement, what then?

Then talk to the GM about it, and tell them that you feel like they're exploiting the characters' weaknesses beyond what's called for. If they're unwilling to change, then you're at an impasse. Personally, I would rather find a different GM than get into an adversarial contest with them where I'm warping my own character's concept in order to compete.

 

In my experience, competing with the GM is a losing proposition. They have unlimited points and unlimited "GM approval" to work with, and the player does not. If you have a GM that insists on treating a role-playing game as a wargame, where they're trying to "beat" you, then you might as well just play Risk or something, IMO.

[Metaphysician]

I don't see whats so wrong with having the PCs adapt. Part of super hero RPGing is that you don't suffer many of the limitations of the genre. . . like plot-induced character stasis.

[Chaosliege]

Here's what I'm hearing. A lot of people here are pissed off because at one time or another they got there asses handed to them by agents. I'm a player, not a GM, and Ive been there myself. Get over it. If you got beat by supers that'd be ok but not agents? Sounds like you need to evaluate what the real problem is. If it is in fact hapening every single game, then yeah, you should talk to the GM. Maybe in this campaign Viper is suposed to be the big badie. Maybe the GM is trying to get you to use a little more tactics on the field. I don't know. I do know that our super team has been beat by agents before, and every time, the GM could say "you know, if you'd just done what you said you were going to do, these guys would've been no problem". And he's right. We always talk about tactics on the way to the fight, but as soon as the figures are on the table, we scatter. Each of us tries to asses the worst threat on our own and we end up getting devided. The point is, sometimes you're going to get beat. I've played with a number of GMs. Some that were worse than others, and never have I been put in position to loose a fight unless it was meant to be that way to set up further role-playing. I'm not trying to piss anyone off. I'm just saying that maybe you should take a step back and examine what's realy happening. Don't blame the gear. All the gear does is give the agents a slim chance of slowing supers down. Would you rather fight throngs of guys with billy clubs? OK, now I'm starting to rant and I have to go to work.

[misterdeath]

Originally posted by Chaosliege

Here's what I'm hearing. A lot of people here are pissed off because at one time or another they got there asses handed to them by agents.

 

Actually, what you're hearing is a lot of people who seem to be in a adversarial arrangement with their GM, and the GM is taking advantage of the situation.

 

You're right that an Agent Fight is a good place to hone tactics, and abilities.

 

And that if you do stupid stuff, you should get hammered by them.

 

But, when you do everything right, and the GM torches your ass because he can, well, something needs to be done.

 

And Derek's right, that's talk to the GM first, not play tit-for-tat.

 

Try to get a handle on what the GM's trying to do. And, if it's not to the group's liking, and no change is forthwith, then decide what to do.

 

Tit-for-tat retaliation can be fun for a short while. But, Derek's right, it's ultimately unproductive.

 

Get someone else to GM.

 

People here are pissed off because they play this game for fun, and it's not fun to always lose. Neither is it fun to always win.

 

D

[RDU Neil]

Originally posted by Doug McCrae

I'd like to see an example from the comics where a bunch of agents beat a superhero. I think such a thing will be hard, if not impossible, to find.

 

I immediately think of the Busiek Avengers (current run) where the team was defeated by a bunch of Moses Magnum's agents at the airport. Hawkeye (I think) couldn't believe they had been beaten by "a bunch of guys with guns!"

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Derek Hiemforth

The main problem with this plan is that it is utterly out of genre for most superhero games. If some agents succeed in blinding The Flash, he doesn't integrate their goggles into his costume forevermore. This strikes me as The Mechanon Effect (constantly trying to rebuild yourself to prevent the last thing that defeated you). It may be logical, but it simply isn't done in the source material.

 

There should be a tacit agreement between the players and the GM that the players won't use out-of-genre rationales for plugging logical weaknesses in their characters, and the GM won't ruthlessly take advantage of those weaknesses every single game.

In the circumstances I was referring to that tacit agreement wasn't in force. The best way to get that agreement going is to just talk it through but, in lieu of that and finding a new GM, there is always the option of rubbing the GM's nose in his style of play - if you go in for that sort of thing.

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by megaplayboy

I do have a problem in one campaign I'm currently in:

The agents are all well-coordinated, toss darkness grenades which block all sight(my brick is the only one who can see through it), one hex entangles, atuofire normal blasters, and heavy blasters. So unless we can just swarm the agents immediately, we get stomped badly really quickly unless we run away. Irritates the heck out of me.

 

Could you and the other players come up with some tricks or new powers for the PCs which would be useful against these agents? If your GM balks at our characters responding to this constant threat, it might be time for a new GM.

 

EDIT: Having read the rest of the thread, I see that this point has already come up in the discussion.

[Supreme Serpent]

Agents are an interesting type of opponent for supers, and have their place. They can be a good change of pace, and should be mixed in, along with powerful single villains, villain groups, giant monsters, and other types of threats characters face. Variety can be a good thing.

 

Problems can come up with agents depending on how they are used.

 

If they show up occaisionally and aren't part of larger parts of the campaign, then the faceless nameless agents are fine - they are variety, a diversion from the normal opponents of the campaign.

 

If they are going to show up often and/or have a major part in the campaign, some more depth is needed. There should be named individuals involved, some special agents that may get away and trouble the heroes again. With names, personalities, and a personal history with these folks, players won't mind the encounters as much - they may even look forward to them. Instead of video-game style nameless opponents, they have someone "real" to interact with. "What? Hydra Group Captain Johannsen again? That's the guy that led the raid on Fort Knox last month! Get him - we may be able to get a lead on Baron Strucker with him in our hands!"

 

If the villains are characters that just happen to be classified as agents, I think they're a good thing as an important part of the campaign. If they're just groups of stats and weapons, they should not be important, and will quickly become boring and/or frustrating if they are constantly present as the main opponents.

[Vondy]

My game is a little different. Its a super-hero game, but it focuses on a grittier, more realistic team of heroes working for the defense department as a paramilitary intelligence team. As such, non-combat investigations and actions are just as important (sometimes more-so) than

 

I divide agents into different categories:

 

1. Mooks

 

These agents are there to be a nuisance. Heroes tend to take them down right and left, but their purpose isn't to take the heroes down. There purpose is multi-fold: 1) to make the heroes feel spiffy and bad to the bone as they wade through them, 2) to delay or distract heroes on behalf of the major villians. Sometimes these agents have intel and a plan, but more often than not they don't. They use basic good sense in tactics, but they don't leverage the system or put the heroes into a real bind.

 

I have never seen my heroes go down before these guys, but there have been occassions where one of the heroes had catastrophic bad-luck and got taken down (briefly) in the fight.

 

2. Meta-Mooks

 

These agents are actually henchmen without superpowers, costumes, or high-tech gear. They could be an elite team used by the villian for major jobs, or they could just be well informed and smart. They most probably won't take the heroes down, but they will force the heroes to take them more seriously - they keep the heroes from getting lazy and losing all respect for normals. They will be organized, take advantage of cover and teamwork, and leverage the rules to their advantage if the players let them. They will also make an effort to gain useful intelligence, which may or may not be successful.

 

There have been occassions where these types of agents have put the heroes in a real bind - more often than not because of the circumstances involved than because of combat tactics - though on one occassion the heroes walked into the sort of trap they ordinarily wouldn't (they were just being brainless that night) and found themselves on the receiving end of a bloody aweful drubbing as a result. They didn't get captured, but they did have to make a retreat while evacuating wounded teammates, one of whom almost died.

 

3. The Major Mook

 

Who is this guy? This guy is actually a supernormal sans costume. He's a normal built on 350+ points who is meant to be scary. In other words: he's not really an agent. He skilled, mean, and often unexpected. He is well equiped, the elite of the elite, and dangerous as hell. He may be a member of a team comprised of meta-mooks, or he may be a freelance solo-operator. Whatever the case, he operates like a master villain, or a master villian's favorite weapon, and he is hard to catch. He uses cover and concealment, he leverages the rules to his advantage, and he doesn't let up. He has contingency plans, escape plans, and booby traps. If they are smart they can give any hero a run for their money, or maybe even 2-3 heroes (but their dice have to be hot). A whole team is a forced retreat for them. These characters have to be a part of the larger campaign.

 

Two of the most dreaded (and popular) villians in my game are major mooks - moreso, even, than some of the major power-houses (including firewing). One of them even managed, through a combination of good planning and hot dice, to fight a retreat against an entire team of heroes and make his escape - but that character is a legend.

 

By and large I don't think GMs should humiliate people with mooks - especially the run of the mill garden variety mook whose job is to serve as cannon fodder. I do think agents should be played with some smarts, however, and while they should rarely pose a real threat in combat, they can be smart enough to force the heroes to THINK.

[Doug McCrae]

Originally posted by Metaphysician

I don't see whats so wrong with having the PCs adapt. Part of super hero RPGing is that you don't suffer many of the limitations of the genre. . . like plot-induced character stasis.

Nothing, if that's what you're into. My own tastes run more towards the mainstream comics based stuff.

 

One reason for this is that I've played in many, many rpgs which weren't genre based and very few that were. I think it's much easier for people to get their heads round 'realism'. Genre weirdness requires a bit of a mental leap.

[megaplayboy]

Originally posted by Kristopher

Could you and the other players come up with some tricks or new powers for the PCs which would be useful against these agents? If your GM balks at our characters responding to this constant threat, it might be time for a new GM.

 

EDIT: Having read the rest of the thread, I see that this point has already come up in the discussion.

 

It's a new campaign, so adapting our powers probably isn't yet viable, and we don't have a gadgeteer or mage type in the group to whip up special goggles, or entangle solvent or whatever. I'm thinking about just swiping enough of their grenades to use them as a "plot device" type counter attack.

[VIPER]

I'm not sure I'd agree with the perception that the "arms race" is so one-sided and unfair.

 

Villianous agents in our campaigns always face foes who have superior firepower, mobility, and speed. And this is a constant problem (for the agents). It doesn't matter which groups or individuals they face, when they go against superheros, they are always outclassed in those areas.

 

So it would seem that well funded agent groups who find themselves having to contend with supers would always have pressure (and funds) to develop weapons designed to thwart the speed and dexterity advantages the supers hold.

 

Particularly with groups like VIPER, groups that are supposed to be feared (in theory if not in individual circumstances) this doesn't seem out of line.

 

On the other hand, I'm not sure I've seen too many self respecting Bricks or EBers who stoop to wearing toys like IR goggles and such out of fear a bunch of agents are going to outclass them if they don't. I'd be surprised if your GM wouldn't let you spend experience points in more appropriate ways to develop stunts designed to counter these threats. In Strike Force Allston wrote that he used inferior forces to beat up on his PC's as a way of guiding their development along obvious but overlooked avenues as a team... sure your GM's aren't just following his example?

 

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[nexus]

I don't know if I agree with that. I mean pride goes along awy, but if I were constantly being blinded, entangled, whatever and made to look like a complete fool but agents with super technology. I would accquire devices to couter act these glaring weakneses in my abilities before I was killed. Or at least to make the pain stop. Superheroers can react to and cover their weak points as well as the villians. Just becuase you good doesn't mean your stupid.

[VIPER]

Hi Nexus

 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting do nothing when agent attacks have become too effective.

 

I'm thinking more along the lines of the Flash getting so sick of being blinded by smoke bombs he learns to spin his arms real fast and 'blow' the smoke away, or Superman performing some sort of modified groundstrike to clear area effect entangles, or Green Lantern making Images of himself to mislead the agent's tossing the bombs, as opposed to all three skulking over to Batman and asking him to bail them out with his gadgeteering.

 

I see the former all the time in comics, the latter approach less commonly.

 

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[Kevin Scrivner]

After reading through the thread, I don't think it is so much an agents issue as a GMing issue. Opponents of any type should challenge the player-characters without being unbeatable. The point is to have fun and leave the players with a feeling of accomplishment. As a GM, I never threw villains at the PCs that I though could overwhelm them. They might be bloodied and bruised but the good guys should win in the end. This was true no matter what genre I ran. It's a basic issue of fairness.

 

When I threw Dalek clones at my pulp adventurers I made the robots tough but I also wrote up only five of them. The heroes couldn't go one-on-one with the invaders but they could team up on them and gradually take them down one at a time. The final robot nearly killed a couple player-characters but then got stuck in the mud (it had rained heavily during the night). In the same way, when I confonted the heroes with Dr. Fu Manchu and the Si Fan, there were hordes of goons but they were 20- to 50-point normals with standard knives and revolvers, not super ninjas with exotic gear. Only Fu's chief henchmen had that kind of power -- of course, the heroes would never get a chance to manhandle the insidious Doctor himself. Much as I would have enjoyed it, throwing a Lovecraftian demon at them from the 1st edition Beastiary was out of the question

[levi]

It seems that this thread has taken two paths...

 

Path 1) The new VIPER Sourcebook has made Viper agents too tough with weapons dealing 10-12D6 of damage and defenses in the 10-25DEF range. Is this too good?

 

The fact that VIPER has agents with weapons and defenses in this range is balanced by two things, firstly these agents are elite of the elite and should not be encountered en masse without prior setup by the GM. Secondly none of these agents has more than a 20 CON or 30 STUN so most supers should STUN them with a solid hit and knock them out cold in two or three shots. The same cannot be said for most supervillains. My conclusion is that the VIPER agents as printed are not too good.

 

Path 2) My GM uses agents to humble my super or as a way to show the players who's boss.

 

Champions should never be a game of Player v. GM. The Players can NEVER win in that situation unless they leave the group entirely. If you are a GM remember that you are the storyteller not a competitor. So don't get upset when the players dice are hot, nor should you cheer when your dice are hot. Think of what you are doing as a writing novel or directing a movie, the good guys are the central characters and as such should win out as long as they don't do something stupid or self-destructive.

As players sometimes you just have to "Go to the f*ing farmhouse!" even if it doesn't make the most sense or doesn't seem central to your character. YOUR character is not the center of the Universe and if the adventure requires the group to follow the Stronghold van back to Stronghold, then do it without making such a headache for your GM.

I have seen several people on these boards say something "The GM should have fun too" and I agree with this sentiment. Just make sure that your idea of fun as a GM is crafting an interesting story, not competing against the players.

[VIPER]

Agreed Levi

 

#1 is nothing new. Viper agents with 12d6 attacks have been around since 3rd edition, if not before... and that was before the point inflation that made 350pt hero characters a standard.

 

#2 would seem to be the bigger problem; it would seem that either the GM is trying to steer the PC's towards _something_ they just aren't getting (teamwork, innovation, better planning or execution) or the GM is suffering from the "don't hurt my babies" mindset.

 

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