Megaman and the Mouse

[tmutant]

I saw something in another thread that got me thinking. (I know. Me. Thinking. Hardly ever the case.) What sort of problems have you GM's had with power mismatches in your groups? For example, say you have Black Canary, The Question, and Nightwing matched up with Captain Marvel (DC version). Or you have Thor, Silver Surfer, and Doctor Strange matched up with Night Crawler.

 

My own experience with it was pretty positive, from a players perspective. I usually run bricks, but for a while I was in a campaign where the characters were heavy on firepower and low on detective-type skills. Hard to fight the bad guys if you can't find them. I ran a detective/agent-killer (Figure of speech. No killing.) My character had about 8 dice max, and that was all HTH, no ranged attacks. The rest of the group started at 12 dice and went up. My GM just made sure everybody had something to do. I always got to sneak around the edges of a fight, defusing bombs, or knocking over agents, while the rest of the team bashed the Big Bad. Out of combat, they would run a danger room session, while I tracked down the Big Bad. And a good time was had by all.

[MikeyMitchell]

Re: Megaman and the Mouse

I saw something in another thread that got me thinking. (I know. Me. Thinking. Hardly ever the case.) What sort of problems have you GM's had with power mismatches in your groups? For example' date=' say you have Black Canary, The Question, and Nightwing matched up with Captain Marvel (DC version). Or you have Thor, Silver Surfer, and Doctor Strange matched up with Night Crawler.My own experience with it was pretty positive, from a players perspective. I usually run bricks, but for a while I was in a campaign where the characters were heavy on firepower and low on detective-type skills. Hard to fight the bad guys if you can't find them. I ran a detective/agent-killer (Figure of speech. No killing.) My character had about 8 dice max, and that was all HTH, no ranged attacks. The rest of the group started at 12 dice and went up. My GM just made sure everybody had something to do. I always got to sneak around the edges of a fight, defusing bombs, or knocking over agents, while the rest of the team bashed the Big Bad. Out of combat, they would run a danger room session, while I tracked down the Big Bad. And a good time was had by all.[/quote']Sounds like you had an inventive GM who managed to reconcile the problem. He's to be congratulated; that's not easy to do. I usually cheat and try to make sure each character is roughly in the ball park with the others to minimize the problem (although some mismatch is almost inevitable).I played in a Star Hero game once where there was a significant mismatch, and I was the cause. I was so proud... No, I told the GM that I wanted to play a combat monster (not my normal thing). So, we worked together to create the alien race, the martial art specific to that race, and so forth. In combat, I was head and shoulders deadlier than any of the other players. He handled it by making sure we spent plenty of time out of combat so the other players' talents had a chance to shine.Yes, mismatched power levels can be a problem. Just one of many a good GM simply has to deal with when it occurs. It's rare to have any group of characters that are totally level with one another, so you have to be prepared for it.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Megaman and the Mouse

 

Champions veteran Theron Bretz wrote a great article on mixing characters of different power level without worrying about point totals or Experience, "Pointless Champions," for Digital Hero #3. A large portion of it was excerpted for a free sample on this website, which you can read here.