Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

No matter who INTERPRETS the comics Batman will never be stronger than Superman or quicker than Flash just because he has more experience to spend. The writers put limits on the characters just like I put limits on the characters. The difference is that you can see mine with numbers but you can't see their with words. I'm looking to play within comic book "realism" and that doesn't dictate that Thor started out as a 50 strength brick and worked his way up to 100.

 

I don't see your system necessarly encouraging that "realism". Thor couldn't travel extradimensionally in his earliest appearances, but can now. He wasn't Thor in his earliest apearances - he "possessed the power of Thor". The whole "Don Blake is really Thor" angle was grafted on many years later.

 

Even within your restructions, what if we start Batman out as a "peak level human"? Let's call that a 25 STR , 23 CON and a 26 DEX. He can advance to a 33 DEX (pretty far above peak level human), 33 CON (WOW!) and a 45 STR (Bats lifting busses?). His PD can rise 14 (4 from STR, 10 from spending on secndaries) or 10, depending on how you interpret these - 10 PD added to a "peak human" is a lot.

 

I'd rather enforce "soft limitations" based on character concept overall than set hard limits that essentially force point expenditures in inappropriate areas once we've max'ed out the appropriate ones. I do agree the suggestions in 5(er) are good bases for averages and maximums, and will assist in keeping characters at a similar point level reasonably balanced.

[MitchellS]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

I don't see your system necessarly encouraging that "realism". Thor couldn't travel extradimensionally in his earliest apearances - he "possessed the power of Thor". The whole "Don Blake is really Thor" angle was grafted on many years later.

Thor could travel to the rainbow bridge and from there to Asgard. Other dimension just became an extension of traveling to the bridge. The Don Blake part is what I call a retrofit.

 

Even within your restructions, what if we start Batman out as a "peak level human"? Let's call that a 25 STR , 23 CON and a 26 DEX. He can advance to a 33 DEX (pretty far above peak level human), 33 CON (WOW!) and a 45 STR (Bats lifting busses?). His PD can rise 14 (4 from STR, 10 from spending on secndaries) or 10, depending on how you interpret these - 10 PD added to a "peak human" is a lot.

If you remember what I said was that I use the chart from page 28 of CU. So in your example a Batman-like character could never progress past a 30 strength, dexterity, and constitution and a 15 pd/ed based on those being the limits of the CU's level for non-superhuman. I use the 20/10 system or the CU guidelines.

[GrooveD70]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

I think the main issue here is using comics as a guideline for XP spends.

 

Anyone who reads comics and has for some time can cite numerous examples of characters who have changed dramatically or not so dramatically over the years at the whim of the writers. For a while there in the old days, mainly with the X-men, there was a tendency to show a progression of power (Which makes sense, they were at a school designed to teach them about using their powers after all) but that has fallen prey to the whim of the writer as well. Storm has had her powers removed entirely and was "rewritten" as a bad to the bone streetfighting leader type, then she got back her powers. Maybe this was her radiation accident. But that's not really the issue here.

 

Example, player 1 is the martial artist in a CU style game. He doesn't know a lost art, he knows Karate. Over time he increases his physicals to near superhuman (mid to high 20's), increases his dc's with Karate to +4 and adds a bunch of little powers that suppliment his abilities (An armored costume, some flash defense lenses and ear caps, a communicator). He goes from being Dex 26, Str 15, karate +2 dc and having a max hit of 9d6 to being Dex 30, Str 25, and Karate +4dc with a max hit of 13d6. He also has a lot of ancilliary powers that he never had and a bunch of new skills. Is this a problem? Of course not. It's a reasonable progression, he is still inside of the "defined as human" levels of the CU, and while he has gained new abilities, none of them are out of line. If he wants to get some of the mystical karate abilities from UMA, also not an issue, they make sense for the character as defined. The above "minimum" spend I detailed requires at least 30 XP for just the stats and none of the other mentioned items. With everything I mentioned, I'd estimate it at anywhere from 65-100 xp.

 

There is still room to increase this guy A LOT through his concept and be well within the general campaign guidelines. The issue here is not the structure, the genre or the rules. It's the players. I have no hard fast rules for XP spends at all. I have an understanding with my PC's that they should run everything past me so I can account for it in game. If the above martial artist took those phantom 100 points and said "I'm dumping 100 points into strength" I'd ask him how that fits in any way, shape or form with his concept, then I'd point out that a lucky shot by a thug with a handgun still could take him out.

 

To me, it's about the relationship between the PC's and the GM. If you guys can talk through stuff, this should eliminate the need for hard fast rules about XP spends. YMMV of course, but in that case, it might be time for a chat with your players.

 

I agree with you as well.

To clear up my delema... I havent really had problems with an arms race... yet. I generally use the Standard Superhero guidlines in FRed. Yet for some concepts I am inclined to bend those rules. For example the top end for Char in the guidelines is 40. Yet Ironclad has STR well beyond that. So where do I set the upperlimit for pc's? Its just an effort to be fair across the board. Of course character concept needs to be taken into consideration. Would you allow a brick with 90 STR? Can you make a decent brick with 40? Should a Martialatist have 30 DEX? Will he be able to survive with 20? I guess I would just like to set some guidelines and upper limits so my players can be more confident on how to make an acceptable character.

 

Thanks for all of the great comments! I'll be stealing... borrowing heavily!

[Enforcer84]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

Well...it usually depends on the type of character for me. For example, a Brick type might have defense as high as 30/30 while the martial artist might only have 18/18(or less) as his max. To compensate, the Brick can come nowhere near the martial artist in terms of SPD and DEX. I disallow skill levels for beginning characters unless it REALLY fits into their origin. I usually look at each character and go for balance. The stronger and tougher you are, the more likely I'll ask for a reduction in DEX and SPD. I'd say I'm fairly strict as far as characteristics go. You may be more lenient on the issue. Restrictiing CV usually means lower DEX values and keeping a limit on levels.

 

Rob

I've often done this; but it does pigeonhole the characters to an archetype. You won't see as many Spiderman Clones as you'll see Batman and Hulk clones.

[GrooveD70]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

I've often done this; but it does pigeonhole the characters to an archetype. You won't see as many Spiderman Clones as you'll see Batman and Hulk clones.

 

And then we get closer to a class based system. YUCK! But who likes "Icandoeverything Man"?

[GrooveD70]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

My big concern is DEF/rDEF. At what point do you put your foot down concerning natural def/armour/combat luck/force feild stacking. It makes my brain hurt!

[Rubric]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

I've often done this; but it does pigeonhole the characters to an archetype. You won't see as many Spiderman Clones as you'll see Batman and Hulk clones.

 

But slight pigeonholing is worth it to prevent that particular problem. One of the reasons my last campaign ended (well over 10 years ago.... ) is because one of the players stumbled into a character concept that was both unhittable and unhurtable. The character was called "Bullet", and had loads of shrinking for an astronimical DCV, and had maxed out our campaign limits on defense. The character also exploited the loophole where massive strength + massive flight speed = a move-through that blows the lid off the DC cap.

 

The player was not trying to exploit the system, and neither of us realized how powerful it would be until he was already an established character. Sure, there are ways to hit him and ways to deal with him, but it was a real pain trying to come up with a new challenge every game.

 

That particular campaign was falling apart anyway because most of the players were getting into jobs/marriages, etc. and our gaming time was rapidly disappearing. But if we had kept playing, that character would have had to go. He was just too much trouble to deal with, even with a very good and cooperative player.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

My big concern is DEF/rDEF. At what point do you put your foot down concerning natural def/armour/combat luck/force feild stacking. It makes my brain hurt!

 

Depends how long you want combat to last. I'd say between 2.5 and 3x campaign max DC (assuming a lot of characters will gravitate to that max) is reasonable.

[David Blue]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

Having looked at how the Beast example worked (thanks!) I quite like the way MitchellS does things in his game - though I would never dream of suggesting it's the way everyone should do things in every game. As a player I would feel secure that I knew what I would be able to do with the character, with full agreement, and with no bargaining, pleading, competing with the other players to be the one who gets furthest ahead by getting the gamemaster to allow a little more (and a little more) than he had intended. I think that a feeling of predicability and fair play can be good for both player and gamemaster.

 

It might even militate against an arms race. In my experience, one thing that can start an arms race early is if everybody comes in with characters that don't push the guidelines - except one guy who's talked the gamemaster into letting him have more than that. That player is likely to be an instant star, and the players of the outshone characters are likely not to accept their lesser status as fair. So the race is on! (There's a difference between players just getting stronger with more points, as they should, and the mentality of a full-on arms race.)

 

You need some flexibility too, but paying attention to the original character concept (not just jamming people into boxes marked "brick", "martial artist" and so on) and a reasonably ready resort to "radiation accidents" (broadly defined) provides that.

 

GrooveD70: " I'm particularly concerned with capping DEF/rDEF and CV and CSL's."

 

Combat value - I think MitchellS has already provided one possible solution to that.

 

Combat Skill Levels in my experience are the solution, not the problem. It's easy to add a couple of levels of offensive combat value with their usual attacks to villains, thus keeping them in the game against most player characters even as the heroes get harder to hit, while also keeping the villains easy to hit. I think this is very much in genre.

 

Defenses - my first gamemaster used to ask an excellent question: can you stun yourself. And if not, unless I agreed your character conception is about being invulnerable and un-stunnable, please rethink your purchases.

 

Example, here's my plain vanilla brick, Last Hero: strength 50 (10d6 punch, 35 STUN, 10 BODY, no "sneaky damage" from designing around movethroughs or anything like that), physical defence 20 with 10 resistant, energy defence 20 with 10 resistant, constitution 20. If Last Hero fights his evil twin, an average hit won't be a constitution stun. (35 is less than 20+20=40) That's good, it shouldn't be. But a hit that does only six points above average, 41 stun, will constitution stun the character. That's easy. Excellent! So Last Hero has sufficiently moderate defences, and would be approved for play more or less automatically.

 

The gamemaster is happy, because he wants frequent constitution stuns to speed up combats and give them the flavour he has in mind, and I the player am happy because I know I have not gone for anything I'm not supposed to with the character. I also have some assurance that the gamemaster will not put me up against a 60 strength brick (doing 42 STUN on average) and then act surprised and let down because Last Hero's eyelids are fluttering after the first hit. After all, we worked this out together.

 

This kind of balancing works if you have people playing in-genre with Silver Age conventions. If the big brick generally wants to fight the big brick, and so on.

 

Also, Mike W said: "Just as important as the max level is the overall range. A range of 4CVs, 4 SPD, and about 4-5 DCs is the max that you want to deal with if at all possible. That is enough to swing rolls to an overwhelming degree."

 

These words he speaks are true. Oh boy, oh boy are they true! "Overwhelming" is no exaggeration.

 

Does that help?

[Mike W]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

MitchellS

 

I've got about 80% of Iron Man vol. 1 including several of the first 10. When I say that his powers changed dramatically over that time and that he went through several armors, I know of what I speak. In his early appearances, he had about 10 ton strength, regardless of what they showed in the Avengers(and moving the mansion would require something fairly comparable to that, just to have enough strength to balance it properly. As for the rest, powers came and went - energy pods became an on board end reserve, a battle computer was added, boot jets were added, then enhanced to an extensive degree, a mental/psi shield was added, roller skates(!) were added then eliminated, an EMP pulse was added. All kinds of things were going on.

 

Most of Jean Grey's power growth actually came after Claremont got ahold of her, long after the "teen" years. And it wasn't overnight.

 

Dr. Strange is another character who is staggeringly more powerful than he was before.

 

As far as uber villains go, I don't see any campaign lasting long enough to reach a point where any one of the characters is a match for Kang the Conqueror, Graviton, or most of the other "take on the whole Avengers/JLA" types. But it would be nice if the campaign lasted long enough that the GROUP could.

[MitchellS]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

Let's just say that I disagree and leave it at that, but for the record I own every issue of Ironman, Avengers, Spider-man, Fantastic Four and X-men up through 1995 and I also know of what I speak. I'll also add that you missed some of my points. I didn't say characters like Ironman don't get new powers, I said that they don't vastly increase in power. There is relatively no difference between Ironman's repulsors in Tales of Suspense #59 and Ironman #199. You should also check with some engineers if you think 10 tons is enough to move the Frick Mansion.

 

Your Jean Grey example is a perfect fit for what I was describing about writer/publisher license. Jean got more power, became the phoenix, died, came back at the power levels before phoenix, etc, etc, etc. Dr. Strange also fits into that category. He was an apprentice, became sorcerer supreme, lost the mantle, regained the mantle, etc.

 

Ultimately you can't look at a character's 40 year history as a measure of experience. You must look at his continuity as it gets updated and changes for the period within a certain segment of time. If you try to use the whole history you get nothing fixed from it. You can't judge what Dr. Strange was in Strange Takes #110 compared to what he currently is because the continuity has changed a half-dozen times since then.

[Mike W]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

Last comment, then I'll agree to disagree., especially since we've kinda hijacked this thread into a separate, albeit related argument.

 

First, I didn't miss what you said, I think we just disagreed on interpretation(and there were a couple things you clarified later on that didn't look that way the first time you stated them). As for IM moving the mansion, he DID have help, and no 10 tons wouldn't be enough...but you wouldn't need anywhere near the 50 ton strength he had later on...class 25 at most at that point, but even that would be generally dubious. I tend to base things on overall figures, not isolated incidents. You can always explain isolated incidents as "writer's prerogative" or "pushing".

 

And Doc, with or without the mantle is FAR more powerful in every way from his early apperances in Strange Tales vol. 1 and he was even back in the late 80s/early 90s before the writers took away his Vishanti powers and started giving him a new set of powers every year or so.

[zornwil]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

I have to set myself up for a flame war here, but I have to disagree with everyone. I see pretty much the same problem cropping up just disguised in different skins. "STR is too cheap." "Penalty Skill Levels are too powerful." "Llama meat is tasty."

 

Instead of changing costs and implementing all sorts of arbitrary limits should we not attack the true problem?

 

Why do your players engage in an 'arms race'? Is it because victory in combat is seen as the ultimate goal? Make the alternatives more appealing. Make skills more than just a footnote. Design sessions that require the PCs do more than pommel the villian into submission.

Llama meat is tasty.

 

But good point. I don't use limits. The only arms race I've really seen ever is in my current campaign and it's between 2 PCs and all about their INT. They've both been willing to sink scads of points into it. It's become a running gag, though it does fit the PCs. To the degree it's shaped the game, with 2 mega-INTs (>100, though of differing approaches and types), I've found it very positive. It's created challenges for me that I've enjoyed. And you can't accuse the players or being cost-effective or munchkiney, really (I mean sinking all those points into INT?).

[Phil]

Re: Caps on Characteristics for Standard Supers

 

Something you might like to consider is applying NCM principles to any caps you set. So if someone really, *really* wants to be Captain Invulnerable, they can, but they have to pay double for DEF over and above whatever campaign limit you set. It's often bothered me that campaign limits usually set 10d6 attacks with 20-25 point defences, so you're always going to take around 10 damage. Let them spend an 20 points to put the defence to 30-35: they're's a chance they'll still take some damage from a normal 10d6, and they'll take plenty from an AP or NND attack.

 

Something else I like to do is to apply an Active Point campaign maximum to all characteristics. So, if your limit is 60 points, you cant spend any more than 60 on Strength, or 60 on Dex or 60 on SPD.

 

As a side note, it's interesting how design philosophies vary. HERO makes defences cheaper than attacks, but relies on GMs imposing campaign limits to ensure that the maximum defence will still allow PCs to take damage from the maximum attack. On the other hand, I was looking at Aberrant the other day, and it simply takes the approach of making defences much more expensive than attacks.