Making a Brick in DC

[greymankle]

I'm trying to create a brick for my up coming sci-fi game. We are using pre-gens and the player wants a brick. The game will have periods of time when the players will not be in full gear and other times when they will be loaded for bear. Equipment is bought with Resource Points and the group will be a military unit so armor is available.

 

I'm having trouble finding the balance. The player wants to soak damage and "Stand there and take it" Easy enough to do with good armor. But if the brick is wearing the good armor why can't the rest of the party? Then they are all bricks. If I give the brick more inherent powers like DR or rPD the brick becomes permantly ready for a fight. So if I throw something at them as a surprise the brick will out-shine the other players by far. Plus with the inherent abilities AND armor it will be very dificult to hurt this character. You could argue: That's what a brick is for. But the character would still out shine the others. Right now I'm just thinking really high body but that may not be what the player wants. Since I'm using Pre-gens already I want to cater a little to their wants.

 

I'm sort of asking for some of your experiences out there. Have you guys built bricks that balanced well with the party? Am I just thinking about this too hard? If a player wants a brick then he should stand there and be better than the rest of the party. He's a brick.

 

I'm probably just rambling.

 

-Peace

[Vondy]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

Let the brick buy high defenses, but don't let them make them resistant. Then they can stack the armor and soak the stun all day long, but not be invulnerable from everything under the sun.

[Saxondog]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

If your designing all the characters then give him real defensive powers but NO offensive ability. A lower CV then the others, no attacks, maybe even 1 point lower speed, and perhaps evengive the non-bricks skill levels and martial arts. Then if the group is attacked while out of uniform then the others will have better combat abilities while the brick can soak up damage.

 

Most of the bricks strength can come from the armor. Any major attacks come from the armor or gearl. Without the armor he is just Joe Average but can take a hit real well.

[Ki-rin]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

parts of the Brick archetype:

1- Lot's of CP spent on Str, Con, Bod, Def

2- not much spent other chars (so lower Dex, lower SPD, less Int, less Ego, ...)

3- not much spent on skills

 

Since it's a Sci-Fi game, you could go one step further and have their armor be an extension of their unarmored states. So the big, slow, strong guy is more so in his armor and the fast, accurate, average strength guy has THOSE qualities reflected in their armor. Etc, etc

 

This way everyone ends up with a schtick that is respected in or out of armor.

[OddHat]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

Just IMO, you may be overthinking things. It's an Action Movie; everyone should shine.

 

Some possibilities:

 

1) Don't let your brick sink all of his points into combat abilities. If all the characters have to sink at least 25 points into skills (not including martial arts), then the Brick will remain useful outside of combat, and have that many fewer points to spend on becoming a combat-god.

 

2) Keep resistant defences low. Don't allow tons of body-armor. Do allow snipers. No real human fights that well without knees, elbows, or ankles.

 

3) Give the Brick defences limited with Must Be Aware of Attack; hit him with a surprise attacke once or twice in the adventure.

 

4) Buy his extra STR, CON, BOD and defences with points cut from SPD and DEX.

 

4) Most important, take a hand in building all of the characters, and make sure that all of them have a few skills and tricks that will come in handy in the adventure. Sure, your Brick will be tough, but your Hacker, Super Spy, Sniper, Ninja, etc. all have their roles to play.

 

 

Or, give him this DC level brick to play, and watch him beg for something else.

[greymankle]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

Thanks for the help guys. I like the high defense, low offense. I'll probably sink some more points into non-resistant PD. I already have the non-combat skill in mind for her. Once agian thanks for the help. I think I've got the idea.

 

-Peace

[Ki-rin]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

curiousity questions greymankle

 

What's the max for characteristics in your DC campaign?

 

What, if any, are the other limits for your DC campaign (AP, damage, CV, CP, etc)?

 

EDIT: I'll widen the audience for that question. What does everyone use for maxes, and what maxes do they use, for a DC campaign?

[Eosin]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

Or' date=' give him this DC level brick to play, and watch him beg for something else. [/url']

 

 

That has to be the funniest thing I have seen in months! My wife wants to kick your ass because I woke her up laughing so hard.

 

[Eosin]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

Now that I have finished laughing.....

 

Like other mentioned, a high STR (20-25 depending on taste), a high CON, BODY, and PD go a long way towards making a DC brick. You can add in things like Damage Reduction 25-50% with the limits Only when aware of attack, requires a CON roll, and/or only in HTH to tweek to your own tastes. Top that off with a level of Combat Luck and viola, a brick.

[greymankle]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

curiousity questions greymankle

 

What's the max for characteristics in your DC campaign?

 

What, if any, are the other limits for your DC campaign (AP, damage, CV, CP, etc)?

 

EDIT: I'll widen the audience for that question. What does everyone use for maxes, and what maxes do they use, for a DC campaign?

 

Honestly I haven't gotten that far. The campaign I'm putting together is still in the creation phase. It will be my first attempt at GM-ing Hero. The way I'm going about it is by creating the first party of pre-gens then scaling, with the help of many people on these boards, the world to match.

 

I do have a CP limit though it will be around 300 for this group. Mostly spent on skills, contacts and such. My game seems to be swinging between a low-level supers game and DC.

 

-Peace

[Eosin]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

curiousity questions greymankleEDIT: I'll widen the audience for that question. What does everyone use for maxes' date=' and what maxes do they use, for a DC campaign?[/quote']

 

What we typically see in our 75+75 or 125 +75 point games is the following

 

Stats: General Max = 25

CV: Minimum of 6/6 but fully loaded out the top combat characters can post values in the 10/10 to 12/12 range.

Damage: Minimum runs in the 6-7 DC range with max in the 10+ range (both HTH and Melee).

Total DEF: Average = 10 PD/5 rPD but max value tends to run about 20 PD/10 rPD

 

If we were talking about a supers-DC, I wold alter that some and bump stats into the 15-35 range but would keep DEX in the 18-26 range.

CV would stay about the same.

Damage would bump up into the 8-12 die range

Good DEF would average 18 PD/9 rPD

[JmOz]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

Give his armor Bulky

 

Most players will not want the modifiers for that one...

[JmOz]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

curiousity questions greymankle

 

What's the max for characteristics in your DC campaign?

 

What, if any, are the other limits for your DC campaign (AP, damage, CV, CP, etc)?

 

EDIT: I'll widen the audience for that question. What does everyone use for maxes, and what maxes do they use, for a DC campaign?

 

Well I am starting my first campeign sunday for DC, it is actualy a low level street Super Heroes (Spiderman/Luke Cage, Batman, etc...) type of game.

 

Dex: 15-25, Players:Low is 18, high is 23, average is about 20

Char 15-25, Players: Low 8 (Com), High 40 (Str, character concept is a brick)

Speed:3-6: Players Low: 4, High 5: Average 4.4-4.6 (Can't remember where one character was at)

Def: 10-20: Players have the whole range with an average of 15 or so

rDef: 5-10: Same as above, average is probably around 8

Hardened Defence: 0-5, Average is probably around 3 do to alot of combat luck

Damage: 6-10,: Low 6, high is 9, average probably 7.5 or so

Skills: 15- High. A few characters have been allowed to go above this do to good gear

 

CV: 20 (This is OCV+DCV+ appropriate skills): range: 12-20, average is around 16-17

 

A few notes, defences are higher than in a normal game, this is do to the super hero element in it

 

Damage is still in the human range, and normal weapons should be able to hurt them some...

[Ki-rin]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

In my DC campaigns, I figure non-super agents will have Dex of 11-25 (base CV of 4-8, average of 5-6) and the supers will have Dex of 17-31 (base CV of 6-10, average 7-8). This means agents have a chance of being a threat to just about any super.

 

SPD is 3-7 (average 4-5), with the slowest supers being allowed to have the largest defenses and DC attacks, while the fastest supers have the lowest defenses and DC attacks.

 

I set an 80AP cap on Attacks, with an average of 40AP. Since I also enforce the "you can only increase base damage or AP by 2x" rule, this means the ABSOLUTE cap on Str is 40.

 

For me, the most important difference between a DC campaign and a C campaign is that Combat IS Dangerous. To that end, the average defense is 1.5x the average attack, very hard to hit supers have defenses 1x the average attack and easy to hit supers have defenses 2x the average attack. This INSTANTLY increases the lethality of combat to the point where everyone respects it.

 

The average defense being 1.5x the average attack combined with the fact that trained non-supers will usually be at -2, -3, or -4 to hit supers means that Our Heros have an advantage over Agents but must still treat them with respect in combat. Our Heros should always win, but trained Agents CAN KILL Our Heros if they act casual or stupid about combat.

[Emerald Mask]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

I suggest extra Body,extra Con. .It makes the character harder to kill harder to stun or knockout but does not violate your armor ideas.

[TedJMill]

Re: Making a Brick in DC

 

How about giving him super-strength, but linking his extra defenses to something like density increase, with a limitation that he's immobile while using it? He can confront the villains, go dense, and keep them occupied and let them use up their ammo on him, while other heroes are picking them off. But he has to turn off those defenses to move or to start hitting people, so he's still vulnerable to surprise attacks or to enemies counter-attacking while he's punching them out.