Essential Bad Champions

[Enforcer84]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

Agents. With 30 Dex, 4 SPD and 4d6 RKA weapons.

[RDU Neil]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

Agents. With 30 Dex' date=' 4 SPD and 4d6 RKA weapons.[/quote']

 

 

You've fought Paul's Janitors, too?

 

 

 

 

 

 

sorry... little joke nobody will get

[hooligan x]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

three more players than there are chairs, or room for chairs. This combines "nicely" with play that is alway going to end at midnight no matter what, this time, and reliably extends to 3am of a Sunday, or worse a Monday morning because of a really big, exceptional, one-off (fight) adventure. Which can make getting knocked out at Sunday 8:30pm or so a blessing, even if it didn't seem that way when it happened.

 

I suspect a lot of horror stories about what violent and evil things player characters did in Champions should add: "This happened at 1:30 am before a working day, and the player, who was red-eyed, hungry and had not sat down properly for hours, prefaced his homicidal actions with a bloodshot stare and the words: "Right. Let's just finish this. ..."

 

I have two house rules: 1. no more asses than seats and 2.everybody out by 11! Thinking of all the time wasted by the pizza ordering, I may add Come with a full belly.

 

My wife has a few house rules too. No geeks in my kitchen is her biggest one.

[David Blue]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

While not unbeateable' date=' it could be argued that Prof. X for the X-men, Captain America for the Avengers, and Superman/Batman for the JLA could be filling this role [the NPC "campaign boss" morality enforcer'] depending on the writer. I think Prof. X especially is a classic "GM's character".

With Superman and Batman I would argue it, and with Captain America probably also. But with Professor X you have an example that's too good for me to want to argue with. OK, so this is a comic "bit" after all.

 

I'm standing by chronic action-holding stalling contests in what should be hot combat as "Essential Bad Champions."

 

It's part of the way gamemasters teach the players to abuse the rules and argue every interpretation. This happens especially with agents, because it's so inspiring for mere men, trained, couragous etc.. to do well against supers. You have to show the agents being smart. And the way they show that they are smart, often, is to work the rules. The players go to school on that. Agents gain great advantages by stalling. Pretty soon the heroes are stalling too, all God's chillun gotta stall, seemingly endlessly, in combat. Agents have equipment that exploits every loophole in the rules, and the gamemaster's perhaps surprising interpretations of the rules (which they somehow always knew about in advance and the player characters didn't of course), to achieve superior bang-for-a-buck! All right, the heroes learn that munchkinisms are the way to be cool and smart, and that the path to victory and fame often passes through a non-intuitive rules call in your favour. Munchkin-fu advances mightily, and players argue all day and all night for "good" (profitable) calls.

 

Total domination by rules rorting, by playing the Speed Chart, by exploiting the overwhelming points and power to be gained from the Focus "limitations" and power frameworks and +1/4s and unlikely calls and House Rules - all this is Essential Bad Champions.

 

Certain comic characters do become defined perennial victims. But it doesn't seem to be because they lack rule-exploiting efficiency. For exploiting the focus and vehicles rules, Blue Beetle would be (nearly) as good as the Batman.

 

I think the systematic and inexorable invalidation or downgrading of characters that are less cost-efficient point builds is also Essential Bad Champions.