Like a Defender from City of Heroes

[Egyptoid]

Who would be a "Defender" super-hero ?

...in the CITY of HEROES definition of the term...

 

 

Sue Richards of FF ?

Iceman of X-Men ?

Green Lantern of JLA ?

 

Defender

From City of Heroes/City of Villains

The Defender is a long-range support specialist. This Archetype is effective with ranged attacks (though not quite on par with the Blaster), but the Defender's true worth shines in another area. Defenders are the premier helpers in the game - they are the best at strengthening their teammate's abilities (buffing) and weakening foes (debuffing). They aren't built for lengthy hand to hand combat, though they aren't fragile, either. The Defender needs to keep an eye both on his teammates and the enemy - in order to see which requires his powerful attention first!

 

*Hit Points: Medium

*Damage: Medium

*Primary Power Category - Buff/Debuff

*Secondary Power Category - Ranged Attacks

 

City of Heroes Archetypes

Blaster | Scrapper | Tanker | Defender | Controller

[CandidGamera]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

Green Lantern and Sue Richards both fit the bill. Iceman, I'd say no.

[Hermit]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

Witchcraft might qualify as one... but then I know very little about CoH.

[Fuzzy Gnome]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

I think Raven of the Titans would be a defender.

[Bloodstone]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

Off the top of my head...

 

Scarlet Witch

 

Hawkeye

 

Green Arrow

 

Fabian Cortez

 

Elixer

 

Mind you, most superheores don't fit perfectly into any one COH/V archtype. Iceman, for example, would basicaly be an Ice Tanker, Blaster and Controller...

[CandidGamera]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

Raven - yeah, I'd buy that.

 

Scarlet Witch? Controller.

 

Hawkeye, Green Arrow? Eh. I think lumping them in as Defenders really overstates their use of the trick arrows, and I think the Trick arrows were kind of a poor idea for a Defender set in the first place. They both should be a kind of Scrapper/Blaster Hybrid, really.

[Trained Chicken]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

I think Raven of the Titans would be a defender.

 

My Raven homage is a controller- gravity/kinetics

[CandidGamera]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

My Raven homage is a controller- gravity/kinetics

 

How is Raven not an Empathy/Dark Defender? Or possibly Dark/Dark.

[the_reaver]

The Defender as an archtype in Champions?

 

My question on this thread is how would you incorporate the Defender into a Champions archtype (like the Metamorph, Blaster, Martial Artist, etc)?

 

I'd playtest that because I've got four different Defenders that I play in City of Heroes that would fit perfectally into a Champions game.

[Phil]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

None. Virtually none of any of the CoH archetypes exist in the genre fiction, and that's one of my biggest complaints with the game. It takes a MMORG and puts a Superhero face onto it, rather than taking the Superhero genre and creating a MMORG from it.

 

Take a simple example. Healing. Every defender has some form of healing, yet healing powers apart from Regen are incredibly rare in the genre.

[CandidGamera]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

None. Virtually none of any of the CoH archetypes exist in the genre fiction, and that's one of my biggest complaints with the game. It takes a MMORG and puts a Superhero face onto it, rather than taking the Superhero genre and creating a MMORG from it.

 

Take a simple example. Healing. Every defender has some form of healing, yet healing powers apart from Regen are incredibly rare in the genre.

 

Not us ForceField types. *grumble*

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

Storm and other weather-powers characters would be storm/elec defenders.

 

(though why that's a defender powerset and not a controller I dunno...)

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

Storm and other weather-powers characters would be storm/elec defenders.

 

(though why that's a defender powerset and not a controller I dunno...)

 

Some defender primaries work better as controller secondaries - Storm and Force Field are two of the most common examples.

 

Re: playing a defender-style character - I like defenders in CoH, but the game mechanics need some adjustment if you're going to translate them into Champions. The main reason for this, IMO, is the nature of Buffs and Debuffs. Offensively, CoH is set up on the assumption that a character does 100% base damage, but can do up to 390% damage via self-buffs or other-buffs. In Champions terms, that's the difference between a 10d attack and a 39d attack. As that's probably a bit unbalancing, you probably need to work with your GM to set some limits as to how 'good' your character's buffs can be.

 

EDIT - the reason you can get away with this in CoH is that there's no real PD/ED in the game - it's all Damage Resistance. Thus, having the eqivalent of a 40d attack isn't nearly as impressive when the target resists 50% of the damage thrown at it.

 

The other issue is stacking buffs - in CoH, defenders team extremely well - they do ok damage, and they can buff everyone in the team. Assuming you've got 2 or more defenders, all of their buffs stack, resulting in a juggernaut team that can roll through anything it encounters.

 

To take an example of a Defender powerset I know fairly well - Force Field. The relevent buffing powers are as follows:

1. Small Bubbles - +30% (or so) defensive bonus for each team member, that lasts for 4 minutes. This translates into a +3 (or so) DCV bonus (AoE, 1 hex), plus a +10 Power Defense (DCV only). This bonus affects others only.
   
2. Big Bubble - +15% defensive bonus, AoE around the FF defender. Translates roughly into a +2 DCV bonus (AoE, 4 hexes, Selective Effect), plus a +5 Power Defense (DCV only) plus a +10 bonus to Mental Defense, Power Defense, and CON (to avoid being Stunned), nonpersistant.
   
3. Maneuvers - not a FF power, but very common for a FF defender to take: +6% defense. +1 DCV (AoE, 4 Hexes, Selective Effect), +3 Power defense (DCV only), non-persistant. There's also a minor bonus to resist sleep powers, or something like that - I forget.

That's pretty much all of the defense-based powers for a FF defender: a +3 bonuse to DCV for all team members, with an additional +3 if you're fighting nearby. Which is high, but not too high. However, these bonuses go for everyone in the team, which means that most allies won't get hit very often, If you have another defender in the group, these bonuses get even more wacky - Radiation defenders, for example, debuff a targets Accuracy, which would translate roughtly into a -6 DCV debuff. Yeah, this kind of thing can be resisted, but the end result is a group of PC's that are really hard to hit.

 

The solution to such a group would be to have enemies that have lots of accuracy and power defense, or their own buff/debuff guys, or something along those lines. However, that requries a re-think of champions design and genre rules, which may be a bit much.

 

That being said, one thing I do like about CoH powersets is their tendency to have attacks that do other things besides damage: debuffs, damage over time, immobilizes, and so on. In Champions terminology, this is a good way to have a lower-damage power that still has a high active cost, which is a good way to distinguish attack powers: the main blaster guy has the 12d attack, while the support guy has a d8 attack with a linked 2d6 PD/ED drain. (or whatever).

[Tim]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

My main character is a lvl 25 Kinetic/Psychic Blast Defender. Her name is Psilancer. I've only taken 3 Kinetic powers: Transfusion-AE heal+End drain. Siphon Power-transfer from targets dmg to your dmg. And Repel-no rng, AE KB. those are easy to figure out in Champs terms.

Her secondary power set, I have yet to figure out how all of it would work. How do you show the "slows attack rate" part?

She spent several of her powers for stealth, Invis and the Swift, Health, and Stamina from the Fitness pool. (A must have).

 

She wasn't built to be game efficient, but to concept. (Look at Lancer from CKC)

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: Like a Defender from City of Heroes

 

Her secondary power set, I have yet to figure out how all of it would work. How do you show the "slows attack rate" part?

She spent several of her powers for stealth, Invis and the Swift, Health, and Stamina from the Fitness pool. (A must have).

 

From my understanding, all powers in Champions "recharge" on a per-combat phase basis; that is, most powers work once per combat phase, and they are useable on your next combat phase. Therefore, you need to affect the SPD of the character in order to affect the recharge.

 

My suggestion:

 

Attack Power - Linked to Drain (Speed) - Penetrating 1x, increased maximum, limitation "Only affects power recharge".

 

Phrasing it that way simply means that once you use a power, it doesn't become active on the combat phase that was 'drained'. They can still move and attack with other powers, whatnot, but powers that are used come back more slowly.

 

However, I'm probably missing something on the Champions side of things, in terms of aborting actions and whatnot. At that point, I'd say "it's a GM call", but only because I don't know the rules that apply.

 

EDIT - unfortunately, for most villians, such a debuff wouldn't be all that much of an issue - most NPCs would have more than one attack, and they's simply flip over to a different one if they couldn't use their primary. Thus, in order to make this more of a useful secondary effect, I'd suggest going with more of a "affects power use only" limitation instead. This way, the target can't use ANY power (as defined by the SFX of the debuff) in the phase that was drained. This is probably more useful, while keeping with the goal of the powerset, than the one I described originally.