Random powers?

[SpydirShellX]

Re: Random powers?

 

I think that variety in character powers makes for a more interesting character...

For example, in my campain -

There is a illusionist character that is actually the Gadgeteer since he decided to compensate for a normally fragile body with technology. He had his 'power' and decided it wasn't enough to fight crime with so he found himself a contact to supply him with supertech.

The brick is a character that walks through walls and takes on aspects of the wall he walks through... he also can send and transmit radio as well as disarm bombs with a touch (and for that matter is more intellegent than the mentalist/gadgeteer).

 

 

I think that 'themed' powers are great... unfortiantly they tend to follow the theme. A fire character tends to be a hot-head and tends to use a certain set of powers.

Personally I think it makes a character a lot more interesting if they have a few powers in their powerset that don't belong.

 

For villains it makes the characters try to spend time learning to fight them rather than making their moves instantly predictable when they reveal their name (which always is a dead giveaway to their powers).

For characters, if gives them the bit of extra definition - what aspect of their power would that character realize that most people wouldn't think of using. This isn't always entirely random.

 

Also think about characters that have abilities that don't neccessarily fit, but they pull off anyway. Wolverine for example... metal skeleton and claws plus mutant regeneration. Those would not normally be thought of together. A lot of gadgeteers have a real grab-bag of powers. Batman has any equipment he can put the word Bat in front of.

 

Really, a complex back story can explain almost any mish-mash of powers... just make it long enough. Contrivance is just a coincidence without the connections from A to B.

[transmetahuman]

Re: Random powers?

 

The "straw that broke the camel's back"' date=' as it were, was this post. No single post caused me to create this thread, nor was I thinking of any specific post, I was just tired of hearing it so often

Well, it did sound like it came from a random table, without any context to judge otherwise. I didn't even say that I disapproved - though, yeah, the context probably implied it. My preference is for thematically solid characters, and I might not have let Spider-Man into a game if some player had invented him first (though I'm totally fine with Trophy Checklist Man, go figure). Some of it is a suspension-of-disbelief issue (yes, in a game where people can turn into animate sandpiles). I also find the limits and boundaries of powers to be one of the most interesting aspects of them.

 

And maybe I'll think more about letting a scattershot character into a game next time (not that it's ever come up before; IME most people like strong themes too), because you made me think about this issue and why I have the preferences I do, and we might lose out on a cool character because of my knee-jerk reaction.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Random powers?

 

Batman has any equipment he can put the word Bat in front of.

 

"It's going to be a long night of investigation Robin, fire up the Bat Espresso Machine, make my first a double."

[secretID]

Re: Random powers?

 

Haha' date=' I like this. Totally works for me, especially if the player comes up with the stories about each villain they came from. Hmmmm...[/quote']

I was thinking a lot of points in unknown hunteds, and unknown bad rep popping up unexpectedly when some item or device is exhibited.

[Trained Chicken]

Re: Random powers?

 

Rocketed to earth from his distant, dying planet after being orphaned by a petty criminal, Our Hero was adopted by a Himalayan monk who tutored him in the ways of the Mystic Arts and mysterious techniques of hand to hand combat until, on his 18th birthday, he was struck by lightning, gifted a powerful weapon by mysterious Guardians of the Multiverse, bitten by a radioactive wombat and bombarded by Cosmic Rays, Gamma Rays, Vita-Rays, Ray-Rays and Antimatter Rays. Building himself a suit of powered armor, Our Hero now battles for Truth, Justice and Hostess Fruit Pies...

 

Yeah, maybe a central theme isn't such a bad idea.

 

Sounds like you've sat accross the table from a few 13 year olds.

 

Anyone remember Golden Heroes? You rolled for your powers' date=' but you then had to design a backstory that reasonably encompassed them. Any that didn't fit, didn't stay.[/quote']

 

Wow, now there's a cool idea. I've never heard of, nor thought of, that.

 

And here I thought this was going to be necromancy of the thread that brought us Megascale Swinging.

 

I'll be damned if that's my legacy to the HERO System.

[Lightning91]

Re: Random powers?

 

Seems to me, more then a few comic characters have powers from multiple sources:

 

Wolverine - Mutant healer (mutant power), metal skeleton (technological)

Dr. Doom - Powered armor (technological), sorcery (magic)

Reed Richards - stretching (radiation accident), technological VPP

Shadowkat - Intangibility (mutant), nija training (awesome mini-series)

Giantman - Growth, Talking to ants

Legion of Superheroes - Everyone gets a membership card and a Flight ring

etc...

 

Why not allow the disjointed powers, with or without an explanation. If no explanation is given, develop the story and reveal it through game-play.

[AlHazred]

Re: Random powers?

 

To some extent, characters focused too strongly on one element are boring. You need variety to give a character spice - not too much, maybe, but enough. And in that regard, I like a random system for inspiration. I used to run V&V and I had players who liked the random generation system for precisely that reason.

 

In any case, let's look at Martian Manhunter - what does his list of powers contain? Telepathy, Desolidification, Flight, Super-Strength, Shape Shift, Life Support, etc. What links these powers together? "Uh... he's a Martian - so there!" I'd never really allow this in my games - you'd need to be a little more centered.

[transmetahuman]

Re: Random powers?

 

Seems to me, more then a few comic characters have powers from multiple sources:

 

Wolverine - Mutant healer (mutant power), metal skeleton (technological)

Dr. Doom - Powered armor (technological), sorcery (magic)

Reed Richards - stretching (radiation accident), technological VPP

Shadowkat - Intangibility (mutant), nija training (awesome mini-series)

Giantman - Growth, Talking to ants

Legion of Superheroes - Everyone gets a membership card and a Flight ring

etc...

 

Why not allow the disjointed powers, with or without an explanation. If no explanation is given, develop the story and reveal it through game-play.

Wolverine's regeneration-that-also-grants-hyperkeen-senses bothers me more than the skeleton. And don't forget:

 

Superman - x-ray vision? heat vision?

 

Thor - extradimensional travel?

 

Wonder Woman - why not give her some mythological items of power instead of some random lasso that compels truth? Though I guess "bondage" was a central theme for her. And how the heck does a reclusive Amazonian society develop an invisible aerospace industry?

 

All the bizarre stuff the Flash can do by "vibrating". Would any GM let a player justify desolid because he's a speedster, if the Flash hadn't been around?

 

And of course the ultimate grab-bag, the Martian Manhunter...

 

Seems like almost all the really big iconic supers from the early years of comics had some pretty "random" powers.

[wcw43921]

Re: Random powers?

 

No. But I still hate characters who have no thematic unity even though I quite enjoy rolling up V&V characters. Finding the thematic unity in a semi-random set of rolls is part of the appeal.

 

My sentiments exactly. When I ran a Villains & Vigilantes campaign many years ago, one of my players had a character who had Vibratory Powers (Energy Blast, moving through walls, defense capability, destroy things by touch) Magnetic Powers (attract metal through magnetism) and Teleportation (travel from one place to another without crossing the intervening distance). While I didn't discuss with him how his powers worked, I came up for myself that they all stemmed from the specific ability to cause all his molecules to come apart and reassemble. That was how he was able to generate vibrations (through agitating his molecules), teleport (disintegrating, then reintegrating in another place), and use magnetism (that's what kept his molecules together).

 

With a little imagination, you can explain any supposedly "random" set of powers.

[wcw43921]

Re: Random powers?

 

Wolverine's regeneration-that-also-grants-hyperkeen-senses bothers me more than the skeleton.

 

I was thinking that animal-keen senses and regeneration could be tied into one critical factor--survival. They allow Wolverine to track any prey, evade any predator, and heal from any injury or disease. All of which give him the ability to survive no matter what the enviroment or the odds against him.

 

Superman - x-ray vision? heat vision?

 

John Byrne did a great job of explaining X-ray vision in an interview he gave in the buildup to the Man Of Steel mini-series (the post-Crisis reboot of Superman). He described it as using "his telescopic and microscopic vision in combination to focus past an object's atomic structure they a camera focuses past the dust on the lens."

 

He also explained heat vision as "a by-product of all that solar radiation he's built up." Probably not so adequate for a picky GM. But I do remember an episode of The Adventures Of Superman where George Reeves version of the character melts a horseshoe with his X-ray vision. So heat vision may have been begun in the comics as "spun-off" from that.

 

Thor - extradimensional travel?

 

May have been an alternate method of getting back and forth to Asgard. Anyway, he's THE MIGHTY THOR. The God Of Thunder. He's one of the strongest characters in his universe, and his hammer can crack mountains like they were walnuts. He is, as Douglas Adams put it, "a man you only dare cross with a team of Sherpas."

 

And you want to tell him he can't travel extradimensionally? Good. Luck. How do I get in touch with your next of kin?

 

Wonder Woman - why not give her some mythological items of power instead of some random lasso that compels truth?

 

Because that's what the writer decided?

 

Sorry--that's the best I got. I don't know enough about the origins of the lasso. Would have been nifty if it were made out of the Golden Fleece. But for myself, I never had a problem with it.

 

And how the heck does a reclusive Amazonian society develop an invisible aerospace industry?

 

No men around to keep them from realizing their full potential. Amazon society was always depicted as being more advanced and enlightened than Man's World, so they were much farther along in technology and elsewhere.

 

 

All the bizarre stuff the Flash can do by "vibrating". Would any GM let a player justify desolid because he's a speedster, if the Flash hadn't been around?

 

If The Flash can be super-fast, so are his molecules. It would take practice, but I could see a speedster being able to generate vibrations, and vibrating his molecules fast enough to slip through the spaces between other molecules. Again, a picky GM might not allow it, but to my mind it isn't that difficult to accept.

 

And of course the ultimate grab-bag, the Martian Manhunter...

 

My understanding is that in the DC Universe, Martians were a more ancient race than humans. You could say that being ancient, they were more fully "evolved" in mind and body, with both more integrated than with humans. Martians can be super-strong, shapeshift, fly, and desolidify themselves because their minds tell their bodies that they can.

 

I hope those explanations work for you.

[jkwleisemann]

Re: Random powers?

 

Sorry' date=' no, that doesn't fly. There's no [b']story[/b] there, no reason for me to believe that's plausible. And any story I could create to justify that would reek of contrivance.

Which, really, is what my point was when I put it together. When that post was made, it was my nightmare of what would happen in a game where I started playing a normal/skilled character (the brilliant scientist)... who ended up with random powers shortly into the campaign (the unintelligible hodgepodge of results that were listed).

 

So, really, that not flying was the point.

 

As to the point of the thread... I think it's just that, when you see such wildly disparate powers as some folks have, you start to think 'random power generator.' I've already had nightmare flashbacks to Heroes Unlimited while reading some writeups.

 

Now, does everything have to have a unified SFX? Of course not! I like the mentalist who straps on power armor to keep from getting pulped on the battlefield, personally.

 

But when you get (and, sadly, this is from honest-to-goodness play experience) a character with:

 

The ability to turn into metal.

Superspeed.

Telepathy.

And animalistic totem-strengths of the Bear....

 

I defy you to come up with any way to explain that sort of illogic without random tables.

 

Though, in defense of the random tables in Champions, they're not actually half-bad in my experience.

[Robyn]

Re: Random powers?

 

But when you get (and, sadly, this is from honest-to-goodness play experience) a character with:

 

The ability to turn into metal.

Superspeed.

Telepathy.

And animalistic totem-strengths of the Bear....

 

I defy you to come up with any way to explain that sort of illogic without random tables.

 

Sounds like another story challenge to me

[SpydirShellX]

Re: Random powers?

 

The ability to turn into metal.

Superspeed.

Telepathy.

And animalistic totem-strengths of the Bear....

 

I defy you to come up with any way to explain that sort of illogic without random tables.

 

Loki decided to have fun with a few of the other Patheons. So taking a note from Zeus's book, he tricked Mercury into mating with a female bear totem of the American Indians. The offspring (our resultant here), due to the powers of he two parents became shaman of his tribe.

Thus the character can turn into metal (pun of the name of Mercury)

Has superspeed from his father, the messenger god.

Telepathy from his training as a shaman

and Bear-totem from his mother.

 

Tada! Think of the family reunions...

[Kirby]

Re: Random powers?

 

Is it so unbelievable that someone might want to play a character with an assortment of powers that neither derive from the same source' date=' nor "play well together"?[/quote']I personally have no problem with this and am glad to see that there are a few others who don't either. I do like a story to go with them (John was a mutant who learned sorcery, Jane was a mentalist who could turn invisible, etc.) and even if the PC has no good story, he can end up calling himself Enigma, Anomaly, Random, Mr. E., etc to "fill the name requirement" some seem to have.

 

I wonder how many people would freak if Firewing had a physical weapon he could only use on the ground?

[jkwleisemann]

Re: Random powers?

 

Loki decided to have fun with a few of the other Patheons. So taking a note from Zeus's book, he tricked Mercury into mating with a female bear totem of the American Indians. The offspring (our resultant here), due to the powers of he two parents became shaman of his tribe.

Thus the character can turn into metal (pun of the name of Mercury)

Has superspeed from his father, the messenger god.

Telepathy from his training as a shaman

and Bear-totem from his mother.

 

Tada! Think of the family reunions...

*gives SpydirShellX the rep-cookie of 'But Was it Worth It?'*

 

Still the sort of character I cringe at seeing.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Random powers?

 

I personally have no problem with this and am glad to see that there are a few others who don't either. I do like a story to go with them (John was a mutant who learned sorcery, Jane was a mentalist who could turn invisible, etc.) and even if the PC has no good story, he can end up calling himself Enigma, Anomaly, Random, Mr. E., etc to "fill the name requirement" some seem to have.

 

I wonder how many people would freak if Firewing had a physical weapon he could only use on the ground?

 

Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, my Mystic Gadgeteer is called Enigma.

[transmetahuman]

Re: Random powers?

 

No men around to keep them from realizing their full potential. Amazon society was always depicted as being more advanced and enlightened than Man's World' date=' so they were much farther along in technology and elsewhere.[/quote']The point was more about the way that the Amazons were hiding from the rest of the world, on a not-very-big island. Of course, in comics, any half-gifted techie can develop an entire complex industry if she has a few spare hours, so even though the Amazons would have almost no use for an aerospace industry until Steve Whatshisname crashed/floated in/whatever, I guess someone could whip one up on the spot.

 

If The Flash can be super-fast' date=' so are his molecules. It would take practice, but I could see a speedster being able to generate vibrations, and vibrating his molecules fast enough to slip through the spaces between other molecules. Again, a picky GM might not allow it, but to my mind it isn't that difficult to accept. [/quote']I don't care how fast or at what frequency it's vibrating at, solids don't act that way. I could see him running through walls via vibration if he left big holes or something, maybe. I'm not going into the comic-book physics issue here, though; the point is that desolid is a really ridiculous stretch of the concept of speedster (though now taken for granted, because of the Flash comics).

 

I wasn't really objecting to the things I listed, though; more pointing out specific examples that I as a GM would probably have frowned on if Wonder Woman, Flash, etc. had been invented by a player in a game of mine rather than being established comics characters. My last post was really a way of saying that my comfort level in this area might be loosening up, not an argument against the Flash.

 

I personally have no problem with this and am glad to see that there are a few others who don't either. I do like a story to go with them (John was a mutant who learned sorcery' date=' Jane was a mentalist who could turn invisible, etc.) and even if the PC has no good story, he can end up calling himself Enigma, Anomaly, Random, Mr. E., etc to "fill the name requirement" some seem to have.[/quote']I've got no problem at all with "archetype-buster" characters. And I think I can start to deal with characters whose story/history gives a logical (or just cool) explanation for disparate powers, if that history doesn't seem overly contrived to justify someone who wants Every Cool Power He Can Think Of. I don't think I wanna loosen up quite that far.

 

I guess it comes down to: Older comics, and the characters they created, made even less sense than modern ones. Modern readers and gamers (including myself) have come to expect stuff that isn't quite so hard on the suspension-of-disbelief, with a little more internal consistency. So the characters with the grab-bag of powers have to work for it harder.

[Doug McCrae]

Re: Random powers?

 

Anyone remember Golden Heroes? You rolled for your powers' date=' but you then had to design a backstory that reasonably encompassed them. Any that didn't fit, didn't stay.[/quote']The problem was the players could just use 'multi origins' to justify every power. For example a mutant who trained to be an expert swordsman then had a cybernetic arm grafted.

[SpydirShellX]

Re: Random powers?

 

The problem was the players could just use 'multi origins' to justify every power. For example a mutant who trained to be an expert swordsman then had a cybernetic arm grafted.

 

I see nothing wrong with that particular story - especially if the character then has a vendetta against the person who cut off his arm.

 

Frankly, Technology and Training can go along with almost any backstory.

 

However, powers cosmic, avatar or mystic powers tend not to work well with others. Powers cosmic and avatar powers generally should be powerful enough in themselves that the user doesn't need stopgaps like martial arts training or technology. Even if they are gifted at some point later in the character's life, they usually go to somebody who is otherwise normal (not trained or otherwise a super). The only exception to that I can think of is the Phoenix/Jean Gray - something that I wouldn't allow in my game. Mystic Powers tend to not work well with technology and tend to require study that would go in place of martial arts training. Maybe a techno-mage or martial artist mystic, but both would require some more backstory than most.

 

As I've said earlier, I like the multiple source of powers idea because it allows for more though in playing the character / character design. However, I want that type of thought to go into the character.

[McCoy]

Re: Random powers?

 

And of course the ultimate grab-bag, the Martian Manhunter...

 

Seems like almost all the really big iconic supers from the early years of comics had some pretty "random" powers.

Or lazy editors.

[McCoy]

Re: Random powers?

 

How about a Mystic character whose main weapon is a .38 Pistol?

Or a character whose main weapon is a bullwhip, uses a pistol for backup, yet somehow ia able to tap into the powers of mystic artifacts?

 

 

Lile Indiana Jones.

 

[MisterD]

Re: Random powers?

 

Would I be able to post links to my characters on my site here and thread readers can see if I stick to concept?

[Adventus]

Re: Random powers?

 

Seems to me, more then a few comic characters have powers from multiple sources:

 

Wolverine - Mutant healer (mutant power), metal skeleton (technological)

Dr. Doom - Powered armor (technological), sorcery (magic)

Reed Richards - stretching (radiation accident), technological VPP

Shadowcat - Intangibility (mutant), ninja training (awesome mini-series)

Giantman - Growth, Talking to ants

Legion of Superheroes - Everyone gets a membership card and a Flight ring

etc...

 

Why not allow the disjointed powers, with or without an explanation. If no explanation is given, develop the story and reveal it through game-play.

 

You forgot a few things:

 

Wolverine: Ninja Training

Shadowcat: Black Magic Sorceress

Dr. Doom: Filthy rich perk: Ruler of country Diplomatic immunity.Technological VPP

 

Also the spelling police stopped by and fixed the spelling errors. DAMN them!

[Kirby]

Re: Random powers?

 

Wolverine: Ninja Training

Wolverine had ninja training? Did he ever use it, aside from walking softly...and carrying a big schtick?

[Adventus]

Re: Random powers?

 

Wolverine had ninja training? Did he ever use it' date=' aside from walking softly...and carrying a big shtick? [/quote']

 

He also has Samurai training.