Powers That Shouldn't Have Been Approved

[Elysea]

Here's one for all you GMs out there. Did a player ever come to you with a power that seemed harmless enough, but ended up twisting your campaign beyond your initial expectations after you approved it? Post your humorous anecdotes here. Players too, even if you weren't the GM in a campaign this happened in.

[Tamashii2000]

Re: Powers That Shouldn't Have Been Approved

 

Originally posted by Elysea

Here's one for all you GMs out there. Did a player ever come to you with a power that seemed harmless enough, but ended up twisting your campaign beyond your initial expectations after you approved it? Post your humorous anecdotes here. Players too, even if you weren't the GM in a campaign this happened in.

 

 

4th edition.. Had a character with a double knockback energy blast (10d6) and a prety good force wall. I never thought twice about it untill the player tossed a force wall up behind a target..then knocked his foe back into it

[TheEmerged]

The imfamous "Acid Rain". 1/2d6 RKA, with an absolutely obscene number of advantages on it -- including AE, Autofire, 0 END, NND, and Does Body.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by TheEmerged

The imfamous "Acid Rain". 1/2d6 RKA, with an absolutely obscene number of advantages on it -- including AE, Autofire, 0 END, NND, and Does Body.

That "seemed harmless enough?!?"

[Derek Hiemforth]

The nastiest I GM'ed for was a guy with TK and Mental Illusions. He was good for taking a villain completely out of the battle every other Phase.

 

Step one: Grab villain in TK.

Step two: Hit villain with Mental Illusion that they're still grabbed in the TK and can't get out.

 

Repeat ad nauseum.

 

The level of effect was ridiculously easy to accomplish with the Mental Illusion. It's not a major change to the environment, and the character had a reputation for having extremely powerful Telekinesis, so it was plenty believable...

 

At least this was 4th edition... in 5th, he could do this all at once with a Multiple Power Attack.

[Bartman]

I once ran a PsiWorld based campaign and added an NPC who's only power was an Aid only to psi powers. In practice it ended up doubling all the PC's effectiveness, and instead of an exotic 'normals' campaign I ended up with with a supers game. I didn't regain control of the campaign until I killed off the NPC.

[Yamo]

Extradimensional Movement to the alternate dimension where everything is the same except all the character's enemies are dead and he rules unquestioned over the entire Earth?

 

Okay, I made that one up, but it couldn't get much worse, could it?

 

Step one: Grab villain in TK.

Step two: Hit villain with Mental Illusion that they're still grabbed in the TK and can't get out.

 

This is clearly a broken Power construct.

 

You should have Linked them so as to accomplish both effects in one Phase.

[Storn]

I inadvertently came up with the agent-killer supreme.

 

A trained marine with the mutant power of a silent teleport (invisible sfx, sight and sound... one minute he is there, next second he ain't). Armed him with a HK MPSpd3... submachine gun with a silencer. And armor piercing bullets.

 

The guy was freakin' scary. Not so good vs. big, paranormal villains .. he just didn't dish out high amounts of damage. (but makes for a great distraction dude and there is the ol' jump behind villain, slap demo charge... buh bye!)

[Bartman]

Originally posted by Storn

I inadvertently came up with the agent-killer supreme.

Back in the day (pre-4th) there was an advantage that for +¼ you rolled 1 less die for knockback. Thus for a normal attack if you bought the advantage at two levels, every body did one inch of knockback. I had a character with a 3d6 normal attack, explosion x2 area, Autofire, -2d6 knockback. We called the the agent sweeper. One burst fired into a group of agents would send them flying in every direction (about 10-20") and usually knock them out. For some reason all the big villians seem to quickly develop knockback resistance.

[Vondy]

Re: Re: Powers That Shouldn't Have Been Approved

 

Originally posted by Tamashii2000

4th edition.. Had a character with a double knockback energy blast (10d6) and a prety good force wall. I never thought twice about it untill the player tossed a force wall up behind a target..then knocked his foe back into it

 

I had a player with a similar construct who never figured that use out.

[MarkusDark]

1 Pip RKA, AOE, Penetrating, X20 Autofire with a big OCV bonus. My first thought was "How much trouble can one person cause with a 1 pip attack?" I wound up calling it the Cheese Grater.

[TheEmerged]

Originally posted by Derek Hiemforth

That "seemed harmless enough?!?"

 

In my first campaign running the HERO system, where I had NPC's with 20d6 RKA's? Yes. Insert "learned a few things since then" crack here

[Elysea]

Originally posted by MarkusDark

1 Pip RKA, AOE, Penetrating, X20 Autofire with a big OCV bonus. My first thought was "How much trouble can one person cause with a 1 pip attack?" I wound up calling it the Cheese Grater.

 

ROFL That's hilarious. I just want to know if you started rolling for scatter with every shot if the attack roll was flubbed... I'd be very nervous watching the Hex of Death dance across the map.

[Demonsong]

I played in a campaign in last edition where the GM aloud a PC to take Disolification, usable as an attack, leaves body behind. The only defense was not getting hit. So this PC would use the attack, the body would collapse, and he would walk over and calmly slit the NPC’s throat.

 

What fun.

[bwdemon]

Under old (2nd edition) autofire/AE rules: 2d6 NND, autofire, AE (radius). The character rarely ever hit with under 6 shots until the thankfully short-lived game ended.

[Enforcer84]

I've mentioned it before, Damage Shield Martial Throw.

[AlHazred]

Originally posted by MarkusDark

1 Pip RKA, AOE, Penetrating, X20 Autofire with a big OCV bonus. My first thought was "How much trouble can one person cause with a 1 pip attack?" I wound up calling it the Cheese Grater.

 

Until they handwaved this, the attack would never have had a Penetrating effect. Since a roll of "1" equals no BODY, the attack never does anything except to unarmored targets.

[Lightray]

Way back before the BBB, I had Enhancer -- a character with a multipower of Characteristics, Useable By Others, Ranged. It was horrific. I voluntarily retired the character after I helped another character Presence Attack Grond into catatonia.

 

I once allowed a player to take Missile Deflection, +2 Vs. Everything, Damage Shield, Persistent, Always On. Even allowed him to use Reflection with some effort. I thought it wouldn't be too bad -- he was still affected by mental powers, adjustment powers, etc.

 

Ugh. It was horrible -- that was the most passive character, ever. All he did was stand around, waiting for someone to hit him. When I recently re-started that campaign, I declaired him an NPC by fiat, and forbade any such nonsense again.

[BoloOfEarth]

Originally posted by Lightray

I once allowed a player to take Missile Deflection, +2 Vs. Everything, Damage Shield, Persistent, Always On. Even allowed him to use Reflection with some effort. I thought it wouldn't be too bad -- he was still affected by mental powers, adjustment powers, etc.

 

Ugh. It was horrible -- that was the most passive character, ever. All he did was stand around, waiting for someone to hit him. When I recently re-started that campaign, I declaired him an NPC by fiat, and forbade any such nonsense again.

 

No problem there. He can't Deflect/Reflect AOE or Explosions (unless the SFX are a grenade or some such, and unless that had Ranged and you didn't list it). Also, it wouldn't take long at all for word to get around, and nobody targets him directly. If all he did was stand around, great, that's one less hero to worry about. Take out his teammates, then drop grenades all around him.

[BoloOfEarth]

Some things that slipped by me over 15 or so years of Champions:

 

Mental Defense, Usable By Others at Range. At first, the Mental Defense was only to help one other, but with EP the player bought it up to 4 others, conveniently covering the entire team. Made every mentalist completely useless.

 

Telekinetic Force Field, UBO at range. The intent was to protect normals, but it soon got used far too often by the team brick, making him completely unstoppable. Between this and the Mental DEF above, I ruled that defenses will no longer be UBO in my game.

 

1d6 NND, Autofire (5), 0 END. Seems pretty innocuous, right? Well, the character, Hummingbird, also had a high SPD (I think it was 9-10 at the start) that quickly got bought up to 12. And since this was his only attack, enough 2-point levels make it certain that all 5 hit. In 2-3 of his phases (one phase for your average character), he's done 10-15d6 NND.

 

And on the other side of the coin, I let one hero have Absorption and a Force Field (only up to amount Absorbed) in an EC. Genocide hit him with a Suppress, taking both a bit below half power. However, since the Absorption was cut so far, it really hurt the Force Field. Then a group of agents opened fire on him with 2d6 AP RKA, killing him in one phase. I had no idea his defenses had been lowered that far, and I was as shocked as he was.

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by bwdemon

Under old (2nd edition) autofire/AE rules: 2d6 NND, autofire, AE (radius). The character rarely ever hit with under 6 shots until the thankfully short-lived game ended.

 

4thEd, had a power armor hero. One of his attacks was a 1d6 NND, AoE 1-hex, Autofire x5, 32 charges (fully automatic gas-grenade launcher on the left arm). Great for taking out agents, and plinking away at guys with high DCV (AoE targeting the hex, remember).

 

Was autofire easier to hit with in 2ndEd?

[MoonHunter]

It seemed so simple....

 

20 STR, 40" flight and Desolidification (Not vs Animal Material or (2nd rendition) Living things). The trick was to grab the target and fly through a wall, leaving the target behind. A few levels in grab and a few walls, and he could dish out a huge amount of damage.

[death tribble]

GM came up with he slick power to demonstrate being knocked over. Basically you had to make a Dex roll by the amount of slick rolled against you between 1-3 dice. And you lost your entire phase if you went down.

That lead to some arguments.

[Captain Obvious]

Originally posted by Kristopher

Was autofire easier to hit with in 2ndEd?

 

Pre-4th Autofire attacks had an inherent +4 OCV built in. There was also an adjustment to the range modifier, but I don't remember if it was beneficial or not....

[Tom McCarthy]

Teleport, usable as attack at range

 

I asked the player what he'd be using it for. Sounded like pure delaying tactics or dispersion type things, so I said OK. It didn't sound like he would abuse it.

 

The first time the team gets attacked in their penthouse base, he teleported an enemy agent to the floor below. And the player next to him says, 'Just put them outside.' And so, agent after agent began disappearing and reappearing outside, and dropping 20 stories...

 

The moral is that abusable powers frequently will be abused unless the author knows better. Ignorance or lack of creativity is not sufficiently limiting.