Number Crunching Vs Roleplaying

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Gary

The trouble with severe character imbalance is what it forces the GM to do. If he scales the villains to the weaker heroes, the stronger heroes will crush them. It he scales the villains to the stronger ones, the weaker ones get knocked out or killed in the first 2 phases.

You know, if a lot of design schemes are floated and people don't turn their noses up because the way some other guy built their character wasn't "aesthetically pleasing" the game often generates a great deal of excitement from the sheer unpredictability of a broad range of speeds and damage classes and defenses. If I'm the GM and one guy is a speedster with the brass to have a 12 speed you better believe that most of my villains are going to realize he is one of the first ones who needs to go down. Speed 4 Tortoise Man may just sneak under the radar.

[Gary]

Originally posted by Agent X

You know, if a lot of design schemes are floated and people don't turn their noses up because the way some other guy built their character wasn't "aesthetically pleasing" the game often generates a great deal of excitement from the sheer unpredictability of a broad range of speeds and damage classes and defenses. If I'm the GM and one guy is a speedster with the brass to have a 12 speed you better believe that most of my villains are going to realize he is one of the first ones who needs to go down. Speed 4 Tortoise Man may just sneak under the radar.

 

I'm talking about severe imbalance of power. IOW, Speed Demon has 12 SPD, greater attacks, higher DCV, and higher defenses than Tortoise. Any villains that could whack Speed Demon would laugh at Tortoise.

[Arthur]

Originally posted by Doug McCrae

One solution our last GM used was to get plain English character descriptions from the players then do all the stats himself. This works pretty well IMO.

 

This works great as an option for the players. When I GM, I offer to build characters for them from a description, if they like. Some prefer to build the characters themselves, others with me doing the number-crunching. Either way is fine with me - whatever they find most enjoyable. It's a game, and everybody is supposed to be having fun. If a GM took character creation away from ME, I'd be looking for something else to do that evening. For some of us, designing characters is a large part of the game experience.

[Lord Mhoram]

Originally posted by Doug McCrae

You're a good player, Lord Mhoram.

 

I see where you're coming from here, but what other solution is there? Few players have your sensitivity. What's the GM to do about the gross-out monster that doesn't realise he's hurting the game?

 

*Blushes* I try. I've GMed for too many years not to see what another GM may be going through due to my actions.

 

As to what solution. That is a tough one. I have been increadibly lucky for the last 13 years I have not had a bad player in the entire time. Well, a couple but they drifted out within 2 or 3 sessions. So I can usually just talk to them and say "Hey, the character isn't working, it's messing up my fun and some other player's, let's see what we can do to fix that, while keeping the character the way you want it."

 

When that isn't available having the GM build them seems overkill, but rather that than no one having fun.

[MoonHunter]

GM involvement

 

Make the skills and abilities of your troupe work for you, rather than against you. I tend to pair up my "number crunchers" and my roleplayers. EAch one is supposed to "coach" the other in their specialty. This has resulted in a) less intraplayer conflict as the roleplaying natzi whine about the non roleplayers, improves the mechanics of the characters, so the roleplayers don't feel underpowered, and c) made everyone a better player all around.

 

Even with this, I think the GM needs to be involved in every aspect of the character, its design, and its development. I am not advocating GMs creating the character. I am advocating that the GM take into consideration, the campaign, the storylines, and who is playing the character, when approving a character or any EP expenditure.

 

The players need a good reason to buy new abilities and skills. They should have in game reasons (or be in the magikal list of things I should of had in the begining, but did not have enough points).

 

I approved one player a post ms. marvel Rogue character. After some tweaking to make it actually fit that level of conception, I let it in the game. Our power gamer complained that his characters get the 3rd degree and that I would never let him have a character like that.

I said, "That's right. I can trust her not to abuse the character's abilities and mangle the campaign. If I gave that character to you, that is exactly what would happen. You would suck down the entire team, swipe King Arthur's focus and take on the universe." He nodded.

 

Experience point expenditures need to be checked on. One of my players kept adding a point here and there... to take advantage of some roundings with limitations. When you did the raw math, you found out he was a few points short. You need to check these things.

 

Just some semi-random thoughts.

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by Gary

I'm talking about severe imbalance of power. IOW, Speed Demon has 12 SPD, greater attacks, higher DCV, and higher defenses than Tortoise. Any villains that could whack Speed Demon would laugh at Tortoise.

Sure that's true to an extent, but that's why GMs build villain teams. I wouldn't allow a such a grossly imbalanced character into my game in the first place even were one of my players to try to bring him into the game. In any case it's not hard to manipulate each hero into squaring off against an appropriate opponent; we do it all the time in my campaign. Indeed, we 3 GMs deliberately try to design villains who are good and logical opponents for the heroes. It's not hard to do usually. Only two of our current team can fly, so aerial villains generally get the attention of our good flyer by default. Our brick flies, but she's usually needed against the villain's brick on the ground. And sometimes we just outright manipulate events to get the heroes into clashes with their foes. I'm running just such a scenario later today.

[Kristopher]

When it comes to number crunching vs role-playing, I prefer the latter, but often find I have to do the former in order to make a character last long enough to bother with. I know it doesn't bother some people, but I can't stand putting gobs of work into the role-playing aspects of a character, only to have him or her taken out.

[Gary]

Originally posted by Trebuchet

Sure that's true to an extent, but that's why GMs build villain teams. I wouldn't allow a such a grossly imbalanced character into my game in the first place even were one of my players to try to bring him into the game. In any case it's not hard to manipulate each hero into squaring off against an appropriate opponent; we do it all the time in my campaign. Indeed, we 3 GMs deliberately try to design villains who are good and logical opponents for the heroes. It's not hard to do usually. Only two of our current team can fly, so aerial villains generally get the attention of our good flyer by default. Our brick flies, but she's usually needed against the villain's brick on the ground. And sometimes we just outright manipulate events to get the heroes into clashes with their foes. I'm running just such a scenario later today.

 

What happens when 2 of the "ubers" square off and one of them takes out the other quickly (perhaps by a high stun multiple). Then you get the situation where a powerhouse is free to start nuking some of the "lessers"?

 

Anyway, it sounds from what you've described before that most members of your team are well balanced relative to each other. I've been in campaigns where there were clearly "haves" and "have nots". The GM had to do a lot of fudging and kludges to make it work.

[Polaris]

Number Crunching Role Playing

 

First off, excellent topic! This is something that our group has been going round and round in, and is the main reason that some in our group want to switch away to a less mathematical system. We have a large RP troupe (we have several games going on of various genres, and players within the troupe play in the ones they want).

 

Here are some things we have tried and what happened:

 

1. We tried the "you provide a description, and the GM will assign stats". I liked this idea, but we ran into some problems with people asking for guidance on what would be appropriate or too strong (would I be too strong if I could lift a battleship over my head?). The GM (and the rest of us) finally got tired of that.

 

2. One of the role players (she knows little about the system, and is FAR more concerned about role playing and seeing how her character can overcome adversity and challenge than how quickly she can smite the villain) pointed out "it doesn't matter how powerful the other players are relative to yours... you aren't going to be fighting THEM". This was great in theory, but it didn't always work in practice (the 'number cruchers' tended to steal all the glory).

 

3. We are presently trying a "just make your character, and don't worry about the points". After the players make their character, a GM is going to look it over and make sure that it is roughly in line with the group. This way, it is not an exercise of how you can squeeze points. Since we are just starting this, I don't know how it is going to work.

 

While playing Fuzion (which is what brought our group to Champions), we had the Rule of X, and that seemed to work very well in our group. We have always, and continue, to have limits on Active Points in a power.

 

Polaris

[Enforcer84]

in the end, I always thought that the active point limit was the way to go. It allows everyone the opporotunity to start off "even" as far as hitting power, defensive ability and mobility. They don't have to but it generally ends up that way. Plus the GM can plan for things because he knows that things aren't going to get past his level of comfort for a bit. After you have gained xp, all bets are off, though and characters can sprout in different ways.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Gary

I'm talking about severe imbalance of power. IOW, Speed Demon has 12 SPD, greater attacks, higher DCV, and higher defenses than Tortoise. Any villains that could whack Speed Demon would laugh at Tortoise.

So, you cater to Tortoise in your game a little. Set up circumstances where Tortoise has an opportunity to use his environment to win when Speed Demon's brute power can't. I agree that there is a point where the difference is too extreme but I think most games move the other way much more often and end up too "mediocre."

[Agent X]

I hate the active point limit. Some power constructs are vastly more expensive active point wise than they will be effective. I think the "GM lookover" is a much better method of making sure things are okay - assuming your GM knows their stuff.

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by Agent X

I hate the active point limit. Some power constructs are vastly more expensive active point wise than they will be effective. I think the "GM lookover" is a much better method of making sure things are okay - assuming your GM knows their stuff.

 

Still, you could use a certain limit of active points as a "red flag" to help you spot problems. Not a hard cap, just something to help you out.

 

No?

[Insaniac99]

Originally posted by Gary

The trouble with severe character imbalance is what it forces the GM to do. If he scales the villains to the weaker heroes, the stronger heroes will crush them. It he scales the villains to the stronger ones, the weaker ones get knocked out or killed in the first 2 phases.

 

sorry, i disagree, that is partly due to lazy GMing, i am running a campaign where there are people with 100-200 point in defferance some times more, sometimes less. and you jsut need to have villians of differant power levels like in the comics, the big guys duke it out, while the little guys go off and play, i mean in my game, i have lots of agenst that ANYONE can jsut pummel, and then supers of varying power levels, the weakest of them all, gets to feel useful because they can easily take out the agents, and the agents, if left alone, can realy hurt the supers and then the combat thugs usually aren't as good out of combat, so you let that detective shine for a bit, and stuff. you just have to do a little more work, and get the players to realise when they have to pair off to their own dude.

[Insaniac99]

Originally posted by Kristopher

Still, you could use a certain limit of active points as a "red flag" to help you spot problems. Not a hard cap, just something to help you out.

 

No?

 

agreed, in my campaign, I said, "as a general rule start with an active point limit of X, but if you want a power, and it goes over, ask me and i might allow it"

 

then again, most of my players have a nova attack, it will kill or almost kill anyone, but the characters are completely wiped by useing it, and my players rarely use them.

[Doug McCrae]

Currently I run my superhero games something like systemless, I don't actually use Champions at all. The method for power balance I used in my last campaign was just asking the players to try to construct characters of roughly equal power. This worked pretty well but only because they were a decent bunch of people.

 

In Champions if you applied this approach, would you consider junking the point totals altogether? Instead you could have a couple of sample characters to use as a power-level guide.

[lemming]

Originally posted by Insaniac99

you just need to have villians of differant power levels like in the comics, the big guys duke it out, while the little guys go off and play

Bingo. I've been in games that are similar. It takes a bit more work and player understanding to enforce Genre.

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by Gary

Anyway, it sounds from what you've described before that most members of your team are well balanced relative to each other. I've been in campaigns where there were clearly "haves" and "have nots". The GM had to do a lot of fudging and kludges to make it work.

Our group works hard to avoid stepping on each others toes. Each player respects the shtick of the other players' characters. Our brick is slow with a fairly low DEX (4 SPD, 23 DEX), but has respectively tremendous defenses (33 PD) and the biggest attack (14d6). My MA is blindingly fast and seldom misses (9 SPD, 43 DEX), but has the smallest attack (10d6 max, 8d6 is normal attack) and very low defenses (12 PD). Everyone else falls somewhere in between. It works out pretty well, but I'll be the first to admit not every group can pull this off. We're very picky about who we invite into our game. I find that saves us a lot of trouble.

[RadeFox]

Wow, A brick with 4 spd and 23 Dex, and your calling him slow/fairly low?? Good lords, well I suppose compared to the 43(!!!) Dex MA, he would be. Sounds like that campaign is seriously 4 color mega-heroes! I know I'd hate to fight anything that could challenge them!

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by RadeFox

Wow, A brick with 4 spd and 23 Dex, and your calling him slow/fairly low?? Good lords, well I suppose compared to the 43(!!!) Dex MA, he would be. Sounds like that campaign is seriously 4 color mega-heroes! I know I'd hate to fight anything that could challenge them!

We are indeed a four color campaign (Still 350 point base, though most of our characters have about 30 XP now.), where our characters are the campaign equivalent of the Avengers or the Justice League. The 23 DEX of our brick isn't even our lowest DEX; we have two SPD 5 DEX 20 characters as well as a SPD 4 DEX 20 powered armor type. It works out pretty well. Our second-tier MA has a SPD 6 DEX 29, but he hits much harder (13d6), has 40% higher defenses and has other semi-mystical powers. On the other hand really I enjoy my MA having a 22- Acrobatics roll.

 

Our brick, by the way, defies convention two ways: 1) She's female. 2) She's our team scientist, with a 28 INT.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Kristopher

Still, you could use a certain limit of active points as a "red flag" to help you spot problems. Not a hard cap, just something to help you out.

 

No?

Now that makes sense.

[BoloOfEarth]

Alternately, you could set an active point cap for all powers except 1-2 "specials". A "special" could be a Nova attack that wipes the character out, or a Once-A-Blue-Moon attack that is severely limited in other ways (Only vs. Dragons or some such). The GM puts extra attention on approving the "special" attack, including all EP expenditures (to make sure the limitations on END or frequency-of-use don't get bought down or off).

 

Never really tried this, mind you; I had hard active point caps for over a decade, and turned 180 and am trying a no-caps campaign right now.

 

IME, those who number-crunch and point-shave their characters are more combat monsters, while those who don't care about such mundane tasks are more interested in the noncombat game aspects. Not a hard-and-fast division, but generally it seems that way to me. Also, IME, the number cruncher is the one (at least in my campaign) who spends points on skills that will only be useful once a decade, but fit the character concept.

[Gary]

Originally posted by Insaniac99

sorry, i disagree, that is partly due to lazy GMing, i am running a campaign where there are people with 100-200 point in defferance some times more, sometimes less. and you jsut need to have villians of differant power levels like in the comics, the big guys duke it out, while the little guys go off and play, i mean in my game, i have lots of agenst that ANYONE can jsut pummel, and then supers of varying power levels, the weakest of them all, gets to feel useful because they can easily take out the agents, and the agents, if left alone, can realy hurt the supers and then the combat thugs usually aren't as good out of combat, so you let that detective shine for a bit, and stuff. you just have to do a little more work, and get the players to realise when they have to pair off to their own dude.

 

Let's take a simple example. Suppose the hero team consists of Superman and Robin. You as GM create villains who are equal matches for them. Let's call your villains Braniac and Penguin for the sake of argument and let's have them match up vs the heroes.

 

There are 6 possibilities:

 

1 and 2) Either the heroes win at about the same time or the villains win at about the same time. No problem.

 

3) Superman beats Braniac first. He then helps out and clobbers Penguin in 1 phase. Robin feels useless.

 

4) Braniac beats Superman first. Braniac then clobbers Robin in 1 phase. Robin feels useless.

 

5) Robin beats Penguin first. Robin tries to help out vs Braniac, but quickly realizes that his best attack barely does any damage (Braniac has the defenses to go toe to toe with Superman after all). Robin feels useless.

 

6) Penguin beats Robin first. Penguin tries to help out vs Superman, but can't dent his defenses. Robin feels useless as he realizes that keeping Penguin occupied didn't help his side at all.

[Gary]

What might be a good idea would be a Normal Power Maxima analogous to Normal Characteristic Maxima. If you have a 50 pt NPM, then costs double after 50.

 

This is actually fair because those last couple of dice are essentially equal to NND dice.

 

You could even combine it with NCM. For example, a character who chose to take NCM might be allowed a 10 pt higher NPM than characters without NCM. Of course under this variant, NCM is worth 0 as a limitation.

 

Another option is to give frameworks lower NPMs than single powers. A multipower might have a 50 pt NPM while a single energy blast has a 60 pt NPM. Multipowers are already tremendously efficient.

 

People could still customize their characters, but they would simply pay more if they want to be significantly more powerful.

[Insaniac99]

Originally posted by Gary

Let's take a simple example. Suppose the hero team consists of Superman and Robin. You as GM create villains who are equal matches for them. Let's call your villains Braniac and Penguin for the sake of argument and let's have them match up vs the heroes.

 

There are 6 possibilities:

 

1 and 2) Either the heroes win at about the same time or the villains win at about the same time. No problem.

 

3) Superman beats Braniac first. He then helps out and clobbers Penguin in 1 phase. Robin feels useless.

 

4) Braniac beats Superman first. Braniac then clobbers Robin in 1 phase. Robin feels useless.

 

5) Robin beats Penguin first. Robin tries to help out vs Braniac, but quickly realizes that his best attack barely does any damage (Braniac has the defenses to go toe to toe with Superman after all). Robin feels useless.

 

6) Penguin beats Robin first. Penguin tries to help out vs Superman, but can't dent his defenses. Robin feels useless as he realizes that keeping Penguin occupied didn't help his side at all.

 

this is where you bring in the Cinematic gameplay, you fudge a few rolls once in a while, and, the heros won't win the batles all the time, additionally, the high powered characters genneraly have alot more stun than the other players, so unless something really lucky happens, they will be up longer.

 

another problem you seem to be having is that you are only thinking in directly damaging terms so lets go over your points:

 

1 and 2: no problem like you said, but they shouldn't be likely to happen if they really are that much more powerful.

 

3: again not that likely to happen, but what you do is either bring in another guy (a villian is watching them and joins up the combat) OR pengiun uses his otehr stuff, like a poisen gas, superman, being suprised takes a breath and is sent into coughs even though no permanant damage is done and robin keeps working on penguin since he is smart enough to know his enemy's ploys and has his gas mask on.

 

4: Robin whips out a gas grenade (he will get another action before brainiac can do anything) and hides himself and superman, he then helps superman and they retreat untill supes is better, robin feels useful because he saved Superman's life, even if the villians got away.

 

5: robin decides not to use directly damaging attacks against Brainiac, and instead uses his flash or smoke grenades to blind Brainiac, which allows Superman a opening to whomp on Brainiac, superman then thanks robin for istracting him.

 

6: penguin uses his special tricks like sleeping gas and stuff, that robin (because f his knowledge of his enemies) can defend against, like a gas mask against the sleeping gas. superman, unprepared for this, is cought unawares and robin realises that keeping penguin occupied worked well even if he was defeated.

 

remember that batman/superman cartoon movie? two totally differant power levels, but joker takes out superman like he is nothing because he is SO differant from what superman ran into that he didn't expect anything like him and batman saves his butt. that is a good example, because that is how you would run a campaign of diferant powerlevels., it just requires out of the box thinking, and a little more work.

 

there are lots more ways that the situations could be handled, but i just typed this up really wuickly, I'm sure the other's can add more if they want.