How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

[SatinKitty]

It's like this:

 

At this point, a certain Chinese restaurant and block of bulding's Owners are probably willing to pay the Villains off to keep us away. We've leveled the place several times. The streets around the City aren't in too hot shape at this point either.

 

Now we know, in the real world, there'd be lawsuits out the wazoo. Some would be for wrongful death for the bystanders injured or killed. Some would be for propery damage. This would happen after every combat, because let's face it, energy blasts and Brick Tricks destroy things on a grand scale. What about the people whose cars you throw at the Villains ?

 

So GMs out there, how is this handled in your Campaigns ?

[Theron]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

In the past, I used things like superhero insurance or had the heroes backed by a corporation with government support that footed the repair bills. More recently, I swiped Doc Metropolis from M&M's Freedom City setting. He's basically a very powerful city spirit whose powers allow the damage to heal itself.

 

Heroes using their powers to do repair work is also a great way to start off an adventure once in a while. "You're just welding the roof of the Astrodome back into place when you hear a familiar evil laugh...

[jkwleisemann]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Depends on the campaign.

 

In most of them though... I likes my property damage grand, and largely disregarded. Sometimes it'll actually matter - for example, in Milwaukee Masks a super battle ended up levelling a skyscraper - after subduing the villains, the heroes got to rescue as many people as possible before the building collapsed.

 

In other cases, I largely disregard it. Why? In Genre. Maybe it's a little ridiculous, but my logic is this: In any world where supers are a fairly common fixture, you've probably got three elements that come into play:

 

1: Super Insurance (held both by supers and civilians) to cover damages and liability.

 

2: Vastly expanded "samaritan" laws that support people who end up wiping out a city block while *trying* to do good things, at least if they can demonstrate that they were going after the baddies. The bad guys, on the other hand, would get their tails sued half way to doomsday... which might explain why so many of them rob banks.

 

3: A general sense that it'd be worse without them. Sure, it sucks that Rogg smashed the Megabeast through your restaurant, but the last time that the Megabeast was sighted, he levelled the entire *city*.

 

This, of course, assumes a couple things:

 

1: The supers don't start *trying* to do massive damage. Picking up the building, smacking Grond, and putting it back is frowned on.

 

2: Supers put in at least a good-faith effort to help out afterwards - they patch up walls, or make arrangements for things like that to happen.

 

3: In general, in these settings, the society as a whole has become more supportive. If the Megabeast gets walloped through your restaurant, the community will pitch in to help fix things up, both out of a desire to associate yourselves with the superheroes (fanboys), and a sense that "hey, next time, it could be me." So the damages aren't nearly as... well... damaging.

 

As for the loss of life... well, that's settled by a handy federal regulation established in the mid-50's, after supers really started taking off. According to the regs, all contractors are required to use materials that have been impregnated with large quantities of handwavium. Due to the unique properties of this material, coincidence works out in such a way that people are rarely, if ever, *physically* endangered by these fights when they're behind walls and such.

 

In those rare cases when they are, the buildings in question have universally been found to not be up to code, the result of people skimping on the proportion of handwavium in the concrete and such....

 

[bwdemon]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

It depends on the mood of the game, the players, and the GM. It can be something that just isn't thought about or something that creates lasting problems and it could fall anywhere in between. Here are some things that might happen in response to the damage...

 

1. Unwelcome help: people begin to view the heroes almost as poorly as they view the villains due to the damage caused. This is probably the most common and easiest to work with.

 

2. "Fright flight": people move from areas where super-fights take place or might take place. Nobody wants to live near a bank or research center, let alone work at one. As population density changes, heroes have to cover a wider area and reporting is slower.

 

3. State of emergency: we all know what a blackout can do to an overcrowded populace, so what happens when power and water are cut off for a prolonged period due to a super-fight? Riots everywhere! Call out the National Guard...

 

4. Criminal & civil charges: pretty much self-explanatory. The insurance industry would be very aggressive with this.

 

5. DNPC Involvement: that Buick you just tossed at Grond looked familiar...

 

6. Specialized (likely superheroic) clean-up services: did a super-fight leave your town worse for the wear? Dial 1-800-Clean-Up today for your free estimate!

[Metaphysician]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Depends on the campaign.

 

In most of them though... I likes my property damage grand, and largely disregarded. Sometimes it'll actually matter - for example, in Milwaukee Masks a super battle ended up levelling a skyscraper - after subduing the villains, the heroes got to rescue as many people as possible before the building collapsed.

 

In other cases, I largely disregard it. Why? In Genre. Maybe it's a little ridiculous, but my logic is this: In any world where supers are a fairly common fixture, you've probably got three elements that come into play:

 

1: Super Insurance (held both by supers and civilians) to cover damages and liability.

 

2: Vastly expanded "samaritan" laws that support people who end up wiping out a city block while *trying* to do good things, at least if they can demonstrate that they were going after the baddies. The bad guys, on the other hand, would get their tails sued half way to doomsday... which might explain why so many of them rob banks.

 

3: A general sense that it'd be worse without them. Sure, it sucks that Rogg smashed the Megabeast through your restaurant, but the last time that the Megabeast was sighted, he levelled the entire *city*.

 

This, of course, assumes a couple things:

 

1: The supers don't start *trying* to do massive damage. Picking up the building, smacking Grond, and putting it back is frowned on.

 

2: Supers put in at least a good-faith effort to help out afterwards - they patch up walls, or make arrangements for things like that to happen.

 

3: In general, in these settings, the society as a whole has become more supportive. If the Megabeast gets walloped through your restaurant, the community will pitch in to help fix things up, both out of a desire to associate yourselves with the superheroes (fanboys), and a sense that "hey, next time, it could be me." So the damages aren't nearly as... well... damaging.

 

As for the loss of life... well, that's settled by a handy federal regulation established in the mid-50's, after supers really started taking off. According to the regs, all contractors are required to use materials that have been impregnated with large quantities of handwavium. Due to the unique properties of this material, coincidence works out in such a way that people are rarely, if ever, *physically* endangered by these fights when they're behind walls and such.

 

In those rare cases when they are, the buildings in question have universally been found to not be up to code, the result of people skimping on the proportion of handwavium in the concrete and such....

 

 

 

In practice, I use what amounts to this. However, I'd like to add an extra emphasis: make sure to remember the 'age' you told your players you were running!

 

If you told your players you were running a fairly bright game, and then slap them with a wrongful death lawsuit for the three bystanders killed when they punched Megabeast through a wall and he reduced a car to shrapnel, *you lied*. Your actually running an iron age game.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Yeah, it's generally accepted in the Silver Age that it's perfectly normal to cause millions of dollars worth of property damage in order to stop a criminal from getting away with $10,000 of the bank's money. And negligence doesn't exist...no one ever gets hurt without being specific targeted for a hurting.

 

Generally in the Iron Age, the "good guys" are criminals themselves. Maybe because of all the property damage and negligent endangerment.

[Plex]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Pretty much the same as every other person here. I use Superhero Insurance that the Heroes and/or regular people can buy. (Pretty expensive for the heroes, not so expensive for regular Joe Schmoe.) The cities in which super powered people interact also carry insurance. The heroes chipping in and helping clean up the mess also goes a long way. It's pretty much a standard for any hero team that wants to be officially sanctioned to have to carry the insurance. Helping clean up the mess afterwards is pure PR. If it gets really bad, a state of emergency could always be called by the governor and/or the President. (Then tax dollars go to help rebuild.)

[Killer Shrike]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Golden Age: isnt even a topic worthy of discussion. Such things just don't happen, somehow.

 

Silver Age: only involved if it furthers the plot; ie providing opportunities for further heroism (saving people from the busted building thats about to collapse, allowing the villain to get away, etc), or to involve Disadvantages (the heroes DNPC is nearby and somehow endangered, requiring the hero to do something to save them, etc, or to rig up something that steps on a PsyLim, etc).

 

Bronze Age: some amount of liability, possibly offset with Supers Insurance and/or specifically allocated funds (like a Civil Supers Fund), and a certain understanding of "reasonable" levels of collateral damage that if exceeded results in social pressure, dropping public opinion, and perhaps legal fallout if egregious or repeated.

 

Iron Age: full or near-full liability, supers are on a short leash when it comes to what they can get away with in pursuit of stopping crime without incurring difficulties. Many supers are considered vigilantes, at best.

[OddHat]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Same standard as many here. Superheroes sponsored on the corporate, municipal, state or federal level have insurance paid for by their employers, and property owners carry "Paranormal Event Insurance" themselves. Government and Corporate Supers with appropriate powers contribute to rebuilding areas after a super battle, both as a civic duty and as good PR. Unlicensed supers with no insurance can be sued, but they're in serious trouble if they fall onto the wrong side of the law no matter what.

 

My campaign is light hearted most of the time, and medical technology is assumed to be better than that available in the real world; civilians deaths stay low unless the villain is intentionally targeting civilians. In theory a PC could cause civilian deaths, but it hasn't happened in a game I've run since about 1994.

[jkwleisemann]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Definitely have to agree with keeping the age in mind... possibly why I've got such a spectrum with it. Most of my games straddle the line between polished Iron and tarnished Silver... for the most part though, there's one rule that *always* has to be followed, regardless of what age you're in:

 

It has to be good for the plot.

 

If you're running Iron Age, I don't *care* how much disregard for civilians the heroes have, if dealing with the fallot gets in the way of the game, *don't*. It's much, much easier to actually, y'know, *play* the game that way.

 

Just remember - there's no statue of limitations on some of those charges. The DA might just be waiting until the immediate threat is out of the way before delivering enough indictments to make the Clinton administration look like your average day in small claims court.

 

*Disclaimer - Clintons are used merely for convenience, not to inspire political grumbling about any other presidents... or him, really. Just that Billy had quite a bit of time spent answering assorted legal problems....*

[Hermit]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

In my games, the magic episodic fairies come out at night and sprinkle their special 'continuity is too much work' dust over everything.

 

Uhm, that and superhero insurance, but I felt I should be close to honest

[input.jack]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

In our campaigns we use a combination of Superhero Insurance, and characters being -careful- to minimize collateral damage. We shift position to knock villains back into open air, or against something that can take it. We herd civilians outside when the fun begins. We dont -use- the area-smashing "brick tricks" unless its safe to do so. We recently staged a confrontation in a large, empty warehouse, after notifying the authorities that the Freedom League was about to throw down with Graviton, giving them time to evacuate the area, -just- so that we could cut loose.

 

We keep track of civilian injuries when they occur, but honestly they dont occur that often. In fact, I cant remember the last time a civilian was injured as part of collateral damage. (Recently some civilians were hurt by direct attack by invading extradimensional warriors, but thats different).

 

So yeah, "supers insurance", an understanding on the part of all involved that property can be replaced and people cant, and dedicated effort on the part of the participants to minimize the collateral damage are how it works around here

[assault]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Probably some kind of superhero insurance.

 

Avoiding injuries, and especially fatalities is more important than stopping bank robbers. Stopping world conquerors is a bit trickier, but bystander saving is still a priority - just not as high.

 

Basically, a hero should refrain from avoidable damage. Throwing cars is, generally, out of the question (not withstanding that it's one of Assault's own standard tactics!) Any damage is then the fault of the bad guys.

[Trebuchet]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Actually, significant property damage seldom occurs in our campaign due to the fact that many of our battles are in remote locations or are confined to a very small area. What damage does occur seldom seems much more than what you'd see from a nasty automobile accident: A trashed vehicle or two, some damage to walls or other inanimate objects, and a few bystanders injured. While these are certainly not unimportant to heroes, they hardly constitute something on a level which would cripple a city. I think the unspoken agreement is that such things are handled routinely by insurance companies (with property owners buying "metahuman damage" coverage like they do fire or flood insurance) and/or the government in exchange for services rendered.

 

As to preventing serious injuries or death, our priorities in order:

1) Protect innocents

2) Protect teammates and law enforcement

3) Protect villains (No, we won't let villains die if we can prevent it)

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

In my campaigns, large-scale damage is typically caused by villains; PC heroes tend to keep their damage below that caused by their opponents -- unless they're attacking a villain base, in which case all bets are off. But I tend to run a more-Silver-than-Iron age game.

 

Generally, I don't make damage / injuries an issue unless it fits some plot. For instance, fighting in a factory, Serendipity (luck-based heroine) threw a "bad-luck" field over an area to trip up a bunch of VIPER agents, and an innocent worker was also in that area. I used that as an excuse for a vat of chemicals directly below the worker to take a blaster hit and explode, turning that worker into a new supervillain (and Hunted for Serendipity; she had put a "To-Be-Determined-Later" Hunted on her sheet during character creation).

 

A later fight caused an explosion that practically destroyed a chemical plant. I had a media outcry about the damage and injuries from that blast, but that was mainly to introduce an NPC city councilman that spoke out in the heroes' defense and has since become a patron of sorts.

 

I've decided that cars / vans thrown around by the heroes will *not* have people inside, even if the heroes don't bother to check first, because that would discourage them using such "objects of opportunity" in dramatic / creative ways. Now, if Styx picked up a Ford Focus with which to hit a villain, and I wanted the villain to get away, I might have a mother scream, "NO!!! My baby's inside!!!" to make him stop, but that would be a once-in-a-blue-moon occurence.

[Balabanto]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

There is superpowered insurance, but it doesn't always cover the damage.

 

Remember, superheroes aren't just people who beat villains up. Superheroes are also people who come to repair property damage after it's caused. There are enough player characters in the game that it can be assumed that when they're not on a case or mission, that some other heroes are helping to repair the damage.

[Patriot]

Re: How do you handle Super Battle damage in your Campaigns ?

 

Team Vanguard Spent an extra 15 points for wealth on the base to pay for insurance.....as the base had 3 d6 of unluck ....It didn't work all the time!!!