[Character] Dozer

[Killer Shrike]

Another Violator: Dozer

[Captain Obvious]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

He'd better change his name, or Bulldozer's gonna CREAM that little pencil-neck!

 

Looks cool, BTW.

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

Hm...I see no mention of Gobo, nor the innate need to manufacture structures out of an edible radish compound.

 

This, sir, is no Doozer.

 

 

Kevin "Cast your cares away, woories for another day!" Schultz

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

Hm...I see no mention of Gobo, nor the innate need to manufacture structures out of an edible radish compound.

 

This, sir, is no Doozer.

 

 

Kevin "Cast your cares away, woories for another day!" Schultz

 

Huh? I guess I missed out on this Fraggle thing as a kid. Failed my pop culture check.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

He'd better change his name, or Bulldozer's gonna CREAM that little pencil-neck!

 

Looks cool, BTW.

 

More like the other way around. Last time I checked Bulldozer couldnt soak 20d6 or beat a 16 rPD FW. He'd go down faster than a sinking (intern)ship.

 

Actually Im going to tone Dozer down a bit. He's got Havok syndrome currently. Can't use his powers effectively without mass destruction.

[Comic]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

Ew.

 

He's going to die very, very young.

 

The first character who does a multiple move-through against his forcewall and knocks it down is going to leave Dozer dead or bleeding to death if he hits, which looks likely.

[nexus]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

He doesn't have Indirect on his attack so doesn't his Force Wall effect them and if they do penetrate they knock it down?

[Hyper-Man]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

He doesn't have Indirect on his attack so doesn't his Force Wall effect them and if they do penetrate they knock it down?

 

Indirect was purchased on the Multipower Reserve so ALL the attacks have it.

[nexus]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

Well, I didn't know you could be an Advantage on the entire reserve. Am I thinking 4th or just a house rule I've ususally played under?

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

Well' date=' I didn't know you could be an Advantage on the entire reserve. Am I thinking 4th or just a house rule I've ususally played under?[/quote']

 

You can indeed have an Advantage on the Reserve, which applies to all the slots. It's a technique I favor and use a lot.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

More like the other way around. Last time I checked Bulldozer couldnt soak 20d6 or beat a 16 rPD FW. He'd go down faster than a sinking (intern)ship.

 

You think that's going to stop him? This is Bulldozer we're talking about.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

Ew.

 

He's going to die very, very young.

 

The first character who does a multiple move-through against his forcewall and knocks it down is going to leave Dozer dead or bleeding to death if he hits, which looks likely.

 

Maybe in your campaign, but not many characters in Dozer's general point range can easily generate 17d6 of Move Thru damage in my campaign; I mean some can, but not many.

 

And even if it is penetrated the FW's defense applies to the damage so its unlikely much body would be left over to be applied to the character.

 

Then of course there would be KB, but again, KB is factored from only the Body that gets thru.

 

So...not seeing it as likely that a single move thru would leave him "dead or bleeding to death".

 

 

Of course, if the FW goes down Dozer is really really vulnerable to other attacks for the rest of the Segment...but thats the down side to the cheesy FW-Indirect defense combo.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

You think that's going to stop him? This is Bulldozer we're talking about.

 

Right, forgot, his main power is selective memory regarding all the massively embarrassing defeats he's suffered. He's such a lovable loser

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

Ok, I chopped 40 points out of Dozers MP and nerfed the AoE's total inches of effect by moving more advantages up to the reserve (which lowers the AP of the slots, and thus the number of hexes effected by AoE).

 

It's still mass damage, but its not as over the top as it was previously.

[Comic]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

Maybe in your campaign' date=' but not many characters in Dozer's general point range can easily generate 17d6 of Move Thru damage in my campaign; I mean some can, but not many.[/quote']

I haven't been keeping close tabs, but your characters are generally very well made. I think if you look them over, you'll find several. Kamikaze hits 19d6, unless I'm misreading how his powers work. Plus, a motorcycle accident could do it to Dozer, if he gets overconfident about his defenses.

And even if it is penetrated the FW's defense applies to the damage so its unlikely much body would be left over to be applied to the character.

For an ordinary attack, yes. But a multiple move through (or less likely move-by) the full attack is figured against every target. First, the forcewall takes the whole hit. Then, Dozer. Falling damage, the same. Indirect attacks could hurt him badly, too. If he's lucky, someone with Find Weakness will get to him first.

Then of course there would be KB, but again, KB is factored from only the Body that gets thru.

Which brings up, what if something big is dropped on top of his FW, doing more than 16 Body (or something big and hot, doing more than 14)? He's in danger from collapsed buildings, power lines, and so forth, isn't he?

So...not seeing it as likely that a single move thru would leave him "dead or bleeding to death".

Single move through? Not a big problem. Single attacker with multiple move through, or coordinated attackers? Big problem. He's a fragile villain, of the sort some GMs sometimes purposely build to test their player's CvK or put them in the position of 'accidentally' killing someone who, due to their massive offensive capabilities, low capacity to restrain themselves from doing harm to others, and own frailties, will turn heroes into unwilling executioners.

Of course, if the FW goes down Dozer is really really vulnerable to other attacks for the rest of the Segment...but thats the down side to the cheesy FW-Indirect defense combo.

Segment? Phase, I thought? At SPD 3, he'd be vulnerable segment 12 after FW goes down (if it's after he's acted), 1, 2, 3 and 4 until his action?

I haven't checked, is he likely to be bleeding to death with his FW up preventing medical assistance?

 

Looking at Kamikaze's disads, I find it hard to believe the two of them wouldn't be at each other's throats soon and often, and one or the other wouldn't live through it.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

I haven't been keeping close tabs' date=' but your characters are generally very well made. I think if you look them over, you'll find several. Kamikaze hits 19d6, unless I'm misreading how his powers work. Plus, a motorcycle accident could do it to Dozer, if he gets overconfident about his defenses.[/quote']

 

STR + v/3 for Kamikaze is 1.5 + (40/3) = 14.5d6

 

As far as a motorcycle accident...a) how do you figure a motorcycle accident for around 16-17d6? and what is the special significance of having a FW as opposed to a FF in such a scenario, assuming he even had it on in the first place (presumably people can survive riding motorcycles without need for superpowers to save them)?

 

For an ordinary attack, yes. But a multiple move through (or less likely move-by) the full attack is figured against every target. First, the forcewall takes the whole hit. Then, Dozer.

 

I'm pretty positive that there's no character in my campaign setting that could reliably generate that much damage on a Multiple Move By, with perhaps one or two exceptions; and certainly none Im planning on using in this particular campaign any time soon if at all, so I'm not even going to bother to run numbers on it.

 

As to "Multiple Move Through"...well, there is no "multiple move through"...I assume you mean Sweep a Move Through, and it doesn't work as you think it does...the FW and the character are considered a single target, per the rules FAQ, and Sweep specifically says that you can only Sweep a FMove maneuver such as Move Thru if "all targets are in adjacent hexes"...since the FW and the character are considered a single target, they are not considered to be multiple targets in adjacent hexes and thus Sweeping the MT vs the FW then the character is not valid by my interpretation of it. YMMV of course.

 

What happens when a character tries a Move By/Through on a target protected by a Force Wall? Does the Wall count as a “target” and thus prevent a character from, say, Moving Through the intended target in the same Phase? And how is the velocity bonus calculated?

 

Despite the fact that it has Range, first and foremost a Force Wall provides defense for the character that created it, and for the other persons “behind” it. If a character wants to use a Move By/Through against a target who’s protected by a Force Wall, consider the Wall + character as one single target. The character performs his Move By/Through as normal. If his Attack Roll fails, he stops dead at the edge of the Force Wall but takes no damage from “hitting” it. If the Attack Roll succeeds, roll the damage as usual. If the damage suffices to break through the Force Wall, the character “continues” moving, ends his movement where planned, and applies the attack’s damage to the target (who, of course, subtracts the Force Wall’s defense from it along with his other defenses). If the damage fails to break through the Force Wall, the attacker stops dead at the edge of the Force Wall and takes the damage he normally would as if he failed to do any Knockback to the target.

 

Regarding velocity, the velocity a character can use in this situation depends on the velocity he can build up, per the standard rules, before hitting the Force Wall. The velocity he might have built up beyond that, in the area between the Wall and the target, does not matter.

 

 

Falling damage, the same. Indirect attacks could hurt him badly, too. If he's lucky, someone with Find Weakness will get to him first.

The Force Wall will go down afterwards, but he'll resist falling damage the same as any character with 20 PD. The Force Wall is Hardened, and will thus ignore Indirect.

 

Find Weakness will kind of suck, but c'est la vie.

 

 

Which brings up, what if something big is dropped on top of his FW, doing more than 16 Body (or something big and hot, doing more than 14)? He's in danger from collapsed buildings, power lines, and so forth, isn't he?

No more so than a character w/o a FW.

 

 

Single move through? Not a big problem. Single attacker with multiple move through, or coordinated attackers? Big problem.

 

See above about multiple move thru.

 

He's a fragile villain, of the sort some GMs sometimes purposely build to test their player's CvK or put them in the position of 'accidentally' killing someone who, due to their massive offensive capabilities, low capacity to restrain themselves from doing harm to others, and own frailties, will turn heroes into unwilling executioners.

 

It sounds like maybe you are coming from a more GM-Player confrontational bias, which is not prevalent in my campaign.

 

This character is not meant to be a pinata. The defense will hold vs most physical attacks the PC's can bring to bear. Im not looking at the PC's sheets right this second, but IIRC only APEX has a chance to get thru reliably with a physical attack. The other PC's can't generate 17 BODY with anything short of a very improbable roll. The whole thing is moot for Triage of course as he has an EGO attack.

 

Also, the FW is not Invisible; if and when it goes down, it is recognizable that he in vulnerable. It's not a big surprise to anyone that his hard candy coated shell is off and that he's squishy. In the off case it occurred and some hero took the opportunity to use excessive force it would likely be due to deliberate effort.

 

 

Segment? Phase, I thought? At SPD 3, he'd be vulnerable segment 12 after FW goes down (if it's after he's acted), 1, 2, 3 and 4 until his action?

I haven't checked, is he likely to be bleeding to death with his FW up preventing medical assistance?

You can Abort to turn a FW back on to protect yourself. It is suggested that GM's not allow it to be done in the same Segment as it went down to prevent giving a character w/ FW too much advantage.

 

Looking at Kamikaze's disads, I find it hard to believe the two of them wouldn't be at each other's throats soon and often, and one or the other wouldn't live through it.

 

For starters you seem to have a very lethal outlook. A lot of assumption of killing and bleeding out and dying in various horrible paranoia inducing ways. Maybe that's how your superhero games go. Mine don't. I can't even recall the last time a PC died in a supers campaign that Ive either ran or played in over the last 16, 17 years. It may have happened once or twice, but so long ago I can't recall. I can only recall one villain being killed...and that was a maybe since the villain was a necromancer and may not have been truly alive in the first place either.

 

Its a generally non-lethal genre unless you are deliberately making it darker and more lethal and looking for opportunities to reduce everything to a death match.

 

That aside, as to Kamikaze and Dozer, ok...what exactly gives you that impression? I see nothing of the sort. Dozer will flip if mocked about his stutter, but what makes you think Kamikaze would mock him at all? He's hyperactive, not abusive. Furthermore Kamikaze wants to have friends and be accepted; he and Dozer are of a similar age...its not unimaginable that the two kids that were mocked and picked on and have had their lives complicated by mutant powers might actually hit it off and become good friends. They've got a lot in common after all, and though Dozer isn't so desperate to belong to something that it rates as a disad, his background mentions he likes having a group of friends that accepts him in the form of his other team members.

[Comic]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

STR + v/3 for Kamikaze is 1.5 + (40/3) = 14.5d6

Ah. I'd expected based on the build that you'd be allowing Kamikaze's 6d6 AoE Kinetic Wave to be added to Move Thru damage. Since you're both the GM and the one who built the character, I trust you that it doesn't.

 

Though Kamikaze has "Excitable (Enraged): Pretty Much All The Time (Very Common), go 8-, recover 11-" and that hardly spells 'plays well with others'.

 

As far as a motorcycle accident...a) how do you figure a motorcycle accident for around 16-17d6? and what is the special significance of having a FW as opposed to a FF in such a scenario, assuming he even had it on in the first place (presumably people can survive riding motorcycles without need for superpowers to save them)?

Having been in, seen, given first aid at, visited the bedsides of and dug graves for more than my share of motorcycle accident involvements, I admit there are a wide variety of damage levels in them. Most are at the low end, and most riders who aren't seriously injured are wearing decent protection. At the very high end, 16d6+ isn't out of the possible range. Dozer has both "Psych. Lim.: Pushy (Very Common, Strong)" and "Psych. Lim.: Revels In Destruction (Uncommon, Strong)" -- these are not survival traits for motorcyclists. A bit of road rage, a roll of 14+ (counting circumstance modifiers like a slick road or poor visibility), and Dozer could easily smack into an oncoming truck. His FW goes down, and he is a 3 PD normal flying through the air at 60 mph, and when he lands he's a speed bump for the rest of the traffic on the road.

The difference between FW and FF is minor, in this case. A character with either, who when they have extremely low defenses with their power down, is fragile and will get hurt.

I'm pretty positive that there's no character in my campaign setting that could reliably generate that much damage on a Multiple Move By, with perhaps one or two exceptions; and certainly none Im planning on using in this particular campaign any time soon if at all, so I'm not even going to bother to run numbers on it.

1/1/1 Fracas wouldn't have to figure out a way to get to 27", since he has 2 attacks that could crack Dozer's FW at least 25% of the time, and 75 pts in disads that would tend to lead him to violence with anyone even a little annoying he's regularly in proximity to. Like pushy, destructive kids. Sure, neither attack will kill Dozer when the FW goes down, but if Fracas' next attack happens before the FW comes up?

 

2/2/2 Kamikaze, as noted, also has an Enraged. If Dozer and Kamikaze go after each other head on (adding their movement rates), and one or the other of them will take a lot of damage. Friendship (IIRC) doesn't mitigate Enraged.

 

3/3/3 Apex can crack Dozer's FW like a teacup, and has "Enraged: Innocents Injured (Uncommon), go 11-, recover 14-", which I'm thinking is always when Dozer is around, given Dozer's psych lims.

 

4/4/4 Ferrous, likewise, especially when the pushy Dozer hits Ferrous' "Enraged: When Taunted (Uncommon), go 11-, recover 11-".

 

4/5/5 Amp can easily crack the FW with a 5d6 KA vs 14 ED, though as he doesn't have an enraged is much less likely to kill Dozer.

 

4/6/6 Showdown, like Amp, can crack the FW (with Find Weakness) and lacks an Enraged, so isn't likely to kill Dozer.

 

4/6/7 Spiker isn't likely to kill Dozer because she can't crack his FW, and if his FW's down first _AND_ she knows how fragile he is without it she's unlikely to fry him to death.

 

4/6/8 Makeshift can't crack the FW except with an extremely unlikely roll, and if the FW is down still isn't likely to kill Dozer with one attack, regardless if he knows how fragile Dozer is or not.

 

5/7/9 Triage can crack the FW with an ego attack, and once it's down, if Dozer is perceived as still a threat in combat, Triage has "Enraged: When the helpless are hurt. (Common), go 11-, recover 11-" -- which I'm thinking is always when Dozer is around.

 

6/7/10 Prefab, I'm unsure of. As a gadgeteer, I bet he could come up with a way to bring down the FW. With "Enraged: When Mocked / Bullied (Uncommon), go 8-, recover 11-" I believe he would be in danger of striking at a defenseless Dozer. I'm just not sure the combination of gadgets and enraged and analysis of how to defeat the FW would all come together at the same time.

 

6/8/11 Seizure, if you allow his Crush attack, could bring down the FW readily enough, but as your most heroic-seeming (to me) character, likely would be in no danger of murdering Dozer.

 

6/8/12 Neuro (possibly even more heroically motivated than Seizure) can't crack the FW, and wouldn't murder a defenseles Dozer.

 

So, of the first dozen of your posted characters I've looked at, half of them might kill Dozer if they got him defenseless in combat circumstances (due to enrageds he seems very likely to trigger) and only a third couldn't bring down his FW more than 20% of the time, if they were to try. You're right that few of them would use Move Through to do it.

As to "Multiple Move Through"...well, there is no "multiple move through"...I assume you mean Sweep a Move Through, and it doesn't work as you think it does...the FW and the character are considered a single target, per the rules FAQ, and Sweep specifically says that you can only Sweep a FMove maneuver such as Move Thru if "all targets are in adjacent hexes"...since the FW and the character are considered a single target, they are not considered to be multiple targets in adjacent hexes and thus Sweeping the MT vs the FW then the character is not valid by my interpretation of it. YMMV of course.

It looks like you're going with the interpretation of FW vs Move Thru that I most prefer, but it isn't the only way people run it. Most of the time that I've seen it in actual play, the target takes damage separately from the FW.

The Force Wall will go down afterwards, but he'll resist falling damage the same as any character with 20 PD. The Force Wall is Hardened, and will thus ignore Indirect.

For simple falling, or simple Indirect, sure. This part looks well thought-out.

 

(It sounds like you don't have any gadgeteers who analyze their opponents and then build attacks to circumvent their defenses, if you don't have someone who would be able to make an Indirect attack on a hardened FW. As a GM, I was always surprised by the ways my cleverer players had to overcome unusual defenses.)

Find Weakness will kind of suck, but c'est la vie.

One hopes that the attack the Find Weakness is based on would be below 10d6, so wouldn't kill Dozer outright.

No more so than a character w/o a FW.

For the first blow. The second attack that hits him after his FW goes down leaves him bleeding, doesn't it?

..

 

It sounds like maybe you are coming from a more GM-Player confrontational bias, which is not prevalent in my campaign.

Actually, I've been very lucky. But I've also been on boards and Usenet groups where I've heard horror stories. Even when not intended, characters that have the effect of being fragile still lead to unhappy players, according to my reading of threads.

This character is not meant to be a pinata. The defense will hold vs most physical attacks the PC's can bring to bear. Im not looking at the PC's sheets right this second, but IIRC only APEX has a chance to get thru reliably with a physical attack. The other PC's can't generate 17 BODY with anything short of a very improbable roll. The whole thing is moot for Triage of course as he has an EGO attack.

I think you just don't realize how well-built your characters are. Only a third couldn't, by my count, generate attacks needed to crack the FW at least a fifth of the time they tried.

Also, the FW is not Invisible; if and when it goes down, it is recognizable that he in vulnerable. It's not a big surprise to anyone that his hard candy coated shell is off and that he's squishy. In the off case it occurred and some hero took the opportunity to use excessive force it would likely be due to deliberate effort.

Armor and PD aren't visible, and it's easy in combat for even heroes to forget that there can be characters who are suddenly not-so-tough. Unless the GM actively reminds people about these things, accidents can happen through inadvertence, as an effect of the way it is played, as opposed to 'what the character would really do'. Plus your villains aren't the only ones with Enraged, and Dozer looks like a particularly enraging individual.

You can Abort to turn a FW back on to protect yourself. It is suggested that GM's not allow it to be done in the same Segment as it went down to prevent giving a character w/ FW too much advantage.

If you haven't used any action in a segment, you can Abort a future action to take one defensive action, sure. But if you're Stunned (which most attacks that get through that FW and hit Dozer ought do to him), you can't. And if Dozer's aborted on segment 1 and his FW goes down again on segment 3, say, he can't turn it back on until segment 8. This is a long time to be vulnerable to enraged people.

For starters you seem to have a very lethal outlook. A lot of assumption of killing and bleeding out and dying in various horrible paranoia inducing ways. Maybe that's how your superhero games go. Mine don't. I can't even recall the last time a PC died in a supers campaign that Ive either ran or played in over the last 16, 17 years. It may have happened once or twice, but so long ago I can't recall. I can only recall one villain being killed...and that was a maybe since the villain was a necromancer and may not have been truly alive in the first place either.

Myself? I prefer Golden or early Silver age, all the way. I'm just pointing out that others have seen fragile characters, complained about it on Usenet and boards in the past, and that I advise to build people with unreliable defenses (e.g. FF, FW, Desolid) with a safety net. In Dozer's case, as little as 5 AP ablative PD ought to do the trick.

 

Given the high ratio of KA's and attacks above 10d6 (the lethal range) in your posted characters, I'm surprised to hear you don't tend toward Bronze/Iron.

 

Its a generally non-lethal genre unless you are deliberately making it darker and more lethal and looking for opportunities to reduce everything to a death match.

I'm glad to hear. I'm a bit surprised, seeing so many characters with KA's and lethal attacks, but I'm glad to hear.

That aside, as to Kamikaze and Dozer, ok...what exactly gives you that impression? I see nothing of the sort. Dozer will flip if mocked about his stutter, but what makes you think Kamikaze would mock him at all? He's hyperactive, not abusive. Furthermore Kamikaze wants to have friends and be accepted; he and Dozer are of a similar age...its not unimaginable that the two kids that were mocked and picked on and have had their lives complicated by mutant powers might actually hit it off and become good friends. They've got a lot in common after all, and though Dozer isn't so desperate to belong to something that it rates as a disad, his background mentions he likes having a group of friends that accepts him in the form of his other team members.

Enraged is a disadvantage that ought to disadvantage evenly. Friendship and psych. lims might modify the circumstances, but they don't buy it off. These are two characters that just seem built to blow up at each other often. I don't know the entire team dynamic, but I'd expect with all the berserkers on it there has to be a powerful mentalist keeping them on a tight leash, or they're going to go ballistic often, and often at each other, from looking at the mix of their disads.

 

Of course, you're the GM, so I'll take your interpretation of how your NPCs are meant to act over my own any day.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

Ah. I'd expected based on the build that you'd be allowing Kamikaze's 6d6 AoE Kinetic Wave to be added to Move Thru damage. Since you're both the GM and the one who built the character, I trust you that it doesn't.

 

Though Kamikaze has "Excitable (Enraged): Pretty Much All The Time (Very Common), go 8-, recover 11-" and that hardly spells 'plays well with others'.

The Damage Shield is seperate from the Move Thru...its AoE so it basically resolves first, likely knocking targets away with the knockback but not doing much harm relatively. If no KB occurs, then he slams into them for full move thru damage.

 

If someone comes at him from the front arc they encounter the AoE Damage Shield and will likely get knocked back.

 

Its meant to be a weird effect, not a damage power up.

 

As far as the Disad, Im using the "Enraged" mechanic -- chance to lose total control and chance to recover, and frequency measures. However its not Im angry and attack something with no thought to defense Enraged. It's I'm excitable and get into whatever Im currently doing with no thought to what else is going on around me.

 

Even if it were a standard Enraged, only BERSERK characters have a chance to attack their allies. So this doesn't strengthen the idea of Kamikaze randomly attacking Dozer or any of his other teammates regardless.

 

Having been in, seen, given first aid at, visited the bedsides of and dug graves for more than my share of motorcycle accident involvements, I admit there are a wide variety of damage levels in them. Most are at the low end, and most riders who aren't seriously injured are wearing decent protection. At the very high end, 16d6+ isn't out of the possible range. Dozer has both "Psych. Lim.: Pushy (Very Common, Strong)" and "Psych. Lim.: Revels In Destruction (Uncommon, Strong)" -- these are not survival traits for motorcyclists. A bit of road rage, a roll of 14+ (counting circumstance modifiers like a slick road or poor visibility), and Dozer could easily smack into an oncoming truck. His FW goes down, and he is a 3 PD normal flying through the air at 60 mph, and when he lands he's a speed bump for the rest of the traffic on the road.

 

And the likelyhood of that actually happening in the context of a typical rpg is what? Somewhere around 0. How many "ifs" is that anyway? NPC write ups exist to give a framework to contested interactions with PC's and to support plot points, not to see if a character can survive a random motoring accident and eat the grill of a Mac truck.

 

The difference between FW and FF is minor, in this case. A character with either, who when they have extremely low defenses with their power down, is fragile and will get hurt.

Thanks for clearing that up for me; I was wondering about that...sorry, I don't mean to be sarcastic or rude, but you say this like you think its news to me.

 

1/1/1

What does all this 1/1/1 2/2/2 business mean?

 

1/1/1 Fracas wouldn't have to figure out a way to get to 27", since he has 2 attacks that could crack Dozer's FW at least 25% of the time, and 75 pts in disads that would tend to lead him to violence with anyone even a little annoying he's regularly in proximity to. Like pushy, destructive kids. Sure, neither attack will kill Dozer when the FW goes down, but if Fracas' next attack happens before the FW comes up?

(Caps indicate emphasis, not shouting)

 

A) But not with a MULTIPLE MOVE BY or MULTIPLE MOVE THRU which was YOUR ORIGINAL ASSERTION that I was COMMENTING ON.

 

If you want to have a meaningful discussion about something, it helps to stop moving the target around. Whether or not there are characters that can get thru the FW is not in question. You said this:

 

The first character who does a multiple move-through against his forcewall and knocks it down is going to leave Dozer dead or bleeding to death if he hits, which looks likely.

 

I said this:

 

Maybe in your campaign, but not many characters in Dozer's general point range can easily generate 17d6 of Move Thru damage in my campaign; I mean some can, but not many.

 

And even if it is penetrated the FW's defense applies to the damage so its unlikely much body would be left over to be applied to the character.

 

Then of course there would be KB, but again, KB is factored from only the Body that gets thru.

 

So...not seeing it as likely that a single move thru would leave him "dead or bleeding to death".

 

 

Of course, if the FW goes down Dozer is really really vulnerable to other attacks for the rest of the Segment...but thats the down side to the cheesy FW-Indirect defense combo.

 

Somewhere in the middle you switched horses and start pointing out other damage schemes that can get thru, but this was never in contention.

 

 

If two NPC's decide to fight it out for some reason, why would I bother to run it out? What's the point?

 

C) What is this fascination you seem to have with interparty death matches?

 

D) If the 575 point head stomper gets it into his head to beat on the 425 point blaster in a fist fight...gee guess who wins?

 

 

2/2/2 Kamikaze, as noted, also has an Enraged. If Dozer and Kamikaze go after each other head on (adding their movement rates), and one or the other of them will take a lot of damage. Friendship (IIRC) doesn't mitigate Enraged.

A) Actually, you might want to read the book on what an Enraged is and is not. That aside, as I mentioned, Im using the Enraged mechanic to represent a different kind of behavior for Kami.

 

Why would Dozer decide to charge a move thru specialist head to head? Arguments based on an assumption of rampant stupidity are never very strong.

 

 

 

3/3/3 Apex can crack Dozer's FW like a teacup, and has "Enraged: Innocents Injured (Uncommon), go 11-, recover 14-", which I'm thinking is always when Dozer is around, given Dozer's psych lims.

Apex can crack Dozers FW on a good roll on a Move Thru, hardly like a tea cup. And this is actually deliberate. The amount of damage Apex can do (as the hardest hitting PC) was directly factored in to how high to set the FW.

 

4/4/4 Ferrous, likewise, especially when the pushy Dozer hits Ferrous' "Enraged: When Taunted (Uncommon), go 11-, recover 11-".

 

A) Dozer isnt exactly in Ferrous's weight class. The 525 hard core brick will smear a 425 point blaster in a toe to toe fight. That's pretty much a given. If Dozer manages to blast Ferrous first he might have some odds of survival, but otherwise he's just outclassed.

 

Again, I didnt say no one could get thru the FW. What I said in case it slipped your attention is:

 

I'm pretty positive that there's no character in my campaign setting that could reliably generate that much damage on a Multiple Move By, with perhaps one or two exceptions; and certainly none Im planning on using in this particular campaign any time soon if at all, so I'm not even going to bother to run numbers on it.

 

C) You seem to have a very strange idea of what Enraged actually does. Also, how do you interpret "Pushy" as triggering someones "TAUNTED" disad? They are two completely different things.

 

Dozer is pushy in as much as he gets his own way and isnt polite about it. Its a ROLEPLAYING guide. Taunting is deliberately making fun of or belittling people.

 

SNIP a lot of iterations of the same thing.

 

It looks like you're going with the interpretation of FW vs Move Thru that I most prefer, but it isn't the only way people run it. Most of the time that I've seen it in actual play, the target takes damage separately from the FW.

To each their own, but I don't think the rules support such an interpretation personally.

 

For the first blow. The second attack that hits him after his FW goes down leaves him bleeding, doesn't it?

A) if its powerful enough, and if its launched in the first place at full strength on an obviously vulnerable foe, and if he doesnt abort out of danger, then sure its possible for him to be one shotted since he is entirely normal other than his psychokinesis.

 

You seem to be arguing from the assumption of a perfect defense. If his FW gets knocked down and someone chump drops him before he can Abort it back up again, too bad for him.

 

Actually, I've been very lucky. But I've also been on boards and Usenet groups where I've heard horror stories. Even when not intended, characters that have the effect of being fragile still lead to unhappy players, according to my reading of threads.

 

It all depends on what ROLE an NPC is meant to fill. Not every tool in the box is meant for the same tasks. NPCs are part of my tool set to make the campaign sing, and I choose my tools well to fit particular needs.

 

Dozer's role is to do massive collateral damage and demand the PC's pay attention to him. The first time out of the box he should make a big splash. If left alone he'll wreck everything in sight. Agents, like PRIMUS, cops, etc, basically can't hurt him.

 

His purpose is to draw attention from PC's. Makeshift is basically unable to deal w/ Dozer without massive luck, so Apex or Triage will have to make it happen. Meanwhile, the other members of the Violators are taking care of business. In later encounters, the team will likely make Dozer a prime target to neutralize first, and offering the opportunity for teamwork among the players / PCs to coordinate that. The next encounter, they try the same tactic, but Dozer has himself learned from their encounters and has developed his powers in some way to require the PC's to adjust. And so forth. He is meant to be right at the edge of defeatable but dangerous by the PCs for his initial foray. He's a walking nuke; you have to deal with it, but you are meant to be able to deal with it.

 

You'll also note that he's one of the weakest of the Violators...only Kamikaze is weaker. Fracas is 575, Furnace is 525, Ing is 900, and Sybyl isn't completely built yet, but she's going to have some points sunk into some unusual abilities, and isn't a front liner anyway. He's not meant to be their mainstay; he's a glass cannon. That's his niche.

 

One day, if the campaign continues, Dozer will develop into something bigger, but for now he serves a specific purpose. Kamikaze and Furnace are similar...all three are powerful, but have flaws baked into them as part of their core design. All three are also young. They are intended to develop over time into more well rounded opponents, overcoming their intrinsic downsides. All three are also potentially turnable to heroic, or at least less villainous ends, as can Fracas and Sybyl. I'm playing my cards closer in Ing, but there are development opportunities there as well.

 

They are not meant to fill the Crowns of Krim or Eurostar kind of adversarial role; they are more like GRAB and are intended to be interacted with over time in a more complex fashion than a virtual cage match.

 

 

I think you just don't realize how well-built your characters are.

Thanks for the backhanded compliment, but actually I do realize they are well built. I also realize they are each built to serve the purpose I intended them for, and not necessarily the purpose you think think they are for or would put them to.

 

Ultimately I post them as a resource for other gamers if they want to benefit from it and use them as is or as inspiration for characters of their own. If they don't that's ok too. If you don't like a particular character, either don't use them, or change them to suit your needs in your campaign.

 

Only a third couldn't, by my count, generate attacks needed to crack the FW at least a fifth of the time they tried.

But not with "multiple move thrus" or move bys, which was your assertion that I was refuting.

 

Armor and PD aren't visible, and it's easy in combat for even heroes to forget that there can be characters who are suddenly not-so-tough. Unless the GM actively reminds people about these things, accidents can happen through inadvertence, as an effect of the way it is played, as opposed to 'what the character would really do'. Plus your villains aren't the only ones with Enraged, and Dozer looks like a particularly enraging individual.

 

Well, common sense applies. He's not a brick, he doesnt act like a brick or do brick things. He had a visibile force aura of some kind that protected him from damage. Its not there anymore...its pretty safe to assume the person is now vulnerable to harm and to exercise caution.

 

And besides, on the off chance he or anyother character ends up dead its ultimately because I as the GM chose to allow it. The GM has ultimate control over outcome, and if I don't want a character to die, they just don't, period. The dice are not gods.

 

In grittier action oriented settings characters can drop like flies and its expected, but in more dramatic settings such as supers its not genre appropriate for something as random as a die roll to rule over life and death so arbitrarily.

 

Perhaps your approach is different and frequent character deaths are part of your supers campaigns and characters are expected to have layered, totally reliable defenses to be competitive. That's not the case in my settings. A lot of characters get by with just Combat Luck, or some other "unreliable" defense. They might get hurt from time to time, but they're only going to get killed if their players have them do something deliberately stupid like suck on the barrel of Destroyers gun array and dare him to pull the trigger.

 

As an aside, I wracked my brain and I remembered another villain that actually got whacked in a relatively recent Champions game -- Black Harlequinn was killed by accident in the Omegaworld adventure when I ran it a few years ago...the players didn't realize BH wasn't a stand up fighter even though he played Wizard of OZ for the entire scenario (hidden away behind a "curtain"), and tried to run as soon as things fell apart, and slightly over estimated the amount of force to use against him. It was a near thing, and I could have chosen to just have him be "very badly injured" if I wanted to. I basically played it straight and had BH die because I personally don't like the character and didnt mind getting rid of him, and for no other reason.

 

 

So, it has happened twice in the last 8 or 10 years.

 

If you haven't used any action in a segment, you can Abort a future action to take one defensive action, sure. But if you're Stunned (which most attacks that get through that FW and hit Dozer ought do to him), you can't. And if Dozer's aborted on segment 1 and his FW goes down again on segment 3, say, he can't turn it back on until segment 8. This is a long time to be vulnerable to enraged people.

A) You are really stuck on Enraged arent you?

 

Im not sure why you seem to feel the need to explain very basic aspects of the system to me like its rocket science or you think I don't already know it. I do already know it, so please stop insulting my intelligence.

 

C) No one is saying he wont ever have his FW go down and stay down. Im saying that he can Abort to turn it back on if it does get knocked down, assuming he is otherwise able to do so.

 

 

I'm just pointing out that others have seen fragile characters, complained about it on Usenet and boards in the past, and that I advise to build people with unreliable defenses (e.g. FF, FW, Desolid) with a safety net. In Dozer's case, as little as 5 AP ablative PD ought to do the trick.

And in time he will realize that himself and develop some layered defense. That is part of the growth span of the character. Currently the character does not have this, and its because I do not want him to.

 

Im getting the feeling that you think Im a noob or something asking for help. Im not. Ive been playing this game for 17 years now, across all major genres and up and down the point scale. Ive made literally hundreds, probably more than a thousand, of characters for this game over the years. Hundreds of them are on my web site. Ive been contributing to the community via the net in one form or another since 1995. Im the 4th most active poster on these forums, and one of the most prolific. I don't need someone to come along and explain basic things to me like its news. Im posting this characters to share them as resources and to get feedback on whether they are "cool" or not...a test screening of sorts...

 

I'm sure you are trying to be helpful, and I get that. However, what would be actually helpful to me instead are editorial catches of actual mistakes on characters, obvious gaps that should be covered based on background, artifacts of earlier versions that don't make any sense any more, and other "clean ups".

 

Myself? I prefer Golden or early Silver age, all the way.

Given the high ratio of KA's and attacks above 10d6 (the lethal range) in your posted characters, I'm surprised to hear you don't tend toward Bronze/Iron.

Labels differ in connotation of course, but I like Silver best myself. However, I find it hard to maintain pure Silver for extended campaigns because players either start to ham it up or to push against its boundaries.

 

I run my CU games as more "Bronze", but not as gritty as Ive seen some people interpret that. Some big dice get tossed around, especially in the higher point levels, but it generally follows the recommended guidelines in the rulebook and is not excessive. I dunno...I basically run the CU straight up with just a few minor background changes -- primarily magic is not the source of all superpowers and I ignore the DOJ conceit that tries to force all the product lines into a common timeline as I find it horribly contrived, internally illogical, and to detract more than it adds.

 

Enraged is a disadvantage that ought to disadvantage evenly. Friendship and psych. lims might modify the circumstances, but they don't buy it off. These are two characters that just seem built to blow up at each other often. I don't know the entire team dynamic, but I'd expect with all the berserkers on it there has to be a powerful mentalist keeping them on a tight leash, or they're going to go ballistic often, and often at each other, from looking at the mix of their disads.

 

Of course, you're the GM, so I'll take your interpretation of how your NPCs are meant to act over my own any day.

A) None of them are "BERSERKERS". Not one has the BERSERK modifier. None.

 

Kamikaze's "Enraged" is not defined in the way you seem to think it is. Its an alternate use of Enraged, which is mentioned in the rulebook as being viable if such is necessary for you to accept it, but at any rate I've been using the "Enraged" triggered loss of control mechanic for many different things for many different years.

 

C) You should reread the book on Enraged because you seem to have a very distilled idea of how it works. Also, you seem to have a very strange idea of what goes on "off screen" with NPC's whose only real purpose is to provide challenges to the actual PLAYER CHARACTERS, who are and should be the center of attention. The Disadvantages on these characters are only meaningful in as much as they help fulfill that central goal.

 

Dozer has an Enraged if stutter mocked because knowing players at least ONE of them will eventually mock Dozer's stutter when I roleplay it out. Its practically guaranteed. Like kids and candy, someone will do it. About 25% of the time Dozer will flip and start getting uppity and will have to be shut down forcefully. Thats it. That's the only reason its on the sheet; to throw a little structure around a game event that will provide a particular challenge to the players.

 

Kamikaze gets excited about things and mono-focused on it. He's basically useless for anything else until he breaks out of it and gets himself under control. He'll just jitter around talking really fast and provide comic relief to get a laugh out of the players, and to key the PC's in on the idea that this is just a kid whose thrown in with bad company, not a hardened professional criminal. It might provide enough of a hook on its own or in conjunction with other elements of the character to draw one or more PC's into a roleplaying opportunity. That's it. That's the purpose.

 

Fracas has an Enraged in combat because he LOVES TO FIGHT, and gets totally into it. I want him to feel like a bulldog, just going after someone until they are hamburger or can evade him. He will go all out against whoever draws his initial focus -- ie the focus of his enraged -- and ignore other foes even when it is tactically stupid for him to do so. The players should develop a healthy fear / respect for him because there is something just scary about a dude that goes relentless on one person. This will heighten dramatic tension because the FEAR of drawing his attention is much more interesting and will have a more lasting impression than the events of the resulting combat. Players will reminisce..."Oh man, you remember the time Fracas was coming after my guy, and we thru everything plus the kitchen sink at him and he just kept coming? Oh man, I thought that was the end of my dude right there...I can't believe we pulled that off!". That's why its on his sheet.

 

In all three cases you'll note that the purpose of it isnt "character gets pissed off and kills / maims teammates off screen".

 

"Sorry guys, I had a great game planned for this week, but I rolled for their Enrageds and those kooky Violaters had a big mosh fight and none of them are in any condition to be used tonight...luckily I brought Yahtzee score sheets. First one to 375 gets an extra experience point!"

 

Let's keep things in perspective shall we? The PC's are the focus of the game, not various NPC's, who are all there to provide a backdrop and help set a stage upon which the players can act out their character's roles, vicariously enjoying the idea of having superpowers and doing the thing superheroes did in the comics we read when we were younger.

 

As a primary antagonist group designed specifically for the campaign, the Violators are set up to provide different kinds of challenges and opportunities to the PCs of this campaign, and not to be rock em sock em participants in a death match who can kill who scenario. If all you want to do is hit things and do damage, play a video game. That's not the purpose or strength of a f2f RPG however. Sure, fights can be fun and memorable, but they are no substitute for an actual game with an actual plot and actual character interaction.

[Comic]

Re: [Character] Dozer

 

The Damage Shield is seperate from the Move Thru...its AoE so it basically resolves first, likely knocking targets away with the knockback but not doing much harm relatively. If no KB occurs, then he slams into them for full move thru damage.

 

If someone comes at him from the front arc they encounter the AoE Damage Shield and will likely get knocked back.

 

Its meant to be a weird effect, not a damage power up.

No need to explain all this. You did a great job with it in the character sheet, and it's nice to see an imaginative and apt use of the power and advantages. I'd used the similarity to Furnace's Hot-Hot-Hot powers as an incorrect parallel.

As far as the Disad, Im using the "Enraged" mechanic -- chance to lose total control and chance to recover, and frequency measures. However its not Im angry and attack something with no thought to defense Enraged. It's I'm excitable and get into whatever Im currently doing with no thought to what else is going on around me.

Entirely cool.

Even if it were a standard Enraged, only BERSERK characters have a chance to attack their allies. So this doesn't strengthen the idea of Kamikaze randomly attacking Dozer or any of his other teammates regardless.

Huh. I thought Enraged meant the character would attack all triggers of the Enraged beginning with the first until each is no longer in combat, in order of proximity. I appear to have skipped the passage that says 'friends and teammates can never trigger Enraged.' My bad. I'd love the cite, to help me look it up, if you have it.

And the likelyhood of that actually happening in the context of a typical rpg is what? Somewhere around 0. How many "ifs" is that anyway? NPC write ups exist to give a framework to contested interactions with PC's and to support plot points, not to see if a character can survive a random motoring accident and eat the grill of a Mac truck.

Sorry. My verisimilitude habit. I see something on a sheet that sets off my nitpick sense, and I have a hard time not mentioning it. As you can tell, I'm into riding IRL. Dozer's psych lims seem to fit a lot of guys I've seen kiss pavement, so he's a very credible character in that regard.

Thanks for clearing that up for me; I was wondering about that...sorry, I don't mean to be sarcastic or rude, but you say this like you think its news to me.

No worries. I always assume on boards that I'm having a civilized, productive and positive conversation in courtesy and fairness with someone who shares some of my interests and motivations. You design awesome characters and appear to be running by all indications a great campaign. How can I resist interest in that?

As to whether or not it's news? Many actions I take have unintended and unforeseen consequences, and I'm always glad when someone lets me know if they think I'm on course for another of those.

What does all this 1/1/1 2/2/2 business mean?

Eep? I left those in? They were to help me keep tally (Might kill Dozer if they could)/(Could bring down his FW)/(Total characters looked at).

 

(Caps indicate emphasis, not shouting)

 

A) But not with a MULTIPLE MOVE BY or MULTIPLE MOVE THRU which was YOUR ORIGINAL ASSERTION that I was COMMENTING ON.

 

If you want to have a meaningful discussion about something, it helps to stop moving the target around. Whether or not there are characters that can get thru the FW is not in question. You said this:

 

..

 

I said this:

 

..

 

Somewhere in the middle you switched horses and start pointing out other damage schemes that can get thru, but this was never in contention.

Sorry, my bad. My whole point was concern that Dozer is too fragile once his FW goes down. Move thru was just intended as a handy - albeit it turns out due to the rules you use irrelevant - example.

If two NPC's decide to fight it out for some reason, why would I bother to run it out? What's the point?

 

C) What is this fascination you seem to have with interparty death matches?

 

D) If the 575 point head stomper gets it into his head to beat on the 425 point blaster in a fist fight...gee guess who wins?

My Verisimilitude psych. lim. I wouldn't put Mechanon in a team with organic life forms who I intended to remain a cohesive team and remain organic, for example. I'd expect any NPC organization to have an internal life, even if I didn't run the combats out.

A) Actually, you might want to read the book on what an Enraged is and is not. That aside, as I mentioned, Im using the Enraged mechanic to represent a different kind of behavior for Kami.

I'd love the cite, if you can help me out with it. So far as you've explained, I agree entirely with the good use you're making of the disad and how it works, except I don't follow how teammates become immune to being triggers.

Why would Dozer decide to charge a move thru specialist head to head? Arguments based on an assumption of rampant stupidity are never very strong.

Enraged isn't exactly the disad that tells you to attack in the way that is likely to hurt you least, just the way that's likeliest to hurt your opponent most. Though, I'd intended for it to be Kami's choice, not Dozer's.

Apex can crack Dozers FW on a good roll on a Move Thru, hardly like a tea cup. And this is actually deliberate. The amount of damage Apex can do (as the hardest hitting PC) was directly factored in to how high to set the FW.

Haymaker, or using Leaping as the basis for move-thru, instead of flight? With Enraged, wouldn't Apex be doing his best to effectively fight Dozer, not attacks he can easily discover have limited chance of success?

A) Dozer isnt exactly in Ferrous's weight class. The 525 hard core brick will smear a 425 point blaster in a toe to toe fight. That's pretty much a given. If Dozer manages to blast Ferrous first he might have some odds of survival, but otherwise he's just outclassed.

Actually, this is part of the problem. Dozer is in many ways in Ferrous' weight class that matter. He does as much damage, can shrug off sizeable attacks without trouble so long as his FW remains up, and there's no way someone who revels in massive lethal damage can claim that deadly force used against himself is excessive. For heroes with CvK, they have to reconcile themselves to cases like Dozer's, where bringing him down could kill him. For heroes without CvK, they may still be troubled by Dozer's death, but it's not like he isn't practically begging to die in a world that sees him as a rampaging murderous sociopath.

Again, I didnt say no one could get thru the FW. What I said in case it slipped your attention is:

 

..

Granted. It's your campaign, and you seem well in control of it. FW's that go down in my experience are more limiting as defenses than they are in your setting, so my point is moot. Different worlds, different outcomes.

C) You seem to have a very strange idea of what Enraged actually does. Also, how do you interpret "Pushy" as triggering someones "TAUNTED" disad? They are two completely different things.

 

Dozer is pushy in as much as he gets his own way and isnt polite about it. Its a ROLEPLAYING guide. Taunting is deliberately making fun of or belittling people.

Sadly, I associate taunting, passive aggressive behaviour and the like with pushiness. Btw, I like the play on words. Dozer. Pushy. Heh.

 

To each their own, but I don't think the rules support such an interpretation personally.

Agreed.

A) if its powerful enough, and if its launched in the first place at full strength on an obviously vulnerable foe, and if he doesnt abort out of danger, then sure its possible for him to be one shotted since he is entirely normal other than his psychokinesis.

 

You seem to be arguing from the assumption of a perfect defense. If his FW gets knocked down and someone chump drops him before he can Abort it back up again, too bad for him.

I can't agree with A). Dozer is a willing and gleeful massively destructive sociopath who can toss out lethal attacks effortlessly. (Btw, I meant to ask, how does his Indirect get through his hardened FW? Did I miss something in the write up on that?) If someone sees an opportunity to keep him from doing more of the same, even if they aren't Enraged by him, failure to take the strongest measures available to do so is either a matter of personal code of conduct overriding their senses of duty to society and to their own self-preservation, or poor grasp of the danger Dozer presents.

I also can't agree with , since Abort is a desperation act that is not always available and since the repurcussions of what heroes do to Dozer is something the heroes have to deal with, if they have memory or conscience.

It all depends on what ROLE an NPC is meant to fill. Not every tool in the box is meant for the same tasks. NPCs are part of my tool set to make the campaign sing, and I choose my tools well to fit particular needs.

 

Dozer's role is to do massive collateral damage and demand the PC's pay attention to him. The first time out of the box he should make a big splash. If left alone he'll wreck everything in sight. Agents, like PRIMUS, cops, etc, basically can't hurt him.

 

His purpose is to draw attention from PC's. Makeshift is basically unable to deal w/ Dozer without massive luck, so Apex or Triage will have to make it happen. Meanwhile, the other members of the Violators are taking care of business. In later encounters, the team will likely make Dozer a prime target to neutralize first, and offering the opportunity for teamwork among the players / PCs to coordinate that. The next encounter, they try the same tactic, but Dozer has himself learned from their encounters and has developed his powers in some way to require the PC's to adjust. And so forth. He is meant to be right at the edge of defeatable but dangerous by the PCs for his initial foray. He's a walking nuke; you have to deal with it, but you are meant to be able to deal with it.

 

You'll also note that he's one of the weakest of the Violators...only Kamikaze is weaker. Fracas is 575, Furnace is 525, Ing is 900, and Sybyl isn't completely built yet, but she's going to have some points sunk into some unusual abilities, and isn't a front liner anyway. He's not meant to be their mainstay; he's a glass cannon. That's his niche.

 

One day, if the campaign continues, Dozer will develop into something bigger, but for now he serves a specific purpose. Kamikaze and Furnace are similar...all three are powerful, but have flaws baked into them as part of their core design. All three are also young. They are intended to develop over time into more well rounded opponents, overcoming their intrinsic downsides. All three are also potentially turnable to heroic, or at least less villainous ends, as can Fracas and Sybyl. I'm playing my cards closer in Ing, but there are development opportunities there as well.

 

They are not meant to fill the Crowns of Krim or Eurostar kind of adversarial role; they are more like GRAB and are intended to be interacted with over time in a more complex fashion than a virtual cage match.

All extremely well-thought-out and impressive. If Dozer doesn't die, which could happen with a 3 PD/3 SPD/low Stun vs two enraging supers who can get his FW down.

Thanks for the backhanded compliment, but actually I do realize they are well built. I also realize they are each built to serve the purpose I intended them for, and not necessarily the purpose you think think they are for or would put them to.

 

Ultimately I post them as a resource for other gamers if they want to benefit from it and use them as is or as inspiration for characters of their own. If they don't that's ok too. If you don't like a particular character, either don't use them, or change them to suit your needs in your campaign.

My own uses are just that I like well-made characters like car afficionados like Rolls Royces and Ferrari's. Thank you for providing them.

But not with "multiple move thrus" or move bys, which was your assertion that I was refuting.

 

..

 

Well, common sense applies. He's not a brick, he doesnt act like a brick or do brick things. He had a visibile force aura of some kind that protected him from damage. Its not there anymore...its pretty safe to assume the person is now vulnerable to harm and to exercise caution.

Enh. My reasoning for not exercising caution about hurting poor, vulnerable Dozer is covered above. I'm, unwisely I admit, with Samwise. Gollum needed to be whacked.

And besides, on the off chance he or anyother character ends up dead its ultimately because I as the GM chose to allow it. The GM has ultimate control over outcome, and if I don't want a character to die, they just don't, period. The dice are not gods.

Heh. I used to know more than one player who would cover their dice when such things were said, lest the 'Dice Gods' hear and be angered. As GM, this is in your discretion. As it should be.

In grittier action oriented settings characters can drop like flies and its expected, but in more dramatic settings such as supers its not genre appropriate for something as random as a die roll to rule over life and death so arbitrarily.

 

Perhaps your approach is different and frequent character deaths are part of your supers campaigns and characters are expected to have layered, totally reliable defenses to be competitive. That's not the case in my settings. A lot of characters get by with just Combat Luck, or some other "unreliable" defense. They might get hurt from time to time, but they're only going to get killed if their players have them do something deliberately stupid like suck on the barrel of Destroyers gun array and dare him to pull the trigger.

 

As an aside, I wracked my brain and I remembered another villain that actually got whacked in a relatively recent Champions game -- Black Harlequinn was killed by accident in the Omegaworld adventure when I ran it a few years ago...the players didn't realize BH wasn't a stand up fighter even though he played Wizard of OZ for the entire scenario (hidden away behind a "curtain"), and tried to run as soon as things fell apart, and slightly over estimated the amount of force to use against him. It was a near thing, and I could have chosen to just have him be "very badly injured" if I wanted to. I basically played it straight and had BH die because I personally don't like the character and didnt mind getting rid of him, and for no other reason.

 

 

So, it has happened twice in the last 8 or 10 years.

 

 

A) You are really stuck on Enraged arent you?

Just verisimilitude. It's a disad of mine.

Im not sure why you seem to feel the need to explain very basic aspects of the system to me like its rocket science or you think I don't already know it. I do already know it, so please stop insulting my intelligence.

No insult intended. Any imputation gladly withdrawn. You're one of the people I'd most gladly refer to, based on what I've seen, for rules and game questions. Well, after, you know, Steve.

C) No one is saying he wont ever have his FW go down and stay down. Im saying that he can Abort to turn it back on if it does get knocked down, assuming he is otherwise able to do so.

 

..

 

And in time he will realize that himself and develop some layered defense. That is part of the growth span of the character. Currently the character does not have this, and its because I do not want him to.

 

Im getting the feeling that you think Im a noob or something asking for help. Im not. Ive been playing this game for 17 years now, across all major genres and up and down the point scale. Ive made literally hundreds, probably more than a thousand, of characters for this game over the years. Hundreds of them are on my web site. Ive been contributing to the community via the net in one form or another since 1995. Im the 4th most active poster on these forums, and one of the most prolific. I don't need someone to come along and explain basic things to me like its news. Im posting this characters to share them as resources and to get feedback on whether they are "cool" or not...a test screening of sorts...

 

I'm sure you are trying to be helpful, and I get that. However, what would be actually helpful to me instead are editorial catches of actual mistakes on characters, obvious gaps that should be covered based on background, artifacts of earlier versions that don't make any sense any more, and other "clean ups".

Noted, and I'll do what I can to keep that focus.

Labels differ in connotation of course, but I like Silver best myself. However, I find it hard to maintain pure Silver for extended campaigns because players either start to ham it up or to push against its boundaries.

 

I run my CU games as more "Bronze", but not as gritty as Ive seen some people interpret that. Some big dice get tossed around, especially in the higher point levels, but it generally follows the recommended guidelines in the rulebook and is not excessive. I dunno...I basically run the CU straight up with just a few minor background changes -- primarily magic is not the source of all superpowers and I ignore the DOJ conceit that tries to force all the product lines into a common timeline as I find it horribly contrived, internally illogical, and to detract more than it adds.

Sounds cool.

 

A) None of them are "BERSERKERS". Not one has the BERSERK modifier. None.

It's a semantic thing. Enraged once upon a time was a form of berserk, and at least three of the Violators appear like they'd fit in well with historical accounts of the Bear Shirt warrior culture, ie 'berserkers'.

..

 

"Sorry guys, I had a great game planned for this week, but I rolled for their Enrageds and those kooky Violaters had a big mosh fight and none of them are in any condition to be used tonight...luckily I brought Yahtzee score sheets. First one to 375 gets an extra experience point!"

Heh! And yet, we had to give one of our GM's a little 'time to himself' when he said something pretty much word for word like this once. The stress of GMing. Terrible toll on the mind.

Let's keep things in perspective shall we? The PC's are the focus of the game, not various NPC's, who are all there to provide a backdrop and help set a stage upon which the players can act out their character's roles, vicariously enjoying the idea of having superpowers and doing the thing superheroes did in the comics we read when we were younger.

 

As a primary antagonist group designed specifically for the campaign, the Violators are set up to provide different kinds of challenges and opportunities to the PCs of this campaign, and not to be rock em sock em participants in a death match who can kill who scenario. If all you want to do is hit things and do damage, play a video game. That's not the purpose or strength of a f2f RPG however. Sure, fights can be fun and memorable, but they are no substitute for an actual game with an actual plot and actual character interaction.

All entirely cool. But we've come an awful long way just to agree on most points. For the most part, all we seem to differ in is that I'd give Dozer a motorcycle jacket as 5 pts OIF Ablative PD, and you're the GM so you get to say "Good roll!That haymaker did 19 Body and 70 Stun before defenses, Dozer is in GM's discretion."

 

Thanks for this opportunity to explore your character and campaign. It's provided many insights for me.