How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

[MitchellS]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

The character needs to be played intelligently. In most instances the martial artist is going to have a defense in the 15 range. That right there means they're not going to take any body on most attacks of 15d6 or less [maybe 1 or 2 with a lucky roll, but usually none]. If the character encounters someone using more dice then their defense then they need to think about using the various combat maneuvers to their advantage. Dodging, rolling with the blow, diving for cover, and blocking [either as a delay or an abort] can be very effecting at keeping lower defense characters in a battle. The real trick is for players to not just assume their pd/ed is going to cover every situation. There's a reason why those combat maneuvers are in the game.

 

Champions is a game where body damage is going to be fairly rare. It's designed to be 4-color rather then realistic. Bricks are almost never going to take body damage [there's just no foes who can throw 30d6+ attacks to get past most bricks' 30-35 defense. The real equalizer in Champions is stun. A 15-20d6 attack is going to hurt even if it can't bruise the target.

[pinecone]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

Here I agree.

 

 

 

This bit is accurate, but I'd add a bit to it. As a GM I have to ask if I really want the Batman homage taking as much punishment as the Superman homage without getting knocked out. I don't want PCs killed unless I planned it that way (or the player has the character do something suicidal); Still, if the Martial Artist's DCV fails him, and he ends up taking a punch that would seriously hurt the Brick, I don't want the Martial Artist to casually shake it off. I'd probably prefer for him to be knocked out. After all, it's the Brick's schtick to take huge hits and keep going; the Martial Artist ought to be built to avoid them. On the days that he doesn't, within reasonable limits (again, I don't want him killed), he should suck it up. Let his player watch the rest of the combat and let the PC wake up and find out what happened later. That's the price of a point based system.

 

There is also various tricks that the "normal" dude can have squirilled away in his Utility belt...

"The old Hologram trick!" Desolid 4x day cannot pass through objects other than attacks (like say busses) special effect the damage passes through because "Batdude" was really hiding, man is he clever!

 

"Rolling with the punch" Damage reduction x1/2 or 3/4 4x day what amazing skill! "How could he have survived?"

 

A playa is responsable for his own safety, unless I'm throwing around big out side the box attacks, I expect the hero to take care of himself....

[pinecone]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

Okay, well first lets take a closer look at the problem. Most batman types will have about 15 def I figure (About half coming from Foci or Combat reflexes), with probably a 15 body, allowing the character to take 3 average EB's of 20 dice before starting to bleed out, 3 more on top of that till death, so the body is probably not the problem, but the stun, ohh that stun that will probably KO him in one to two shots

 

So we need to mitigate the stun. Well high recovery can help, so can more speed (More recoveries), and of course more stun or defences.

 

Now we get into the house rules section

 

I have a house rule involving the luck power (I basicaly swiped it from Savage Worlds BTW)

 

At the start of the game you roll your dice of luck, and count the body, each body is the number of luck points you get

 

Each luck point can be used for the following things

*World modifing, this may take more than one luck point but lets you modify the scene to fit your needs, the GM decides on the spot howmany luck points it will cost to change what you want to change

Ex. You are being choked by ogre in a lab, you ask the GM if there is a beacker of acid you can use to throw at Ogre, he decides it costs 1 luck point for there to be one

 

*+2 Overall levels (lasts for one action, must be used before action is taken)

 

*Reroll, highest roll taken

 

*One free Recovery

 

*Stop Bleeding to death

 

*Breakout roll from mental effects

 

*Speed: Basicaly you get a single extra action, as if you had an action in that phase, goes by dex

 

*+3 Lightning reflexes (Must be used at top of phase)

 

*anything else you can talk the GM into, Bribes work well here =)

 

I'd be perfectly happy letting a "luck point" make a dive for cover automaticly succeed....I have a mechanic, I just modify for flava....

[Balabanto]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

You know, it's amazing how you guys all spend all this time talking about what people can do and you forgot the most basic thing of all.

 

Are you ready?

 

Martial Dodge! The Injuns are a comin!

 

Someone just unloaded an attack on a guy with +5 DCV plus any levels he may possess. Ten Suerte, Senor!

[Willpower]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

Well, for one I at least try to make sure all of the players are playable, and at least somewhat defensable against most attacks. At least against most attacks that aren't meant to really kill supers a lot. That is why, when describing my campaigns I try to have a range of appropriate defenses. I know it keeps from being able to play in DC type games at least somewhat, because their range is so great that if someone like a normal was hit full force by someone even in the remote Superman level power range, they would be totaly wiped. But then I have found when you do play at those levels everyone invariably ends up wanting to play a character in the Superman level power range, because if you have a huge fight, and that level of diversity, typically the lower powered characters end up feeling there isn't much they can do. And if you have a fight in the lower power range, then the higher powered characters end up dominating so much, that the lower powered characters still feel useless. Mixing it up doesn't work either, because at that point the only fight that really counts is the high powered one. (Example: Batman versus Joker, Superman versus Doomsday in a big fight. Batman beats Joker. Yea! OK, Doomsday beats Superman... OK, good luck Bats. Other way around. Joker beats Batman. Boo! Superman beats Doomsday... You really think Joker has a chance?

 

This just shows why in Champions I use a range of appropriate power levels and defenses so that all characters can work together. You will still have some people that out power others, but it won't be so overwhelming that the other guy has no chance at all. I ran a game one time, where someone played a Dark Knightish type guy, who investigated a warehouse, only to find that was where Eurostar was planing their heists. He flubbed one of his rolls and was spotted. Big fight ensued. Normally, this guy fight on equal footing with only a few members of Eurostar, but he was at least built to a good enough level that he could affect most members at least somewhat, and take a few shots even from Durak. (That was his name back then.) This Dark Knightish type guy, fought like the blazes this time though. It wasn't that the dice were with him, he was just really trying to use his surroundings and fight smartly. He did, and ended up defeating all but one member of Eurostar before finally being overwhelmed, and that was only because it was Durak that was left, was untouched, and he only had a few stun left at that point.

 

There have been many times people have approached me with a character build and I have had to tell them that they would get killed unless we added a bit more defense somewhere. Typically, they do and it works alright. One time I had someone ignore what I said. After the first fight that group was in, and he was taken out first thing, by a lot, and out the whole fight, he wanted to readjust his character.

[Cancer]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

Having seen a PC get one-punch TRM'ed, a word of advice for those building squishies: don't take an Enraged that'll get triggered in combat.

[pinecone]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

Having seen a PC get one-punch TRM'ed' date=' a word of advice for those building squishies: don't take an Enraged that'll get triggered in combat.[/quote']

 

And buy some freakin Pres...other wise you might just stand there going "Ohhh...I'm gonna diiiieee" and be right...

[ghost-angel]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

You know, it's amazing how you guys all spend all this time talking about what people can do and you forgot the most basic thing of all.

 

Are you ready?

 

Martial Dodge! The Injuns are a comin!

 

Someone just unloaded an attack on a guy with +5 DCV plus any levels he may possess. Ten Suerte, Senor!

 

That's assuming he started to Martial Dodge in his Phase, or has a Phase to Abort in order to do with.

 

If he's a very High DEX Character and goes first in a Phase, he could possibly have a whole bunch of people in that Phase who go before the next Segment and he's able to Abort an action.

[Peregrine]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

I agree that this is more a matter of prevention than response. In order:

 

1. Forget about NCM; let the dark knight have higher-than-NCM physical (at least) stats. (Some do this, some don't. Them what don't, i.e., them what limit their dark knight types to NCM, need to do even more of the rest.)

2. High DCV

3. Combat Luck (this Talent was specifically written for such characters)

4. Armor and/or Damage Reduction (armored costume)

4. Dodge/Martial Dodge, Dive for Cover, and Roll with the Punch (pick and use)

5. Luck (either the Luck power or some kind of Luck Points house rule)

6. GM cheats (if you really want to keep the dark knight from going 'squish', then the dark knight doesn't go 'squish'; in-story reason is left as an exercise for the GMs creativity)

[Killer Shrike]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

The most effective way to do it is to just control the scale of your game in the first place. The HERO System does great things, its super flexible, and you can use it for a staggering array of genres and power levels. However, that being said, what it doesn't handle very well is a wide spread in key combat attributes; CV, avg DEF, and avg DC being chief among them.

 

If you run a campaign where the uber brick has 75 def and anything less than 22d6 is a joke, then characters at the lower end of the conceptual scale have to be padded out in ways that make little sense or that can be hard to swallow. This is how you get a "Bat-God" effect.

 

Less really is more. If you keep the mean at a reasonable level and the spread between high and low to a reasonable variance, it is much easier to have characters of all types, and for putative "normals" to be competitive without hanging disbelief from the neck until dead.

[Zorak1003]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

If the dark knight has all the skills and DCV so that he USUALLY doesn't get hit, and on occasion he DOES... Then fine, this is an RPG, not the comics. He gets knocked out or killed, so be it.

 

But again, it's you, as GM, controlling the villain, who decides who gets shot at, with what and at what level of damage to begin with. If the bad guy really DOES think the dark night detective is more of a threat at the moment than the brick, and hates him enough to use his Doom Cannon at full power... It's your story.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

But again' date=' it's you, as GM, controlling the villain, who decides who gets shot at, with what and at what level of damage to begin with. If the bad guy really DOES think the dark night detective is more of a threat at the moment than the brick, and hates him enough to use his Doom Cannon at full power... It's your story.[/quote']

 

There were, many years ago, a series of complaint letters in Avengers referring to the tendency of villains to have weaponry capable of stunning or knocking out Thor, but miraculously leaving the other Avengers, including Hawkeye and the Wasp, alive.

 

Your comment above touches on a key difference I see between comics and games. In the comics, characters (heroes and many villains) show restraint. They don't attack full-force against unknown targets, or even against many known targets. In a game, players tend to think "I paid for 12d6, so why would I fire off a 10d6 blast?" and every unknown target gets hit full-force. We, as GM's, facilitate this. We design every adversary with enough defense to stand up to those full force attacks, so Captain Boy Scout never has to deal with the ramifications of hitting a "normal with a fancy gun" with a 12d6 blast that does 8 BOD (4 PD's not bad for a normal) and slams him into a wall where he sucks up another two BOD, leaving him at 0 BOD (10 BOD is a bit above average for a normal) and hospitalized. Nor do the campaign Supers need to respond to the media's great pictures of "Vigilante Supers Using Excessive Force", and the resulting political fallout.

 

A game where the Heroes occasionally faced adversaries who aren't that Super might be refreshing, and force a bit of different thinking. In my experience, most games make it easy for the players to forget their characters are Super, since everyone they encounter as an adversary is, at worst, almost as Super and, at best, way more Super.

[Zed-F]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

This is starting to get off on a tangent here, but that's why most Silver-age heroes and Silver-age villains (who aren't that interested in killing) should come equipped with a stun-only attack, an entangle, or some other option for dealing with folks without seriously hurting them. Too many people seem to forget that rule when building characters, hero and villain alike.

[Comic]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

One distinction bricks typically have from Dark Knights is the Achilles Heel.

 

If your normal human detective has a susceptibility, vulnerability or condition that makes all their powers fail (other than being disarmed of their foci) then they'd be the unusual case. For bricks, it's pretty common and in genre to take these weaknesses, or have some glaringly obvious area without meaningful defenses (low ego, lack of flash def, etc.)

 

Ironclad bricks with absolutely no vulnerabilities, susceptibilities or weaknesses are rare in the comics. Superman had kryptonite, magic, red sunlight... The Hulk had being calm. Thor not only needed the hammer, but Norse virtue and the whim of Odin. Namor needed water. The Thing needed to constantly be told he would find someone to accept him for who he was or he'd succumb to depression and stomp away. Martian Manhunter, fire or heat. Colossus was routinely punctured by attacks by unknowns. Etrigan suffers from holy artefacts -- but he likes it.

 

Batman? Take away his utility belt, and he's merely.. one of the world's greatest martial artists and athletes.

 

Should the question be how to keep your bricks from going "squish?"

[OddHat]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

Yup to the comments of Hugh and Zed. Additionally, a fair percentage of GMs see the game as being about the Villains or the Setting rather than about the Heroes, sometimes resulting in almost every NPC Brick / Speedster / whatever being tougher than his opposite number on the Heroes team.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

I tend to go with a combination of high DCV, Combat Luck, medium-toughness body armor, and stealth tactics.

[Sean Waters]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

I suppose the answer to this question comes down to what sort of game you are playing. Some sort of Golden Age game and the squishie would fly back into a wall but get up in the next panel, rubbing his jaw and making some wry comment. In some of the darker Iron Age comics, the squishie's severed head would be used as a football by the villains in the next panel...

 

So, I suppose the question is this: what do you WANT to happen to a squishie hit by a major attack? Given the phrasing of the question: how do you keept hem from going squish - I'd anticipate that you don't want them squished.

 

Now I'm taking this a little further, and assuming that you don't want to simply homogenise characters, the question becomes, to my mind, How do you stop squishies being one-shotted?

 

The answer to that depends on your players. To be honest if you extend the 'roll with punch' rule to any and all attacks, so long as the character is being PLAYED as a squishie, they should survive most things.

 

For more gung-ho players, I'd recommend large doses of combat luck.

 

I have fudged rolls for damage but only when I absolutley KNOW I'm not going to get caught. Nothing bursts the bubble faster...

 

Of course you could ask: what defines a squishie? If the answer is 'the ability to go 'squish'', then you need to think long and hard about building round that.

[Peregrine]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

Yup to the comments of Hugh and Zed. Additionally' date=' a fair percentage of GMs see the game as being about the Villains or the Setting rather than about the Heroes, sometimes resulting in almost every NPC Brick / Speedster / whatever being tougher than his opposite number on the Heroes team.[/quote']

 

This is a sad legacy of Other Settings having "ongoing metaplots" which drive the events of the setting, rendering PCs in individual campaigns as "supporting actors", because the publisher's NPCs are driving the metaplot. GMs who come from those games don't have any experience (or, often, even any exposure) to the idea that the players' PCs are supposed to be the stars of the story and the ones driving the events of the setting.

[OddHat]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

I suppose the answer to this question comes down to what sort of game you are playing. Some sort of Golden Age game and the squishie would fly back into a wall but get up in the next panel' date=' rubbing his jaw and making some wry comment. In some of the darker Iron Age comics, the squishie's severed head would be used as a football by the villains in the next panel...[/quote']

 

Add to this, how likely is a "squish" scenario in a game where every PC is built on the same point totals and with an awareness of the basic damage range of the campaign? Part of our job as GMs is to tell players if characters are viable or not in a given setting. A 20d6 EB isn't going to outright kill a character with a paltry 12 PD and 12 Body, just knock him out and injure him; it's hardly an undo burden on the Bat-Tribute's player in a 350 point game to ask him to spend the points to reach a level where his character won't be killed in a single attack.

[Loxly]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

There were, many years ago, a series of complaint letters in Avengers referring to the tendency of villains to have weaponry capable of stunning or knocking out Thor, but miraculously leaving the other Avengers, including Hawkeye and the Wasp, alive.

 

Your comment above touches on a key difference I see between comics and games. In the comics, characters (heroes and many villains) show restraint. They don't attack full-force against unknown targets, or even against many known targets. In a game, players tend to think "I paid for 12d6, so why would I fire off a 10d6 blast?" and every unknown target gets hit full-force. We, as GM's, facilitate this. We design every adversary with enough defense to stand up to those full force attacks, so Captain Boy Scout never has to deal with the ramifications of hitting a "normal with a fancy gun" with a 12d6 blast that does 8 BOD (4 PD's not bad for a normal) and slams him into a wall where he sucks up another two BOD, leaving him at 0 BOD (10 BOD is a bit above average for a normal) and hospitalized. Nor do the campaign Supers need to respond to the media's great pictures of "Vigilante Supers Using Excessive Force", and the resulting political fallout.

 

A game where the Heroes occasionally faced adversaries who aren't that Super might be refreshing, and force a bit of different thinking. In my experience, most games make it easy for the players to forget their characters are Super, since everyone they encounter as an adversary is, at worst, almost as Super and, at best, way more Super.

 

As a tangent:

 

Funny you should mention that. I've been running a game wher the Brick has an AoE Attack, 8d6.

 

The first Story Arc had the team facing off with a group of "Suped-Up" Gang members ... compleat with Fire-Attacks and Fire-Based Force Fields. Her AoE did damage to them, but no Body.

 

The Next Story opened with her, again, facing off with some "Suped-Up" Gang members using Fire Powers. I made it clear that these ones did not have Force Fields.

 

She Splatted them with full power into the above mentioned wall.

 

Luckly, her partner was a good Paramedic.

[Sean Waters]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

Add to this' date=' how likely is a "squish" scenario in a game where every PC is built on the same point totals and with an awareness of the basic damage range of the campaign? Part of our job as GMs is to tell players if characters are viable or not in a given setting. A 20d6 EB isn't going to outright kill a character with a paltry 12 PD and 12 Body, just knock him out and injure him; it's hardly an undo burden on the Bat-Tribute's player in a 350 point game to ask him to spend the points to reach a level where his character won't be killed in a single attack.[/quote']

 

I sometimes think that we SHOULD design more extreme heroes and villains, ones that can't take a hit, for example.

 

I often wonder why I'm giving a character any more than 8pd when they are basically normal, and even then why they would be at the extreme end of human physical acheivement.

 

You can explain that the 'supering' process toughens the character generally, but that is a bit of a sweeping generalisation.

 

The reason we do it in fact is so that characters don't go down with one hit. Maybe they should. Maybe we should build characters who, unless the concept calls for substantial defences, have huge attacks, but paltry defences, at least compared to what we are used to.

 

That would certainly change the dynamic of play, but could make things interesting. A solid hit will finish most characters, so they will be far warier about being in the firing line and (perhaps) more careful about using their own powers at full strength.

 

Also, the example you quote turns out less well if the 12pd is not resistant and the attack is killing, at even half the AP of a 20d6 EB, you can send someone with 12 Body, or at least put them on the critical list...

 

I suppose the approach is something we need to consider when looking at the sort of game we want, but it might be worth thinking about an 'unbalanced' campaign....

[OddHat]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

I sometimes think that we SHOULD design more extreme heroes and villains' date=' ones that can't take a hit, for example.[/quote']

 

I don't, save as throwaway NPCs. Not many players are going to be happy seeing their Hero die on the first shot of the first combat, and it doesn't make for much of a story.

 

I often wonder why I'm giving a character any more than 8pd when they are basically normal, and even then why they would be at the extreme end of human physical acheivement.

 

So don't. Give them 6 PD, 16+ BODY, and Rapid Healing, and then have them invest in body armor after the first time a 12d6 attack puts them in the hospital.

You can explain that the 'supering' process toughens the character generally, but that is a bit of a sweeping generalisation.

I'd rather stick with "No Tougher Than Average Man had a really short career, which is why this story isn't about him." Unless you are doing an average humans in deadly danger game, in which case more power to you.

The reason we do it in fact is so that characters don't go down with one hit. Maybe they should. Maybe we should build characters who, unless the concept calls for substantial defences, have huge attacks, but paltry defences, at least compared to what we are used to.

Going down in one hit and being killed in one hit are very different things, both in stories and in HERO. In part we need to define the term "squish". I've approved PCs who will be knocked unconscious in one average hit, after speaking about it with a player; I wouldn't approve one who'd be killed. NPCs who die after one shot, on the other hand, are not a problem, so long as getting killed is in fact their story role.

That would certainly change the dynamic of play, but could make things interesting. A solid hit will finish most characters, so they will be far warier about being in the firing line and (perhaps) more careful about using their own powers at full strength.

Knock out in one blow will speed combat; death for a PC in one blow is a different matter.

 

Also, the example you quote turns out less well if the 12pd is not resistant and the attack is killing, at even half the AP of a 20d6 EB, you can send someone with 12 Body, or at least put them on the critical list...

 

The numbers I gave were intentionally low for a PC in a game where 20d6 EBs are flying around; in a game where 7d6-1 RKAs are a real possibility (average 23.5 BODY), the minimum for a Batman type to be survivable would include resistant defenses, with 15 or higher BODY and probably roll with the blow SFX Damage Reduction. If the GM doesn't like allowing those levels of defense to an "ordinary human", he shouldn't have allowed the PC in a campaign where that level of attack was common in the first place.

 

I suppose the approach is something we need to consider when looking at the sort of game we want, but it might be worth thinking about an 'unbalanced' campaign....

Balanced or not, if your PC is killed in one blow on the first night of combat, it probably wasn't much of a Superhero campaign.

[nexus]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

I suppose most of the issue comes down to what genre you're emulating and to what degree you want to emulate it. I think if the GM makes its clear to the player that their character is in great danger from taking a hit and the player wants to go with it then they can't be too upset when if/when the character is severely injured or killed; that doesn't mean they won't, of course. If the GM is running a heavily golden or silver aged game and/or wants heavy genre emulation then its probably less exceptable but some of it falls on the gm. If the Batman homage can't take Attack X, then the villians, for some reason, just don't target him with attack X or pull their punches. There doesn't have to even be an in game reason for it, that's just the "way it is". Bricks and other tough character get targetted by big attacks so they can show off tough they are. Generally, I don't go for quite that level of genre emulation and my supers settings are somewhat more Iron Age. The PCs (and NPCs) can fail, be hurt and even die even its not nessacrily dramatic or "appropriate".

[OddHat]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

The PCs (and NPCs) can fail' date=' be hurt and even die even its not nessacrily dramatic or "appropriate".[/quote']

 

That's as valid a choice as any other; your game, your call. Personally I don't pass PCs who can't survive the expected dangers of an average combat, even in my "gritty" superhero campaigns; there's no fun for me in planning a three act story arc around a character only to have them blown to pieces in Act 2, Scene 1.

 

And noting again that while there's some crossover between "Fail", "Get Knocked Out", "Get Injured", and "Get Killed", there are also important differences. PCs getting knocked out, injured, or failing to meet a mission objective wouldn't be a problem in most of the games I ran. An unplanned PC death usually would be.

[Trebuchet]

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"?

 

We avoid our lightweights going squish by the simple expedient of running a four-color quasi-Silver Age campaign and making sure characters who get KO'd or hurt badly are protected by teammates. That's not to say nobody ever gets hurt; Zl'f takes BODY damage fairly regularly given her massive 12PD/12ED and campaign's 12DC average attacks. Even our brick has taken significant BODY damage on occasion.

 

Lethality is more a function of campaign style than of mechanics. Silver/Golden Age fatalities < Iron Age fatalities.