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

[Trebuchet]

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

 

QED! Both of these are cases where the dark knights aren't getting squished! You guys are doing it right. Purely as points of information: are there mentalists in the party, and if so, do they have to be on-map to participate in combat?

 

The one-punch TRM I've seen was in a cage match, almost literally, of the worst sort. Locked in the hold of a steel ship with an uber-brick. (We had the capacity to get out, but not while in combat.) Don't ask me how and why we got there; it's a sore point, and including the fatality, almost half the party are considering drawing up different characters or dropping entirely.

We do have a mentalist on our team, but in our longest-distance running battle (across several blocks of London waterfront streets and rooftops) the mentalist's player was the GM, so it wasn't a factor in that particular fight.

 

Even in more close-range scenarios, our mentalist tends to stay right in the fight. IOW, he may be attacking at range, but he's no further away than our EB's tend to be. In a couple fights he's been in melee range (bad for him because he has base defenses on the order of an MA, but lacks an MA's DCV) and once protected an innocent by literally using his own body as a shield (and took 12 BODY through his defenses as a result).

[Zorak1003]

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

 

Compare the game to the source material. In the comics, how often does Superman hit an unknown opponent with his full STR, or Cyclops fire off a maximum strength optic blast against an unknown adversary?"

 

We actually have no idea, unless we get the occasional thought bubble when the writer decided to tell us this.

 

" Now, how often does a PC in your game ever use less than his full dice against anyone in a costume? Having Super characters who are eggshells with hammers forces the issue that full power is not the appropriate default setting when dealing with unknown opponents"

 

Ok- For the LAST frickin' time- I'll type this slow because I know you can't read fast- IF your Player Characters ARE doing "too much damage", SOMEONE will have been hurt, without the GM doing anything special to point this out.

[OddHat]

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

 

Speaking as a moderator, this is a friendly discussion on a part of the boards visible to non-members. Please treat your fellow posters with respect; personal insults are a violation of the ROC.

 

We all get heated over game and hobby related issues from time to time. Just keep it civil, eh?

[Sean Waters]

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

 

Compare the game to the source material. In the comics, how often does Superman hit an unknown opponent with his full STR, or Cyclops fire off a maximum strength optic blast against an unknown adversary?"

 

We actually have no idea, unless we get the occasional thought bubble when the writer decided to tell us this.

 

" Now, how often does a PC in your game ever use less than his full dice against anyone in a costume? Having Super characters who are eggshells with hammers forces the issue that full power is not the appropriate default setting when dealing with unknown opponents"

 

Ok- For the LAST frickin' time- I'll type this slow because I know you can't read fast- IF your Player Characters ARE doing "too much damage", SOMEONE will have been hurt, without the GM doing anything special to point this out.

 

Having read this slowly, I agree, by and large but I think that the 'we only ever hit full force' problem - if indeed it is a problem - is best addressed in the character design stage.

 

For instance, in a 12DC game, only allow 8DC of damage to be at normal or reduced END cost, and require any more, up to the limit, to be at increased END cost, so you can chuck huge power blasts about, but it will quickly tire you. You are not restricting the character in play directly, but they cannot spend all their time max-blasting.

 

If you do this you may wish to reduce defences overall a little, or you'll be there all night....

 

My personal inclination would be to either, as GM, drop a few clues, or allow an INT roll before they unload against a squishie. Then they have the choice. Even against a normal though, most average superheroes are not going to kill the target with a single blow, but they could certainly hospitalise them.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

My personal inclination would be to either' date=' as GM, drop a few clues, or allow an INT roll before they unload against a squishie. Then they have the choice. Even against a normal though, most average superheroes are not going to kill the target with a single blow, but they could certainly hospitalise them.[/quote']If I encountered this problem, I'd far rather approach it this way than making mandatory increased END costs on a power or other such artificial means. Supers in most subgenres aren't supposed to be killing opponents, even agents wearing the uniforms of the bad guys' organizations. Sometimes it may be unavoidable, but not killing those opponents shouldn't require extra thought. Unless it's a Iron Age or lethal Dark Champions campaign if the players routinely kill opponents and/or innocent bystanders, then the campaign has larger problems than just overkill.

[OddHat]

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

 

As far as the problem (when and if it is a problem) of Supers unloading with deadly force on normals and accidentally hospitalizing or killing them, I find a short, direct discussion with the players usually works; "Normals usually can't take 12d6 blasts without ending up in intensive care or the morgue; this is a game where that can have serious consequences for your character and the story." I'd rather take that option than hint or impose mechanical solutions beyond the already high durability of the average person in HERO.

 

As to excessive force used on costumed enemies, a combination of design consideration and direct communication with the players works best there as well. There's something to be said for the comic book convention that some characters are just normals with a gimmick and their underwear on the outside of their tights, but both the GM and the player should be on the same page about such characters being present in the campaign. If the players have to show restraint to avoid hospitalizing the bad guys, I as GM should tell them that up front.

[Hugh Neilson]

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

 

Compare the game to the source material. In the comics, how often does Superman hit an unknown opponent with his full STR, or Cyclops fire off a maximum strength optic blast against an unknown adversary?"

 

We actually have no idea, unless we get the occasional thought bubble when the writer decided to tell us this.

 

While the thought bubble has faded in use over the years, it was very common for Cyclops, in particular, to be noted as recognizing the target was well defended, and that he could cut loose. Supes has had decades of being noted as rarely or never using full power because of his massive power level.

 

Having read this slowly, I agree, by and large but I think that the 'we only ever hit full force' problem - if indeed it is a problem - is best addressed in the character design stage.

 

For instance, in a 12DC game, only allow 8DC of damage to be at normal or reduced END cost, and require any more, up to the limit, to be at increased END cost, so you can chuck huge power blasts about, but it will quickly tire you. You are not restricting the character in play directly, but they cannot spend all their time max-blasting.

 

From a source material simulation perspective, I dislike this solution. Many characters in the comics, on occasion, are faced with opponents that are considerably more powerful than they normally face, and respond with the decision to "not hold back". There is no indication that exerting their extra power has any notable down sides, other than the character's own concern for causing serious damage to his target.

 

" Now, how often does a PC in your game ever use less than his full dice against anyone in a costume? Having Super characters who are eggshells with hammers forces the issue that full power is not the appropriate default setting when dealing with unknown opponents"

 

Ok- For the LAST frickin' time- I'll type this slow because I know you can't read fast- IF your Player Characters ARE doing "too much damage", SOMEONE will have been hurt, without the GM doing anything special to point this out.

 

Define "too much damage". "Too much damage" against Lex Luthor, the Toyman and the Prankster will bounce off Darkseid and Doomsday. To be capable of competing at the Darkseid/Doomsday level REQUIRES the character be capable of doing "too much damage" to Lex Luthor, the Toyman and the Prankster. In the comics, such characters appply reduced power against lower defense threats. In the game, this tends not to happen.

 

If you do this you may wish to reduce defences overall a little, or you'll be there all night....

 

My personal inclination would be to either, as GM, drop a few clues, or allow an INT roll before they unload against a squishie. Then they have the choice. Even against a normal though, most average superheroes are not going to kill the target with a single blow, but they could certainly hospitalise them.

 

To me, this highlights how the GM contributes to, or even creates, the problem. Those characters in the comics who regularly exhibit the restraint lacking in many player characters regularly come up against opponents who lack the defenses required to survive, much less pose a credible physical threat, if attacked with the character's full power attacks. One reason that PC's start with the top end is because they know the GM always sets the opposition's defenses at a level that nothing less will do. If the GM's game has never featured an opponent with less than 25 or 30 defenses, why would the PC's ever be motivated to use less than full power attacks? In such a tgame, I think the GM has created an unwritten rule that opponents will not be seriously injured by full power attacks, so restraint is not necessary. In such a game, a clue that a specific target is a very rare exception to this campaign ground rule is appropriate.

 

As far as the problem (when and if it is a problem) of Supers unloading with deadly force on normals and accidentally hospitalizing or killing them, I find a short, direct discussion with the players usually works; "Normals usually can't take 12d6 blasts without ending up in intensive care or the morgue; this is a game where that can have serious consequences for your character and the story." I'd rather take that option than hint or impose mechanical solutions beyond the already high durability of the average person in HERO.

 

As to excessive force used on costumed enemies, a combination of design consideration and direct communication with the players works best there as well. There's something to be said for the comic book convention that some characters are just normals with a gimmick and their underwear on the outside of their tights, but both the GM and the player should be on the same page about such characters being present in the campaign. If the players have to show restraint to avoid hospitalizing the bad guys, I as GM should tell them that up front.

 

In a game where the ground rules, as Oddhat indicates, are that opponents will have a wide range of defenses, I think the onus shifts to the player. It's not up to the GM to say "Hey, this guy looks especially poorly defended". It's now up to the PC to recognize that this unknown assailant may or may not be well defended enough to stand up to his 15d6 MegaBolt, and perhaps he'd better hold back until he knows for sure how tough this guy is. When such restraint is, in fact, necessary to avoid risk of hospitalizing or killing opponents, that Code vs Killing becomes a lot more limiting - moving up to that value of 20 points attributed to it. How much would you give a character for "Code vs killing targets with 20+ resistant defenses"?

[Sean Waters]

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

 

Here is the bottom line, to my mind, and I have to say in the years I've been playing, this has never really been a problem...

 

1. Heroes don't deliberately use ultimate force against normals. If they do, they rapidly become villains.

2. Sometimes it will happen accidentally (the villain used Mental Illusions so you target a normal THINKING he is Dr D, for example), but that is usually within the control of the GM and should not be done except for sound plot reasons.

 

Like I say, and perhaps I have been fortunate - it has never been a problem in games I've played in. I think most people playing the game 'get it'.

 

The Dark Knight problem is a seperate one though - a character who conceptually has low defences, but is often in the thick of superpowered combat. Villains are unlikely to show the restraint that Heroes should, so why is Batman still alive?

 

The answer to that one is probably very much a personal decision: build him with high defences (or other ways of avoiding damage), defined as luck or skill based, rely on GM compassion (BAD idea, even though, really, this IS the reason Batman is still alive, just replace 'GM' with 'Writer'), or have a whole stack of new heroes ready to play when this one goes squish.

[bwdemon]

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

 

The low defense characters (speedsters or dark knights or whatever) usually have staggering DCVs to make up for their low defenses. I would caution anyone against ignoring this. They just chose to go the "don't get hit" route instead of the "take a hit" route and that was their choice. They spent their points, just like the high-defense characters did, and they shouldn't receive any coddling for it. While the high-defense target has to worry about being nailed with NNDs whenever they pop up, the low-defenses target has to worry about accurate/area attacks whenever they pop up. It's all part of the deal.

[Sean Waters]

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

 

The low defense characters (speedsters or dark knights or whatever) usually have staggering DCVs to make up for their low defenses. I would caution anyone against ignoring this. They just chose to go the "don't get hit" route instead of the "take a hit" route and that was their choice. They spent their points' date=' just like the high-defense characters did, and they shouldn't receive any coddling for it. While the high-defense target has to worry about being nailed with NNDs whenever they pop up, the low-defenses target has to worry about accurate/area attacks whenever they pop up. It's all part of the deal.[/quote']

 

An excellent poitn well made.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

The low defense characters (speedsters or dark knights or whatever) usually have staggering DCVs to make up for their low defenses. I would caution anyone against ignoring this. They just chose to go the "don't get hit" route instead of the "take a hit" route and that was their choice. They spent their points' date=' just like the high-defense characters did, and they shouldn't receive any coddling for it. While the high-defense target has to worry about being nailed with NNDs whenever they pop up, the low-defenses target has to worry about accurate/area attacks whenever they pop up. It's all part of the deal.[/quote']Absolutely! Part of the challenge and drama of playing a dark knight or other squishy type is the knowledge that the character can be seriously injured or even killed. In fact, if said squishy character never gets hammered then something is wrong.

 

Batman isn't a hero because he never gets hurt. He's a hero because he gets hurt, grits his teeth, and keeps going. Anyone can quit when they get scratched. It takes someone special to keep going. (One of the most heroic things I ever witnessed in a Champions game was when the team I was GMing for was pursuing a BODY-draining monster in the sewers of San Francisco. After taking down half the team, the only thing between it and escape was a martial artist who was already down below 0 BODY from the previous encounter. Knowing that another hit - any hit - from the monster would kill her character outright, the player still had her character block its egress for several Phases until other characters could recover and reengage the creature.) That's heroism.

[JmOz]

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

 

I agree with the "you spent your points this way" to a degree, but I do think a disclaimer that you can still have a squishy F/X without truley being a squishy

 

i.e. If I am playig "artfull Dodger" who has armor (no limits for example sake) bought as "I always get out of the way, sometims a glancing blow will land and I will take some damage" then mechanicaly he should be as safe as anyone else while in game he always luckily gets out of the way

[Trebuchet]

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

 

I agree with the "you spent your points this way" to a degree, but I do think a disclaimer that you can still have a squishy F/X without truly being a squishy

 

i.e. If I am playing "artful Dodger" who has armor (no limits for example sake) bought as "I always get out of the way, sometimes a glancing blow will land and I will take some damage" then mechanically he should be as safe as anyone else while in game he always luckily gets out of the way

That's exactly why the introduction of Combat Luck was such a boon for squishy types. Even 6 or 9 rPD from Combat Luck or other defenses stacked onto STR-based PD will ensure survival against most typical attacks. It won't keep the character from getting hurt, of course, but that's part of the challenge.

[Sean Waters]

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

 

I agree with the "you spent your points this way" to a degree, but I do think a disclaimer that you can still have a squishy F/X without truley being a squishy

 

i.e. If I am playig "artfull Dodger" who has armor (no limits for example sake) bought as "I always get out of the way, sometims a glancing blow will land and I will take some damage" then mechanicaly he should be as safe as anyone else while in game he always luckily gets out of the way

 

This is quite right, but IME, and as a player myself, I'm pretty sure I'd be far more risk adverse if I knew that my character was not going to die, or at least go out of the combat, if he got hit, as would happen with a character that had only low level defences.

 

I'm not a sufficiently accomplished role player to completely ignore the mechanics and build in my playstyle.

 

I've gotten round this (as a GM) in a Dark Champions game, where I supplied the characters, by lying to the player as to what his powers were. Basically the players had character sheets for pretty much everything they could be expected to know (or that it was experient that they know for book keeping) - move, characteristics, skills etc, but I kept their (low level) powers to myself. This one guy (Strangley Sticky - long story) had the ability to avoid most damage by luck and skill - basically if he tried to avoid getting hit, then he rarely took much damage from an attack. This worked against pretty much everything - including explosions and such. AoE is the bane of high DCV characters....

 

In fact the power was armour, with no conscious control. He had to be trying to avoid the damage for it to work - if he knew, or thought that taking the damage was inevitable, the defence failed, so if he hurled himself into the line of fire of a machine gun, the bullets would not bounce, or if he stabbed himself with a knife, he'd get cut.

 

Worked on a game level (it was easy enough for me to administer as GM) but also on a psychological level - he never FELT buleltproof, even though he had the highest DEF in the game.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

In fact the power was armour' date=' with no conscious control. He had to be trying to avoid the damage for it to work - if he knew, or thought that taking the damage was inevitable, the defence failed, so if he hurled himself into the line of fire of a machine gun, the bullets would not bounce, or if he stabbed himself with a knife, he'd get cut.[/quote']That's almost an exact description of how Combat Luck works, including the fact it doesn't work if you're not trying to avoid getting hit or deliberately inflict injury on yourself (such as hitting a character with a Damage Shield).

[Tigereye]

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

 

My dark knight survives through Martial Dodge, plenty of DCV, Combat Luck, the latest in silky nanoweave body armour-

 

those of you critical of "Nanotechnology" can see the site for themselves-

 

http://www.csiro.au/partnerships/ps4y.html

 

and lots of heroes and devices with Healing when everything goes wrong. Survived a punch from Grond that way.

[Trebuchet]

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

 

My dark knight survives through Martial Dodge' date=' plenty of DCV, Combat Luck, the latest in silky nanoweave body armour and lots of heroes and devices with Healing when everything goes wrong. Survived a punch from Grond that way.[/quote']Surviving a hit from the likes of Grond isn't something most dark knights and other squishy types would be likely to do without help, if at all. He's got what, a 90 STR? Certainly nothing to be embarrassed about.

 

My MA would be at -4 BODY after an average 18d6 hit. Ow.

[bwdemon]

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

 

Surviving a hit from the likes of Grond isn't something most dark knights and other squishy types would be likely to do without help, if at all. He's got what, a 90 STR? Certainly nothing to be embarrassed about.

 

My MA would be at -4 BODY after an average 18d6 hit. Ow.

 

Rep for having a longtime character that can actually take BODY from the average 18d6 normal attack...

[Trebuchet]

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

 

Rep for having a longtime character that can actually take BODY from the average 18d6 normal attack...

Thanks. I was wrong, though - she'd actually be at 6 BODY, not at -4. An average 18d6 hit would put 6 BODY through her total defenses. Of course, she'd also be out cold until the cows came home (and that's not including probable Knockback damage, which might well put her into negative-BODY territory since being unconscious halves her defenses down to 6 PD).

[mikesama]

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

 

Generally, as has been noted, you low def characters usually have something going for them to offset the low DEF. A high DC invibility or something else. Generally when the 'crunchies' get shot at I have the villian spread the blast a few dice because "I'm gonna take down that f%&*(& dark avenger".

 

No one is a super powered game is going to be so low on the DEF scale that a 10d blast will be close to leathal. One shotting them and causing body, yes. But not enough to send them into the hospital or the coroners office.

[Sean Waters]

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

 

Way back when, at university, I GM'd a game where the PCs didn't feel that they'd got a proper workout unless they were bleeding internally and in single figure STUN for most of the evening.

 

Or maybe that was the players, I don't recall......