how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

[OddHat]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Yes but for the most part' date=' the weapons are. A gun in the hands of Nick Fury is still bound by the physics of the gun.[/quote']

 

A 350 point Nick Fury homage has a lot of room for Skill Levels, Find Weakness, Ranged Martial Arts, etc, when compared to the average cop on the beat.

 

And campaign preferences and house rules often widen the differences further.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Actually the general feeling I get from most of the posters on these boards is that a character such as Nick Fury, the Punisher, Hawlkeye, and the Green Arrow have no place in Champions. I think thats a dis service to the game and genre in general. That is why I defend vs. Angry Godman with such vigor. It limits the imagination to such narrow builds for players.

 

To each his own I guess.

 

Yep, That's why we have three different genre continuing campaigns though different characters appropriate for each genre. ( and the punisher does have NO place in a superhero game.)

[OddHat]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

While I would argue that the Punisher doesn't really qualify as a true hero by my standards' date=' I think any inability to accommodate the likes of Nick Fury, Hawkeye, and the Green Arrow is a flaw in a particular campaign and not a flaw in the game system itself. I've seen too many ninjas with HCM in Champions campaigns not to think such unpowered characters can't work just fine. I've even been in a campaign with a Green Arrow-like archer who was quite capable and relevant even on a team full of more traditional supers.[/quote']

 

My JLA and Teen Titans homage teams have homages to Batman, Green Arrow, Robin and Speedy. They've always been very popular at my convention games.

[Clonus]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Yes but for the most part' date=' the weapons are. A gun in the hands of Nick Fury is still bound by the physics of the gun.[/quote']

 

No, it isn't. Quite apart from Nick not normally using a conventional gun, Nick can use Find Weakness and skill levels to do things with a gun, conventional or not, that a normal can't. And of course there are four ways to neutralise the effectiveness of guns in the hands of normals.

 

1. 
   
2. Be Iron Man or Superman and just let the bullets bounce off your impervious integument. Leaving rocket launchers with kryptonite warheads out of consideration, Nick Fury probably won't do much against you unless his weapon is more than it seems, which it probably will be.
   
3. Be Captain America, Thor or Wonder Woman and deflect the bullets with your fashion accessories, or occasionally your bare hands. Nick needs to have you make a mistake or take it to hand to hand which he'll do fairly well.
   
4. Be the Vision, Katherine Pryde or Dead Man. Nick is kind of out of luck.
   
5. But lastly you can just be Spider-Man or Batman and just have a DCV at least 6 higher than normal goons. In which case Nick can just shoot you, 'cause he's way better than a normal. By rights he'll make a much shorter fight of it than the Hulk would.

[Trebuchet]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Allow me to state this a better way.

 

The real world natural result of bullet proof villains is a better bullet for a better price. By making your villains bullet proof (high resistant def) your end result is an arms race for your HERO's. It's better to just only allow for lower resistant def like 9-14 and be done with it otherwise every one of your HERO's becomes based on Drains Transforms, Suppress, and Find Weakness powers. Thats what 28 years of playing champions has taught me. Champions can be so much more without invincible man ruining your game.

I was discussing this thread with one of my co-GMs this afternoon and our conclusion is that trying for "realistic" firearms effects is a) counter to the genre pointless in a world of spandex-clad supers, since none of our GMs is going to allow a PC to be killed by an ordinary mook's bullet with a lucky roll. Batman gets nicked by bullets on occasion; not mortally wounded. Bullets make him bleed, not fall over dead. I don't care what the die roll says; I'm not killing a PC because I rolled a lucky hit.

 

Guns should and can be a threat to low defense supers. They shouldn't deliver instant death because that violates genre in most Champions campaigns. (There might be Iron Age campaigns with submachinegun-wielding goons as major threats. I wouldn't be interested in playing in one.)

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

This is why I wanted to know the specifics of your allowed defenses.

 

Even with a standard resistance of 10-15 it is still possible for a normal with a normal gun to damage that particular character. GM's tend to forget you can double the damage of any weapon.

 

Taking your example of 2 d6 you can increase the damage just from using a haymaker 3 d6+1, Thats 10 body 20 Stun average. Now lets add CSL's to make the gun 4 d6 (12 body 24 stun) simple enough.

 

Then there are ways to reduce resistant armor by half ....

 

By the time the normal is done aiming his gun at the super, the super has moved away, if not simply flattened him with an Energy Blast.

 

How much of an arms race do you want your campaigns to be? Bullet proof supers and bullet proof villans are weak games as the end result is Og Bang Stick. I've found it much better to allow guns to be dangerous to both HERO and Villain to force both players and Villains to work in the background.

 

Suffice it to say, my personal experience has not resulted in the conclusion you draw in the last paragraph.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Allow me to state this a better way.

 

The real world natural result of bullet proof villains is a better bullet for a better price. By making your villains bullet proof (high resistant def) your end result is an arms race for your HERO's. It's better to just only allow for lower resistant def like 9-14 and be done with it otherwise every one of your HERO's becomes based on Drains Transforms, Suppress, and Find Weakness powers. Thats what 28 years of playing champions has taught me. Champions can be so much more without invincible man ruining your game.

 

Well, that's 8 more years than I've been playing, but that hasn't been my experience at all, because killing attacks are rare. PCs should not be trying to kill the villains; runs counter to the game style I run. Energy Blasts are more than sufficient.

 

It doesn't matter what the Resistant Defense is if you're using a Normal Damage attack.

[Trebuchet]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

How much of an arms race do you want your campaigns to be? Bullet proof supers and bullet proof villans are weak games as the end result is Og Bang Stick. I've found it much better to allow guns to be dangerous to both HERO and Villain to force both players and Villains to work in the background.

The flaw I see with this argument is the assumption that it has to be true across the board within a campaign. In our Champions campaign of 15 years we have two characters with 12 PD's and a brick with 32PD/20r PD. Obviously a pistol is theoretically a much greater threat to the former characters than the latter. In practical terms, an ordinary man with an ordinary pistol is essentially no threat to any of them.

[Alibear]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

I'd be willing to bet the Special Forces would be willing to take it on' date=' if they had to. And would stand at least some chance of being able to pull it off. Whether you believe in things like coordinated multiple attacker bonus, AP ammunition, anti-vehicular ordinance, deliberate killshots, surprise attacks, researching an opponent's weaknesses, tactics, etc... or not, and provide the special forces with ultratech weapons instead.[/quote']

 

Yes indeed and I did say that very early on in this discussion. In my gaming world there is a group of Psycho Bad-Asses who take on Supers at their own game. The use every dirty trick in the book and always attack on their terms. But that is not what we're talking about here is it?

 

We're not talking about special forces, The SAS or a superworld equivelent, we're talking about normal beatcops talking on Gods.

[Zed-F]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Yes indeed and I did say that very early on in this discussion. In my gaming world there is a group of Psycho Bad-Asses who take on Supers at their own game. The use every dirty trick in the book and always attack on their terms. But that is not what we're talking about here is it?

 

We're not talking about special forces, The SAS or a superworld equivelent, we're talking about normal beatcops talking on Gods.

The problem is that we are having multiple concurrent discussions in this thread, and a lot of us are talking past one another.

[Alibear]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Good point, I blame The Fox of Misinformation!

[Tungsten Shephard]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Good point, I blame The Fox of Misinformation!

 

I'm sorry how did I misinform. I have not resorted to personal attacks, so I don't understand why you feel you must resort to such measures.

 

I stand by what I said earlier you can't prove me wrong here the 5th ed rules do back me up on this on page 405 under Adding Damage. A gun in the hands of Nick Fury is still governed by the physics of the gun. A gun that does 2 d6 RKA is still limited to a possible 4 d6 RKA of damage. The guns physics do not change. I never said Nick Fury was helpless, weak, non improvising, etc. I said nothing about the character of Nick or an inability to use powers such as find weakness, armor piercing rounds, etc. ONLY that the OAF gun is still a OAF gun.

 

The gun itself is still a gun. If you make arbitrary choices that all guns are useless vs. supers as some here who are attacking my position have, then you take a valuable aspect of the rules away from the game. Look its fine if your HERO's are bulletproof provided they have the resistant DEF, or other powers to deal with being shot. Nor have I said that you should never allow for bullet proof supers, I have said in earlier posts there is room for the HULK in champions but those should be the exceptions not the rule, use the rules how they were written they work.

 

However as someone who does regularly GM Champions (about 28 years worth) if you make a blanket statement that all supers are immune to guns as some here have, you will very much likely in most cases, create an arms race and inevitably restrict the creativity of your players designs.

[nexus]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

I was wondering about the mechanics of Haymakering an Area of Effect attack so posted in the rule faq board.

 

Haymaker and Area of Effect

[OddHat]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

However as someone who does regularly GM Champions (about 28 years worth) if you make a blanket statement that all supers are immune to guns as some here have, you will very much likely in most cases, create an arms race and inevitably restrict the creativity of your players designs.

 

I've read the thread from the beginning; I don't see any posts asserting that all supers are immune to guns. Could you please provide links to the posts in question, so that the posters can clarify their positions?

 

Speaking as a moderator, this thread is getting overheated. I'm asking all involved to take a breath and ease up. We're all long time fans of the same game; there's no reason to take shots at one-another.

 

So, guys, chill, eh?

[Tungsten Shephard]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Thank you Nexus, at least I was shown to be correct on my view on how a normal can handle Angry Godman with a LAW rocket launcher.

 

I only hope that Angry Godman does not see me before its too late.

[OddHat]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

I was wondering about the mechanics of Haymakering an Area of Effect attack so posted in the rule faq board.

 

Haymaker and Area of Effect

 

Yup. There's also the "Common and dramatic sense" rule; many GMs are not going to pass a Haymakered LAW rocket by an NPC unless it has a solid dramatic explanation. Personally, I wouldn't allow a "Real Weapon" to take the option at all, but that's a house rule rather than a book rule.

[OddHat]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Thank you Nexus, at least I was shown to be correct on my view on how a normal can handle Angry Godman with a LAW rocket launcher.

 

Depends on the Brick's build. In a campaign where the GM allows rocket launchers to be haymakered, he always has the option of building an "Invulnerable" character with whatever combination of defenses he needs to deal with it.

[nexus]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

I don't think anyone was saying you can't Haymaker AE attacks. It says pretty explicitly that you can Haymaker any attack. I (and I think others) felt that sfx behind doing so with LAW were dodgey. The only thing that Steve Long's post really clarified is that it doesn't get around the weakness of Haymakers that moving negates them. It's actually a little worse since it applies if anyone in the AE moves at all.

[nexus]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Yup. There's also the "Common and dramatic sense" rule; many GMs are not going to pass a Haymakered LAW rocket by an NPC unless it has a solid dramatic explanation.

 

Needless to say I agree, it seems to violate the spirit of the rule if not the letter.

[Tungsten Shephard]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Posted by Oddhat

I've read the thread from the beginning; I don't see any posts asserting that all supers are immune to guns. Could you please provide links to the posts in question, so that the posters can clarify their positions?

 

Posted by alibear

will be totally immune to the average person armed with a handgun up to and including .50 caliber.

 

posted by Mike W.

normal guns don't really hurt supers.

 

Posted by steamteck

In the thread about CapGun, it was brought up that normal guys with guns really shouldn't be effective against super villains.

 

Posted by Crosshaircolie

It's going to be nearly impossible to hurt anybody with powers with that thing,

 

Posted by Opal

True, just because normal, real world tech is ineffective against supers

 

I will agree there is nothing that comes right out and says it. However it does appear to be a reoccurring theme.

 

Needless to say I agree, it seems to violate the spirit of the rule if not the letter.

 

I will agree to what was just said here. However in my current game I have a reoccurring villain named Circus Freak. Circus Freak tends to make things like insidious gadgets (high gadget pool villain). Circus Freak has a sense of humor so Circus Freak makes a Robot armored car that has the appearance of a possessed Vehicle monster or Monster Truck. I made the Vehicle virtually unstoppable with the goal in mind for the players to find Circus Freak's remote control. Needless to say after some frustration of not seeing the obvious, (even when it was pointed out to them, the Rocket Science jokes were great that night) that a LAW rocket launcher was finally used by the NPC police to stop it from killing people. (Keep in mind the PC's were offered the shot) The car was defeated not by killing the Robot Armored Car (rDEF 50) but by blowing a hole in the street. The HERO's being led by a detective named Joe Cool was finally able to locate the Remote and shut down the "Angry Godcar". (NOTE: that was not the name of the Armored Car) The evolution of "HEY WE NEED ONE OF THOSE!" occurred with the supers.

 

Please don't let Angry Godcar or Angry Godman ruin your game. Even if the idea was a good one at the time.

[Shoutybloke]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

You shouldn't need to haymaker a law rocket. It's a 228 active point attack. Being used against someone set up to take 60-75 active point attacks. That should seriously inconvenience even Doctor destroyer.

Also haymakering a killing attack only adds 2 dc.

[Shoutybloke]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

I will agree to what was just said here. However in my current game I have a reoccurring villain named Circus Freak. Circus Freak tends to make things like insidious gadgets (high gadget pool villain). Circus Freak has a sense of humor so Circus Freak makes a Robot armored car that has the appearance of a possessed Vehicle monster or Monster Truck. I made the Vehicle virtually unstoppable with the goal in mind for the players to find Circus Freak's remote control. Needless to say after some frustration of not seeing the obvious, (even when it was pointed out to them, the Rocket Science jokes were great that night) that a LAW rocket launcher was finally used by the NPC police to stop it from killing people. (Keep in mind the PC's were offered the shot) The car was defeated not by killing the Robot Armored Car (rDEF 50) but by blowing a hole in the street. The HERO's being led by a detective named Joe Cool was finally able to locate the Remote and shut down the "Angry Godcar". (NOTE: that was not the name of the Armored Car) The evolution of "HEY WE NEED ONE OF THOSE!" occurred with the supers.

 

Please don't let Angry Godcar or Angry Godman ruin your game. Even if the idea was a good one at the time.

 

Sorry, this appeared whist I was posting my reply. 50rPD ? on what I assume was an automaton, so triple point cost? Haymaker away.

[Tungsten Shephard]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

Actually it was a built using rules from Ultimate Vehicle. Monster Trucks have taken on a whole new meaning since that time.

[Opal]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

On the 'arms race' issue, most campaigns have Apt, DC, DEF, caps and/or RoX implemented - there is not 'arms race' in such campaigns.

 

Statting normal weapons and normal people and allowing resistant defenses/DCVs/other defensive powers such that normal people with normal weapons are ineffective against supers simply enables a lot of superbeing archetypes. The bullet-bouncing brick, the bullet-dodging martial artist, the bullet-deflecting patriot, and so forth. It also /doesn't/ prevent superbeing archetypes like the super-agent, the Knick Furys and whatnot out there, who have super skills combined with normal weapons, or simpy super-tech weapons. OTOH, statting normal weapons and normal people such that they can kill campaign-maximum rPD bricks and hit campaign-max DCV speedsters, does away with a /lot/ of archetypes. At that point, you're running Dark Champions, at best.

 

I don't think you're really advocating tossing out most superbeing archetypes, Fox, I'm guessing you've got a long-running, super-cool, Iron Age Comics campaign, that was Dark Champions back with Steve Long was still a corporate lawyer. But, please, don't think that campaigns with a more 4-color or Silver Age schtick automatically fail.

 

 

Personally, I've played Hero since the early 80s, also, and I /have/ noticed something of an arms race - or, really, more like inflation - going on in the normal weapon stats. In 1st Ed, the typical superhero was expected to have attacks in the 40-60 Apt range, an defenses to stand up to such attacks, as well. Today, I'd say something around 12 DCs is still pretty much the de-facto standard. Also in 1st Ed, normal weapons were statted out around 30 Apts or so. Guns did a die or two of regular killing damage, a LAW was AP (but still, IIRC, not a lot of dice).

 

Some other Hero games come out, and, in them, it makes a lot more sense for guns to be varried and to kill people. Since you didn't buy guns, they weren't exactly Apt balanced. Increased STN multipliers, for instance, were handed out like DCs. One gun might do 2d-1 Killing, while another did 1 1/2d with a d6 STNx. The result was that some handguns were 10 apts, and others were 75 Apts - and anti-tank weapons were 200 apts.

 

But, in the supers games, such overpowered firearms were still out, since you had to buy everything with points.

 

Then they combined everything into Hero System - and still didn't take the Apts of normal weapons, statted out to kill heck outta people in very non-super-heroic games into account. Niether the default stats of guns nor the typical super-level attacks/defenses were adjusted to fit eachother.

 

That's great for Dark Champions, but requires some hand-waving for any other kind of super-hero genre ("well yes, there is a write-up of a desert eagle with teflon-coated bullets somewhere as a 2d RKA, AP, 1d6+1 STNx, but that's 75 Apts, and in this campaign world, your choices are 'light pistol' (d6 RKA) or 'heavy pistol' (1d+1) or 'magnum handgun' (1 1/2d RKA), that's it, guns and killing people aren't the focus of this campaign, superheros and saving people are.")

[Zed-F]

Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign

 

I'd see this as a fundamental disconnect in the conversation, so I'll start from where we agree: A person with a fundamental moral or ethical code, including (but not exclusively) a belief in G_d in whatever form, can face the temptation to abuse his power and yet refrain from doing so. Personally, my own experience and study leads me to believe that this is by far the rule rather than the exception; most people, most of the time, do not abuse their power over their pets, their children, their students, their employees, and all the many others they may find themselves holding power over. Simple empathy and group identification alone can reduce or prevent abuse. People sometimes slip; some people never develop or adapt a functional moral code; some can't feel empathy at all. Some of those will rise to positions of power and abuse all they come across. None the less, most people don't, not because of a lack of the chance to abuse whatever power they have and get away with it, but simply because one way or another a healthy, functional human is not under most circumstances abusive, especially towards perceived members of their own groups (usually but not always family, friends, tribe, and nation, in that order). Treatment of perceived outsiders or threats to the group are a different story, but even there most functional adults don't abuse their power most of the time (with exceptions, both cultural and individual).

 

The monsters of history wouldn't have been less qualitatively cruel if they'd had less power; their cruelty would have been focussed on fewer and weaker targets, and their stupidities would have caused less damage, but the evil would still have been their. Power provides opportunity; it lets a bad human indulge his desires. It does not turn a good man bad. At worst, it can let the flaws that were already there rise up.

The difficulty I have with this argument is that there is ample evidence (to my mind) that power does indeed corrupt, and we hear about it constantly in the news every day, especially as concerns those with political power -- whether we are talking about governmental politics, or corporate politics, or cheerleader group politics.

 

Now it's true that you'll tend hear a lot more about the cases where evidence of corruption comes to light, than where such evidence doesn't exist in the first place. But all you have to do is look at all the red in the picture here to realize that, worldwide, corruption of those in power is widespread and a serious problem.

 

Lincoln said, if you want to test a man's character, give him power. Simply put, I think most people rarely acquire enough power to be truly put to the test. Sure, you may have absolute power over your cats, but what benefit do you gain from abusing that power? None. You might have power over your children, but there is little benefit to be obtained from abusing them in most cases as well. Moreover, there is always the risk of getting caught, and at least in most developed countries that sort of behaviour is heavily frowned upon. Social pressures of various sorts, as you described, tend to help keep people from abusing what power they do have. Even so, I've seen plenty of evidence that otherwise regular people can and will abuse those under them if it gives them sufficient benefit -- for instance, I've known more than one family wherein money provided by an outside party for the education of children was used instead to further the parents' vices. Naturally, what constitutes 'sufficient benefit' to incite temptation to abuse power will vary from case to case. Nevertheless, I'm sure I wouldn't have to look hard to find worse examples, or to discover that such examples are commonplace among certain subsets of society.

 

Moreover, as one acquires power, and as one associates more and more with those in the pursuit of power, the powerful tend to lose touch with those social pressures. They tend to start to consider themselves immune. And the company they keep assures them of having ample opportunities to be tested and tempted. Over time, lines drawn in the sand tend to blur, and behaviour once deemed unacceptable might become acceptable, if those one associates with indulge in it regularly. Such is the fate of most politicians, it seems, who aspire to high offices, or the most plush corporate boardrooms. It isn't necessarily a fast process, and those with sufficient moral fiber may be able to resist it for a while -- perhaps even a lifetime. But given the number of scandals that plague the corporate and government world, it seems that those able to resist such corruptive influences indefinitely are few and far between. People might aim to get into government in order to do the right thing, and some may succeed. But the seeking of power, and the association with others who seek power, seems to offer progressively more and more tempting opportunities for certain values to fall by the wayside, as more power is obtained.

 

So given this as a starting point, what happens when we throw supers into the mix? One answer is we simply don't worry about it, because we want to tell stories about superheroes, and superheroes are by definition immune to these considerations. That's certainly one valid approach, and there is nothing wrong with those sorts of stories. They've been a staple of comic books for a long time, and can be quite entertaining to read or participate in.

 

But if you want to run a People with Powers game, what happens to a person's ethics when that person is suddenly handed power overwhelming on a silver platter, is an interesting question. Will they succumb to corruption immediately? Unlikely, unless they were already inclined that way to start with. But over time, as they associate more and more with others who are similarly powerful, and with those who seek to acquire still more power -- even if the latter's goals may not align with their own -- won't they be increasingly tempted to use their power to further their own ends, rather than just defend the status quo? Won't they be increasingly be tempted to work to reshape the world the way they think it ought to be? And we all know how easy it is to get a bunch of people to agree on how the world ought to be -- especially people with egos swelled because they really are special.

 

So long as all those people with great power can act as an effective check on themselves, everything ought to be more or less ok. After all, our world isn't a complete disaster area just because we read about political corruption on a daily basis (or could if we were so inclined.) But there's always the possibility that power blocks might start to form that are larger than the 'me and my 4 friends on the team' level, and start pursuing various agendas... and there's always the chance that those agendas might start to gain popularity in the super community... and there's always the risk that, as time goes on, those agendas might start to show more evidence of self-interest on the part of the powered, and less interest in the plight of the unpowered, just as politicians tend to grow less in touch with common folk over time, with the acquisition of power and the association of those who likewise have and/or seek power.

 

In fact, one could argue that the temptation would be greater for the superhuman than for the politician, because many politicians depend on the common people to get elected and retain their power, whereas the superhuman doesn't. Similarly, if the superhuman is effectively immune to reprisal, that lowers some of the barriers against corruption (the fear of getting caught) that society has thrown up to keep corruption in check. Hence why I think the common trope that superhumans are immune to anything the common man could do against them -- including the military -- is a bad idea, at least in a People with Powers-styled game. If your superheroes are incorruptible, it can work... but otherwise I feel there needs to be some possibility of normals being able to defend their interests, should the superhumans start considering their own interests first and those of others second, as most people do.

 

This isn't an original line of thinking, I admit. It's been explored before, and I generally am not interested in going all the way down this path. I just use it to establish a few ground rules -- such as the military having the ability to combat supers, should they need to -- that make it so that I don't feel I have to go all the way down the line.