How many hero spoils the plot

[LordGhee]

In your Gaming if you are running a 150pt campain for your players, how many villians that they meet are going to be 150pts.

 

Will your players meet 150pt all the time or are they the "Hero's" that they should be.

 

Lord Ghee

[Nolgroth]

Re: How many hero spoils the plot

 

In your Gaming if you are running a 150pt campain for your players, how many villians that they meet are going to be 150pts.

 

Will your players meet 150pt all the time or are they the "Hero's" that they should be.

 

Lord Ghee

Honestly, I don't worry about the points. I worry about how the characters measure up in certain key points (Speed, CV, Damage, Body, Con, Stun). For oppositional NPCs, I don't worry about things like non-combat skills or Perks or whatnot. If it is appropriate for them to have them, then they have them.

 

Caveats

1) Once an NPC demonstrates an ability, I try to note it down. This applies to Combat and Non-Combat abilities.

 

2) Most of the NPCs the characters meet are much less physically powerful than they are. In turn, they tend to have access to institutional resources that the characters do not. The occasional powerful NPC throws the group off balance. (I love that part).

 

3) Sometimes I tailor an NPC to be exactly PC power level. Usually this is for a Rivalry, Hunted or similar situation. If you want them to stay roughly the same power level, then they need to advance at roughly the same rate as the PCs.

[Blue Jogger]

Re: How many hero spoils the plot

 

I basically leave the "Hero" niche to the heroes. (This was the choice of the players and it took me awhile to figure it out.)

 

I'd say roughly 90% of everything they meet are going to be much weaker than the heroes.

 

Now, that upper 10% are group class villains who the heroes do not want to meet alone in a back alley, but on the other side, the villains are going to be frustrated if they have to deal with all of them. They are used to the other 90% that a simple hand gesture will eliminate (or severely damage) a whole room. If they are "heroes" at this level, they are flawed in some way that they can't or won't help the rest of the world. Maybe they have a kingdom to run, maybe they're a bit too old to go adventuring, or maybe their actions are too visible and would cause several group class villains to focus undue attention towards themselves. Usually, they tend to be real jerks as well.

 

I, too, do not worry about the points. But I tend to have things that can threaten the party be either a whole gaggle of lesser points creatures that the heroes can mow down eventually. Or I have the one or two villains that can deal with the party on a fairly even basis.

[Maelstrom]

Re: How many hero spoils the plot

 

I don't even write up mooks -- I just assign them defenses and body/stun, and an attack. It saves time. Anybody who is the heroes' level or higher I stat up, and worry about points. Major villains I stat and build completely, figuring they or their cousins will be seen again. I file the serial numbers off a lot of book villains, and some times block them out and mix-and-match the blocks.

 

I do a lot of running 'on the fly', where I figure out a plot while they're setting up, often in five to ten minutes, grab animals/mooks out of the bestiary, and then leaf through villain books while they're in the first mook fight. For fun, I'll use a pulp villain in a fantasy game, or vice-versa -- fantasy villains are great for pulp, especially if they're from an exotic location like Tibet or Africa, or the Amazon, or New York.

[Ragnarok]

Re: How many hero spoils the plot

 

I tend to vary minion strength on the effect I want to achieve. For example, if I want to make the heroes feel like they're the deadliest force in the land, I'll throw insignificant mooks at them. If I want to make the heroes sweat a bit more, I'll throw in tougher guys. And for those times when the heroes need to be humbled, I'll throw in an elite. I think that heroes who are used to taking everything out in one swing get an overinflated sense of power and get bored easily. Sometimes you need to show them that they're not the big dogs sometimes.

 

With that said, I like to play around with different minion strengths to throw the heroes off their guard. For example, let them run around chopping mercs in half to make them feel powerful, then put them up against an elite. Also works in reverse: let them regain a sense of power after they've been thwarted a couple times.

 

In any case, my gamers have to work for their sense of prestige.