What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

[BNakagawa]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

So if Color Kid got his hands on a power ring of any color/weakness, he'd be unstoppable.

[Vulcan]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I had often wondered why Green Lantern (any of them) didn't just take Sinestro's ring (on any of the multiple times they beat him) and use it on those rare occassions where they had to deal with something yellow...

[ParagonAlpha]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I had often wondered why Green Lantern (any of them) didn't just take Sinestro's ring (on any of the multiple times they beat him) and use it on those rare occassions where they had to deal with something yellow...

 

Because yellow = fear and everyone knows Hal Jordan is fearless.

 

The ring wouldn't work for him. Duh.

[Querysphinx]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

Because yellow = fear and everyone knows Hal Jordan is fearless.

 

The ring wouldn't work for him. Duh.

 

The two qualifications for being a green lanterns. You must be fearless, and you must be stuuuuuuupid.

[Basil]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

The two qualifications for being a green lanterns. You must be fearless' date=' and you must be stuuuuuuupid.[/quote']

 

You must also be heroic!

 

 

 

Or did you already say that?

[AnotherSkip]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

One of my players once attempted to create "the mad orbiter" based on the same concept :

 

10" Teleport

+ Usable as attack

+ magascale +1/2 (1" = 10 km)

 

yeah the "cable clone" I got one in my campaign, but he has 10" teleport, and the without error rules. So he falls on his targets, I have a few plans though. now i have to institute the falling takes time rules.

[Doc Samson]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I had often wondered why Green Lantern (any of them) didn't just take Sinestro's ring (on any of the multiple times they beat him) and use it on those rare occassions where they had to deal with something yellow...

Guy Gardner had it for awhile (starting in the Sinestro Quest and ending in Guy gardners series). It was pretty cool too.

[Egyptoid]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

the Armor Piercing &or Penetrating versus Hardening eshcaladation

[Hyper-Man]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

Guy Gardner had it for awhile (starting in the Sinestro Quest and ending in Guy gardners series). It was pretty cool too.

 

Hal Jordan also did in the Alex Ross 12 issue Justice series.

 

said the plot of Justice is basically "the ultimate Superfriends payoff."

[nexus]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

This is kind of a spin-off from my other post, "Would U allow this?", but I would like to pose this question to all you GM's out there...

 

What powers do your PC's have in your campaign that you always end up arguing over or find very unbalancing in your campaigns? And, what have you done to compromise on the powers? Give specific breakdowns of the powers please and the arguements regarding them.

 

Mental Powers are a PIA for me. They often short circuit any investigative or mysteries in the campaign unless they're very convoluted or hand out Mental Defense like candy and render a number of skills effectively redundant (many Interaction skills). Mechanically, I find them dull and narratively somewhat difficult to describe. I'm also not fond of how Hero System handles some aspects of mental powers but I under why they are the way they are.

 

Invisibility can be very tricky to deal with and tends to extremes. Either the character with it rolls over opposition, goes ignored or there's constantly someone or some thing involved in the scenario that can by pass their power which gets frustrating for the player. There's also arguments lie "If my clothes are invisible, doesn't my HKA sword/claws get IPE for free?"

 

Precognition. I always require some limitations on that power and make it explicit that the what the character sees is either a "possible" future or that visions might not tell 100 percent of the story but are a "snapshot" of a particular moment subject to interpretation. Retrocognition has some of the same issues as Mental Powers regarding mysteries.

[input.jack]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I usually do the same thing with Pregog. I tell the Players "Precog tells you the MOST LIKELY future, based on events happening as they would from the point you look forward from, without outside (your) interferance".

 

I actually gamed with a GM who ran Precog as "absolutely the unavoidable future now that you have looked at it". So by looking into the future, you made it so. We would -try- to work around outcomes we didnt like, and not everything was -exactly- what it had seemed when we looked, but it -always- played out to be what we had seen with precog. I have NO idea how he did it. He loved Greek mythology, and was a master at maneuvering PCs into place when he needed them to be.

 

He was also kind of a railroading GM, so while it was impressive in how he handled Precog, his games werent always fun...

[D. Guss Tibus]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I gotta agree. Precog is the biggest spoiler power. Some the mental powers are PITAville too.

[Querysphinx]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I don't mind mental powers. Telepathy would seem to be the most disruptive to game play, but I like to remind myself that people's brains are not like cameras, we don't record everything we see in crisp technicolor or store it all in long term memory. Nor are brain operating systems (B.O.S.) necessarily compatible so information may get garbled in translation. The telepath may see brain images and not know what to make of them.

 

When in doubt, bury them in trivia.

 

It has been my experience that after a few false positives, telepaths learn to back up their telepathic findings with other sorts of evidence.

 

Of course, I like thinking around that sort of problem. A GM who doesn't like thinking around that sort of problem may not be so entertained by it.

[BNakagawa]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I don't mind mental powers. Telepathy would seem to be the most disruptive to game play, but I like to remind myself that people's brains are not like cameras, we don't record everything we see in crisp technicolor or store it all in long term memory. Nor are brain operating systems (B.O.S.) necessarily compatible so information may get garbled in translation. The telepath may see brain images and not know what to make of them.

 

It is by no means an open and shut case about the nature or limits of human memory.

 

As evidenced by savants, the ability of the human brain to retain amazing amounts of information gathered in a short amount of time exists.

 

Most of us don't seem to have the knack for getting at it. How telepathy operates, whether it is simply the asking of the person to search their memories for a bit of information, or bypassing them and going after the memories themselves, isn't even addressed in the game mechanic.

 

So, you have an undefined property of human cognition being altered by a less than comprehensively defined power. There's a great deal of hand waving involved any way you look at it.

[nexus]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

While making a call on the nature of memory and how Telepathy interacts with can be a GM's call "gimping" the ability to maintain a mystery seems a little more heavy handed than declaring Precognition shows a "possible" future. Vague and and clear Precog gets a limitation after all. It seems like Telepathy that was subject to perils of human memory and maybe the eye witness memory issue would be worth one too. Also special effects might effect the situation. Telepathy might represent a few things.

 

Edit: I'd lean more towards Telepathy going directly after memories themselves. It doesn't even suffer a language or cultural barrier by default after all. Mind Control (Tell me what remember about X) would most likely get subjective answers. Make Telepathy too inaccurate and you risk it becoming more or less like Interactive skills. I could see in a more "realistic" campaign requiring a slightly higher effect or some kind of skill roll to get the unvarnished "truth" on a memory scan as a compromise between two extremes.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I agree that I think the GM should simply disallow abilities he considers unbalanced in his game rather than let the player spend the points, then house rule the power's utility into oblivion.

[D. Guss Tibus]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I agree that I think the GM should simply disallow abilities he considers unbalanced in his game rather than let the player spend the points' date=' then house rule the power's utility into oblivion.[/quote']

 

Excellent point! :thumpup:

[Querysphinx]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I agree that I think the GM should simply disallow abilities he considers unbalanced in his game rather than let the player spend the points' date=' then house rule the power's utility into oblivion.[/quote']

 

I would rather tell the player. "Yes, you can do this, but this is how it's going to work..." Maybe I'll give them a limit on the telepathy. For example, I might request and require a "muddy the waters" limitation that makes it progressively harder to repeatedly use telepathy on a target in a short period of time; you have to wait for the waters to still again. Working on the theory that you can't observe something without changing it.

 

I should point out that, as a GM, I have no compunction against tweaking, shaving, bending, twisting, or outright ignoring rules that don't do what I want them to do, but I tell my players about it up front. The gaming contract is between the players and the GM, not between the humans and the rulebook.

 

"It's not so much rules as guidelines."

[lemming]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

the Armor Piercing &or Penetrating versus Hardening eshcaladation

 

We had that, and finally just had a campaign rule that two levels of hardened would be proof against any piercing combo. Which got everyone to not have anything past that. And we only had a few bricks that wound up with double hardened.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I would rather tell the player. "Yes' date=' you can do this, but this is how it's going to work..." [b']Maybe I'll give them a limit on the telepathy.[/b]

 

I should point out that, as a GM, I have no compunction against tweaking, shaving, bending, twisting, or outright ignoring rules that don't do what I want them to do, but I tell my players about it up front. The gaming contract is between the players and the GM, not between the humans and the rulebook.

 

Emphasis mine. I agree with your approach.

 

To me, you are telling the player "I won't allow the power as written because it will break the game. Here is what I will allow." The player has the choice of taking that approach, or going a different direction. He has not been allowed (or mislead) to spend his points on an ability he believes will perform as advertised, then been told "nope - it doesn't work - too bad you wasted those points".

[nexus]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

I would rather tell the player. "Yes, you can do this, but this is how it's going to work..." Maybe I'll give them a limit on the telepathy. For example, I might request and require a "muddy the waters" limitation that makes it progressively harder to repeatedly use telepathy on a target in a short period of time; you have to wait for the waters to still again. Working on the theory that you can't observe something without changing it.

 

I should point out that, as a GM, I have no compunction against tweaking, shaving, bending, twisting, or outright ignoring rules that don't do what I want them to do, but I tell my players about it up front. The gaming contract is between the players and the GM, not between the humans and the rulebook.

 

"It's not so much rules as guidelines."

 

Hopefully I didn't give the impression I thought you were being unfair to your players. I meant altering the way Telepathy functions to that degree wouldn't be something I'd feel comfortable doing without offering a Limitation. I assumed you'd be upfront about any changes from the start regardless of if you gave them a numerical limitation or not.

[Ed Coll]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

The gaming contract is between the players and the GM' date=' not between the humans and the rulebook.[/quote']

 

Very well put!

[JackValhalla]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

Hands-down most disruptive power to me: Extradimensional travel. One of the first games I ran, I overlooked one entry in a character's multipower, and the next thing I know, this campaign is sailing into the wild blue yonder. The first adventure started, I introduced a challenge for the players, they started thinking about how to solve it, and then this guy pipes up and says, "Screw this. I'm going back to ancient Troy to go score with this Helen chick. Anyone wanna come with me?" And they did.

From that point on, it was all I could do to try to keep up with them. I'd try to devise some kind of scenario for the timeline they were in, but if they got bored, disappointed, frustrated, or worried, they'd just find a different point in history to violate.

Finally I had to give them a time-travelling antagonist, a kind of "time-cop" who had to fix their messes, and wanted to stop them before they could do any more damage. And they blipped away from him.

Now, older and wiser, I know how to deal with this situation, and how to re-engage the players in a cohesive plotline, even if it's not the one I originally intended. At the time, it drove me up a wall. To this day, that power sends up great big flags and warning bells for me.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: What powers frustrate u & disrupt your campaigns?

 

Hands-down most disruptive power to me: Extradimensional travel. ...

 

Yeah, EDM without a sfx based set of Limitations can be uber-powerful. But it also is the best choice (of last resort) to describe certain abilities. Examples: a speedster's 'Enter the Speedzone', a shrinker's 'Enter the Microverse', etc... .