Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

[lendrick]

Are there any good rules of thumb for keeping equipment balanced in a heroic campaign? Say, if I have a 175 point character, how may points' worth of equipment is it safe to give them without throwing the whole game out of whack?

[FreeDice]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

Well, I think it depends on the nature of your campaign. A low-magic fantasy campaign will likely be limited by Encumbrance - let characters have almost all they can afford, and they likely can't hurt game balance, because weapons and armor are heavy.

 

Whereas in a scifi campaign, it'll be a bit harder - stuff is light, and technology can do a lot more.

 

And then you add in magic, and it all gets knocked out of whack.

 

What kinda campaign are you running?

[lendrick]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

A sci-fi campaign with psionics, which I suppose is just magic by another name.

[Rapier]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

50 or 60 pts in the Equipment Pool seems to be about right. That's where I've start my guys at and some hardly use any and others need more. A lot of it depends on design. But even the non-equipment characters have purchased equipment that has come in right handy a time or two.

[Utech]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

Keep in mind that if you start out with the wrong amount of equipment, you can easily adjust things. Access to equipment can be limited or expanded by economic or political forces and changes in availability of resources. It can also be an interesting plot point to have the characters work to break up a blockade, negotiate trade agreements, discover a vast stash of unobtainium, learn that their power packs have been tampered with, or what-have-you. (How many times have Star Trek folk had to find more dilithium crystals?)

[Tasha]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

We usually give people either cash to buy equipment or if the Characters are part of an organization they get whatever is appropriate to the mission. Honestly we haven't really had any problems with equipment. My character in the SG-1 game used a .50 Barret rifle and stuff turned out ok. The rest of the group had a mixture of p90s and m16s. Still no problem. I guess we just had badguys that could stand up to that firepower.

 

In fantasy we just would buy what the character should have for their conception. Though with magic in the game throwing dc6-8 with rPDs of 6-8 is just normal. Again stuff is just balanced.

 

I guess I would say to not worry about it and if PCs are carrying too much stuff start enforcing the encumbrance rules.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

Yeeeeessss. They get it for free, so don't feel bad about taking it away from them.

[Markdoc]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

Yeah. We used to use equipment pools, but these days we just wing it and let encumbrance and practicality dictate. It's usually pretty obvious whether they can get the stuff or not. If there's any doubt and the players reeeeeally want something that's not readily available, well, there's an easy adventure thread right there.

 

cheers, Mark

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

It's also important to remember that anything trivially easy for the PC's to lay their hands on is equally easy for their opponents to access, which assists somewhat in the balance.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

As long as the amount of equipment is reasonable, I wouldn't sweat it. I would take note of the quality of the equipment, for a couple reasons. First, you don't want your characters running around with gear that is so high tech that it makes enemies or obstacles trivial, even if such equipment exists in your universe. Partly it detracts from the characters that their gear is more important than they are, and partly logically super-advanced equipment should logically be expensive and hard to get.

 

Second, if the heroes start out with junky equipment, anything nice that they acquire later (through rewards, loot, deals, or whatnot) will be that much more cool. Really nice equipment becomes the equivalent of magic items in a fantasy campaign. It gives the heroes a sense of reward, especially for those from a dungeon-crawl background. If you are concerned about the equipment becoming unbalancing, make it clear when the heroes get it that it has a limited power supply or will get used up or something (disintegration grenades are awesome, but obviously can't be reused).

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

I tend not to use equipment pools as standard and allow the PCs to have the kit that they think the PC would reasonably have access to. As pointed out - things that are not paid for are easily acquired and easily lost as the plot demands. If a player wants a piece of kit that they do not want to lose so easily then they pay points for it.

 

That means they lose it less readily and if they do they pick another up at the earliest possible opportunity. Players LOVE getting stuff. If they know that you will regularly give them access to stuff then they will be less upset about losing it and, if they get really cool stuff that they really want to keep, they will pay points for it.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

Quality and Quantity of Equipment is important, especially when compared to characters who are psykers. HERO can run into problems if one character buys powers with character points, and another buys them with in game (i.e. fake) money. For example, if character A has a psychic power to enhance their strength and toughness, as well as the power to cause people's heads to explode. Character B has power armor and a laser rifle (which they bought with money). The person who plays character A will generally be sad because they could have had more useful psychic powers (stuff that can't be duplicated with technology). Occasionally the laser rifle and power armor will be taken away, but will it really disappear enough to make the two characters balanced?

 

So I'd determine what you pay points for, and what you pay money for. Then never the two shall meet.

[dmjalund]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

HERO can run into problems if one character buys powers with character points' date=' and another buys them with in game (i.e. fake) money.[/quote']I'd be worried if he paid with real money. Smacks of a corrupt GM

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

So I'd determine what you pay points for' date=' and what you pay money for. Then never the two shall meet.[/quote']

 

If I have people with weird abilities in an heroic game then I make sure that everyone has one - the psyker does what he does, the gun bunny can use guns better than anyone else.

 

The gun bunny then might decide to ensure he has his weapons always available because it enhances what else he can do...

 

 

Doc

[Rapier]

Re: Question about keeping equipment balanced in heroic campaigns?

 

My current campaign falls right into the bailiwick.

 

We've got one character that is able to control fire. She's got a unified power list (ala EC) and an MP. She dropped CONSIDERABLY more points on Powers than everyone else. Off the top, I would guess she spent half her points on Power and everyone else spent (at most) a quarter. Her Characteristics are noticeably lower and her skill list is markedly smaller than the other characters. If you take away her Powers, ask her to act outside of the bounds of her Powers or it is somehow inadvisable for her to use her powers (eg in a gas station) she is in trouble. She has no real ability to inflict any damage (other than the 1.5d6 slap from her raw strength) or to hit and is liable to be knocked out in short order.

 

The characters who are equipment based (and we've got 2) have higher Characteristics and more skills. They are more rounded and versatile.

 

Now, we do run into some strange occurrences (eg Tasers). And I had to build all the powers while keeping an eye towards the equipment...so that they are roughly of the same power level. Since the weapons were coming in between 6 and 8 DCs, the characters with Powers have all their attacks falling into that range also.

 

I've found that the character design has done quite a bit to balance the equipment vs power issue.

 

EDIT: Oh, and while we are using Equipment Pools I do allow a certain amount of '0pt Equipment.' I'm not going to stat up a ration bar and it would make sense that characters would have gun cleaning supplies and bottles of water etc.