Making Characters For Fun and Practice

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Just finished up another character, this one goes by the name Wraith. I'm trying a different format this time though. Instead of the .pdf I tried using .rtf. However, since the .rtf format wouldn't work, I converted it into a .txt format instead.

 

I couldn't figure out what kind of hat it was that I wanted, so I looked it up in City of Heroes and made a character with that outfit, then took a screenshot.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Do you keep the .hdc files you work with after you're done with a character?

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Do you keep the .hdc files you work with after you're done with a character?

 

Yeah, I keep them around for reference. Right now though I'm just getting into this, so I might keep these characters around for a long time or I might delete some of them to make room for more.

[Tasha]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Ok assuming Champions Universe Normal. BTW you used a 5e export template. All 6e export template say 6e in the description. If it doens't say anything it's a 5e template

 

Total PD&ED being 40 is way out of line. Keep your character to a max of 30 or so PD and ED (each not combined)

 

Teleport would be considered too long (50m should be about max).

 

Some people might see his Martial attack being too many dice. I am on the fence about it myself. I would probably recommend that you drop it to 12d6 (ie drop the strength to 40).

 

Where's KS Undead. PS undead Hunter. PS former profession, KS evil spells etc, AK Evil and Good aligned sites etc. Detective work, Conversation, etc.

[Lucius]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

First, let me say that I think you and the Hero System have a great future together.

 

Regarding Talents as Powers; I've playing in games where they were encouraged, as far as I know they are rules-legal, and I certainly don't share the view that you should never do it. But that said, I don't think I'd approve all the constructions you have with Combat Luck. I'd say it depends on a couple of things. For one, if you pile on a lot of modifiers, maybe you should consider starting from scratch; but something like a single Limitation or Advantage is not so bad. I'm fond of Combat Luck with some variation of "Does not Stack" (prevents a character from piling Combat Luck on top of heavy armor to become an unstoppable juggernaut.) Also, ask "is this out of line for the effect I'm getting?" If an ability in play turns out to be more effective than its point cost indicates, you may want to rebuild it. Contrariwise, if it's LESS effective you may ask if there's a legal way to make it cheaper.

 

Something I don't think anyone's remarked on - I noticed a Fragile cloak and a Fragile robe among the characters. I find it hard to imagine either one lasting after the first combat...

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And a troublesome palindromedary

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Where's KS Undead. PS undead Hunter.

 

Right below the powers section apparently.

 

Thanks for the tip about that being a 5e export template, I really don't know which templates to use.

 

I've been able to talk with the local HERO GM here in Boise (and possibly the only HERO GM in Boise lol), and I'm getting the impression that I'd need to talk with whomever GMs to find out what kind of stats to put on a character. For example, the book gives a huge range on DCs for Superheroic Normal level, going anywhere from 8d6 to 14d6 (which means that last brick was technically within that range). If the campaign had supervillains with as much as 14d6 damage, then the suggested range on defenses rises up to about 28 to 56 PD and ED each (that's 2 to 4 defense per damage die, which the book suggests as a guideline). On the other Hand, if the max any enemy would throw at you is 8d6, then you'd only need about 16 to 32 PD and ED. That's a huge difference right there. 0_o

 

I think Tasha was the one who said in an earlier thread that it's hard to make characters in a vacuum, and they're right. Without any reference, I'm pretty much going blind here. Another good example is that the local GM had let a character in with megascaled teleport so he could cross the planet. I'm pretty sure there's alot of GM's that wouldn't allow that, though.

 

In any case though, I have a new character that's taking alot of time and work to build, primarily because he can summon robots from his secret factory, and thus I have to not only write up and balance the actual character, Dr. Von Kruschekt, but I also have to write up and balance the 3 different types of robots he can summon (1 assault bot, 2 protector bots, and 4 combat drones - almost straight from the City of Heroes/Villains Mastermind archetype, albeit with some changes). Of course, the real challenge, once again, is that I have no reference to work with right now, so I'm not sure if an 8d6 armor piercing attack is high, medium, or low in someone's campaign.

 

I'm hoping that it's actually moderately low, though, since that's what I'm aiming for.

[Tasha]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

OK in my experience, GMs running in the Champions Universe will be ok with characters in this range:

400 total character Points with 75pts in Complications

DC 10-12 (14 being max, but only for powers that are hard to use (ie Offensive strikes, things with extra endurance etc))

Def 20-30 rDef from 10-20ish (Some GM's are ok with rDef going all the way to max 30 YMMV)

Dex 18-33

Spd 4-6 (7-8 being max for speedsters YMMV) Usually High def high Damage characters are lower Spd and Dex, Lower damage/lower def characters tend to be higher Spd and Dex

OCV 7-13

DCV 7-13 (again High Dmg/High Def are lower CV and Lower dmg/Low def are high CV)

OMCV 3-7 (some GM's will allow you to buy this down to 1 and some think it's cheesy and some use it for breakouts as per APC YMMV)

DMCV 3-7 (any more than 7 on the mentals tend to be a waste of time as most characters don't buy either value up)

Movement 40m-50m

 

For survival sake:

Con 18-30 (most non brick types are Con 20-23)

Try to structure your Stun to take 2-3 hits (more if you are the brick aka Tank) Again you assume (3.5 stun per d6 - total Def)x3 = Stun

Your Endurance should allow you to use your most common powers for 2 turns or so. ie (AttackPowerEND+HalfMovementEnd)xSPDx2

Not much reason to buy much BODY in a Champions Game, you don't usually take much BODY so 13-20 should be sufficient.

 

If you make Generic Champions Characters with these guidelines You should be able to play with just about any GM. Some GMs run lower powered games and some run higher powered games. It should be pretty easy to tweak your generic character to meet any other guideline.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Right below the powers section apparently.

 

Thanks for the tip about that being a 5e export template, I really don't know which templates to use.

 

Hero Designer doesn't bundle with all the export templates people have come up with. The templates list should display 6e as part of the name of a Sixth Edition template. You can always grab more templates at the Vault if your license is current.

 

There are several ways to get a frame if reference for characters, If you happen to own a genre book like Champions, look at the sample characters for examples of what's rational for introductory PCs. There are also adaptable characters in the Vault. And if you join a game, the GM is very likely to have some limits on what beginning PCs should have.

 

So you don't have to work in a vacuum. All that dust....

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Does anyone know how to get a .html export file uploaded? I found a good export format (6E) that also contains the extra background information, but I have no idea how to get from that point to a point where others can see it lol.

 

The one thing I have been able to do is upload a .txt character sheet for a base, which I have attached.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

html code was blocked due to security concerns several years ago by Simon.

txt, code or pdf attachments are the best board friendly options unless you have your own website you can host them on (like Susano/Michael Surbrook's or Killershrike's).

[Tasha]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Does anyone know how to get a .html export file uploaded? I found a good export format (6E) that also contains the extra background information, but I have no idea how to get from that point to a point where others can see it lol.

 

The one thing I have been able to do is upload a .txt character sheet for a base, which I have attached.

 

we are all pretty happy to DL .hde saved character files from Hero Designer. This gives us the ability to see better how your powers/skills are being purchased and it gives us the ability to post our takes on your character.

[Ice9]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Another good example is that the local GM had let a character in with megascaled teleport so he could cross the planet. I'm pretty sure there's alot of GM's that wouldn't allow that, though.

I think that depends a lot on the setting. In a fantasy campaign, it would be a very powerful ability that might be out of line for starting characters. In a modern game, it's still useful, but really just saves you the trouble of taking a plane. In a superheroic game, where the team might have a private jet or flying base anyway, it's not even that powerful - more like a flavor ability that sometimes comes in handy.

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Okay, attached are the .hdc files for The Roboticist, a.k.a. Dr. Hahn Von Kruschekt. This guy is basically a port over from City of Heroes/Villains (or CoX for short), as that is a game I play quite frequently. In CoX, he was a mastermind with robotic minions and forcefields. Here I have customized the appearances, powers, and background of him and his minions, but overall it's very similar in concept.

 

Overall I really enjoyed making this character, although I'll admit that many GMs probably wouldn't allow him in as-is. The main problem I see is that I used a couple of the "stop sign" powers, and of course different GM's will have different opinions as to whether these are allowed or not. Still, the important parts were that I had fun, and I learned a ton in the process (especially reguarding bases and AI's).

 

This was a 6-part character, including sheets for the Dr. himself, 3 types of robots he can summon, the factory/superbase that makes the robots, and the AI that runs that factory. All in all, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of plot hooks on this character, and it would be alot of fun to play, but depending on the campaign the robotic weapons may need to be toned down to make up for their sheer numbers.

 

I can only post the first 5 parts at once, so there should be a second post very soon.

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Here is the second upload for Dr. Von Kruschekt, but it only contains the AI for his factory/superbase.

[Tasha]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

OMCV has a minimum of 1 (as do all Characteristics...)

INT is excessively high (23 should be as much as you need)

SPD 4 might be a bit low (5 is the sweet spot for most Energy projectors)

150 END might be a bit large.

 

I would be willing to see how the Bots played out. Potentially they add some complexity that could make the game slower. They would take 3 phases to summon. You could summon all 6 bots at the same time by using "expanded class" then you could Summon all 6 bots at the same time.

 

BTW AP on the 12d6 blast is a bit much. the Straight blast is good enough

 

Haven't had a chance to look at the bots yet, but will soon. Pretty darned good build. Best yet!

[prestidigitator]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

You could also ZIP up the HTML file, but at that point it's probably not even as friendly as a PDF (since most browsers have plug-ins that'll read PDFs directly rather than having to save them to disk).

[ned-kogar]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

In a superheroic game' date=' where the team might have a private jet or flying base anyway, it's not even that powerful - more like a flavor ability that sometimes comes in handy.[/quote']

 

Tell that to Bastion... I've just read the X-Men Second Coming storyline. Zoiks!

[Mickael]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Hi!

Could you please post the pdf files in a zip or something ? I'm curious about your builds but I haven't HD yet

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Hi!

Could you please post the pdf files in a zip or something ? I'm curious about your builds but I haven't HD yet

 

The .pdf files or the .hdc files? I'm asking because the only "HD" I can think of at the moment would be the HERO Designer, and the .pdf files should be able to be opened with adobe acrobat reader (or whatever it's called, I forget the exact name). In either case, I'd be happy to oblige, so long as I can figure out how to do that (I haven't actually zipped any files before lol, I guess I just never needed to).

[mayapuppies]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

The .pdf files or the .hdc files? I'm asking because the only "HD" I can think of at the moment would be the HERO Designer' date=' and the .pdf files should be able to be opened with adobe acrobat reader (or whatever it's called, I forget the exact name). In either case, I'd be happy to oblige, so long as I can figure out how to do that (I haven't actually zipped any files before lol, I guess I just never needed to).[/quote']

Right, he's saying he doesn't have Hero Designer, so if you wouldn't mind posting the robot summoner and his robots in pdf so he could read them.

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Okay, I'm not sure if this worked right, but I tried to export the files to .html format (that way they still have the roleplaying elements attached as well as the build), and put them all in a .zip file. If this doesn't work, let me know.

 

I can't put the robot factory in either .pdf or .html format though, but I did have it posted in .txt format in a previous post, so hopefully that should work.

[Mickael]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Okay' date=' I'm not sure if this worked right, but I tried to export the files to .html format (that way they still have the roleplaying elements attached as well as the build), and put them all in a .zip file. If this doesn't work, let me know.[/quote']

 

Thank you, that worked well. Now you know how to zip files

 

Why are the powers in the Multipower all unified ? Isn't the limitation redondant ?

[Tasha]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

Thank you, that worked well. Now you know how to zip files

 

Why are the powers in the Multipower all unified ? Isn't the limitation redondant ?

 

No it's not redundant. Multipower only allows one power in the list to be used at any one time. Unified power allows drains to effect all powers with the limitation all at once. Also the rules specifically say that taking Unified Power on a framework slot is legal.

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

OMCV has a minimum of 1 (as do all Characteristics...)

INT is excessively high (23 should be as much as you need)

SPD 4 might be a bit low (5 is the sweet spot for most Energy projectors)

150 END might be a bit large.

 

I would be willing to see how the Bots played out. Potentially they add some complexity that could make the game slower. They would take 3 phases to summon. You could summon all 6 bots at the same time by using "expanded class" then you could Summon all 6 bots at the same time.

 

BTW AP on the 12d6 blast is a bit much. the Straight blast is good enough

 

Haven't had a chance to look at the bots yet, but will soon. Pretty darned good build. Best yet!

 

Just thought I'd respond to this, now that I've gotten a chance to both think on this and had a chance to have this character battle it out against himself.

 

OMCV, along with the other characteristics, goes down as far as zero in the HERO Designer, so I just didn't know there was a minimum of 1 on that one.

 

INT I think I'd rather keep unless a GM explicitly said no. The way I figure it is this: first, the range the book says for standard superheroic stats is 10-40, and since often people have very high strength, I'd love the see the reasoning behind anyone disallowing it to be that high. Second, it does actually give both high skill levels and high perception. That means that I can take penalties to my rolls and still succeed, or even have a decent chance in a skill vs. skill contest. The big reason, though, is just that this guy, roleplay wise, should be a supergenius to have weapons this far in advance of the rest of the world (pulse guns, laser guns, energy cannons, photon grenades, healing beams, and even remote forcefield generators). He didn't just find these, he made them all himself.

 

SPD 4 I agree would normally be low, but considering that he has as many as 7 bots out running at SPD 3 to 4, that stacks up really, really fast.

 

The 150 END would basically be there to make it so that he can go through a few turns of combat w/o running out of endurance. It was something that some of the people in another thread suggested, so that's why that's there.

 

The bots would definately add to the length of combat, simply because there are now more characters to roll for. Summoning anything, or even just using duplication, would have the same basic effect. My hope is that it wouldn't be so much that it caused problems for whatever roleplay group this character is with. Also, I'm going to point out that with the way his summoning works, if he expects a fight, he can simply summon his bots in advance, and he can have them around for up to 20 tasks due to the way he was built. I kinda like it that he would have to take time to summon them though, since that gives him a weakness in combat if he gets suprised.

 

12d6 with AP is definately higher than I'd like. So is the 10d6 autofire w/ 3 shots and AP. Combat with himself came down to who hit the other guy first, and that's before bots. If the pulse-rifle shots didn't outright knock the other guy out, they'd almost guaranteed stun the other guy, so it's just way too much. Add that in with all those bots, and the fire support this guy provides is just way, way too much. I think a relatively simple solution, though, might be to lower the damage in exchange for extra levels of AP. That means that he can still damage more powerful opponents that might have a level of hardened defenses, but he wouldn't need such amazingly high damage output.

 

Anyways, thanks for the advice, I always appreciate another viewpoint on these characters, especially since it's so easy for them to get out of hand.

[Kruhl Sentru]

Re: Making Characters For Fun and Practice

 

For those that don't know, the exansion for City of Heroes/Villains, Going Rogue, came out a couple weeks ago. Well, I happen to play that game extensively, so that's what I've been up to.

 

Anyways, I've made the changes over the last couple of weeks a little here and there to my Roboticist character. I've attached a .zip file with him in it. The bots and the Dr. himself are in .pdf, but that doesn't work for all of them, so the factory is in .txt format and the factory AI is in .html format.

 

I have been working on an idea for a Star HERO character, but I'm very unfamiliar with that kind of setting, so I'm probably going to have to spend some time learning more before I can create and post it. In any case though, I haven't just dissappeared, so much as I've been playing entirely too much on City of Heroes: Going Rogue.

 

As usual, feel free to post critiques, especially to let me know if I've messed up on the rules or done something that no sane GM would allow.