Best/Worst Characters?

[Certified]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

I would like to know what all of you great Champions gurus would consider your best and worst characters are. As I have stated before I am not well experienced with the game. I played 4e a bit and then years later picked it up again and have now ordered the latest edition as my local gaming stores are not aware of its existence. Several of my characters turned out pretty lame but I have had a couple of good ones as well

 

My best character was a mentalist called "Migraine" whose signature attack resulted in my GM re-reading the rules and forced me to re-work the character. I no longer have the character but his attack was a ranged killing attack based on ECV--a mental killing attack which was about 5d6 and easily killed most things/ppl we encountered.

 

My absolute worst character was a character called "Moonchild" whose powers were based on the phases of the moon. He was most powerful on a full moon but was basically a skilled normal during a new moon with power fluctuations between. He was quite interesting and powerful on a full moon but was a stinker throughout the campaign.

 

Both of these were 4e so I don't know what is still relevant. I will probably rebuild these characters for you folks if I have time and can find my 4e book.

 

So what are your best and worst characters?

 

Just reading this I'd like to start with we may have different views of best and worst. Moonchild looks like far more fun to play than Johnny McHeadexplody. Migraine just looks like, well, boring to me. No offense but there doesn't seem to be much fun in instadeath.

 

So best and worst characters that I've played in terms of combat ability.

 

Worst: Fallout - Fallout was a bubble of radioactive force. The character had a few neat tricks such as NND Strength. However, the character had only a Speed 4 and 13 Dex. Other characters in the game were more in the Speed 6-7 range with Dexterity of 20+. It wasn't so much that the character under performed with the other PCs but more so that the challenges created by the GM would generally wipe the floor with Fallout if they were going to be any kind of threat to the rest of the party.

 

Best: Xolotl's Daughter - Her body was a conduit into space. As such she could survive amazing amounts of damage including living through a nuclear bomb blast. This character was too meaty though so things had to be toyed with to make her less of a brick monster thing.

 

- - -

 

Best and Worst Characters I've played in a more general sense.

 

Worst: Omega 13 - Generically engineered super being on the run. Omega 13 seeks a way to expose those who created him and become part of society as a whole. This character was a take on the perfected being concept with flat 20 stats and a few powers and martial arts. he falls into the worst category as he was something of a cold fish to play. There wasn't much personality and thus he was just kind of there.

 

Best: Ardal Teg - Former Irish Footballer Ardal was given an amulet called the Storm Talisman imbuing him with the power to control storms and incredible speed. Ardal lives life the hard way, drinking, smoking and generally enjoying himself. Brash, braggart and generally seen as insensitive Ardal is also something of a Humanist. He believes deeply in the ethics of peoples actions and how other super powered beings use their powers. This has resulted in him going out for beers with an assassin sent to kill him, and getting into a fight after another hero removed the pain someone had experienced after being tortured. The fight came from the victim saying they didn't want the heroes to help him further. Ardal went missing for several months, it hasn't really come out in game but he was working to help protect some innocents who were in trouble after their last conflict. Of course he returned to the pub, hitting on all the ladies and smoking, everywhere, which seems to bother people more than anything else.

 

Most Difficult: The Fear Thing and Alona - The Fear Thing was a primordial entity that fed on fear. Alona was a little girl from a poor home with abusive parents. What made her different is unlike all the other little children all around the world Alona didn't hide from the fear. The fear was better than the reality and she embraced it called on it even to make her parents understand the pain. They died and Alona survived on the streets some time afterward. Eventually Alona was asked if she could make the Fear Thing do good things. The Fear Thing wanted Alona to be happy and doing good did just that. This is how a monster and It's pet human became a hero. Unfortunately, the character was the Fear Thing, with Alona being a follower and DNPC.Alona served as the Fear Things mouth piece but it really only wanted to feed and make her happy so I ended up playing as Alona most of the time. It was just very difficult to find the right mix of childlike and creepy. Unfortunately, Alona eventually took a real back seat being mostly forgotten about until the action happened and the Fear Thing appeared.

[Lucius]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

In a moral sense....

 

one of my worst characters was Chun the Unavoidable, created for a specifically villainous campaign. Yes, inspired by the Jack Vance villain, he collected eyeballs.

 

My best was possibly Amphibion. He was noted for things like saving the life of a villain who had just been trying to kill him, and ignoring a raging superbattle up and down the street in order to apply first aid to save the life of an innocent bystander.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

I wonder which would be my best and worst palindromedary taglines?

[Ghost Archer]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

My Best? I judge this by the character design I am most proud of and that would be a character everyone called 'Stitch'. A shapeshifter. I design him for another player after he'd given me a vague idea of the power he wanted. Not long after, he complained and quit the game for a few months because I had nerfed his character. I have never been so mad or insulted in my gaming life. I am still damn proud of 'Stitch' and the player did come back after his wife explained the character design to him. He turned out to be a lot of fun for not only me but the player and the rest of the group.

 

My other Best was a speedster, Blurr, I designed for myself . . . hint to all . . . NEVER offer a complex, well-designed character to a GM just starting out . . . especially if he gives you 200 free points. It was a total mess and he quit after ONE run.

 

My worst? Oh, gawd. Understand I was NOT responsible for the character concept, only the character design and build. 'Chiquita', like the banana. She wore a fruit bowl on her head . . . each fruit was a different power . . . she carried a watermelon . . . made her look pregnant . . . I am SO embarrassed I even consented to make that one.

[Old Man]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

My brother once made a secret agent, who was an anthropomorphic cat, with psychic claws. I think is code name was Mr. Snickers.

My brother was 11 at the time.

I still can't decide if Mr. Snickers was awful or awesome.

 

I'm going to go with "awesome", if only because Mr. Snickers resembles a MSH character I once made (but never played).

[Badger]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

My brother once made a secret agent, who was an anthropomorphic cat, with psychic claws. I think is code name was Mr. Snickers.

My brother was 11 at the time.

I still can't decide if Mr. Snickers was awful or awesome.

 

friggin awesome, man (but do consider the source here)

[Nuclear Fridge]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

My best character was a mentalist called "Migraine" whose signature attack resulted in my GM re-reading the rules and forced me to re-work the character. I no longer have the character but his attack was a ranged killing attack based on ECV--a mental killing attack which was about 5d6 and easily killed most things/ppl we encountered.

 

I'm sure that 'Headbang Man' -- sorry, Migraine -- did his signature thing on some poor NPC the plot needed you to keep alive. Dead men don't tell tales, and when their heads are decorating the walls and ceiling, questioning them is not an option...

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

I'm sure that 'Headbang Man' -- sorry' date=' Migraine -- did his signature thing on some poor NPC the plot [i']needed[/i] you to keep alive. Dead men don't tell tales, and when their heads are decorating the walls and ceiling, questioning them is not an option...

 

Hmm. Did he have Does Body on it as well? If not, he wasn't killing anybody with that power ...

[Christopher]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

Hmm. Did he have Does Body on it as well? If not' date=' he wasn't killing anybody with that power ...[/quote']

And i am pretty certain "around 5d6" with 2-3 level avad (to get agaisnt mental defense) and does body (+1) was slighty beyond any campaign limit...

 

Edit: Yes, 75 Base Points with +2 Advantages (2 steps down avad + does Body) would have been worth about 225 Active Points. In a single power that could indeed unbalance the game...

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

I almost exclusively GM'd Champions games, so my examples are a mixture of NPCs created for my game, and PCs created by players in my game.

 

Worst: My former Champions GM (the guy who introduced me to the game, and did an awesome job as GM) briefly joined my campaign with a character -- I've forgotten the character's name -- whose powers were all based on cards drawn from a deck of regular playing cards. Thus, he didn't have much choice in his powers on any given Phase and would have to "play the hand he was dealt." Neat idea, but *all* of his defense powers were in that honkin' huge Multipower too, and it didn't take long in game for him to draw a hand with *NO* defenses, in the middle of combat. The player didn't want to re-do the character to give him a greater likelihood at having at least some defenses all the time, and he dropped out shortly afterward.

 

Best: There are a number of NPC villains I've created that I'm partial to. Here are just two of them.

 

One was the arch-nemesis to a PC hero. My friend created "Squeeze", a brick with stretching. As the name implies, he was very good at grabbing and SQUEEEEEZING his foes until they passed out. He had his character hunted by "Diamond Kitty," an NPC villainess he created. All he gave me was that she was a cat burglar who liked to toy with Squeeze, like a ball of yarn. So I created a woman with a vendetta against a specific company whom she blamed for her father's death, and a penchant for stealing precious gems. Her well-padded outfit was covered with shards of artificial diamonds, resulting in a decent Damage Shield, plus she had claws and a few smaller gadget-based toys. In a one-on-one betwen Squeeze and Diamond Kitty, they were so evenly matched that one test combat I ran, they ended up knocking each other out at the same time. And she was fixated on Squeeze, like a crush (no pun intended) and would send him clues to her next robbery or other crimes.

 

John Doe was a NPC amnesiac whom the PC heroes adopted as one of their own. He could look at anyone or anything and instantly see the weak points. (He had Familiarity with any regular weapon, Find Weakness with Any Attack (AOE: Cone), and Missile Deflection with objects of opportunity. Other than that, he was a normal human, albeit in peak condition and apparently very well-trained.) The first time they met him -- while the heroes were raiding a lab of the 4th edition villain Malachite -- John Doe held his own against one of them armed only with a bedpan and one of those rolling metal poles that hospitals use for hanging IV bags. The heroes became completely drawn into figuring out who John Doe was before losing his memory, not realizing that he was a creation of Malachite designed specifically to learn all of the PC heroes' weak points and vulnerabilities, then when given a command phrase JD would turn into a living weapon to kill said PC heroes. When it all came to a head, I was very proud of my players for the lengths they went to restraining JD rather than just KO-ing him, and talking him down from his programmed berserker rage.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

Worst? That would have to be the 250-point speedster with a 38 DEX, 12 speed and (due to the cost) very little else. He could act before anyone else, but even against mooks he wasn't particularly effective. Of course, his favored move, disarming the badguys, didn't work very well because the GM allowed them to use their full Strength to resist disarming even when they were surprised.

 

Best? Sort of a tossup. The Cat Without A Name (TCWOAN) was an escaped laboratory animal with human intelligence whose primary motivation was self-preservation and spreading his unique genetic heritage as widely as possible. Fortunately, I was playing in a group that "got" the character and played along. His primary power was a fully-invisible EGO attack, the special effects of which were that he was psionically inducing a fit of narcolepsy in his victims. He'd stand off a bit and repeatedly zap badguys while his team-mates kicked butt (The attack was only 2 or 3 dice, so it took a while to take full effect).

 

My other "best" characters were Bob Tiger and Lance O'Bannon, the Singing Cowboy. Bob Tiger was a humanoid tiger (brick w/some growth and distinctive features) who was also a volunteer policeman and a movie actor (his day job). He usually got parts as monsters, but frequently wrote Bill Watterson practically begging him to allow a movie version of Calvin and Hobbes to be made, so BT could portray the Hobbes no-one else can see. Lance O'Bannon, TSC was a 400-point singing cowboy in a supers universe that was undergoing a Crisis on Infinite Earths-like campaign. He was incredibly persuasive and could shoot the guns out of your hands with pistols that never seemed to require reloading unless it would advance the plot.

[Chuckem]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

I'm sure that 'Headbang Man' -- sorry, Migraine -- did his signature thing on some poor NPC the plot needed you to keep alive. Dead men don't tell tales, and when their heads are decorating the walls and ceiling, questioning them is not an option...

 

~~ Yes, of course he did, lol..

 

Hmm. Did he have Does Body on it as well? If not, he wasn't killing anybody with that power ...

 

And i am pretty certain "around 5d6" with 2-3 level avad (to get agaisnt mental defense) and does body (+1) was slighty beyond any campaign limit...

 

Edit: Yes, 75 Base Points with +2 Advantages (2 steps down avad + does Body) would have been worth about 225 Active Points. In a single power that could indeed unbalance the game...

 

~~ We had 375 points and I had bought it with some Limitations too. I created him on 4e when 4e was new. I can't remember the details, do you know how long ago that was? And YES it did unbalance the game which led my GM to not allow mental killing attacks anymore...

 

~~ Yes, it did Body.

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

A friend reminded me of a character in my game with

RKA

Autofire 10 shot

Explosion

6d6

Given this was 1st Edition, this would cost him 180 endurance, leaving him very unconcious in the midst of the ruins of the neighborhood where he had just used the power.

[mattingly]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

Best: John Doe was a creation of Malachite designed specifically to learn all of the PC heroes' weak points and vulnerabilities' date=' then when given a command phrase JD would turn into a living weapon to kill said PC heroes.[/quote']

Excellent idea.

[mattingly]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

My worst played character was Baker's Dozen, a duplicating soldier, who would duplicate into (you guessed it) thirteen copies of himself that each had their own specialties and weaponry. Although the character was a cool idea, having one person playing 13 characters just totally dominated the game table. After one session, that was 80% me doing stuff, I retired him.

[budding voyager]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

Best character I played was the Duchess of New Jersey, a member of the British royal family from an alternate dimension where the Americans lost the Revolutionary War (or, the Transatlantic Civil War). In the alternative history, there were no World Wars nor Depression, and the massive free trade zone of the British Empire enabled very rapid technological development (in her history, she had Gandhi sent to Australia before he could make too much trouble; he died in a work camp there). The Duchess got her powers from the nanotech which all nobility has (enables immortality, radar to detect assassins, shooting lightning to defend oneself, etc) and she became stranded in our dimension by her treacherous cousin.

 

I played her as being ignorant about most Earth culture, ruthless to supervillians (in a game where may PCs took the Honor Code Complication), and a thick New Jersey accent.

[Ice9]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

My worst played character was Baker's Dozen' date=' a duplicating soldier, who would duplicate into (you guessed it) thirteen copies of himself that each had their own specialties and weaponry. Although the character was a cool idea, having one person playing 13 characters just totally dominated the game table. After one session, that was 80% me doing stuff, I retired him.[/quote']I had a character like that as well. Summoned creatures from the dream realm, pretty interesting to play, but dominated all opposition and slowed combat to a crawl - had to retire him pretty quickly. This also qualifies as my worst character for another reason - while I came up with a good back story, and some interesting connections, I never figured out what he did when not superhero-ing, or how he would act in a number of situations. So he came off as very flat in play.

 

 

Had an idea for a morphing character who was basically a big pile of goo. A gelatinous slime that couls shapeshift' date=' duplicate, go desolid, and take on *all* the properties of what he turned into on a slightly weaker state. I never figured out how to build him with 250 points... or even 375 points.[/quote']Multiform! I actually made a character somewhat like this, a blob of living oil/polymer that could change its shape, structure, and (to an extent) chemical properties. If anything, I had too many points - because of Multiform, I was effectively gaining points at nearly 5x the normal rate. Bought a lot of contacts, and then just ignored the surplus. A fun character to play as though - while not stupid, it was quite naive and new to the superhero thing, so often didn't realize that it could easily handle something until a team-member explained how. And was also rather hyper-active.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

One more character that was a lot of fun was a permanently "duplicated" trio named Moe, Larry, and Curly created by a player in the same campaign as TCWOAN. The guy was a Three Stooges buff and knew them better than anyone I had ever met. He created his own version of "Stooge-Fu" for the trio and, even when we weren't in combat, kept us entertained with Stooge antics that flowed naturally from the campaign setting and the personalities of the individual Stooges. Fortunately, they were not the leaders of the group.

[Querysphinx]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

I have GM'd more than I have played the game by several orders of magnitude. The worst character I ever encountered from a build point of view was a one-session wonder named "Defender." His power was a magic ring that could turn any one element into any other element. So far so good. The problem was, he didn't want to go through the trouble of figuring out what the effect of transforming something into say white phosphorous could be. So he only bought one power, transform any one element into another, apparently figuring that the game physics would take care of itself. "I transformed his armor into cesium, so he should be dead, right?"

 

The player compounded this error by buying no defenses whatsoever and 5" of gliding for a movement power. That's right folks, he could glide slower than he could run.

 

I, the helpful GM tried to talk him out of the build, but he wouldn't have any of it. I could have just said, "no." I was in the habit of doing that. Instead, I decided to see if he could learn from his mistakes.

 

Nope.

 

There was a superbattle going on in a downtown area full of skyscrapers and "Defender," espied a group of heavy weapon agents atop the roof of a building down the block.

 

Defender: "I jump off the roof and glide toward them and turn the heavy weapon into white-phosphorous."

GM: "You do realize they're about 40" away from you?"

Defender: "Yeah."

GM: "And you're going to spend at least 8 phases drifting like a leaf on the wind. A big fat green leaf with a bulls-eye painted on it."

Defender: "Yeah! But when I turn their guns to phosphorous it'll kill 'em."

GM: "Okay. Roll to hit."

 

He missed. He did not survive the return volley. Very little of him ever reached the ground.

 

Ignorance is curable. Stupid is not.

[Lucius]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

In one of the very first Champions games I played in, another player had a character I nicknamed the Guided Missile.

 

His schtick was a drug that made him a superbeing for something like, I don't know, 10 minutes a day. Long enough for the standard Champions combat anyway. To this day I'm not sure if this was deliberate munchkinism or not.

 

His usual tactic was to superleap move through on the biggest threat. His only powers were enhanced primary characteristics - that's right, his only defenses were the PD and ED from STR and CON. Well, he also had extra Running via a skateboard, but mostly didn't use that. He always took out one opponent but took himself out at the same time - thus the nickname. I think once he managed to recover before the combat was over and got a second strike in.

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

That was a long time ago....before I had a palindromedary

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

Suddenly reminded...

Had a player who set up a 1st edition martial artist named "Crusader".

He had 30PD, fully resistant.

And 2ED, also fully resistant.

He could go toe to toe with Grond, but be one shotted by a standard Viper agent. (6d6eb autofire)

He also had a 10 Constitution, a 8 recovery, 30 stun and 60 endurance.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

My first attempt at making a hero system character was a Popeye-like character called Fist-Man (I was oblivious to other possible meanings for that name at the time). He had all his characteristics at maximum (20 for non-figured, whatever the limit was for figured). I ran him in one scenario and realized that trying to be the best at everything on a limited budget meant you weren't the best at anything. The GM and I overhauled him to be more super even if he wasn't competent at all things.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

In one of the very first Champions games I played in, another player had a character I nicknamed the Guided Missile.

 

His schtick was a drug that made him a superbeing for something like, I don't know, 10 minutes a day. Long enough for the standard Champions combat anyway. To this day I'm not sure if this was deliberate munchkinism or not.

 

His usual tactic was to superleap move through on the biggest threat. His only powers were enhanced primary characteristics - that's right, his only defenses were the PD and ED from STR and CON. Well, he also had extra Running via a skateboard, but mostly didn't use that. He always took out one opponent but took himself out at the same time - thus the nickname. I think once he managed to recover before the combat was over and got a second strike in.

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

That was a long time ago....before I had a palindromedary

 

Reminiscent of a character I heard of named Warhead, whose powers consisted of Duplication, Superleap (1 charge), and a No Range RKA Explosion (1 charge). At the start of a fight, he'd split off his duplicates (four, IIRC), then they would jump into a cluster of bad guys and explode, killing themselves (they had no improved defenses and 5 Body, to save points on the Duplicating). It wasn't until later that the group read the rules and discovered that you can't respawn dead duplicates. Points were shuffled to add Personally Immune to the explosion and a bit of extra defenses to the duplicates ... so they'd spawn, jump, explode, and then run in a blind panic back to the main body.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

... so they'd spawn' date=' jump, explode, and then run in a blind panic back to the main body.[/quote']

 

Now that's a visual!

[Christopher]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

... so they'd spawn' date=' jump, explode, and then run in a blind panic back to the main body.[/quote']

Like headless chicken?

[Joey Sidman]

Re: Best/Worst Characters?

 

Like headless chicken?

 

Or like creepers from minecraft