EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

[megaplayboy]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

I still need to write another 3 dozen or so sets of bullet-point advice on specific issues--world-building, character design, combat tips, troubleshooting, etc. I have noticed a recurring theme in this thread of "what to do about characters of varying power levels", and feel like I need to write a bit more to address that, and provide helpful examples as was suggested. Generally, I favor a rock-paper-scissors approach, where Character A(rock) is awesome against "rock"(e.g. physical attacks) and "scissors"(e.g. energy attacks) but is vulnerable to "paper"(drains, mental powers, magic, whatever), Character B(paper) is awesome against "rock" and "paper" but vulnerable to "scissors", and Character C(scissors) is awesome against "scissors" and "paper" but vulnerable to "rock". Basically, nobody is all-around awesome against everything, and if they are, they're more like all-around excellent than all-around awesome. So, the Mystery Man may not be able to go toe to toe with the Paragon, but they have a "bag of tricks" that can do the Paragon a suprising amount of harm, and on top of that, they excel in non-combat areas that the Paragon does not excel at. The Mentat may not be able to withstand the mighty blows of the Powerhouse Brick, but they can send them into an illusory dreamland from which it is difficult to escape. Etc. The members of a group should have a good reason to group together--their vulnerabilities, flaws, shortcomings and blind spots require a teammate to back them up, and their assets, abilities and powers enable them to reciprocate well. I'm a little leery of running campaigns with mixed power levels where some characters fall well below the median--because overshadowing becomes almost inevitable. You can mix together, for example, characters of 300, 400 and 500 points without too much trouble, but if you make the disparity wider--say, 300, 500 and 700 points--the differences in capability become more evident, and at greater levels of disparity--say, 300, 700 and 1000+ points--the relevance of the least-capable PCs becomes questionable, imo. An alternative approach is simply to build everyone on a similar point level(or at least, a fairly high "floor"), set a "combat floor"(say, legendary level CV and DEX, and 12-24 Damage Classes(somewhere in that range), with comparable defenses(combat luck, conditional damage reduction, what have you)), and allow the players to differentiate/specialize as they prefer. That way, you can still have significant differences in combat ability/power, without rendering the "lower-powered" heroes irrelevant or turning them into a liability. And, as I mentioned, giving extremely powerful characters a variety of limits and Achilles' heel(s) is a must.

[assault]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

And' date=' as I mentioned, giving extremely powerful characters a variety of limits and Achilles' heel(s) is a must.[/quote']

 

I recently did a rough analysis of (my interpretation of) the ability of the early membership of the JLA to take damage. Basically, I concluded that there were only three truly "invulnerable" characters - Superman, the Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern. (Wonder Woman is tough too, but apparently not bulletproof.)

 

All three of these have obvious Achilles' heels.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

Keep going please I really need this for my Galactic Champions: Federated Super Teams campaign.

 

Thank you SIR!

 

QM

[Orion]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

It could be good to discuss the difference in character building between "realistic" and "comic booky" (for lack of better terms) campaigns and character building methods. This isn't just an epic campaign concern, but depending on the type of characters used, may be more necessary than with low-powered campaigns.

 

As an example, my world strictly forbids gadgeteers as main characters, and they are extremely rare as villains. There are no Green Arrows and Batmans, because the first time they fight a mook, they get shot, which gets them dead. There are invulnerable detectives, but normal detectives are on the police force, not running around in costumes. Having Olympic-level physical characteristics get you nowhere. Detectives with Olympic-level physique still die when they get shot, which would happen regularly. So, in this style campaign epic characters by default need powers, or at least powered armor to survive. Power levels can still differ greatly among the characters, but they have to survive being punched by bricks, hit by energy beams, and shot with assault rifles.

 

In a more typical comic book story, Green Arrow can go up against Darkseid, fer example, and live, because he never, ever gets hit seriously by anything - that's Superman's job for that story. He's in every major battle, but the villains totally ignore him and concentrate on those that can take the hit. Living Laser will ignore Daredevil to go after Wolverine, etc. Or, the more powerful the opponent, the better the wimpy hero's defenses are. He can beat up a couple mooks, barely. But he can also beat up a couple demons from hell, alien invaders, super soldiers, and several low-powered supers at a time.

 

In the first case, armor is always armor - it resists damage. In the second, armor is often the sfx of the power "writer's or GMs favor". In the first, high CV or dodge is always used, and always noticed. In the second case, it is also always used, but it is never noticed. Green Arrow can't dodge bullets - that's the Flash's job - but he has the same DCV to model not getting targeted. It's not that the villains can't hit the hero, it's that they rarely even try to do so, even if it would be the obvious thing to do. With a good GM and group, this can simply be handled by the GM never making big attacks against the low-defense heroes. Most players can't handle the uncertainty, or dislike that another takes no damage while they are beat up, so using builds that mimic comic writers inherent dislike of hurting the low-defense heroes is often the only way to go.

 

Anyway, if an epic campaign is to be done, one of the first things that needs decided is the "realism" level and if meta-gaming concerns can influence builds.

[megaplayboy]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

In the Galactic Champions sourcebook for 5th edition, there's a writeup for a team member who has skads of combat luck, to simulate the improbable survivability of the character. There's another character who has ludicrously strong defenses but relatively low attack power(Bulletproof). I could see a character like Bulletproof fighting street crime. The main way street hoods might fight him would involve throwing obstacles in his way, gang tackling him, finding something strong to tie him up with, etc.

Whether the setting is Iron-agey "realistic" or Silver-agey "comic-booky", I think I've mentioned the use of a "combat floor", or minimum set of standards for a PC to meet in order to participate in an "epic" campaign. There are a variety of ways to tweak the defenses of mystery-man types without destroying the character concept--Dex-based damage reduction, combat luck, extra DCV levels, etc. In a realistic setting, they can armor up, wear a temporary force-field belt, carry a shield, etc. --anything to bring them up to "floor" level defenses(probably at least 10-20 resistant defense, 20-30 total defense in a baseline epic setting--enough to keep them from getting one-shotted in a fight).

[assault]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

Damage Reduction is the best "scaling" mechanic. If you want a character who can engage in both epic and street level activities, it's the best way to go.

 

One of the common assumptions in these kind of discussions is that larger quantities of damage are routinely being thrown around than in lower powered games. I'm not sure that that necessarily reflects the source material.

 

Basically, Darkseid isn't the typical opponent. Sure, he can throw around the kind of attacks that can affect Superman and one-shot Batman - but he can also one-shot most of the rest of the JLA too. In that sense, Batman is no more vulnerable than the rest. The only kind of mechanical build a character needs to represent that is one with enough Body to not die. And, of course, Superman is usually taken out by using Kryptonite or the like, rather than by hitting him really hard.

 

Most other opponents don't throw those kind of attacks. They can't affect Superman - hence his power is called "invulnerability", rather than "toughness" - and their effect on other characters is basically similar to that of any other superbeing. That is, Batman, and most other characters, try not to get hit, and are likely to be significantly inconvenienced if they do. On the other hand, they don't die, and usually recover fairly quickly.

 

This is actually a common phenomenon in the source material - a character gets hit once, and is taken out of the fight. Long hard slugging matches are rarer than in most Champions games I've played in/seen. This is one of the differences between RPGs and comics/animation/whatever.

 

Basically, I think the source material contains a lot more glass cannons than we are used to in the game. Physically tough opponents are rarer than we are accustomed to, and thus we tend to overestimate the amount of damage being thrown around.

 

Of course, that's muddied by the btb benchmarks presented in the Hero System, where superbeings are relatively weak compared to tanks and so on.

[phoenix240]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

It could be good to discuss the difference in character building between "realistic" and "comic booky" (for lack of better terms) campaigns and character building methods. This isn't just an epic campaign concern, but depending on the type of characters used, may be more necessary than with low-powered campaigns.

 

As an example, my world strictly forbids gadgeteers as main characters, and they are extremely rare as villains. There are no Green Arrows and Batmans, because the first time they fight a mook, they get shot, which gets them dead. There are invulnerable detectives, but normal detectives are on the police force, not running around in costumes. Having Olympic-level physical characteristics get you nowhere. Detectives with Olympic-level physique still die when they get shot, which would happen regularly. So, in this style campaign epic characters by default need powers, or at least powered armor to survive. Power levels can still differ greatly among the characters, but they have to survive being punched by bricks, hit by energy beams, and shot with assault rifles.

 

In a more typical comic book story, Green Arrow can go up against Darkseid, fer example, and live, because he never, ever gets hit seriously by anything - that's Superman's job for that story. He's in every major battle, but the villains totally ignore him and concentrate on those that can take the hit. Living Laser will ignore Daredevil to go after Wolverine, etc. Or, the more powerful the opponent, the better the wimpy hero's defenses are. He can beat up a couple mooks, barely. But he can also beat up a couple demons from hell, alien invaders, super soldiers, and several low-powered supers at a time.

 

In the first case, armor is always armor - it resists damage. In the second, armor is often the sfx of the power "writer's or GMs favor". In the first, high CV or dodge is always used, and always noticed. In the second case, it is also always used, but it is never noticed. Green Arrow can't dodge bullets - that's the Flash's job - but he has the same DCV to model not getting targeted. It's not that the villains can't hit the hero, it's that they rarely even try to do so, even if it would be the obvious thing to do. With a good GM and group, this can simply be handled by the GM never making big attacks against the low-defense heroes. Most players can't handle the uncertainty, or dislike that another takes no damage while they are beat up, so using builds that mimic comic writers inherent dislike of hurting the low-defense heroes is often the only way to go.

 

Anyway, if an epic campaign is to be done, one of the first things that needs decided is the "realism" level and if meta-gaming concerns can influence builds.

 

Yeah, One of the reasons I prefer lower power level campaigns is my favorite character types aren't either unworkable or extremely "meta gamed".

[assault]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

In a more typical comic book story' date=' Green Arrow can go up against Darkseid, fer example, and live, because he never, ever gets hit seriously by anything - that's Superman's job for that story. He's in every major battle, but the villains totally ignore him and concentrate on those that can take the hit.[/quote']

 

Actually, in a lot of cases, there are good reasons for that.

 

(a) Superman, Green Lantern or whoever represent more of a threat, and are thus the priority targets.

( Superman, Green Lantern or whoever makes a point of drawing fire away from their non-invulnerable team mates. In this case, they will be the ones to directly and frontally engage Darkseid.

© Superman, Green Lantern or whoever actively protect their non-invulnerable team mates from fire. GL will create protective shields, Superman will interpose himself in front of his team mates and so on.

 

This is because they are team players. They are invulnerable, the others aren't, and they act accordingly.

 

Now, we could argue that this proves that the non-invulnerable team members are liabilities and time wasters, but that's another argument.

 

Part of the reason the non-invulnerable characters survive is because the invulnerable ones protect them.

 

I doubt many PC groups would do that, alas.

[assault]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

Incidentally, a low of what we are discussing applies to speedsters too. At high power levels, they are going to be hit, and hit hard. They need to be able to survive that. Likewise for shrinking characters, and other "not being hit" specialists.

 

We're not just picking on Batman and Green Arrow.

 

Oh, and characters need to be able to survive the occasions when their Achilles' heels are attacked too. Green Lantern shouldn't just die when someone hits him with a gold bullet, or yellow wavelength laser.

 

There is a real issue with survivability for virtually all characters.

 

Maybe we should create a thread for posting high point total characters, so we can really see what we are talking about in game terms.

[dmjalund]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

Actually, in a lot of cases, there are good reasons for that.

 

(a) Superman, Green Lantern or whoever represent more of a threat, and are thus the priority targets.

( Superman, Green Lantern or whoever makes a point of drawing fire away from their non-invulnerable team mates. In this case, they will be the ones to directly and frontally engage Darkseid.

© Superman, Green Lantern or whoever actively protect their non-invulnerable team mates from fire. GL will create protective shields, Superman will interpose himself in front of his team mates and so on.

 

This is because they are team players. They are invulnerable, the others aren't, and they act accordingly.

 

Now, we could argue that this proves that the non-invulnerable team members are liabilities and time wasters, but that's another argument.

 

Part of the reason the non-invulnerable characters survive is because the invulnerable ones protect them.

 

I doubt many PC groups would do that, alas.

Maybe we need an equivalent of D&D 4E Marking, so that the "Superman" character can 'force' the villain(s) to target him.

[megaplayboy]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

Maybe we need an equivalent of D&D 4E Marking' date=' so that the "Superman" character can 'force' the villain(s) to target him.[/quote']

 

The essential problem of the "take the weakest guys out first then concentrate on the toughest ones" strategy is that the other guys can and will do the same thing, and they might be better at it. If the Paragon-type character gets bypassed to take down the mystery man, they can respond in kind by taking down the other side's mystery man(or a glass cannon type character). So they have to dedicate enough firepower toward the tougher heroes to at least keep them preoccupied.

[megaplayboy]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

Incidentally, a low of what we are discussing applies to speedsters too. At high power levels, they are going to be hit, and hit hard. They need to be able to survive that. Likewise for shrinking characters, and other "not being hit" specialists.

 

We're not just picking on Batman and Green Arrow.

 

Oh, and characters need to be able to survive the occasions when their Achilles' heels are attacked too. Green Lantern shouldn't just die when someone hits him with a gold bullet, or yellow wavelength laser.

 

There is a real issue with survivability for virtually all characters.

 

Incidentally, maybe we should create a thread for posting high point total characters, so we can really see what we are talking about in game terms.

 

An old thread:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/41818-Project-1000-Build-a-Legend-Megahero?highlight=project+1000

Several high powered character writeup threads done by Enforcer84:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/65003-Dr-Hank-Pym-(Marvel)

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/40592-CHAR-Martian-Manhunter

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/41559-The-Collected-DC-amp-Marvel-Writeups

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/50219-CHAR-Captain-Marvel-(Shazam)

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/50194-Char-Power-Girl

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/85571-Mary-Marvel-(5e-1200pts)

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/84625-The-Incredible-Hulk

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/84130-Eternals-Package-Deal

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/53767-CHAR-Big-Barda

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/72471-Else-Earth-Pantheons-of-the-Verse

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/40858-CHAR-Captain-America

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/34727-God-Package

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/41489-CHAR-Iron-Man

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/62702-Count-Nefaria-(Marvel-Work-in-Progress)

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/40269-Character-The-Flash

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/54131-CHAR-Black-Panther

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/53913-CHAR-Mister-Miracle

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/41046-CHAR-Thor-(Marvel-Style)

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/40788-CHAR-Batman

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/40033-CHAR-Superman

Omega Girl:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/24896-Omega-Girl-(of-Jane-s-Superhuman-s-fame)?highlight=circle

The New Circle(lots of epic level mystic/magic/supernatural/mythical types)

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/23376-The-New-Circle?highlight=the+new+circle

 

There's more, will update as I am able...

 

Another:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/12892-1000-Point-JLA-Campaign

[megaplayboy]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

What's interesting in those Enforcer writeups is that Mister Miracle, Black Panther, Batman and Captain America all clock in at around 1000+ points.

[csyphrett]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

I always mean to add to the new circle thread but can't get around to it.

CES

[phoenix240]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

What's interesting in those Enforcer writeups is that Mister Miracle' date=' Black Panther, Batman and Captain America all clock in at around 1000+ points.[/quote']

 

Though to be fair Enforcer's writeup of 'mazing Man would probably come in at about 700.

 

I'm joking!

[megaplayboy]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

Though to be fair Enforcer's writeup of 'mazing Man would probably come in at about 700.

 

I'm joking!

 

 

To be fair, there are probably posters here who would start a "Dr. Manhattan on 250 points" thread.

[Enforcer84]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

Though to be fair Enforcer's writeup of 'mazing Man would probably come in at about 700.

 

I'm joking!

 

Don't tempt me!

[Enforcer84]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

 

To be fair, there are probably posters here who would start a "Dr. Manhattan on 250 points" thread.

 

Cassandra did it.

[Enforcer84]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

As you can probably guess, I'm on the high level side of things.

I have no problem with Archers and Batman archetypes in my games. I can have Bats and Superman on the same team and they both can participate. It might take a little extra work for the GM to give them the spotlight - professional writers have trouble not making Batman overshadow everyone which makes me laugh.

[JmOz]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

The problem writers have with Batman is that they tend to downgrade other heroes into idiots, and power creep on batman has made him an expert in EVERYTHING. I read a story a couple months ago, from the 80's where Batman was asked about something, and his response was that he didn't know much about Meterology, but knew someone who he could talk to,. I was blown away, it had been so long sense I saw him not be mister I know everything

[megaplayboy]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

The problem writers have with Batman is that they tend to downgrade other heroes into idiots' date=' and power creep on batman has made him an expert in EVERYTHING. I read a story a couple months ago, from the 80's where Batman was asked about something, and his response was that he didn't know much about Meterology, but knew someone who he could talk to,. I was blown away, it had been so long sense I saw him not be mister I know everything[/quote']

 

Batwikipedia.

[Balabanto]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

Shouldn't that be on the Genre Crossover Nightmares thread?

[kahuna's bro]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

The problem writers have with Batman is that they tend to downgrade other heroes into idiots' date=' and power creep on batman has made him an expert in EVERYTHING. I read a story a couple months ago, from the 80's where Batman was asked about something, and his response was that he didn't know much about Meterology, but knew someone who he could talk to,. I was blown away, it had been so long sense I saw him not be mister I know everything[/quote']

 

ironic for a herowho wouldnt know a superpwer if it bit him

[megaplayboy]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

I'm halfway through the combat tips section, and have written about 22k words total so far. The advice/guidebook section should run to about 50k words when I'm finished, then the other half will be sample campaign settings, epic power writeups, "generic" epic archetype templates, and actual character, vehicle, item and base writeups. The 6th edition Champions genre book runs to 300 pages/150,000 words, so that's my benchmark(100-150k total) to achieve for an epic level superhero campaigning sourcebook. A full setting book would likely be similarly sized.

[Mister E]

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

 

What the heck does Batman not know about meteorology? This lack seems artificial. If Batman doesn't know something about the weather, I wave the BS-flag if some dork in a suit on TV does.

 

It reminds me of Shurlock Holmes (Sir A. C. Doyle, really) who didn't think he had room in his mind to store little things... like the fact that the Earth was round.

 

One word: "Cottingley Fairies."

 

Two words: Doyle didn't really know a whole lot about anything.

 

Let's not penalize Batman. I bet he knows more about weather than Thor.