How Violent Are Your Superheroes?

[Cassandra]

Question to all. How violent are your superheroes? Do they kill? Or do they capture the villains even at the risk of their own lives?

[Enforcer84]

Pretty violent without being lethal? I could count the number of death's my PC's have caused on one hand.

[Uthanar]

The character that I play attempts to be a pacifist. She was created as a super hero in a ritual meant to sacrifice her to open a portal between the Abyss and NYC, the fifth victim in the ritual and the final one needed. This caused her to be a convergence of magickal energies, energies that she has had to master or go insane. She has felt pain and suffering and wishes to harm as few people as possible.

 

However, I am primarily a GM and only get to play that character on weeks that one of my players is running for me (approaching 50 sessions and have gotten to play 6 of those sessions).

 

My players are as follows:

 

Lady Liberty is an icon of the American people and extremely opposed to killing anyone. She generally attempts to negotiate before resorting to her fists, but when push comes to shove is willing to go to the lowest form of conflict resolution. She will not kill.

 

Taser is a soldier exposed to a lifeform from within the walls of reality. He believes in the higher cause, but I think he would be willing to kill someone if it comes down to it. He wants to leave a lot of his past behind him as a soldier, but sometimes you have to get the job done. In fact, in one of the games that I was playing in we were presented with an alternate world version of Taser that was very willing to kill people as long as it would save the people in his reality. The attitude that modeled the dark version of him was based on the actions and sentiments that the character has voiced at times, though were taken a few degrees further.

 

Blink is a retarded janitor that got caught in a lab accident and was infected with nanites that have super charged his body. He is now the world's dumbest speedster. He is new to our game so I am not certain, but I think that he would not seek the death of anyone. He has acted out of compassion when I have seen him in action over the past 6 games we have played. I do not know if he would seek non violent resolutions, as lately we have been given situations where violent resolution was forced upon the team.

 

Pulse is a genius college graduate who improved on a prototype he saw during his internship, combined that with his own invention and became a Power Armored Genius with Too Much Power. Destruction seems to follow in Pulse's wake, and he has a bad reputation. If you ask people if they trust Pulse, most will tell you that they don't. However, the man within the suit I do not think is capable of killing anyone. Pulse generally acts like if someone is shooting at him to start with, he should respond with action and not words.

 

Finally, we have Aces the Lucky Cop. Aces was trained to be able to kill people as a policeman, but also the necessity of restraint from taking that action. He has repeatedly called for less lethal action during engagements from some individuals working near him. If push came to shove, Aces could take the shot, but it is not in his nature to seek that sort of alternative. He has attempted to defuse situations with his words many times.

 

Everyone would risk their lives to capture instead of kill a villain.

[Hermit]

Pretty violent without being lethal? I could count the number of death's my PC's have caused on one hand.

 

Pretty much the same. It varies from character to character, of course. I've had characters break bones without remorse, and I've had others who put on the kid gloves and keep them on when others are cutting loose.

[Greywind]

"To combat violence, you need greater violence!" Peter Hartman, Nighthawks

 

I have some "shining example" heroes. I have Punisher-type vigilantes. I have "whatever happens in the heat of battle is okay" types.

[Christopher]

I never made Violent Heroes as such. It mostly depends on the Campaign rules about expected Lethatlity.

 

I often make the literal True Blue hero - full CvK simply belongs to the deal then.

 

But I sometimes made a Superhero intentionally without full CvK or without one at all (not killing is partially covered by other Limitations, though Killing is also fuelled by them). They aren't cold blooded Killers or anything. They just accept that sometimes attacking full force is the only way to save life and end a conflict. Usually they have some military background or had an unusual upbringing (quite often they are also extraterestials, so totally different values might apply).

If they had to choose between letting a minor foe escape or saving a life, they would save the life and let the villain go. If the only reliably way to save even a single life would be at the cost of the villains life, they would take the villains life. If a crippling attack can have the same effect, they would choose the crippling attack over a lethal one.

What they would never do is killing someone who surrendered or is knocked out. If they have to take a life in combat, the only remorse they would feel would be about them not being strong enough to having a better option.

 

Ironically the same Characters that would kill in combat, would also be against the Death Penalty:

"Killing is a way to end a Conflict, not a way to prevent Conflicts." (This Character accepts that Conflict are inevitable and the only thing one can prevent is to cause conflicts yourself)

"A life might not be worth another life, but it is worth the cost to keep them locked up securely. Death Penalty is only a cost saving measure."

"Wastefull. Back home we just extract the brain, remove anything related to personality and install them into devices. Faster then making a AI, instanly able to communicate verbally and much lower chance to attack all living things. Plus this way they can still serve the community." (this Characters Species is exceptional in Biotechnology and they propably have made bechmarks vs. real A.I.'s - so it is a viable approach back home)

[Corsair]

It depends on the nature of the campaign. Gritty, underworld, counter-culture "heroes", and no holds barred. Bright shining super-hero utopia with government sanctioning to non-lethal groups and even the villains tend to keep the gentlemen's agreement to be civilized. And then there was the odd campaign where the unwritten rule was to stymie the GM with laid-back heroes who thought of powers as something to have a good time with. Fight villains? Why? You just get bloody and dirty.

[assault]

Number of characters killed by my personal PCs: Zero.

 

That said, these days I intentionally use Code of the Hero instead of CvK, in order to allow for alien invasions, fighting Nazis and similar war-type situations. And even then the goal would be as bloodless a victory as possible.

 

In terms of violence in a more general sense, my characters are usually more interested in protecting innocents than in hitting bad guys. Their responses in a conflict are initially likely to be relatively non-violent, only resorting to punching faces when it proves necessary.

[Lucius]

Wait, beating people up doesn't constitute "violence?"

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is wondering if this is one of those "alcohol isn't a drug" things

[phoenix240]

It varies from team to team, character to character but if I had to generalize I'd say that overall most feel that violence carries the risk of injury and death and by engaging in it you take that chance. They're not cold blooded murderers (though some of them have enemies and nemesis that would at least make them consider it...) but many consider themselves soldiers or cops so lethality is always a possibility. Not many NPCs or PCs have died so far, thanks partly to mercy and how difficult it is to accidentally kill a Champions character as opposed to knocking then unconscious.

[BTolputt]

Depends on the campaign to be honest.

 

I introduced my sons to Champions using characters I wrote up as an Avengers team analogue. They bought into the whole movie style heroism so they love turning aliens into paste but will only go so far as beating thugs, mooks, and "human" villains into unconsciousness. So standard comic serial violence.

 

In another campaign I played in some years back, the GM was exploring the concept of super-heroes in a more realistic world. He'd been reading The Ultimates, so funnily enough the Avengers played into that too. Anyway, when putting the characters together, one of the recurring elements was that folks with super powers are from all walks of life, not just from people who'd have a code vs killing. So some of the characters were against hard violence of all forms as you'd expect from a middle-aged mother of three & a university student pothead, but others were quite fine with the idea of killing those they need to (soldier & gang banger).

 

[Matt Holck]

The mind controlling squirl is likely CIA lab experiment gene crossed from "the story teller" an earlier mind controller.

 

I've got a Jedi knight that could be friends with the squirl in that pocket dementia . 3d6 KA light saber = lethal

 

I've got multiform undecided (will have to tell that player it must stay 1 below on all peak abilities of other characters)

 

[Old Man]

How violent are my superheroes? Two words: Quentin Tarantino.

 

I'm kidding. My heroes don't shy away from hitting bad guys to make them stop whatever they're doing, but neither do they seek revenge killings.

 

One caveat: My characters tend to 'inadvertently' inflict the maximum possible property damage on the surrounding area. Property damage greatly amuses me as a player.

[Altheus]

My group had a habit of turning major henchmen in to installation art embedded in walls with variously broken bones, this habit developed after we found that holding back got our arses kicked a couple of times. The only individual we actively went after with a view to doing whatever was necessary to stop them ws Black Paladin who slaughtered random people in the street to power up some kind of ritual. We decided that he was going down as hard as possible and if he didn't get up, so much the better. (Got around the code vs killing because he is or appears to be undead)