Some thoughts on character types

[assault]

This is just a vague idea that has been floating around in my head for a while...

 

The earliest Golden Age superheroes can be loosely categorised as (a) wizards, ( mystery men or © supermen.

 

For example, Mandrake preceded Superman. Zatara appeared in Action #1, alongside Superman. These are "wizards". They are physically capable humans, but their main abilities involve magic.

 

Mystery men include the Phantom, who followed Mandrake, but also preceded Superman. Action #1 featured various pulp style characters, including Tex Thompson, who would eventually become a costumed hero. The Crimson Avenger appeared a few months after Superman. Batman, of course, eventually became the best known and most successful member of this group.

 

Typically, a member of this group is a physically and mentally superior human. They are typically more capable than "wizards", but lacking their magical abilities. They may, of course, use equipment.

 

Superman, of course, was the prototype of my "supermen" category. These characters have superhuman abilities. Often, but not always, these include superhuman strength, invulnerability, and superhumanly fast movement, often including flight.

 

This doesn't cover all Golden Age characters adequately, but it is near enough for my current purposes.

 

There's one group I should mention, and that is the mad scientist type character. I think they can generally be folded into my "wizard" category.

 

It's possible to think of these groups having something of a "paper, scissors, rock" type relationship.

 

Generally speaking, a mystery man is physically outclassed by a superman. On the other hand, a wizard's magic (or science) can defeat a superman. However, a wizard is vulnerable to a good punch in the face from a mystery man.

 

Of course, this works the other way around as well. A superman can get the drop on a wizard, and punch him even harder than a mystery man. A wizard who gets the drop on a mystery man can take him out too.

 

The only uncertain thing is whether a mystery man can take out a superman. Clearly they can, but not under normal circumstances. This is the only questionable link in this chain.

 

Obviously a mystery man can take out another mystery man, a wizard another wizard, and a superman another superman. That's a matter of tactics, luck and slight variations in ability.

 

So there's a rough, simplistic "class system" for Golden Age superbeings. It's actually a bit "Fighter, Magic User, Thief", isn't it?

[Christopher]

I am not so certain about it. You should not forget that Kryptonians have a know Vulnerability to Magic (it has been named by him and his enemies in multiple recent incarnations). Without that, Mystisc would not be a Challenge.

And they regulary beat up the Creations of Mad Scientists (indeed those creations only exist to give him a viable Challenge), so they seem hardly "weak" towards Mad Scientists.

The one thing always giving Supes a Challenge was Lex Luthor, a Mystery Man.

 

Each of the Fantastic Four would be considered a Superhuman, yet you would not consider them being especially vulnerable to a Mystic. Dr. Doom is just too powerfull to enter any meaningfull discussion here, as he is like the 1000 Point Villain in a 400 Point game.

 

That a Superhuman beats a Mystery Man is mostly because the Mystery man is built on lesser points. Batman has been upgraded over the years to be more on par with the other Justice Leaguers. And even then he still needs Kryptonite or Artificial Red Sun Light to beat the Man of Steel.

[ayinde]

Whitewolf put out a game that ran on a a similar idea it was called adventure and was the prequel to aberrant . For the most part the 3 hero types balanced out

[ayinde]

Christopher you make some good points but his idea is fairly right for a golden age setting. Gold lex was a mad science user and superman was well superman the silver age brought highbrid ideas mostly mystery man/superman character style

[Ninja-Bear]

Assault I'm not sure if this would be another archtype or subarchtype of mystery man, the military man/secret government man.

[Cassandra]

All Golden Age Heroes seem to have a Vulnerability to Surprise Attacks. While they can defeat anyone in a fair fight, all seem to fall unconscious to a blow to the back of the head, a chloroform cloth over their nose and mouth, or sleep gas.

 

It's a good idea to have Contortionist skills for any hero that doesn't have superhuman strength.

[Greywind]

All Golden Age Heroes seem to have a Vulnerability to Surprise Attacks. While they can defeat anyone in a fair fight, all seem to fall unconscious to a blow to the back of the head, a chloroform cloth over their nose and mouth, or sleep gas.

 

It's a good idea to have Contortionist skills for any hero that doesn't have superhuman strength.

5r, pg 380:

A character Surprised while out of combat

is at ½ DCV and takes 2x STUN from the attack;

moreover, the penalty for any Placed Shot is halved

(see page 415). Double the STUN damage before

applying defenses (and, in campaigns using the Hit

Locations rules, before applying the STUN modifi

er for a location).

 

So that is already in place.

[Ninja-Bear]

Assault is there a specific power level you are looking at? I mess around writing up some characters based on descriptions from the public domain of super heroes and I've built '"supers" on heroic level and points (standard 150 points to be exact). Now as a disclaimer, I haven't ran any in any real games. But I think that considering how basic most of them were, it is very doable.

[assault]

To be honest, if I was going to take this seriously, I wouldn't use the Hero System except in an extremely cut down form. I'd be just as likely to use original (1974) D&D. Or maybe Boot Hill (1975).

 

Of course I could build Champions templates around these types of characters. They wouldn't be very useful, though, IMHO, since they lump together such horribly different characters.

[Ninja-Bear]

 

What!?!?! I thought that Champions was so you could put horribly different characters together for play? What I did for a rough guideline was master villains and heroes started at the competent level and thugs were at skilled level. Also I used the the guidelines for characteristics and skills in the rulebook and only bought which was justified in the description. I found that I had points left over. The name of the character I completely written up was Cyclone.

 

[Cassandra]

All Golden Age Heroes seem to have a Vulnerability to Surprise Attacks. While they can defeat anyone in a fair fight, all seem to fall unconscious to a blow to the back of the head, a chloroform cloth over their nose and mouth, or sleep gas.

 

It's a good idea to have Contortionist skills for any hero that doesn't have superhuman strength.

True, but a lot of them were knocked out with one blow regardless of their strength or power. Wonder Woman, for example was often knocked out by a blow to the back of her head in the 1940s.

[Greywind]

All Golden Age Heroes seem to have a Vulnerability to Surprise Attacks. While they can defeat anyone in a fair fight, all seem to fall unconscious to a blow to the back of the head, a chloroform cloth over their nose and mouth, or sleep gas.

 

It's a good idea to have Contortionist skills for any hero that doesn't have superhuman strength.

Plot device. "Ha! I shall let them think they've knocked me out, and when they tie me up and take me back to their headquarters, I'll be in the perfect place to find out what their master plan is!"

 

"Kill him!"

 

"Wait! What?!"

[Cassandra]

Energy Projectors like The Human Torch were around in the Golden Age.

[assault]

Energy Projectors like The Human Torch were around in the Golden Age.

Yes. In fact, one of the earliest ones, The Flame, was created to replace Wonder Man, a superman knockoff who was sued out of existence by DC. http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Flame_%28Fox%29

 

Many of these could be included in my "superman" category, with a few possibly more suited to my "wizard" category. Archers like Green Arrow are "mystery men".

 

Speaking of wizards, Doctor Fate and Green Lantern are best treated as "supermen" too, since they are invulnerable, fly, and rely heavily on their fists.

[kahuna's bro]

 

a golden age version of a martial artist obviously not called such would be a wrestler or a boxer ala WILDCAT

[assault]

a golden age version of a martial artist obviously not called such would be a wrestler or a boxer ala WILDCAT

My "mystery men" category covers them, along with folks like Sandman, Green Arrow, Air Wave and the Red Bee.

 

The difficult cases are people like Hawkman, or even Starman.

[Cassandra]

Energy Projectors like The Human Torch were around in the Golden Age.

Dr. Fate and Green Lantern (Alan Scott) are more Mystic/Gadgeteers. Their powers come from mystic devices (Helmet/Power Ring). Wonder Woman would be a Brick/Mystic. While her physical strength comes from being an Amazon, her magic lasso, bracelets, and invisible plane as magical items.

[assault]

Energy Projectors like The Human Torch were around in the Golden Age.

"Mystic/Gadgeteer" more or less corresponds to my "wizard" category, which of course I named before deciding to incorporate mad scientists into it.

 

Dr Fate and Green Lantern typically operated more like bricks than anything else. That puts them firmly in my "superman" category.

 

Wonder Woman fits in there too, although more awkwardly. The key thing her opponents had to do to defeat her was to circumvent/neutralise her abilities, just like they would have to do if they were fighting Superman.

 

I don't have a "Brick/Mystic" category. That's a different descriptive system ("language").

 

In fact, that's what this thread is about - a discussion of how to categorise characters in a different way. Obviously my "system" is incomplete and has difficult edge cases, but I'm finding it an interesting way to think about characters. Hopefully I will be able to use it to build a set of character templates and example characters.

 

In terms of inspiration, I've been looking at Superhero 2044, the very first published superhero rpg. It was unplayable, but it was also the inspiration for, and a massive influence on Champions and most of the other early superhero rpgs. In fact, many of them seem to have been created as a response to its deficiencies. This seems to have been the case with Champions.

 

Anyway, SH 2044, as an early rpg, has a kind of character class system, dividing them into "uniques", "toolmasters" and "ubermenschen". While I've followed a different logic, my categories have ended up being fairly similar. The main difference is that while SH 2044 tended to lump magic using characters into the "unique" category, I've explicitly located them along with the "toolmasters" in my "wizard" category. On the other hand, I probably would place some "toolmasters" (Starman?) in my "superman" category.

 

Just to complicate matters, my "supermen" and SH 2044's "ubermenschen" are completely different.

 

But in general, and this convergence was unintentional, my "supermen" roughly correspond with SH 2044's "uniques", my "wizards" with "toolmasters" and my "mystery men" with "ubermenschen".

 

I'm not sure if I will be able to take advantage of that. I suspect that it would be more relevant to creating a setting than anything else. SH 2044 included an impressively concisely described setting, that while a bit rough, is a very good example of how to write something that inspires expansion. I might be able to use it as a model, substituting my categories for his.

[assault]

I have a rather defective version of 1938 Superman I'm working on at the moment. 6e, 400 points. He's a variation on my very old 250 point 5e version.

 

If I can get him to work, he'd provide a useful basis for a template, since, after all, most subsequent superheroes ripped him off to one degree or another, and the degree tended to be less in the early days.

 

Balancing him against my mystery men would be the next issue.

[Greywind]

Energy Projectors like The Human Torch were around in the Golden Age.

Fate is a full-blown wizard in his own right. Having Nabu riding shotgun just makes him more powerful/knowledgeable.

[Christopher]

All Golden Age Heroes seem to have a Vulnerability to Surprise Attacks. While they can defeat anyone in a fair fight, all seem to fall unconscious to a blow to the back of the head, a chloroform cloth over their nose and mouth, or sleep gas.

 

It's a good idea to have Contortionist skills for any hero that doesn't have superhuman strength.

The concept that "What works in Fiction does not nessesarily work well in a RPG" also affects things like Complications.

This is one of the most obvious and extreme cases. And extreme cases will most likely fail in a RPG.

 

So the best way might be to not model that at all.