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The Sentinels


PaladinAg

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Sentinel 8 is Mercury.  He is a detective with the Met who acquired powers in an industrial accident.  Unsurprisingly with a name like Mercury he is a speedster (in my campaign settings the Roman gods were actually the Greek 'gods', so he isn't in danger of a visit/hunted from a very powerful entitiy!)

 

PaladinAg

 

 

For Mercury, you might add "Selective Fire" to his Running Punch so he doesn't affect the civilians or hostages...

 

For what it's worth, the Trail Advantage was introduced in the 5e Ultimate Speedster and later reprinted in the the 6e Advanced Players Guide 1.  As written, it is a (+1) Advantage.  Adding Selective to it would be an additional (+1/4) and require a normal 'to hit' roll for each target in the 'Trail'.  A second application of AOE Accurate (+1/2) could also be applied so each individual attack is still vs. the DCV of the area instead of each character.

 

To stack both on to my rookie version of the Flash would reduce the HA damage to +4d6 and reduce bonus damage to ~1/3rd of normal (15 STR adds +1d6, movement and maneuver damage adds at 1/3rd the normal rate).

 

Superspeed Clothes-Line:  Hand-To-Hand Attack +6d6, Area Of Affect (Trail) - from APG1 page 135 (6e damage prorating rules mean that STR and Manuever Damage adds at 1/2 the normal rate (20 STR adds +2DC, Move By adds +1DC per 20m); +1) (60 Active Points); Hand-To-Hand Attack (-1/4)

[Notes]: From APG1 page 135.  A Trail is 2m wide and tall, and as long as the character’s movement in the Phase; it cannot be made longer, larger, or taller unless the GM specifically permits. (Using Noncombat Movement, or Pushing or otherwise increasing movement increases the length of the Trail.)  A Trail only works in conjunction with a character’s movement. It follows his movement path, so if he zigs and zags in and out among various obstacles, the Trail will also.

 

 

HM

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OK.  That is enough artwork.  Now onto the Sentinel Legion.  This is effectively the backup team to the Sentinels as they aren't as powerful (400 pt v 450 pt).

 

First up is Longbow.  He is a weapon master with a...bow. Yes there are many other bow using characters, but a British one named after the famous war bow of medieval Britain just seems right.  French readers may object :winkgrin:

 

PaladinAg

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Sentinel Legionary 2 is Amethyst.  She was jut the 5' tall housekeeper until she was exposed to extreme levels of mutagenic radiation by Dr Terror.  This transformed her in from a petite 5' tall woman into a 7'6" tall purple giantess with the strength to match.  

Dr Terror is the power mad dictator of Ruthenia (a real place in what is now Ukraine) that broke away as part of the collapse of Soviet rule in 1991.  He has access to super technology and uses this to keep himself in power and seek to achieve world domination.  His forces are primarily robotic (so players can use their Killing Attacks without worrying about their "code v killing"/"reluctant to kill" psych complications!) 

Amethyst is a classic "only in alternative identity" brick as she has to transform to use her powers.  Not common at all, oh no...

PaladinAg

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Sentinel Legionary 4 is Galatea.  She is android who gianed self awareness and powers through an unknown means.  Some of the inspiration for this character is from a certain red, green and yellow Marvel android, some from the Angel-3 character from C4 High Tech Enemies and perhaps from a certain well known play/legend.

 

PaladinAg

 

 

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Valkyrie

 

Ung, looks like a bad case of running right over the campaign limits.

 

As far as I can tell, she can produce the following combat 'stances'

 

OCV 14, DCV 14, DC 17 HKA (4d6 HKA + find weakness + 2DC from strike Maneuver), with 3 overall levels still to be allocated

 

OCV 13, DCV 11, DC 18 HKD (4e6 HKA + all 6 strike levels allocated to DC, +2 overall levels allocated to DC, +2 DC from the strike maneuver) With 1 overall level left to allocate

 

So it looks like her average CV is around 13, with around DC 18 attacks.

 

Vs DC 18 normal attacks, you'd take 37 STUN (out of 50) and have no chance of resisting CON stun. Against a DC 18 killing attack, you'd lose 8 BODY.

Against a D18 mental attacks, you lose around half your STUN and are CON stunned as well.

Against DC18 mind control you are looking at an EGO +40 result with an average roll.

 

-----------

 

Next, 'sublime strike' makes any combat maneuver not covered by these skill levels a really bad alternate choice. That's +6 OCV or +3 DC, against someone you really have to work to fight, you'd always want to do that.

 

With your unified powers, something like 4d6 or 5d6 Drain STR (which would be an incidental power in a DC 18 game) is enough to drain a vast majority of your added stats. Since you have almost all your stats in a unified power, almost any drain that targets stats is going to hit them all. Even a bunch of minions with 3d6 drain STR 1m AOE weapons make your character significantly weaker. If this was set up to be your 'weakness' that would be fine, but all of the characters in this group seem to be build using the same 'unified power build tech'. This means that any opponent that has a AOE drain or can hand out drain guns to minions, or something similar, almost auto wins against the team. Against a single hero, that's fine, since one of the purposes of the team is to cover your weaknesses, but it's the whole team...

 

-----------

 

Not sure why 'always on' on tough skin is worth (-1/2). If it supposed to make things like medical treatment on you harder, shouldn't that be a complication instead? If it's in response to the recent "can you mind control someone to turn off their defenses?" I thought the consensus there was that was probably a (-/+ 0) advantage most of the time?

 

Note that you can't normally put naked advantages in power frameworks, so you should make a note that 'Asgardian Close combat' does this'

 

Vambraces of Defence may be better built as a bunch of bonuses to the block maneuver, since no range deflection that requires an abort seems to be the block maneuver under another name. Is there any specific reason you did it as no range deflection?

 

Maybe make touch of truth work vs Mental defense, instead of power defense? It's a 0 cost swap.

 

-----------

 

Is there some form of team transportation available? Otherwise, how does she get across the city to stop the bank robbery (or whatever)? She can run/jump at 60 km/h which at least spares you the indignity of having to take a cab, but it's still may b e abit slow.

 

[edit]

Whoops, sorry. Was looking at Storm Front as well when writing this up; Valkyrie doesn't have find weakness. But she can still manage DC18 attacks by allocating skills levels to DC...

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Storm Front

 

Looks like CV 9, DC 15? with two levels to allocate, so really CV 9-11, DC 15-16?

 

Fighting a similar powered character means taking 27.5 STUN from the average roll DC 15 attack and being CON stunned too. Is wiped out by any mental powers, sense affectors, and most drain attackers.

 

Weather Powers multipower has so many slots that it might be better to do as a VPP instead. A quick count says you spent something like 61 points on multipower slots.

 

"Wind Cushion": turns out that knockback resistance is a special power, so should only go in power frameworks with GM permission. So you should make a note of it. (Also, breakfall is the same way, skills qualify as special powers)

 

Seems to fly at around 316 km/h so able to get across the city quickly under own power.

 

Will say that Storm Front appears to have many more 'interesting' combat options than Valkyrie does.

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British Lion

 

Is he meant to be on pain killers (25% damage resistance) 'all' the time? If not, his defenses look weak compared to the rest of the charaters. He's SPD 6, and one of the classic trade offs for speedsters is lower defenses, but Storm Front is also SPD 6 and doesn't make the DEF trade off.

 

Only looks like CV 9, DC 13 so he seems considerably weaker than Valkyrie and Storm Front in combat.

 

Should't he have more EGO, mental defense, and PRE defense, as the batman type character?

Looking at Valkyrie, who can do something like DC 12 PRE attacks, poor British Lion starts off at PRE +20 (awed). If the person doing that kind of PRE attack has some advantages, he can easily get to 'cowed'. In addition, with EGO 13 and only 3 resistance and no mental defense, he's pretty easy to interrogate or mind control.

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Persinette

 

Haven't really looked yet, but noticed 'Sleep' and 'Deeper Sleep' in the multipower. Are these supposed to be additive? If so, that's not allowed:

 

6E1, p 398

a character cannot buy a slot in his Power Framework defined as “Blast +8d6” to add to the Blast 12d6 slot in the same Power Framework or another Power Framework

So you'd need to be 6d6 mental blast in a variable slot, or make the other 2d6 of mental blast in deeper sleep a linked power or something instead.

 

May have also missed similar things in the multipowers of the other characters.

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Valkyrie

 

Ung, looks like a bad case of running right over the campaign limits.

 

As far as I can tell, she can produce the following combat 'stances'

 

OCV 14, DCV 14, DC 17 HKA (4d6 HKA + find weakness + 2DC from strike Maneuver), with 3 overall levels still to be allocated

 

OCV 13, DCV 11, DC 18 HKD (4e6 HKA + all 6 strike levels allocated to DC, +2 overall levels allocated to DC, +2 DC from the strike maneuver) With 1 overall level left to allocate

 

So it looks like her average CV is around 13, with around DC 18 attacks.

 

Vs DC 18 normal attacks, you'd take 37 STUN (out of 50) and have no chance of resisting CON stun. Against a DC 18 killing attack, you'd lose 8 BODY.

Against a D18 mental attacks, you lose around half your STUN and are CON stunned as well.

Against DC18 mind control you are looking at an EGO +40 result with an average roll.

 

-----------

 

Next, 'sublime strike' makes any combat maneuver not covered by these skill levels a really bad alternate choice. That's +6 OCV or +3 DC, against someone you really have to work to fight, you'd always want to do that.

 

With your unified powers, something like 4d6 or 5d6 Drain STR (which would be an incidental power in a DC 18 game) is enough to drain a vast majority of your added stats. Since you have almost all your stats in a unified power, almost any drain that targets stats is going to hit them all. Even a bunch of minions with 3d6 drain STR 1m AOE weapons make your character significantly weaker. If this was set up to be your 'weakness' that would be fine, but all of the characters in this group seem to be build using the same 'unified power build tech'. This means that any opponent that has a AOE drain or can hand out drain guns to minions, or something similar, almost auto wins against the team. Against a single hero, that's fine, since one of the purposes of the team is to cover your weaknesses, but it's the whole team...

 

-----------

 

Not sure why 'always on' on tough skin is worth (-1/2). If it supposed to make things like medical treatment on you harder, shouldn't that be a complication instead? If it's in response to the recent "can you mind control someone to turn off their defenses?" I thought the consensus there was that was probably a (-/+ 0) advantage most of the time?

 

Note that you can't normally put naked advantages in power frameworks, so you should make a note that 'Asgardian Close combat' does this'

 

Vambraces of Defence may be better built as a bunch of bonuses to the block maneuver, since no range deflection that requires an abort seems to be the block maneuver under another name. Is there any specific reason you did it as no range deflection?

 

Maybe make touch of truth work vs Mental defense, instead of power defense? It's a 0 cost swap.

 

-----------

 

Is there some form of team transportation available? Otherwise, how does she get across the city to stop the bank robbery (or whatever)? She can run/jump at 60 km/h which at least spares you the indignity of having to take a cab, but it's still may b e abit slow.

 

[edit]

Whoops, sorry. Was looking at Storm Front as well when writing this up; Valkyrie doesn't have find weakness. But she can still manage DC18 attacks by allocating skills levels to DC...

 

Storm Front

 

Looks like CV 9, DC 15? with two levels to allocate, so really CV 9-11, DC 15-16?

 

Fighting a similar powered character means taking 27.5 STUN from the average roll DC 15 attack and being CON stunned too. Is wiped out by any mental powers, sense affectors, and most drain attackers.

 

Weather Powers multipower has so many slots that it might be better to do as a VPP instead. A quick count says you spent something like 61 points on multipower slots.

 

"Wind Cushion": turns out that knockback resistance is a special power, so should only go in power frameworks with GM permission. So you should make a note of it. (Also, breakfall is the same way, skills qualify as special powers)

 

Seems to fly at around 316 km/h so able to get across the city quickly under own power.

 

Will say that Storm Front appears to have many more 'interesting' combat options than Valkyrie does.

 

 

British Lion

 

Is he meant to be on pain killers (25% damage resistance) 'all' the time? If not, his defenses look weak compared to the rest of the charaters. He's SPD 6, and one of the classic trade offs for speedsters is lower defenses, but Storm Front is also SPD 6 and doesn't make the DEF trade off.

 

Only looks like CV 9, DC 13 so he seems considerably weaker than Valkyrie and Storm Front in combat.

 

Should't he have more EGO, mental defense, and PRE defense, as the batman type character?

Looking at Valkyrie, who can do something like DC 12 PRE attacks, poor British Lion starts off at PRE +20 (awed). If the person doing that kind of PRE attack has some advantages, he can easily get to 'cowed'. In addition, with EGO 13 and only 3 resistance and no mental defense, he's pretty easy to interrogate or mind control.

 

Persinette

 

Haven't really looked yet, but noticed 'Sleep' and 'Deeper Sleep' in the multipower. Are these supposed to be additive? If so, that's not allowed:

 

6E1, p 398

 

So you'd need to be 6d6 mental blast in a variable slot, or make the other 2d6 of mental blast in deeper sleep a linked power or something instead.

 

May have also missed similar things in the multipowers of the other characters.

 

First, Crusher Bob thanks for the detailed scrutiny.  Keep it coming!

 

General:

1.  These characters are aimed around a 13 (special rare attack higher) DC, DEF 33 level. 

2.  CV levels are bit all over the place, as it is difficult to work out the effect of blocking, dodging, applying levels to OCV or DCV etc.  Do you have a good way of getting OCV and DCV levels in balance.

3.  I almost have a house rule that CSLs can't be turned into DCs. 

4.  The team has a Mach 10 aircraft that can also submerge.  Getting from A to B isn't a problem.

5.  Where naked advantages are appearing in frameworks I've been reviewing them and putting in "GM Permission" if they stay.

5.  The intent behind the unified power approach is indeed to give a character a definable weakness.  Perhaps I did go a bit overboard with them?

 

In no particular order:

Persinette.  Oops. That's a miss on my behalf.  The intent I was trying to get was that up to effect level X, the character doesn't need to do anything fancy, but beyond that point, gestures etc, extra END are required.  As it complementary, linking wouldn't work (I think).  Possibly a compound slot with the two levels combined into a single slot?

 

Valkyrie.  Given all the other levels, the sublime strike can probably go.  Good idea about making the touch of truth versus Mental Def.  The triggered deflection approach fits better with the character concept.  I always felt that block was a HTH combat manoeuvre.  I didn't know about the 'Mind Control to lower defences' thing,  Inherent may better capture the level of protection but it affects her when she is injured.  Probably no limitation as you suggest.  I would have thought the various close combat feats would have given her some interesting effects.

 

Stormfront.  Using a normal MP vice VPP was an intentional thing.  Filling the gaps in the vulnerabilities doesn't fit the starting character intent.  Perhaps when she gets some experience? 

 

British Lion.  He is more Captain America than Batman really.  He does have a hatful of martial arts and levels which does increase his CVs.  I'll check his PRE levels.  I'll also see about his defence levels (note he has a force shield) .

 

Again, thanks for the comments!

 

PaladinAg

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Discussion on whether you could be mind controlled into turning your armor off is here: Consciously not using powers

 

In general, I think when you are building a team for 'display' they should each take advantage of different 'build tech', both so the team doesn't share the same weakness and so that you don't keep using a particular type of build tech as a crutch.

 

Here's an outline of how I think CV/DC/Def/SPD limits should be handled:

 

You define a CV/DC/Def/SPD set as the 'average hero'. Each character is then allowed to be higher than normal in one category. In addition, they can trade off for higher in one category by being lower in another.

In general, the distance between 'average' and 'high' (or average and low) is as follows:

 

CV: 2 CV (example, if CV 7 is average, then a character who is OCV 10, DCV 8 is 'high', and a character who is OCV 7, DCV 7 is 'low)

DC: 2 DC

Def: 5 Defense (in both PD and ED, so if Def 25 is avearge, PD 30 ED 20 still qualifies as average, and PD 30 ED 30 is 'high')

SPD: 1 point of speed

 

I know these trade offs work reasonably well at

CV 7

DC 10

Def 25

SPD 25

 

Will have to fire excel up to check how they compare at higher average points.

 

---------

 

But I do know that it's probably better to move the power level that certain die amounts equal rather than to push things too high. Setting really high average points means everyone starts needing things like mental defense to avoid a blowout vs someone with appropriate DC mind control.

 

--------

 

So, for example, if you define your averages as

CV 9

DC 12

Def 30 (Avg DC 12 * 2.5 = 30; Somewhere between average DC * 2 and average DC *2.5 is generally where to set this.)

SPD 5

 

Then the guideline for Valkyrie becomes:

CV: High (CV 11)

DC: High (DC 14)

Def: Low (PD/ED average 25)

SPD: average (5)

 

And Storm Front

CV: Average (CV 9)

DC: High (DC 14)

Def: Low (PD/ED average 25)

SPD: high (6)

 

Or something like that.

 

----------------

 

Then, there are generally 3 different ways to be awesome at combat that aren't straight up damage and defense:

Mental powers (mental attack, mental illusion, mind control)

Adjustment powers (drain, transform)

Sensory manipulation (flash, invisibility, darkness, etc)

 

In general, every character should have some response to two categories, but not a strong response to all 3.

 

here is the last time I put together a team of heroes for display.

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Persinette

 

Not sure how SPD that requires a skill roll would work. Roll at the start of every turn to see what your speed will be?

 

 

Feels like the multipower and VPP need some cleanup. It's not really clear what 'sorts' of powers go in one place vs the other one. In addition, the use of naked advantages in the VPP to modify slots of the multipower is right out.

But what it looks like you might be able to do is use the VPP to hold all the non-gesture, etc required powers, and then have the multipower have those limitations on it.

This may let you add gestures as a limitation to the pool of the multipower, getting a few more points.

 

Wings of the Fae

I'm not sure you can stack gestures and restrainable, since they both are limitations about the movement of body parts.

 

Seems to have low CV, low STUN, and low REC compared to the other characters I've looked at so far, but doens't seem to gain anything with these trade offs.

 

Seems to be able to fight while invisible, but still very very weak from something that attacks PD. A DC 15 or 16 attack vs PD, which would be reasonably common in this setting has a good chance of reducing her to 0 STUN in one hit (DC 16 is 56 STUN, minus 19 PD leaves 37 STUN left over as damage).

Looks like you can't fight behind a 'Mystic Barrier' because I think it would go down the moment you allocated your pool to a different power. (would have to double check that... Hmm, no, barrier is classed as an instant power, so you could put up a wall, and then fight from behind it. So the allocation of defenses may end up being a build choice, as long as you have the time to erect a barrier to hide behind.

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In general, I think when you are building a team for 'display' they should each take advantage of different 'build tech', both so the team doesn't share the same weakness and so that you don't keep using a particular type of build tech as a crutch.

 

Here's an outline of how I think CV/DC/Def/SPD limits should be handled:

 

You define a CV/DC/Def/SPD set as the 'average hero'. Each character is then allowed to be higher than normal in one category. In addition, they can trade off for higher in one category by being lower in another.

In general, the distance between 'average' and 'high' (or average and low) is as follows:

 

CV: 2 CV (example, if CV 7 is average, then a character who is OCV 10, DCV 8 is 'high', and a character who is OCV 7, DCV 7 is 'low)

DC: 2 DC

Def: 5 Defense (in both PD and ED, so if Def 25 is avearge, PD 30 ED 20 still qualifies as average, and PD 30 ED 30 is 'high')

SPD: 1 point of speed

 

I know these trade offs work reasonably well at

CV 7

DC 10

Def 25

SPD 25

 

Will have to fire excel up to check how they compare at higher average points.

 

---------

 

But I do know that it's probably better to move the power level that certain die amounts equal rather than to push things too high. Setting really high average points means everyone starts needing things like mental defense to avoid a blowout vs someone with appropriate DC mind control.

 

--------

 

So, for example, if you define your averages as

CV 9

DC 12

Def 30 (Avg DC 12 * 2.5 = 30; Somewhere between average DC * 2 and average DC *2.5 is generally where to set this.)

SPD 5

 

Then the guideline for Valkyrie becomes:

CV: High (CV 11)

DC: High (DC 14)

Def: Low (PD/ED average 25)

SPD: average (5)

 

And Storm Front

CV: Average (CV 9)

DC: High (DC 14)

Def: Low (PD/ED average 25)

SPD: high (6)

 

Or something like that.

 

----------------

 

Then, there are generally 3 different ways to be awesome at combat that aren't straight up damage and defense:

Mental powers (mental attack, mental illusion, mind control)

Adjustment powers (drain, transform)

Sensory manipulation (flash, invisibility, darkness, etc)

 

In general, every character should have some response to two categories, but not a strong response to all 3..

 Thanks for this Mr CB.  Here are my thoughts on the base point for the Sentinels (450 pt) and Sentinel Legion (400 pt)

 

Sentinels

Chara Max 50   Active Points max 85

DC:  12

SPD: 6

CV: 8

DEF: 30

(Mental Def 15)

 

Sentinel Legion

Chara Max 40   Active Points Max 80

DC: 11

SPD: 5

CV: 7

DEF 28

(Mental Def 14)

 

Off to redesign with this approach...  I will post the other characters whilst I'm busy.

 

PaladinAg

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OK.  Here is Sentinel Legionary No 5.   Spectre is the classic caped detective with a hefty combination of skills, martial arts and gadgets rounding out someone at the top end of the normal human characteristic range.

His origin story is closer to that of the Punisher rather than Batman, although those familiar with NCIS will recognize the name and the story about the family.  The character even has woodworking as his "hobby" everyman skill.  So what would have happened if Leroy Jethro Gibbs had chosen to become a caped vigilante instead of an federal agent?

 

PaladinAg
 

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Here's something else handy to keep in mind when building champions characters:

 

       CON Stun Avoid  
DC  0.25  0.5  0.75  0.9
 8   25    28   31    34
 9   28    31   35    38
10   31    35   39    42
11   35    38   42    46
12   38    42   46    50
13   41    45   50    53
14   45    49   53    57
15   48    52   57    61
This lists the total Def + CON totals you should have to avoid a CON stun at least that % of the time. So, for example, if you want to resist CON stuns vs DC 12 at least 75% of the time, you Def + CON total should be 46. That's one of the reasons I prefer to set the 'average' defenses to average DC * 2.5; it keeps the required CON from being really inflated. Someone with low def (25) at this level needs CON 24 to have 50% CON stun resistance from DC 14 attacks. This also means they have something slightly less than 90% resistance to CON stun from DC 12 attacks.
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​The final Sentinel Legionary is Starfist.  An archaeologist finds a strange ring, that turns out to be the weapon and symbol of an ancient order of galactic guardians.  Do they still exist or is he the last...  Please note the costume is yellow not green and there is no mention of hand held lighting devices :-)

 

I've also attached the "Sentinel Legion" team package.  Not as extensive as that for the full team.

 

PaladinAg.

Sentinel Legionary.HTML

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OK.  Following Crusher Bob's suggestions on balancing and a more judicious approach to the use of unified power for characteristics.  Here are Storm Front and British Lion.

 

Main changes are a reduction in some of the combat levels and some tweaking to minor powers.

 

PaladinAg

British Lion 450 V0.2.HTML

Storm Front 450 V0.2.HTML

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