NPC Point Totals

[Kristopher]

I thought I was going a little overboard when I created War Angel at 570 points. I keep seeing NPCs posted here that exceed that total by a large margin. The 4thEd Viperia is 999 points. Is Professor Muerte really supposed to be close to 1200 points? If that's the case, how many points was the official Dr Destroyer? Is my idea of what's an epic superhuman character just set way too low?

 

(In case it isn't obvious, the games I was in were set in non-CU settings.)

[Jhamin]

In my experience most player characters are in the 350-450 point range. Most of the villan teams are built on similar points. If you are going to field a combat machine villian who needs to be able to handle the whole team at once about 700-1000 is not unusual.

 

Vipera is even more in 5th edition. She is supposed to beat down and possibly humiliate whole teams of heros. She is not typical, she is the one you pull out when the heroes get a little too cocky after beating Mechanon or Firewing.

 

The official Dr. Destroyer for 5th tops out at over 2500 points. He is described as being able to take on a signifigent percentage of all the heroes in north america and kill several before being forced to withdraw. He is also not typical and sending beginning characters against him is more or less a death sentance.

 

I suspect that you are seeing such high point totals on the boards because people are either trying to wow us with their mega baddies, or are simulating characters with 25+ years of comic book continuity to account for.

[Enforcer84]

It all depends on what you are looking for. My campaigns tend towards higher point totals than average. And my Prof. M. is supposed to be a threat to 5 or more 350+ Pt heroes. So, yeah. My Hero A Day Thread has some high powered NPC's in there. But I have some low ones. Just not as many as most out there.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

NPC's need to sometimes be hugely expensive.

 

I mean... try building a telekinetic whose powers are a strong enough to actually win a STR vs STR roll with a brick... 90 AP powers before reduced END *cost*.

 

Furthur, some characters should have a wide array of unconnected, campaign limits+ abilities. Viperia is a great example of that...

 

Also, there's characteristic creep... 'ooh. needs to be smarter. needs to be faster......'

 

And, of course, there's the fact that the odd villain needs to be able to stay standing after a co-ordinated attack by the entire team.

 

Oh, and NPC's can suffer from 'ability works so. I don't care if it's 100pts for no combat effect', while PC's tend to squeeze points. (This was most pronounced with 4th Ed weather controllers... I can't think of any published Champions examples, mind)

[phydaux]

Originally posted by WhammeWhamme

Also, there's characteristic creep... 'ooh. needs to be smarter. needs to be faster......'

 

I'm guilty of this, even with my player characters.

 

After all, Mystica doesn't really need a 20 COM, and those 5 points could be put to good use elsewhere, but I just can bring myself to sell them off.

[Kristopher]

I try very hard to avoid Characteristic Creep. One thing I don't like to see in gaming supplements, comics, or any other sort of fiction, is hyperbolism. I don't want to see any character described as The Best, The Fastest, The Smartest, The Strongest, etc. And I really don't want to see one character described as The Smartest this year, only to have another character even more intelligent published the next year, and then "the really smart one, no really" the following year. I don't want to see writers dueling to see who can publish the strongest SoB in the universe.

 

I don't care to see Champs characters with bloated Characteristics. STR has to be spread out because of damage, but other than that I really don't have NPCs with anything over 30, with a few rare rare exceptions.

 

Example: Deep Purple is a mastermind, and he has 28 INT, 23 EGO, and 23 PRE, with two 10-pt Overall Skill Levels and a range of Talents.

[ChuckB]

Dr. D., Viperia , Grond , et al are the kinds of extremes I usually try to avoid.

 

As a GM , if your game has power-levels and playability guidelines for the players , it doesn't really serve you well to

pull out characters who bypass all the limits on damage-classes , defenses and OCV/DCV by a wide-margin.

 

My big problem with Dr. D is that his background has never (in any of the editions) been interesting enough to warrant his power-level.

 

He's always portrayed as a subtle , master schemer ,but there's really nothing subtle about him. Everything is over-the-top. Dr. Doom and Baron Zemo seemed to be his inspiration , but he's really closer to Galactus than anything else.

[Bartman]

Originally posted by Kristopher

Example: Deep Purple is a mastermind, and he has 28 INT, 23 EGO, and 23 PRE, with two 10-pt Overall Skill Levels and a range of Talents.

That seems low to me. After all any normal can reach that fairly easily... At least they can once the age disad has been applied. Virtually every NCM campaign I have ever played in had at least one character with an INT around 30.

 

I like the ranges given in Champions (5th Ed). And the next time I GM I will use them. Before that we never really had any sort of standard. But now that we have them I haven't seen a published character who's concept and writeup were out of synch with the offical guidelines.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Originally posted by ChuckB

Dr. D., Viperia , Grond , et al are the kinds of extremes I usually try to avoid.

 

As a GM , if your game has power-levels and playability guidelines for the players , it doesn't really serve you well to

pull out characters who bypass all the limits on damage-classes , defenses and OCV/DCV by a wide-margin.

 

My big problem with Dr. D is that his background has never (in any of the editions) been interesting enough to warrant his power-level.

 

He's always portrayed as a subtle , master schemer ,but there's really nothing subtle about him. Everything is over-the-top. Dr. Doom and Baron Zemo seemed to be his inspiration , but he's really closer to Galactus than anything else.

 

He is not Galactus. IIRC, officially he will be medium powered for Galactic Heroes. We haven't *seen* CU Galactus. (shudders)

 

He's 'just' Dr Doom...

[Kristopher]

The insanely bloated "Dr. D" would be a "medium-powered" villain in Galactic Champions?

 

Sheesh.

[ChuckB]

Originally posted by WhammeWhamme

He is not Galactus. IIRC, officially he will be medium powered for Galactic Heroes. We haven't *seen* CU Galactus. (shudders)

 

He's 'just' Dr Doom...

 

Compared to the PCs standard power-level he's closer to Galactus than Doom.

 

Except in a few cases Dr.Doom was about an even match for most of the FF and he rarely engaged them in a straight out brawl the way Destroyer can.

 

More often than not , Doom would run like hell as soon as he saw the Thing barreling down on him.

 

Destroyer has always been an excessive character and maybe he'd be OK for a (really) high-powered game or a game with no power-limits at all , but introducing him into the standard game usually sends out the wrong messages.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Originally posted by ChuckB

Compared to the PCs standard power-level he's closer to Galactus than Doom.

 

Except in a few cases Dr.Doom was about an even match for most of the FF and he rarely engaged them in a straight out brawl the way Destroyer can.

 

More often than not , Doom would run like hell as soon as he saw the Thing barreling down on him.

 

Destroyer has always been an excessive character and maybe he'd be OK for a (really) high-powered game or a game with no power-limits at all , but introducing him into the standard game usually sends out the wrong messages.

 

Ah, but the Fantastic Four are hardly the average team.

 

They're fairly high powered.

 

He's somewhere between Galactus and Doom I guess...

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by WhammeWhamme

Ah, but the Fantastic Four are hardly the average team.

 

They're fairly high powered.

 

He's somewhere between Galactus and Doom I guess...

 

Dr Destroyer, as I've seen him written up, would laugh at the FF and swat them like flies in a direct confrontation.

[Enforcer84]

Nah, My FF is about 700 pts each. It would be fairly even.

[Kristopher]

I won't claim to be an expert on the FF, but from what I have seen 700 pts each is too much.

[Enforcer84]

Depends on what you're going for.

Really, Get all of Reed's sciences, contacts, a small or medium gadget pool and his tactical savvy, he gets up there, Torch and Invisible Woman can do alot depending on the issue in question. Sue's Forcefields are so versitile that she can run 200-300 pts just developing them, give her a few skills, her invisibility and such... I also think you have to take the Campaign levels into consideration.

The Marvel Universe campaign I ran in had some outrageous amounts of stat inflation, sure, we could have kept every thing closer to "Normal" Champions levels, but there is a lot of layers of characters in the comics, the Thing in our campaign had 85 Strength, 40 rPD and rED and alot of skills, martial arts, and combat levels just to represent the fact that he's been around for a long time. If you want a starting Fantastic Four you could make them 250-350 relatively easily; but if you want "Universal Icons" FF, the point totals can go much much higher. Its all relative to the campaign you are running and where you want it to be. Michael Satran (did I get the name right?) has written up most of the famous comic book characters on 250 points.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

edit for nonsequiter: Hey my post count eqals my DOB!

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by Bartman

That seems low to me. After all any normal can reach that fairly easily... At least they can once the age disad has been applied. Virtually every NCM campaign I have ever played in had at least one character with an INT around 30.

 

I like the ranges given in Champions (5th Ed). And the next time I GM I will use them. Before that we never really had any sort of standard. But now that we have them I haven't seen a published character who's concept and writeup were out of synch with the offical guidelines.

 

I don't let the Age Disad raise any NCM.

 

The Legendary range given in Champions 5th is where most of the Primary Characteristics on superheroic PCs and NPCs in my settings fall, with the exception of STR. I consider anything much into what Champions calls Superheroic as more likely to be stat bloat than anything done out of necessity, at least on Primary Characteristics. Because of its relationship to damage and whatnot, STR has a wider range, but very rarely exceeds 60.

 

You'll see very few characters, even speedsters, with SPD over 7. On the other hand, my PCs tend to favor very high REC over massive amounts of STUN.

[Shikarr]

Alas I am guilty of characteristic creep myself in some cases but usually not too badly. The main difference on point cost between my villans and the heroes is I don't skimp on skills or things that fit into the concept of the villans. So skills and such add up quickly where characters might not byuy that biology skill if they didn't need it a villan in mine would have it simply because I didn't have to worry about cost for him. My standard villans against my group if singular usually run in the 500 to 800 range while my villan teams run from 400 - 700 each depending on the team and such. Of course with everything there are exceptions. My Three Ninja group of Black, White, and Grey Ninja are at a minimum of 645 and the maximum of 900 points. And then again there is always my Genesis Organization Robots. Being Automatons is costly in all cases and with some defenses and powers they become point hogs rather rapidly. But those 2 groups luckily don't dominate my game although they are both woven into the background of some of the characters. As said before game points for NPC's is a teribly subjective matter. Only each game master can decide what they allow and disallow and what points they want in their villans. The people at hero try to do there best I am sure at pushing out a group of characters that will appeal to most games. There will always be some that are over the top like Dr Destroyer or Viperia, but even they have there uses. Fear factor if nothing else.

[Bartman]

Originally posted by Kristopher

I don't let the Age Disad raise any NCM.

Fair enough. But the official products have to. Dr D has a huge INT because he is supposed to be a super genius. And according to the standard rules a normal can get a 30+ INT fairly easily. It is a bit disingenious to state that you don't use the rules as written and that all the offical characters are wrong because they do.

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by Bartman

Fair enough. But the official products have to. Dr D has a huge INT because he is supposed to be a super genius. And according to the standard rules a normal can get a 30+ INT fairly easily. It is a bit disingenious to state that you don't use the rules as written and that all the offical characters are wrong because they do.

 

There are better ways to simulate someone who is a genius, but still a human being, than by slapping on tons of extra INT. There are better ways to simulate almost anything, that don't involve stat bloat. With very few exceptions, there's just no need for Primary Characteristics (except STR) over 30 for superhumans, or over 20 for normals (including STR).

[lemming]

Some of the write-ups for the FF

 

Mactyre.net

[Vanguard00]

I tend to make my NPC villains almost exactly like I make my heroes. Granted, I worry less about the points, but that's relative. I still try and make them as efficiently as possible and still stay within the boundaries of common sense (in relation to my campaign).

 

As an example, when I created a villain team for the heroes (six heroes on the team), I made the team as definitive as possible. There were five villains who were under the 350-pt mark, but they were still decent opponents. They were designed to lose one-on-one, but still have the potential to win in groups. Two of the villains were at 350-pts and were as tight as I could make them, and they were designed to be the "main" opponents to the villains. The last, the leader, was built on 500 pts and was the main bad guy, but one who hadn't been around all that long. A lot of his pts were spent on followers and bases. Still, it was nice that he could take any two of the heroes on with a good chance of winning, and actually held four off for a brief time.

 

So, to answer the original question, my villains tend to be based on the heroes themselves with a strong guideline of what I want to accomplish. I don't have a "super-supervillain" of higher than 500 pts (yet), but that might change depending on my campaign needs.

[Enforcer84]

Originally posted by Kristopher

There are better ways to simulate someone who is a genius, but still a human being, than by slapping on tons of extra INT. There are better ways to simulate almost anything, that don't involve stat bloat. With very few exceptions, there's just no need for Primary Characteristics (except STR) over 30 for superhumans, or over 20 for normals (including STR).

 

 

Other ways, yes. It all comes down to how you want to run things in your campaign. I've never felt the need to keep human's that separate from superhumans. And at least I have yet to bust out a speed 25 character...*nods to creator of VOICE*.

[JmOz]

For what it is worth:

 

I view the max for humans to be equal to 1.5 the value givin in NCM. The thing that seperates a hero from a normal is that he does not have NCM

 

If you want to go over that limit, (I Call it Human Character Maxima) then you have to have it as a power, with a power explaination (So you need to have been biten by a radioactive ant or something)

[Vorsch]

The original Dr D should be tough,

 

2500 pts on a character is stupid, build it as a PC , in 4th ed he had a 200pt gadget pool, (str +133 no end) why not.

 

A threat to a party can be built on 100-150pts more than the party easily, and i also dont think that vilains which have defences verses everthing, so the player cant afect them are very fair or interesting or genre for that matter.

 

Also 25 years of comic history does not equal 25 years of campaign experience, i have already had this problem with vampire, 25 years of background 3 powers, fights for a week gain 3 new powers.

 

hero has the same constan exp gain, till the point it becomes ridiculous, ive seen the character posts!

 

try a game with no xp/ 1xp refreshing i promise you(its what i did in vampire and it worked, changes the focus of the game if you start as you are and finish the same)

 

Vorsch