Anyone up for 20,000 Point Heroes?

[PhilK]

Inspired by an old Dragon magazine Villians & Vigilantes article where they designed really high  powered characters, what about High Powered characters in Champions?  What’s the highest point character you’ve created?  I’m thinking like 20,000 - 30,000 point characters.

[massey]

That's pretty darn high.

 

The highest point characters I ever created were far, far lower than that.  I think I've got a 3800 point Silver Age Superman build somewhere.  The thing to keep in mind is that damage is supposed to be exponential.  A 13D6 attack is "twice as powerful" as a 12D6 attack.  It doesn't play that way in game, but as far as descriptively, that's how it's supposed to work.

 

5th edition Galactic Champions recommended 700 point characters to represent the very high end.  I've found that 1000 to 1500 points lets you build characters like Batman, Thor, Green Lantern, etc, without having to cut any corners.  Just buy them flat out.

[Christopher]

The Chracter Guidelines on 6E1 34 list values from 300 to 650 and 750+

 

20k is 2 orders of magnitude away from that. Increasing the power level like this can help to add Granularity, but it will utterly wreck just about any builtin balance. I mean at those points 75% Resistant Damage Reduction is a trivial buy at 90 points. And a mandatory one at that, at the damage values thrown around.

 

5 hours ago, massey said:

The thing to keep in mind is that damage is supposed to be exponential.  A 13D6 attack is "twice as powerful" as a 12D6 attack.

That is a rule that only works if the Defenses are similary scaled. If you take the table on 6E1 35 and divide Defenses/Resistant Defenses by DC, you get a nice ration to go by. That should in theory scale up to however high you want to go.

 

5 hours ago, massey said:

That's pretty darn high.

 

The highest point characters I ever created were far, far lower than that.  I think I've got a 3800 point Silver Age Superman build somewhere. [...]

 

5th edition Galactic Champions recommended 700 point characters to represent the very high end.  I've found that 1000 to 1500 points lets you build characters like Batman, Thor, Green Lantern, etc, without having to cut any corners.  Just buy them flat out.

Book Characters have the advantage that they can be unbalanced, because only 1 person controlls them and their environment. Wich is magnified exponentially in Solo Titles. As I discussed way back here:
some pitfalls of Translating Characters from Fiction to a RPG setting and the secrect of making non-combat stuff fun in hero

 

Something I at least thoguht about was making Heroes on Point Level Y, but with a lower level cap.

Like 650 Point heroes, but with 500 Point Heroes caps. At least in theory that should create better rounded Characters.

[Lucius]

19 hours ago, PhilK said:

Inspired by an old Dragon magazine Villians & Vigilantes article where they designed really high  powered characters, what about High Powered characters in Champions?  What’s the highest point character you’ve created?  I’m thinking like 20,000 - 30,000 point characters.

 

I've built Gods on less than 3,000 pts. Hero Designer doesn't even accommodate the kind of numbers you're throwing around. I'm not sure what purpose you think would be served by characters of such point totals.

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

More than a palindromedary can swallow

[PhilK]

@Lucius  Just for fun.  I was thinking about modeling an ancient god-like alien entity, and I figured that It’d be around 20k points

[Lucius]

4 hours ago, PhilK said:

@Lucius  Just for fun.  I was thinking about modeling an ancient god-like alien entity, and I figured that It’d be around 20k points

 

I've written up Omnipresence and Omniscience as Powers, and I don't recall needing that kind of point expenditure.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says I ought to track those down again....

[massey]

Eventually you just run out of things to spend points on.  A 5000 point cosmic VPP, every skill at 25-, 500 PD and ED resistant triple hardened with 75% Damage Reduction...

 

You just end up flipping through the book trying to justify things.

[Cancer]

So what would the point cost be to Summon a clone of the Solar System, since we're at deity level here?  Getting it to stick around for 4.55 billion years is additional cost, of course.

[Lucius]

First posted in 2009

 

May All the Gods Forgive Me

 

Yes, this is getting impious even by my standards, not to mention completely silly....but I couldn't resist.

 

 

Omnipresence: (Total: 217 Active Cost, 199 Real Cost) Immanence: Growth (+15 STR, +3 BODY, +3 STUN, -3" KB, 800 kg, -2 DCV, +2 PER Rolls to perceive character, 4 m tall, 2 m wide), Inherent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2), MegaScale (1" = 100 billion lightyears; +6 1/4) (127 Active Points) (Real Cost: 127) plus Transcendence Desolidification , Inherent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2) (90 Active Points); Linked (Immanence; Greater Power is Constant or in use most or all of the time; -1/4) (Real Cost: 72)

 

Omniscience: (Total: 246 Active Cost, 246 Real Cost)Knows All: KS: Everything, Uncontrolled (+1/2) 50- (Real Cost: 61) plus Understands All: Universal Translator 40-, Uncontrolled (+1/2) (73 Active Points) (Real Cost: 73) plus Sees All: Spatial Awareness (Unusual Group), +20 to PER Roll, Discriminatory, Analyze, Microscopic: x10,000,000,000, Perceive into any dimension, Rapid: x100,000 (Real Cost: 112)

 

Omnipotence:

Omnipotence: Variable Power Pool, 500 base + 937 control cost, Inherent (+1/4), Persistent (+1/2); all slots Cosmic (+2) (1437 Active and Real Points)

plus

Eternal Omnipotence: Succor Cosmic Power Pool and all Slots 5d6, Inherent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Transdimensional (Single Point in Time: Moment of Creation; +1/2), Uncontrolled (+1/2), Can Apply Adders (+1), All Powers Simultaneously (+2) (156 Active Points)

 

 

NOTES

 

The first attribute listed, Omnipresence, includes Immanence and Transcendence. The former is Growth, Megascaled, sufficient to cover the entire observable universe as of the most recent scientific cosmological theory, as I understand it. The latter is bought as Desolidification.

 

The second attribute, Omniscience, sort of assumes the first: If a Deity is not Omnipresent for example but wishes to be Omniscient, it would be necessary to buy 360 degrees, Range, and lots of Telescopic on the Cosmic Awareness. An Omnipresent Being need not have Ranged senses, since by definition nothing is ever at range from an Omnipresent Being.

 

The third attribute, Omnipotence, includes both a Cosmic Power Pool and an Eternal Succor that applies to the Cosmic Power Pool at the moment of Creation, and that goes off automatically and without effort each phase - Forever. Even in the unlikely case of a SPD 1 Being, and even over the course of, say, a normal Human lifetime of three score and ten years, that's an enormous amount of 5d6 Succors - and a zero END Succor basically goes on forever. Even though it costs less than 1600 points, I'd say this constitutes effectively unlimited power for any Being that endures for eons.

 

Don't ask why I did this. I don't understand it either.

 

edit: Might as well add this:

Deus Absconditus: Invisibility to Sight, Hearing, Mental, Radio, Smell/Taste and Touch Groups and Spatial Awareness , No Fringe, Inherent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2) (135 Active and Real Points)

 

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Sometimes, the palindromedary worries about me.

[massey]

You need Affects Real World on the VPP.

[Lucius]

54 minutes ago, massey said:

You need Affects Real World on the VPP.

 

Why would I do that when I can put it on the powers bought via the VPP?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And a PT

[massey]

11 minutes ago, Lucius said:

 

Why would I do that when I can put it on the powers bought via the VPP?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And a PT

 

Because virtually all of your powers in the VPP are going to require that anyway.  For something you're always going to use, it's cheaper to put the Advantage on the Control Cost, rather than buying up the size of the pool itself.

 

With a 500 point pool, you could have a 100D6 Energy Blast.  But it won't affect anything without Affects Real World.  So you're really looking at having a 33D6 Energy Blast that is actually usable.  That's pretty cool and all, but it's Dr Destroyer level, not Omnipotent Being level.  Put ARW on the Control Cost and now you're back to the full 100D6.  It will cost you 500 extra points (+2 on the 250 Control Cost), but you're basically getting triple the value from your base pool.

 

--

 

I'm still not clear on how the Succor is supposed to work.  And you need to figure out a way to avoid getting automatically hit with every Affects Desolid attack that anyone in the observable universe happens to throw.

[massey]

11 hours ago, Christopher said:

That is a rule that only works if the Defenses are similary scaled. If you take the table on 6E1 35 and divide Defenses/Resistant Defenses by DC, you get a nice ration to go by. That should in theory scale up to however high you want to go.

 

 

"Twice as powerful" is really just a generic term for how people are supposed to interact with the environment.  Champions has an exponential curve for descriptive effects, but a linear one for gameplay.  That way Superman and Batman can still be on the same team.  A guy with a 30 PD can be "a hundred times tougher" than a guy with a 5 PD, without requiring a 500 PD.

 

Quote

Book Characters have the advantage that they can be unbalanced, because only 1 person controlls them and their environment. Wich is magnified exponentially in Solo Titles. As I discussed way back here:
some pitfalls of Translating Characters from Fiction to a RPG setting and the secrect of making non-combat stuff fun in hero

 

Something I at least thoguht about was making Heroes on Point Level Y, but with a lower level cap.

Like 650 Point heroes, but with 500 Point Heroes caps. At least in theory that should create better rounded Characters.

 

Our group has had a lot of success playing book characters, but for those adventures we've tended to run "concept games" where there wasn't a point limit and the GM designed all the characters.  It was okay for one guy to be 1000 points and another to be 400, because the 1000 point guy wasn't just a 400 point character with 2 1/2 times the attacks and defenses.  The high point guy had some expensive power builds, and was kind of wasteful with his point expenditures.  Superman can have 200 points of enhanced senses, and enough telescopic vision to read a newspaper on a park bench while standing on the moon.  It's cool, but it doesn't really make him that unbalanced.

[Pariah]

I really can't conceive of such a thing. I tried to build a villain on 2500 points once, just to see if I could do it. I couldn't. As mentioned above, I ran out of things to spend points on.

[Christopher]

2 hours ago, massey said:

Superman can have 200 points of enhanced senses, and enough telescopic vision to read a newspaper on a park bench while standing on the moon.  It's cool, but it doesn't really make him that unbalanced. 

Somebody once had an Idea for Supermans "Supersenses":
Clairsentience. No Megascale or anything, just plain old Clairsentience.

[massey]

2 hours ago, Christopher said:

Somebody once had an Idea for Supermans "Supersenses":
Clairsentience. No Megascale or anything, just plain old Clairsentience.

 

I've done that before.  I played a Superman clone character with a "Kryptonian powers" Multipower.  Heat vision, superbreath, Missile Deflection for catching bullets, Clairsentience for actively using his senses, and Danger Sense for Any Area to represent when he hears people cry out for help.  I figured these were all powers that he was unlikely to use more than one at a time, so I stuck them all in one Multipower.  Technically it's GM permission to do that with enhanced senses, but the GM had no problem with it.

 

Pretty effective for building high powered characters on the cheap.

[Tjack]

    I don’t think you have to go anywhere near that high.  The Surbrook’s Stuff site has some 2000 point versions of the Justice League that I look at the way some guys look at a Ferrari.

   More power than I’d ever need, but I’d sure like to take one out for a test drive.

[phydaux]

I remember reading somewhere that a "god" would be ~5000 character points.  So I started experimenting with 5000 point character builds,

 

I made a very viable 5000 point Olympic-type god.  He had a 1000 pip cosmic VPP so he could literally do ANYTHING just by wanting to.  I decided that this template would be ALL the gods in my pantheon.

 

Then I made a 5000 point "god killer" to be the pantheon's enforcer.  He wouldn't do anything unless 2/3 of the other gods agreed.  And then the only thing he did, COULD do, was kill other gods.

 

But 20k points?  Meh.  I guess that means my gods have a 200 Comeliness instead of "just" a 50 Comeliness.  

[phydaux]

11 hours ago, Pariah said:

I really can't conceive of such a thing. I tried to build a villain on 2500 points once, just to see if I could do it. I couldn't. As mentioned above, I ran out of things to spend points on.

 

Seriously?  I think 5th Ed Dr. Destroyer was 8k points, and  he didn't even have a 12 SPD.

[PhilK]

Looking at Champions Beyond, Thw Warmonger is about 3600 points.

 

[Tech]

On 1/22/2019 at 12:07 AM, phydaux said:

 

Seriously?  I think 5th Ed Dr. Destroyer was 8k points, and  he didn't even have a 12 SPD.

 

In "Classic Enemies", the High-end Dr Destroyer costed 1932 pts.

In "Book of the Destroyer", the High-end Dr. Destroyer cost 4811 pts.

Neither are nowhere near 8k points.

 

I think the most I ever built a villain on was about 1200-1500 pts. I can't even conceive of using 8k pts much less 20k pts.

 

I like what massey said:

"Eventually you just run out of things to spend points on.  A 5000 point cosmic VPP, every skill at 25-, 500 PD and ED resistant triple hardened with 75% Damage Reduction...

 

You just end up flipping through the book trying to justify things."

[Anaximander]

It seems to me that villains like that should be treated as more of a plot device than an actual character and should be handled with a lot handwavium much as one might do if someone were writing an adventure around a natural disaster or something.  The aren't actually intended to beaten but reckoned with.

[Badger]

seem to remember someone posted a 5-10K character one time.  And that character was essentially a multi-universe conqueror and god-level.

 

And I think a lot of the points were essentially for all his advanced tech toys, and insanely powerful followers to summon.

 

 

[Cassandra]

That's how many points I have.

[archer]

If your character is immortal and has earned 1 point per month on average for the last 2000 years, you're well over 20,000 points. (And that's not even dealing with Egyptian gods which have been around in excess of 6000 years.)

 

I'd imagine such a character got most of his earned points doled out as contacts, favors, and languages (which are now dead) though.