Hunted Disad

[specks]

What's been your experience with the Hunted disadvantage? How have the PCs used it? How does the GM use it?

 

[Spence]

I've used it since 1st Ed, both as a player and the GM with success.

 

By choosing a Hunted, the player is telling the GM they want to encounter that villian.  Frequently.  Just how frequently depends on what they take.

 

Now it doesn't mean that every encounter is with that villian.  It can also be other encounters and events driven or manipulated by the Hunted.

 

One of my favorite Hunteds is the "unknown" Hunted.  A player selects a level of Hunted and asks the GM to surprise them.  The enemy the that the Hero doesn't know he has.

 

 

[ScrewySquirrel]

Hunteds are a favorite.

 

Don't forget that you can be creative with hunteds

A great teen hero disad is:

 Hunted (Only Watching): Parents: as pow, NCI

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

personally, I roll hunted when I am beginning to put together a scenario. I want to know, before I begin which of the rogues gallery will be showing up as I can tie them into the fabric more easily.

 

That faceless corporation just became a local franchise of the Chicken King, and the unknown bank raider becomes the brother-turned-bad of the group's flagsuit wearer.

[Duke Bushido]

Yep;

I'm a lot like Doc.

 

If I can find the last thread we did on this, I'll put up a link.  Lots of interesting comments there. 

 

Oh:  I also allow a 6- option.  Partly because it's on keeping with a set of house rules on skills, partly because it's in keeping with house rules on other disads, and mostly because every once in a while, someone wants a hunted that doesn't pop up so often as to become a part of every fifth or sixth session. 

 

I'm totally fine with it: it's worth five points less. 

[Doc Democracy]

oh! And don't just consider the appearance of the villain. A hunted can be considered by that person giving some other opponent useful detail on how to defeat the hero without actually making a direct appearance in the scenario.

[megaplayboy]

You can have Hunted by Evil Boss/Wicked Stepmother/Vindictive Ex-Wife/School Bully--the hunted doesn't have to be a criminal or evil organization, it can be someone in the everyday life of the PC who makes their life miserable on occasion.  You can also, of course, have the Hunted be the PC's arch-nemesis or whathaveyou.  

[Armory]

12 hours ago, Spence said:

One of my favorite Hunteds is the "unknown" Hunted.  A player selects a level of Hunted and asks the GM to surprise them.  The enemy the that the Hero doesn't know he has.

 

I've done this on the last few PC characters that my players drew up.  They can take a Hunted of their own, but I gave each of them a Mystery Hunted, usually tied to their origin in some way.

 

5 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

oh! And don't just consider the appearance of the villain. A hunted can be considered by that person giving some other opponent useful detail on how to defeat the hero without actually making a direct appearance in the scenario.

 

This!  It could even be just a clue that leads the PCs one step closer the Hunter's plans.

 

I'll confess, I don't roll Hunted appearances.  At this point in our campaign I have so many sub-plots running I don't do 'random'.  When writing the scenario I just review the last couple of sessions and my notes on each character, to see which sub-plots, including Hunteds, are hanging out there, and I select which ones I want to use next time.

[archer]

I roll Hunted appearances but they don't necessarily show up in the session if they don't fit into that session. I'll put them in as soon as is reasonable.

 

I'm not sure I remember how Hunted has been dealt with in every edition but as Doc said, it doesn't necessarily mean they show up personally to fight the heroes.

 

They could be taking notes on the hero in the background or taking notes through a henchman. Or buying the only videotape of the big fight scene.

Giving advice to the bad guy of the week.

Stealing something from the bad guy of the week while he's busy with the heroes.

Be committing a crime or espionage in another part of the city while the heroes are busy.

The Hunted blackmails someone who works at the heroes' HQ or one of the character's DNPC's.

Setting up a cop or agent to do something heroic during the team's battle in order to increase his status and the cop/agent later turns out to be a henchman of the Hunted.

 

I think of a "Hunted" as the Hunted doing something that's going to affect the hero. But the hero doesn't necessarily notice that it happened in the same session that the Hunted was rolled. Sometimes I don't figure out what the Hunted did until after the session was over. I might not have meant for that heroic agent to have turned out to be particularly heroic. But I might decide later decide that the heroism was a set up masterminded by the Hunted so that the agent gets access to something which will become a pain in the butt to the character.

 

Sometimes you are going to roll Hunteds and every character's Hunted will randomly get a successful roll for that session. If you are into big chaotic fight scenes across a city as everyone in the world tries to get the McGuffin, just throw every Hunted into the mix at once.

 

 

As for how players use it, I encourage players to integrate Hunteds into their character's backstory. And if they're just looking for points, I encourage them to instead look into psychological complications instead of randomly putting in Hunteds. If the player doesn't care about the Hunted, it's tough for me to care about the Hunted...and the other players might not care about the Hunted at all, which can make it a pain in the butt to integrate into sessions very often. (I have the same philosophy on DNPC's.) If they are wanting a Hunted just for the points and insist on a Hunted rather than some other complication, I'd encourage them to take the same Hunted as one of the other players, if that's okay to both of them or to pick a solo villain who could easily become part of teams or a hireling for various villain organizations so it'd be easier to work him into the story.

 

If two players have similar origins, like one was given his power by PRIMUS and the other was give his power by SAT, I might encourage them to pick one organization or the other and both be from that origin. If they're open to that idea, it would keep my from having to integrate two different US government organizations into the campaign on a regular basis and having to try to find ways to make them distinctive when they're often similar.

[Duke Bushido]

Found it.

 

Here you go:

 

 

Some interesting thoughts in there, too.

[Christopher]

On 3/28/2019 at 10:52 PM, specks said:

What's been your experience with the Hunted disadvantage? How have the PCs used it? How does the GM use it?

 

As a Player:
Cheap Disad Points if you got a Villain writeup and Motivation for the GM to use.

 

As GM:
With Group adventures no Complication likelyhood is quite as high as the value indicates. Very Frequently would mean a Complication comes into play every other Adventure. If you got 4 Characters with "Very Frequently" then you would always be dealing with 1-3 of them.

Personally I do not like the mandatory nature of Complications. I think it is better to ignore that mechanic and ask for Storyhooks for the GM-

[BoloOfEarth]

I like the Hunted complication, as long as the player picks a reasonable hunted.  I've seen many a player try to use a Hunted for relatively free points.  ("The GM always has GroupX show up, so I might as well get points for it.")  I've also seen them try being Hunted by someone who isn't a real threat.

 

I'll admit, at character creation I don't always catch (and force changes for) some things players put in.  For instance, one PC in my game (Honey Badger) is Hunted by PETA - and the player had them listed as "As Powerful."  So guess what?  PETA now has a super-powered team covertly working for them.  Animal Rights has put in many behind-the-scenes appearances, including one where their leader, Unicorn, mentally transformed Honey Badger's girlfriend (along with a bunch of other people at an event) into being rabidly pro-vegan, which almost caused her to break up with him. 

 

I've also had several PCs pick the same Hunted, which has had a major effect on the whole campaign.  For instance, when I was running a game for 5 players years back (in 4E, I believe), 3 of them were Hunted by Malachite.  Thus, Malachite put in almost constant "appearances," almost always peripherally, to the point that the heroes had to sneak onto the Malachite Islands and face off against him in person.

 

Like Doc D, I roll for Hunteds (along with DNPCs, Rivarly, and Secret / Public ID) while first writing up an adventure, so I can think of ways to factor them into the plot.  If they don't fit, I generally leave them out, though if the roll was low enough (like a "critical success") I'll either force a tie-in to that adventure, or else ensure that Hunted shows up in the next adventure.

[Tech]

On 3/28/2019 at 7:27 PM, ScrewySquirrel said:

Hunteds are a favorite.

 

Don't forget that you can be creative with hunteds

A great teen hero disad is:

 Hunted (Only Watching): Parents: as pow, NCI

 

A friend of mine has a shrinking hero, who had a hunted for a long time: "Hunted by Small Animals 8 or less".  He eventually bought it off but I can't count the number of times it popped up. Examples: birds thought he was a big bug; when he was blinded near an ocean battle, he started to get carried away by a crab. The little dog next door is still his worst enemy...

[BoloOfEarth]

When I was a Champions player, my big Hunted was Firewing.  And my character stupidly had Vulnerable 2x STUN from Fire and 2x Effect from Explosions.  All it took was one fireball from ol' Firewing to one-shot-KO my character.  You can bet those Vulnerabilites got bought down / off quickly.

 

I'll add that as a GM, I'm not opposed to a player suggesting a Hunted that hasn't been created yet.  I remember one PC hero, Squeeze, who was "Hunted by Diamond Kitty."  I asked the player, "Who the heck is Diamond Kitty?" and he replied, "I dunno, go ahead and make her up."  So I wrote her up as an archnemesis - they each had powers that targeted the other pretty well.   Her appearances during the game were a lot of fun.  I think she was the one who befriended Grond, gave him a My Little Pony, then carefully stole it and blamed the theft on Squeeze.  (pause)  Okay, so maybe they were more fun for me than for him.