How rare are the special defenses

[dsatow]

Assuming a standard Champions 4 color campaign, how rare do you mark the common special defenses (flash def, power def, mental def, resistant)?

 

Assuming the following four rarity levels (very common, common, uncommon, rare), how would you rank them?

 

Personally, I'd rank them as follows:

 

sight and hearing flash def : common

Life support temp cold : common

mental def : uncommon

Life support breathing : Uncommon

power def : rare

flash defense other than sight and hearing : rare

Life support other: rare

 

 

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

Depends entirely on your GM and the circumstances.  Even beyond GM variance, different villains will have different likelihoods of having certain defenses. 

Sometimes the current plot-line is that disembodied flying superbrains from Pluto have used the de-planetizing of their homeobject as a pretense to invade the Earth and kidnap intelligent young scholars to serve as debate-slaves.  In that case, you'd better bet Mental Defense will be very common. 

Sometimes Master Mechanos has raised a robot army to rob every bank in the western world at the same time.  Life Support is going to be almost omnipresent. 

 

I'm sure someone familiar with the premade NPCs from the NPC books could offer an analysis of the premade NPCs, but even that's pretty touch-and-go unless your GM's selections are truly patternless. 

 

 

Or was this an AVAD question? 

[massey]

In my experience:

 

sight and hearing flash def : uncommon (maybe one player in a group will have it)

Life support temp cold : uncommon outside of a total life support character

mental def : most common type of special defense, most PCs will have at least a few points

Life support breathing : first life support chosen, maybe half the group members will have it

power def : rare (often no players have it)

flash defense other than sight and hearing : almost never

Life support other: rare outside of a total life support character

[TranquiloUno]

Mental Defense seems pretty straight forward but I usually have trouble even rationalizing wtf "Power Defense" is doing in a broad and general sense such that I can justify a character having it or not.

 

I agree with Gnome BODY (important!) that it's highly GM\game dependent.

 

I can't really estimate commonality in a universal sense but I would guess   Flash > Mental > Power with the Life Supports more relegated to character concept than being defensive abilities.

 

But that's a guess. Flash Def is pretty easy to rationalize and some concepts even kinda encourage it (if you've got special goggles...maybe throw some Flash Def on it?) and Mental attacks are common enough in Supers games and easy enough to rationalize ("My guy has great strength of will!\Is half-alien\Can focus his chi\really almost anything") that it'll pop up.

Drain\Transfer\Transform effects seem least common, generally, so the defense are less common as well.

 

That's my speculation!

 

[Duke Bushido]

As GB(i) points out above, it really depends on the group.  For me, it depends on the complexity the group is looking for-- fast and loose, or involved?-- and the comfort level of the players with the system, and even wether or not they are into tactics (not everyone is.  Including the youth group, I've got one group who is into tactics and two others who think that a fast, simple combat is fun enough and want to get on with the adventure-- sights to see, people to meet, etc).

 

I could go on and on, but that really sums it up: the more into tactics, the more into "effectiveness" and "build-scultping," the less common those things become.  I've got a couple of serious tacticians that look at the odd defenses as _investments_ more than something significant:  "Oh, and hard-shelled earmuffs, too.  I know: it's only three points of flash defense, but make sure you know that it's hard shelled."  You know: SFX as "investment" for all those who have NND that list hard shelled this-or-that as a complete defense.

 

The others?

 

I just mentioned this elsewhere on the board (I think just last night), but I've had "Presence Defense, EGO Defense, and CON (stunning) Defense as actual characteristics for years.   I think there's just way, way, _way_ to much variation in circumstance to find an effective ranking system.  (this was always my pet peeve against "No _NORMAL_ Defense" as a name: what's "normal?" )

 

Certainly we could likely do a survey of what is more and less common in individual _groups_, but I expect that would vary by campaign significantly, even within the same group.

 

 

 

[assault]

In general, in my games, the frequency of special defenses can't be considered outside the context of the PCs. In some cases, important NPCs may also influence things.

 

If a PC has an attack against a particular defense, that defense will become relatively common. Otherwise it will be nearly non-existent.

 

If a PC has a particular special defense, attacks against that defense will become relatively common. Otherwise they will be nearly non-existent.

 

Similarly, but off topic, if a PC has a Vulnerability or Susceptibility, these effects will become relatively common. In fact, a PC who takes one might as well explicitly take a Hunted built around such effects. At that point, though, I will start building villains with vulnerabilities/susceptibilities to the PCs' powers.

[Ninja-Bear]

In our group Mental Defense is extremely rare. We just don’t use Mental Powers and when that has come up, the GM gives us free MD (Ego/5) for that adventure.

[Cassandra]

Power Defense and Flash Defense are what VPP are for.  We've all scene teams in comics where they villain has a power like a Drain or a Flash that overpowers the team in the first encounter, but then the tech or magician comes up with a way to protect the team so the villain can be defeated.  A 5 or 10 Point VPP can cover a situation like this nicely.

[dsatow]

Please note that I understand the situation is based on the campaign, but the question revolves around what you think a standard 4 color Champions campaign is.  If you cite a specific campaign, then you've jumped over the initial premise. 

 

If you want to think of it another way, how about this:

 

There is a convention game call "Superfight".  "Players will try to stop the Avengers from fighting the Justice League.  Players will need to bring their own character."

The power levels are described (DCs, CVs, Spds, Act pts, total points) but nothing else.  How do you think the special defenses would rate as commonality.  Note, you do not have any more information than what is written above.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

4 hours ago, dsatow said:

Please note that I understand the situation is based on the campaign, but the question revolves around what you think a standard 4 color Champions campaign is.  If you cite a specific campaign, then you've jumped over the initial premise.

But the problem is that the standard varies by GM.  I can tell you that my GM doesn't seem to make much use of special defenses but I can't be sure because nobody but my PCs have ever used special attack powers.  I can also tell you that I as GM include special defenses approximately every other villain (more common for Flash Defense, less common for Power Defense since it's so vague) with no real regard to what capabilities the PCs have. 

 

4 hours ago, dsatow said:

There is a convention game call "Superfight".  "Players will try to stop the Avengers from fighting the Justice League.  Players will need to bring their own character."

The power levels are described (DCs, CVs, Spds, Act pts, total points) but nothing else.  How do you think the special defenses would rate as commonality.  Note, you do not have any more information than what is written above.

Case in point, that's not "standard 4 color Champions campaign" distribution of defenses, that's "Stat the Avengers and Justice League" distribution of defenses.