Help me build a character

[Ares]

So, I'm very much a newbie to this TRPG system. I wanted to try and put a character I play on Champions Online onto paper and see where that takes me, turns out the system is really cool and flexible though. I intend to find a game at some point, but for now I seem to be struggling with accomplishing my initial goal and I'm posting here in the hopes that someone might help me out here. 

So, as the name implies, I intended to create the avatar of Ares, the god of war, as according to how I envision him. It's really difficult to take the system in without actual practice in playing, because I can't easily tell how good or bad certain options are, or how to realise more complicated concepts with the tools I'm given. So far, this is what I've managed to gather on what the character's build should entail:

400-600 character points

High strength (Maybe 70-80)
Strong defenses 
Dimensional Travel to his hall in the Astral Plane (Elysium)
Large template
Have a high combat skill with weapons
Minor amount of superspeed and superjumping

This needs be turned off if exposed to something like dispell, or anti-magic fields:

Ablity to fly, not necesserily extremely quickly, but just well enough to be useful
Ability to teleport to specific locations, such as shrines dedicated to his worship or particularly devout followers
Maybe a list of minor magic capabilities like summoning weapons, armor and objects out of his hall, being immune to harsh because he has a constant aura of heat radiating off of him, being able to inspire rage and/or valor in people, seeing auras and magical effects
Have any weapon in his hand become magically enhanced for more damage, special effect would be an aura of flames
Ability to absorb any act of violence or collateral damage done within a non-specific area around him in order to make himself grow stronger, heal his wounds, grow in size or allow him to fight on longer, depending, really, on which of these are ultimately easier to realize
Have some sort of passive defensive power that would make him much more difficult to take down with damage
Have the ability to become enraged and grow faster from it

This needs to be turned off when exposed to specific magical artifacts, an example being the amulet of harmonia:
Ideally, immunity to attempts at mind controlling him, resistance to Ego and Presence drain

I would also like him to have a weakness that would allow a magician of sufficient strength to banish him back to the Astral Plane

I don't even know where to begin with skills, honestly, as well as talents, perks, equipment and so on. I think I realized I probably should ask for some advice about half way into trying to wrap my head around the Hero system in one sitting, any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Doc Democracy]

Welcome to the forums.  You will find folk here quite helpful.

 

you are a long way in as far as design goes but your points spread is pretty broad.  Try going for 450 points, that is a lot for a beginner to play with and may provide constraints that you need to think about.

 

I tend to ignore point limits to begin with, just buy the things you want and note the points you are spending.  

 

I think your your biggest problem here is that you are building a character outside of a campaign.  The campaign would give you guides on what is a decent combat value, what is a decent defence, attack and everything else.

 

If we go with the book standards, going with high powered superhero gives us characteristics up to 60, combat values upto 14, active points up to 90, skills up to 16- and defences upto 35, possibly 30 of that resistant.  These begin to give you something to measure Ares against.

 

You mentioned STR of 80.  That looks good compared to the stat limit of 60 but if this is his primary attack then it is only equivalent to 80 active points, so you might look for other ways of boosting the attack.

 

Start with the basic characteristics and a few powers to see how many points you have spent.  When you are stuck on a specific power, come to the forums and we will help you design it - would make a very long post to deal with everything you brought up in one post. 🙂

 

Get some paper and start writing stuff down.  

 

Does that that make sense?

 

Doc

[Tom Cowan]

The 80 STR plus a weapon (Hand to hand attack and/or Killing attack) would likely work.  The power framework mult-power would be a good way to go if he has more them one attack 

[Crusher Bob]

Making a 'high power' character that is able to hang around with other 'high powered' characters in champions can actualyl be pretty hard.

 

Examples of why this is so:

So, you guy can sling 20d6 attacks.  So we expect an opposition to sling 20d6 attacks back at him.

A 20d6 attack, on average, does 70 stun.  So you need DEF + Stun to be able to soak up some number of these attacks.

Plus, you need enough Con + Def to avoid being 'stunned' when those attacks get through.

How much is enough Def + Stun?  Well, that's complicated too, as it depends on how the campaign is setup.  In general,your character should probably be able to soak up around one full rounds output from a similar power character.  How much is that? well, it depends on how much speed the average character has.

 

What about your OCV and DCV?  those have to match up to the campaign limits too.  If you charcter comes to the table with OCV and DCV 10, and someone else comes with OCV and DCV 15, someone is probably going to be unhappy.

 

And what about all the other ways your character can get attacked?

In champions, a character that can expect to run into 20d6 punches can generally also expect 20d6 flashes, 20d6 mind control, 20d6 drains, 20d6 entangles, 20d6 presence attacks, and all sorts of other things.

 

So most champions characters can't really be built well without building some idea of the world around them first, because you can only answer questions like, 'how much mind control will I have to expect to try to resist?' when you know what kind of mind control is going to be out there.

 

here is a thread I did some time ago, showing examples of how these campaign limits interact, sample characters, callouts to various bits of design implementation, and so on.

[Lucius]

In Hero System you can build almost anything.....

 

IF you have the points.

 

Looks like you've latched onto a concept that will call for lots and lots of points spent.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

House of the Palindromedary

 

[Thumper]

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Dimensional Travel to his hall in the Astral Plane (Elysium)
Ability to teleport to specific locations, such as shrines dedicated to his worship or particularly devout followers

These can both be accomplished with the same power:

• Interdimensional Travel:  Extra-Dimensional Movement (Single Dimension, Any Location) Total cost: 25 points

This would allow Ares to travel to any location in the world (including to temples and devout followers) by passing through Elysium.  If you to be able to teleport from temple to temple, then this power will do the trick:

• Temple Teleportation:  Teleportation 1m, Safe Blind Teleport (+1/4), MegaScale (1m = 10,000 km; +2); Can Only Teleport To  Fixed Locations (-1) plus 2 Fixed Locations Total cost: 3 points
• This assumes Ares has 2 temples. Each additional temple costs +1 point.

Teleporting (and Extra-Dimensional Moving) to "devout followers" is more difficult and can get quite expensive and tricky.  This is one way to do it:

• Find Follower I:  Detect Psych: Devoted to Ares (Common, Strong) 15- (Unusual Group), Penetrative, Perceive into Earth dimension, Range, Rapid:  x10,000, +42 Telescopic Total cost: 60 points
• Find Follower II:  Teleportation 1m, Safe Blind Teleport (+1/4), MegaScale (1m = 10,000 km; +2); Can Only Teleport To  Floating Fixed Locations (-1/2) plus 1 Floating Fixed Locations Total cost: 7 points
• The Find Follower I power allows Ares to search the entire world (Telescopic +42) and find anyone Devoted to Ares at the Strong level or higher, even if they are inside a building or underground (Penetrative). You will need to define some means that a person could hide themselves or others from Ares.  I recommend "Substances Consecrated to Gods Other Than Ares," so that Ares can't see into other god's temples or even onto the grounds of their temples.  This is a fairly weak exception, but I'd allow it since this Detect can only find people who love you (and thus presumably want to be found).
• It takes about 250 milliseconds to recognize a person's face, thus a person could reasonably recognize 4 people per second (segment).  The Rapid adder increases this to 40,000 people per second. Ares can scan through about 2.4 million followers a minute, so if Ares has more than a million devout followers, you might want to increase the rapid to x100k. Once the target is found, Ares will need to study him for 1 minute to set him as a Fixed Location, and can then teleport or XDM to the follower's location.
• Adding Concentration and/or Extra Time to Find Follower I would be appropriate and help manage the cost.

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Maybe a list of minor magic capabilities like summoning weapons, armor and objects out of his hall,

Have any weapon in his hand become magically enhanced for more damage, special effect would be an aura of flames

 

 

The easiest way to do this is combine these powers so that Ares can instantly summon any weapon to his hand, and said weapon becomes enchanted and wreathed in flames.  I would actually kick it up to an 11 and say the weapon is wreathed in whatever is most dangerous to Ares' enemy!  This is a super easy power to build:

• Master of Magical Weapons: Hand-To-Hand Killing Attack 2d6 (5d6+1 w/STR), Variable Special Effects (Any SFX; +1/2) Total cost: 45 points
• This power doesn't have the Focus limitation because if Ares weapon is taken away it simply vanishes and he teleports a new one (or the same one) to his hand. He can never be disarmed.
• The weapon can have any Special Effect Ares wants.  It can be a Flaming Axe, Laser Sword, Holy Spear, or Cheese Club, etc.  If you know your enemy's Vulnerability, you can exploit it.
• This power assumes a 75 STR.

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being able to inspire rage and/or valor in people

The easiest way to do this is buy the Oratory skill, but that's boring and very limited. There are a lot of different ways to build this power, depending on the specific effect you want.  I like this:

• God of War:  Aid  EGO and PRE 3d6, Expanded Effect (x2 Characteristics) (+1/2), Area Of Effect (1m Radius; +1/4), MegaScale (1m = 1 km, Cannot alter scale; +3/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Constant (+1/2), Persistent (+1/4), Uncontrolled (+1/2); Only to Aid Others (-1/2), Target Must Be In Combat (-1), Always On (-1/2) Total cost: 25 points
• This power quickly boosts the morale of every person involved in a combat within a 1km radius of Ares, regardless of what side they fight on.  Everyone becomes a frothing at the mouth, raging fiend who can't be frightened or driven from the field of battle.  Ares has no control over this ability, simply being near the God of War drives men mad for fighting.

Here's a different take on the same idea:

• God of War:  Major Transform 1d6 (apply Berserk: In Combat  (Common, go 14-, recover 8-) to Humans), Area Of Effect (1m Radius; +1/4), MegaScale (1m = 1 km; +1), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Constant (+1/2), Uncontrolled (+1/2),  Invisible Power Effects (Fully Invisible; +1); No Range (-1/2) Total cost: 31 points
• This power transforms every human within up to 1 km into a berzerker who goes mad for carnage in any combat -- and the target has no idea what's happened to them until they get into a combat and suddenly find themselves taken over by furious rage.  This is a Mind Transform and so it affects EGO.  With the average soldier having 10 EGO, in the time it takes Ares to casually stroll through a military camp he can easily affect the entire camp.  After all, he only needs to remain within 1 km of a target for 1 to 2 turns (depending on his SPD) to effect the transform.

 

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Ability to absorb any act of violence or collateral damage done within a non-specific area around him in order to make himself grow stronger, heal his wounds, grow in size or allow him to fight on longer, depending, really, on which of these are ultimately easier to realize

Here's how to build this power to make yourself grow stronger:

• Fueled By War: Aid  STR 2d6+3, Trigger (No Time, Automatic Reset, Does Not Control; +3/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2); No Conscious Control (-2), Only to Aid Self (-1) Total cost: 15 points
• The Trigger is "Another character within 20m deals physical damage."  Ares cannot activate this power himself. It will quickly add 15 points to Ares STR and tend to keep there during the combat.  If you use this power, I suggest going with a 60 STR to keep things balanced.
• You could replace Aid with Healing to STUN or END.

Growing larger is a trickier, since you must first have Growth. Honestly, I find Growth impossibly frustrating to work with and would just avoid doing this.  It gets even more complicated if you already have the Large template applied.

 

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Have the ability to become enraged and grow faster from it

If you mean Enraged as in the condition inflicted by the Enraged complication, then that's Limited Power: Only When Enraged, whose value is going to depend entirely on how frequently you are Enraged.  If you mean "enraged" as in "whenever I am in the undefined state of being enraged" then that's not a limitation, because you can choose to be "enraged" in that sense whenever you want.  That's really just a Special Effect for whatever power you're buying and doesn't affect the cost.