Crusher Bob

The other problem I ran into with trying to do images as light is that the active point total grows pretty quickly. I was trying to build a character that was sometimes a motorcycle. So I looked up how bright headlights were. And your bright beam headlights are supposed to illuminate things that are ~100 meters away. But images for light, narrow cone, 100m long is quite expensive, for a headlight. I eventually wrote up a version of aoe nightvision, useable by up to 128 people that seemed much more reasonable in point costs, with the note it's a headlight. Adding a reasonably powerful spotlight to your herocar should not cost as many points as giving it armor to shame most tanks.

I've built characters with this as an (1/4) limitation, mostly because I wanted the characters to preform in a mechcanically appropriate way without have superhuman CON. If your character needs 28 or so CON because you want to make a character that isn't stunned that often, but thematically can't stay awake for long periods, work tirelessly, resist strong drink exceptionally well, etc. So the character would have a much more human CON of 15 or 18, and then an extra ~10 points of stun resistance on top of that.

Hard to look at a complicated power build without some description of 'how' things are supposed to work. But some commentary: Multiform is of characters who transform into different 'selves' not make multiple copies of themselves. Making a copy of yourself is Duplication, or Images, or Summoning, or Followers or something like that, depending on your implementation. Also, multiform is generally for characters who have different mentalities and skill sets. For example, your your 'base form' character is a surgeon who wants to help all the peoples and your multiform is a werewolf who wants to eat all the peoples (and also can't perform surgery). If your character keeps the same mind and skillset, (Only in alternate ID (-1/4)) is probably the disadvantage to use. Though note that there has to be some limitation between switching between IDs for this disadvantage to apply. I'm not exactly sure what the self Aids are supposed to be, and why you would use them over just buying more stats with additional limitations. In general, power constructs like this are frowned upon because they cause additional book keeping and make it look like you are trying to get those stat points through some power construct that makes them cheaper. A 75 point multipower for movement powers is way overdone. 75 points is larger than most 'normal heroes' main attack abilities (which would be 50 or 60 points, usually). Tone it down to 40 points or so. Your are not using the linked disad correctly. Linked applies only when there is some disadvantage to linking the powers together. Example: I can only do X when my fire aura (that sets most things around me on fire) is active So you can't, for example, link your movement multipower to your instant change. That sounds like Only in Alternate ID, which you already have. Your low CON and low Def means that you will be stunned almost every time you are hit. Especially if you have low Def, you need a high CON to prevent being stunned when hit. Exactly what CON and Def totals are required are in the Stun Avoidance table I did up in the other thread. ------------------------------ So lets look at build a basic sorta ninja character. He'll be a bit based on Might Gai, from Naruto. In his non-heroic form, he's a super human ninja, but below super-hero powerful. He's able to hulk out and gain lots of boosts to his stats (Only in Hero ID). To satisfy the requirements of OHID, he has to make several ninja hand signs (and use, I dunno a few full actions) to hulk out. So if his hands are restrained, or damaged, or something, he can't hulk out. His power balance will be: DC 10 (average (+0)) CV 9 (high (+1)) Def 20 (low (-1)) SPD 6 (high (+1)) High un hulked stats will be something like STR 25 (assume +2 DC from martial arts, so expected un-hulked DC is 7) DEX 18 CON 15 (plus an additional 15-20 CON (Only for stun avoidance (-1/4)) Def 15 (with around 8 resistant defense) OCV 8 (rem: this is after the changes for whatever martial maneuvers are chose, if any) DCV 8 (rem: this is after the changes for whatever martial maneuvers are chose, if any) MDCV 9 Then, he'll have a bunch of stats bought with Only in Hero ID (-1/4), and maybe a few other limitations (one recoverable fuel charge? side effects? some cost END? i dunno) And his hulked out stats will be: STR 40 (assume +2 DC from martial arts, so expected un-hulked DC is 10) DEX 23? CON 15? (plus an additional 15-20 CON (Only for stun avoidance (-1/4)) Def 20 (with around 12-15 resistant defense) OCV 9 (rem: this is after the changes for whatever martial maneuvers are chose, if any) DCV 9 (rem: this is after the changes for whatever martial maneuvers are chose, if any) MDCV 9 Then, you have maybe a 30 to 40 point pool movement multipower Then, you need to add around 30 points of skills, and then spend you last 30 or so points on making your character able to do something other than move and punch people.

And since character generation has come up again, are the guidelines and examples I did up in this thread good enough? Is there something unclear? Is how the characters mechanically operate understandable? Are the build tech tricks I use explained clearly? Should I comment more about how campaign assumptions interface with character generation and assumptions? I did a little bit of that, and implied some things, but didn't really write up much about it.

Here's the link to a character writeup I made for a character with probably a similar feel. Chargen walkthrough. Aspirant was made to be a sorta Spiderman like combatant. Able to hit hard, able to get out of the way, but thematically a bit squishier than combatants of a similar scale. So her power balance is: DC 12 (high (+1)) CV 9 (high (+1)) Def 20 (low (-1)) Speed 5 (average (0)) So her total power balance is +1, which is in line with all the other characters in the campaign. Things of specific note. A lot of games give you lots of 'extra powers' when you are really strong. Examples might include: tying people up by wrapping lamp posts around them, hitting the ground really hard to cause a shockwave and knock everyone off their feet, simulating Spiderman like clinging by driving your fingers and toes into concrete, and so on. But Hero doesn't really do that sort of thing. You are generally allowed to pull off things that are much lower than your thematic power level and related to your special effects, but not written on your character sheet. But you are generally not allowed to repeat 'power stunts' at your power level over and over again without paying the points for it. So, because I wanted aspirant to have the ability to both do lots of 'being strong' related stuff, and I wanted the ability to easily pick up new 'being strong' tricks, she has a multipower with strength in it. If she just wants to hit someone, she can use the strength in the multipower to just hit people. But she can also repeatedly (important word here) throw things like ball bearings at people (blast vs PD), wrap wire, or lamp posts, or steel girders, or whatever around people to tie them up (entangle), and smash through almost anything in her way if given a moment (tunneling). So there are plenty of combat options other than "I try to hit him again". And if you come up with a new idea for a brick trick that you want to use, it probably going to only cost you around 3 CP to buy it. A better build might be to fully sell back her base strength, so she can afford a 60 point pool brick tricks multi-power, so her other abilities match the 12 DC she is allowed to have, but I didn't want to really sell back all of a characteristic in an example character. ------------------------- Her movement multipower is the same thing. Being able to run pretty fast in Hero doesn't really let you do stupid parkour tricks like super running might get you for 'free' in other games. You need to have paid for at least some of those other abilities. So, for example, Aspirant can use the 12m no velocity teleport to step onto or off of fast moving things without turning into road pizza. So she can, for example, hop up onto the windshield of your high speed vehicle without having to worry about the fact that she was standing still and you were going 200km/h down the street. No velocity teleport is how this is done in the game engine, but to everyone watching, it' 'done' as a superhuman parkour trick. Well... she'd probably need to use clinging too, but since teleport is a fixed multi-power slot, it would probably have to be: Hold action and wait just before her next action came around. Use the held action to no velocity teleport onto your high speed vehicle On her action on the next segment, switch the movement multipower to clinging so she can stick on. And then proceed to do whatever. Of course, that assumes there is time to do that sort of thing. So that's more an example of the limits of a movement multi-power than a plus. ----------------------------- Let's now look at defenses: She has 20 Def with 13 being resistant. That makes her pretty much immune to assault rifles (around 2d6 RKA), so she shouldn't have much trouble for normal people without heavy weapons. Against a mirror match, she's looking at taking around 22 STUN per attack, but with her stun resistance of 28, she if highly unlikely to be stunned when hit by something like that. ------------------------------- The +1 to all PRE skills is more expensive than the 3 points of PRE to just get her +1 to all PRE skills, but I didn't want her to be that imposing just standing there. In that team, Athenian and Arachne are the ones who's thing is PRE attacks. ----------------------------- Also note how the 4 members of the 'A-team' each have things they can do that the other characters can't quite match. Want to really sneak in somewhere? Arachne can be invisible and intangible. Want to put the best face on something? Athenian has PRE 30, when he smiles, his teeth go "ding!". Want to know who that chump in a mask is, or what the gangs are going? Aspirant probably has the answer. Need to science something? Aphelion can probably do that. While they are all capable heroes, the team each has something unique to bring to the table. And the game would be pitched something like: A bit like Buffy, but where the characters are: A Greek Hero version of Ironman, with a suit for every occasion. Nyaruko-tan a cynical Spider(wo)man And a Green Lantern, as played by John Goodman

A hero campaign pretty much requires a bunch of campaign average (or limits), otherwise the system doesn't really work at all. And it takes some system mastery to understand what to set the limits at. As an example, I see a 15d6+1 Killing attack on the character sheet with a bunch of adders. But: I'm not sure I see any resistant defenses. You need resistant defenses to defend against the body damage of killing attacks, and you need at least some resistant defenses to resist the stun of killing attacks as well. The 15d6+1 KA (DC 46+) does 53.5 body on average, and something like 294 stun (after the +3 stun mult adder) If you hit yourself with that (assuming I've missed something and you have 45 resistant def up: You take around 8 BODY (which, when you have 50 BODY might not be that big a deal, but does require that you look up the long term healing rules). And you take around 249 STUN. That blows right through your 150 STUN, and you are at ~-100, which means you are knocked out for quite some time. Even a 'regular' 46DC EB still does body to your character on average, and doing 161 STUN, deprives you of around 116 STUN, and since that is over your CON, you get stunned and are reduced to half DCV. And assuming 20 OCV and 20 DCV are the average, they won't miss their follow up attack. And that 46DC regular attack is much weaker than whatever the adders on that killing attack actually ramp the effective DC up to. And, if 46+ DC attacks are supposed to be the average, 46DC drains, mind control, and whatever else are on the table. So you need something like 160 mental defense +EGO to even have a hope of resisting that. --------------------- Plus, doing that math for all this stuff at the table is going to be a severe headache. If you really want to play heroes that are 'more powerful' it's easier to make everything squishier and leave the heroes with manageable dice totals, instead of keeping all the low end stuff as described in the book. ------------------------------ Setting campaign averages to: DC 10 CV 7 Def 25 SPD 5 STUN (around 40 or 50) Produces characters that are roughly comparable to Spiderman. They are about as dangerous as IFVs or attack helicopters. But can't devastate cities instantly. High end 'normal' stuff like tanks, jet fighters, artillery, and so on are a threat to them. If you want to make the characters more powerful vs the world, you can do stuff like cutting all the stats of 'normal stuff' in half. As for why these are good numbers from a system mastery point of view: DC vs Def: The average attack produces 3.5 STUN per DC, so a 10 DC attack does 35 STUN. The average 25 Def defense means that it'll take 4 hits to bring you to 0 STUN, which will take a while if you are in a one on one mirror battle. But the moment you go to the various ways 2 on 1 plays out, a fight will go much more quickly. In addition, this means that you don't have to really inflate your stats to handle all possible drains, mind control attacks, and similar. CV 7 An average CV of 7 means that people who are reduced to 1/2 DCV by things like stunning and presence attacks don't fall completely off the RNG. 1/2 of 7 is 4, the average hero hits a 1/2 DCV opponent on a 14- (which is something like 90%) but there's still some chance of missing them. If you go up to something like 12 CV average, that means that there is a 6 CV difference between 1/2 DCV and normal; hitting on 17- is something like 99.5% Speed 5 This allows 'faster' characters with SPD 6 and slower characters (with SPD 4) to exist without totally crushing all opposition or being totally gimped by being slower. Part of the tactics of hero based around holding actions and acting on certain segments to make fighting people with different SPD more interesting stop working around SPD 7 or 8. When everyone acts almost every segment, holding actions don't mean anything anymore. --------------------- Remember campaign averages have to be set low enough that the system and math work out well for things that are above average as well

Since people have brought up character advancement: 1 The ability to blast moar is not necessary for actual character advancement. Consider Han Solo: In the A New Hope, to one of the characters in RotJ addressing him as, "General Solo?" and none of the other characters think that the fact that Han is now a general in the rebellion as anything odd. He's undergone a lot of character 'development', but he hasn't really gotten any better at flying things, or shooting poor fools in the face. So it's more than possible to have important stuff happen to your character without them getting better at blasting people. Exalted and Nobilis both made some nods at this sort of thing, but I don't think either one really did it well. ------------------------ As for the getting better at blasting type of development, one of the other advantages of the 'forced tradeoff' system I I described above is that you can allow characters to advance by allowing characters another 'positive' when making their trade offs. For example: We define our starting campaign averages as: DC 10 CV 7 Def 25 SPD 5 And one step as: DC 2 CV 2 Def 5 SPD 1 And allow a starting character to have a balance total of +1 from the average. We make our character something like Spiderman, and their stats look like: DC 10 (Average (0)) CV 9 (High (+1)) Def 20 (Low (-1)) SPD 6 (High (+1)) So our character has a balance total of +1. Later, as the campaign advances, we can spend points to bring our character up to +2 in total. We decide to up not-Spiderman's Def, so he's not so squishy: DC 10 (Average (0)) CV 9 (High (+1)) Def 25 (Average (0)) SPD 6 (High (+1)) He now has a balance total of +2, and he's theoretically balanced vs a character in the same campaign that went to brick route and now looks like: DC 12 (High (+1)) CV 7 (Average (0)) Def 30 (High (+1)) SPD 5 (Average (0)) Who also has a balance total of +2 ------------------------------ There's some problems when you double down on things, like +2 CV, so you are +4 OCV/DCV over the campaign average, but it seems to work better than just upping all the campaign maxima at once and allow players to do whatever.

Hmm, nothing new from Daisuke yet, so I'll put some stuff up about character creation: One of the things to consider when making a character is that a character made to be the (lone) protagonist of an adventure series is considerably different from a character that's made to be part of a group. A lone protagonist has to (sorta) be able to answer ever single problem that crops up in the story. While a co-protagonist can rely on a team member to do something. In fact, a co-protagonist almost has to be worse that their team member at whatever their team member shines at, so the focus can easily shift to one of the other co-protagonists when it's their turn in the spotlight. Compare, say, Harry Dresden and Harry Potter. When a Potter needs a plan, or to find out something, or to brew illegal polyjuice in an unused toilet bowl, Hermione is there to do that. But when Dresden needs that sort of stuff done, he's really the only one he can rely on, so he has to be able to do all that sort of stuff too. This concept in game design is usually called 'niche protection'. Where, for example, only the thief can disarm traps, only the cleric can heal people, only the wizard can make all the baddies fall down, and only the fighter is strong enough to carry all the phat lewt the other party members procure. Well, at least until the wizard gets good enough to cast 'summon donkey' and then the fighter is mostly out of luck... So, if you are making a wizard character to take part in wizard adventures, you should probably be thinking more about Harry Potter, rather than Harry Dresden. And try not to go full Hermione. She's an example of a character that doesn't really need to other characters to solve the adventure. It's only great restraint on her player's part that keeps her from just doing everything while Harry and Ron stand around like the idiots they are. But in a Champions game, where particularly cleverly designed characters can do almost all the 'pillar activities' needed for an adventure, you generally have to talk to the other players during character generation to both make sure that the characters taken as a group can cover everything needed by the average adventure, and that the characters don't step on each others toes so much that some will never be able to be good for anything when the spotlight shines on them. For most superhero games, the pillar activities seem to be: Beat up baddies Investigate baddies Provide soap opera If your superhero game is going to do some additional 'stuff' you need to make sure everyone knows what this stuff is going to be, so that they can take this into account when creating their character.

In theory, character generation guidelines for champions should for trade offs between various stats, not just set campaign maxima for everything. If you are good at character creation, it's usually possible to have the campaign maxima at everything right at the start. The people who aren't good at character creation usually can't do that, so the whole point of the campaign maxima (to help create sorta balanced characters) has not fulfilled it's purpose. More detailed write up of the 'forced tradeoff' idea can be found here That set of rules also has several other good guidelines for preventing your character from not needing any party members. Examples: A character should not have all 3 of: mental defense, power defense, sight flash defense Note: a non-sight based targeting sense should generally be considered as flash defense. These special defenses should also reduce the maxima of your regular defense (PD/ED) so that you aren't making a character that's highly resistant to everything. Otherwise the attack that does 'normal damage' to you will probably wipe out the other party members. A character should not attack multiple 'special defenses' Example: a multipower with: blast vs PD blast vs power defense mental attack (vs mental defense) is 'legal' but generally means that the character can use one of their attack powers to attack any bad guy in a weak defense, unless the bad guy has every defense. But that means that the other members of your party that can only attack one 'special' defense never get any spotlight time. here is a thread I wrote some time ago about character creation.

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.

It comes up, yes. The 'problem' with balancing the campaign with just caps means that either all of the characters are at the caps (sorta same and boring) or that the players who are good at character creation are at the caps, and the players who aren't good at character creation are below those caps (not a good play experience for those players). So, one of the alternatives to that is a system of 'forced trade offs' instead of simple caps. Shorts example: The 'average hero' has CV 7, DC 10, Def 25, and SPD 5. You character gains one 'free' advance in any one of those categories. You may also trade an advance from 'average' to 'high' in exchange for lowering one of your other categories to 'low' Trade off amounts are: CV 2 points, DC 2, Def 5, SPD 1 So example legal characters could looks like: CV 9, DC 12, Def 20, SPD 5 (tank hunter/ martial artist style character example: Spiderman) (CV: UP, DC UP, Def Down, SPD: Avg) CV 7, DC 12, Def 30, SPD 4 (standard brick style character) (CV: Avg, DC UP, Def UP, SPD, Down) CV 7, DC 10, Def 30, SPD 5 (Def: UP, rest Avg) etc

It seems to be generally accepted that, say, Martial Strike (+0 OCV, +2 DC) and Offensive Strike (-2 OCV, +4 DC) are a pretty balanced trade off. So one of the 'problems' your system generates is that there is no way to balance higher DC attacks by lowering the OCV. If characters are maxed out at (OCV 7 and) DC 10, then there seems to be no way to balance a character who can also make OCV 5 and DC12 attacks, because such a character would need END 60. Though I guess you could also balance DC and CV in addition to END... Take a look at the sample balance rules here for a system that attempts to balance character CV/DC/Def/SPD

Another thing to think about is how to handle attacks that trade OCV for more damage. For example, and OCV 7 DC 10 attack is probably balanced with an OCV 5 DC 12 attack, but if I already have enough END for the DC 12 attack, I might as well make an OCV 7 DC 12 attack instead.

Here's where I write up some stuff on Hero system tricks, build philosophy, show sample characters, and so on.

Another possibility is a 10 or so point disadvantage that all 'normal' people have that keeps them from doing double damage to structures. Then, if you want to have Batman be unable to break through walls, he can just take the disad.

Hmm, I'd define my own small personal universe, that I had control of the physics and so on of, to prevent being ganked by sudden universe edits. (Step 1: Raise AT field) Then, I'd try spawning a lot of (probably lower power) pocket universes, to act as decoys for anyone trying to find my own pocket universe (Step 2: make sure there's a lot of other stuff that's not me to shoot at) Next, it's time to find out where the other side is. If possible, use the spawned pocket universe as sensor relays, etc so that 'my universe' isn't the only on doing something interesting. (Step 3: find the enemy) Lastly, it's time to attack the enemy. The pocket universes are used something like drones or aircraft launched from a carrier, both disposable (to either attack the enemy or protect myself) but also worth preserving, as they are what keeps the enemy from being able to attack me directly. (Step 4: destroy them with endless bad fanfiction)

You can use the 'code' tag to ensure that you text is aligned. This makes things much easier to read. example: VAL CHA Cost 15 STR 5 15 DEX 10 15 CON 5 23 INT 13 13 EGO 3 20 PRE 10 What's the ' Affected by mental sense affecting powers (-1/4) ' limitation supposed to do? Is ' Only when using tech (-1/4) ' supposed to be 'things capable of electronic calculation'? Do you gain the bonus with an abacus, astrolabe, slide-rule (calculating technology)? Do you gain the bonus with a knife, written language, your glasses (all 'tools' are 'technology')? When doing character writeups, please include the approximate power level of the character in some easy to digest form. It looks like that character is made for a ~DC15, CV ~12 game. If so, you defenses seem to be very low. It looks like you have Def 25 and 20 CON. A standard DC 15 attack does 52.5 damage, does 27.5 through your 25 Def, stuns you, and then you get taken out in the next hit. You have no defense against DC15 mental attacks and DC15 presence attacks. I'm not sure you can get out of DC15 entangles without resorting to maximum growth, which you may not be able to use all the time. Your 5 points of flash defense isn't useful against DC15 flash attacks. All in all, it's a character that will give the GM headaches, because any mirror match that attacks your weaknesses auto-wins, so it's very hard to have you in a party. Here's one of my writeups on Champions character creation.

The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant, next to the power to make puppies appear, anywhere

Hmm, I'd say that the simplest way to do this is to have the character be a consequentialist who is able to provide very supportive arguments/data that whatever 'bad' thing they are doing will result in good stuff. You'd want to avoid too much real world detail, but instead just have the character be able to provide 'good data' that their actions are probably going to result in good stuff. Example: Consequentialist has just appeared in front of a bunch of grade schoolers out of a field trip. He produces a basket of puppies in one hand and a portable wood chipper in the other. He then proceeds to apply to puppies to the grade schoolers using the wood chipper. It's pretty horrific. If the PCs give Consequentialist time to explain his actions: He gives the following presentation: According to [good data] people who are exposed to horrible events are [somewhat likely] to develop super powers. However, most people that are exposed to horrible events in their regular lives are more likely to be villains, because their regular lives are the kind that tend to produce horrible events. People who have things in their lives like good social support structures and a well developed moral code are less likely to have super-power granting horrible events in their normal lives. [data on these statistics]... and that's why the villains tend to outnumber the heroes so much. As these gradeschoolers come from one of the better local schools, they are generally more likely to have 'good' lives than a random selection from the population: [data to back this up]. In addition, exposing them to a super-power granting horrible event at this young and age means they'll still have the support of the parents, etc. So they will have plenty of time to be socialized about the potential good uses of their potential super power. My puppy and wood chipper method is the least morally objectionable thing I've been able to develop that still shows good results on being horrible enough to cause super powers in [enough] of the target population. Here's my [data] on what other ideas I've had for horrible things, and their projected returns. So, in conclusion, I have to go out and spray freshly minced puppy on several more grade school classes. We'll need all those heroes to defeat the alien invasions that statistical modelling say are coming in the next ten to fifteen years.

Asked that exact question here.

I'd say that computer link can also be used to represent your ability to quickly extract information from the Internet. So for 0 points, you get what Google gives you, and for 2-3 points, you easily get all sorts of 'public' info like what property someone owns, and for around 5 points you get all the creepy Googolplex stuff like everything they ever posted on Facebook, all the ads they clicked on, what pictures of their face have ever been posted and by who, and so on. Another thing for radio perception for internet access is that that normally gives you a completely separate sense, so you can still look at the Internet while flashed. So you may want the 'also effected as sight and hearing groups (-1/2)' or 'also effected as sight group (-1/4)' disads.

Alas, if you are giving up (some? all?) of your mojo by leaving the group, there's not much you can do, since you don't have enough power to make your arguments convincing. You could make friends with other people with power, and coordinate them. Or you can organize a union or guild or something, but if you had enough problems with your group to give up your mojo, I'm not sure that gentle moral suasion is the most appropriate action.

Why would you want to make your weapon hard to ready? Remember that 'police' as people who dealt with more than breaches of the peace is a 'modern' concept. If someone robbed you and you wanted your stuff back, or a bit of revenge, you hired a thief taker; you'd didn't go to the watch. You didn't go into town all armored and armed because it was unnecessary and uncomfortable. If the GM makes it necessary with dickishness, then PCs will put up with the discomfort. As for firearms making armor go away... the age of the gun (sorta) started with the fall of the walls of Byzantium in 1453, and plate armor was still being worn until around 1650, and breastplates stayed on another hundred or more years.

Here's how After Sundown does stuff:

Baaard! stop doing things with the crime scene! Bard: But it'll tell me everything we want to know after a nice dinner pancakes... You're just sad you can't investigate. [edit] Which of course leads to the wonderful follow up: <around one year later> The rest of the party stood around awkwardly as the bard investigated the new crime scene. They were sure they had solved the kingdom's werewolf problem a year ago, alas the blood splatter and destroyed furniture looked very much like the scenes they had looked at just a year ago... Bard: Hmm, well that's certainly a thing. Party: What, are there werewolves we missed? Bard: Well, uh, no, not really. You see, uh, meet my daughter. The bloodspatter and destroyed furniture somehow gave the impression of waving while simultaneously hiding behind the bard's legs. Party: What? just... what? Bard: Well, when I investigated the last crime scene... The party had quickly learned to measure the bard's explanations in how many drinks it took them to get through them; this was looking like a five drink minimum. Bard: ...and now that her mom's not around anymore, I figure we'll take her in and I'll train her to be a bard, just like me!