Kdansky

Re: Review this character I would actually allow *some* Grab + Teleport maneuvers. All those that anyone with a bit of Running/Leaping/Flight could easily do to. Short range, no dropping from buildings, and so on. But anything else would clearly be UAA.

Re: Review this character I completely missed that. Yes, Mind Scan in the same MP as Telepathy/Illusion/Control is a lot less good, since you can only *find* someone, but then you cannot do anything to him, not even talk. You always want Mind Scan outside your MP, and technically, having Telepathy and Control separate also helps, if you don't want to take a +1/4 telepathic advantage on your Mind Control (reducing the dice from 12d6 to 9d6 usually, which hurts).

Re: Review this character You can save alot of points by upping CON and STR (if you buy END+REC+STUN, STR/CON will net you points, you can easily define SFX as "I use my mental powers to support my fragile body" and even take a -0 or -1/4 limitation Nonpersistant, you can then drop a TK slot in the process if you want), which I would do, since you are incredibly vulnerable, both against Stunned, and against grabs. With DCV 3 any thug will hit you, grab you or plain punch you out. On the other hand, everyone will hit you with DCV 5 too. 4 Speed is also not a lot in a 200 point game. My own game is 200 points right now, and only the brick has speed 4, but ~25 to 40 defenses vs 12 DC and nearly all other characters are speed 6. The MP: Thia said it all. Putting random powers together (even by SFX) usually leads to weird results. Having multiple MPs is a lot cleaner and reflects utility with costs a lot better. 9 very different slots is also a bit much.

Re: Limited SPD 2000 points? You better invest heavily into Knockback Defense then I'm not much fond of limited speed, it's so... weird?

Re: Spear of Destiny Mc Guffin Why should I write it up?

Re: Problem with Drain/Suppress. Explain please. Self Only is totally mispriced, especially for Aid. Aid is incredibly good in a group setting (I had to step in yesterday when someone did not much else than DEX-aiding which nearly broke the combat), and horrid on self use, since you pay ~6.5 points per 1d6, which is just plain bad. Self Only on Aid should be in the -2 vincinity, after all, you lose about 80% of effectiveness in a 5 player-setup. My preferable solution would be: Take Ranged off ALL attack powers (even EB and KA) for consitency, and then reprice them accordingly. But that is 6th talk.

Re: Problem with Drain/Suppress. Explain please.

Re: Problem with Drain/Suppress. Explain please. You found one of the balance issues of 5th: Suppress is alot better than Drain in nearly all scenarios. Which is a bit sad, since it adds an important mechanic (pay while active). Also, drain/suppress speed is utterly broken usually. I never allow it, period. 12d6 Suppress Speed, no advantages or limitations. Fire it once in segment 12 and your opponent is at -4 speed for the rest of the fight, which won't be long, since you can just pound him to dust now. Yes, you do pay an outrageous 36 end (assuming you are speed 6 and you can't take him down in less than 5 phases with a spreaded (he is very likely to try to dodge) EB to do KB, followed by a Haymaker against a 1/2 DCV target), but it is incredibly effective. 12d6 Suppress STUN: Hey look, it's AVLD EB for free! I hate suppress

Re: BODY into STUN I get hit by a bullet doing 20 body and 40 stun. If I wear that spandex, I take 0 body and 60 stun. So the armor did 20 stun to me. Logical fallacy right there. The armor can prevent all damage (Armor), only stun (PD) or only body (limited armor). But it cannot *add* stun to it. That just does not make sense. The body and the stun part of an attack don't "add up", they are two symptoms of the same cause (X amount of force/impulse). That is like saying you can reduce the wavelength of warmth, but still allow it to to heat things. Rubber science in honours, but at some points, it does more good than bad. Overcomplexifieing (is that even a word?) in a case like this for example. I fix'd that for you Hint: A lot of complicated constructs usually don't work out well at the game table. They add some math but provide neither realism nor fun. I once thought a monster which was semi-solid (Desolid + Activation Roll) might be a good idea. Until I started rolling that stupid AR twenty times a turn. Suddenly, Damage Reduction (or just high defenses) with proper SFX looked a lot better. Braincraft is very correct indeed: The more abstract the system, the better it usually works.

Re: Dark Champions hero fragility If you run into problems when balancing your first Hero game, that's not unusual. The system has so much freedom it is pretty much a given that if you build 10 guys (5 PCs and 5 NPCs), you will have at least one or two utterly broken builds. And if you don't know what is broken due to experience, the first few fights will be weird. DOn't be afraid of rewriting characters mid-campaign if the stats don't work well. Out first game had everyone doing 3d6 KAs while wearing about 5/5 defenses. Fights were decided in segment 12.

Re: Focus - only to remove limitations I prefer the complicated method to the Variable Limitation, especially if I only use two cases and not a wild arrangement. That said, one of my players even came up with "Variable Disadvantage" which is 5 points on his sheet, but depending on which Archetype he uses in his VPP (see TUS), the disad is a different one (worth 10 points). Pretty neat.

Re: Resurrection, my players dislike it Those ideas of you often make me chuckle. I will think about a god-killer, that sounds like a very neat idea. Having a Hunted more never hurts. I should make the Hunter come back from the dead too. Ooooh, great ideas there.

Re: Invisibility

Re: Resurrection, my players dislike it I will have to go into SFX now The backstory is roughly as follows: The PC got into trouble with a god (it's not a champions game), killed all the followers of the god which effectively takes away the god's powers and the god "punished" the character (and saved itself) by merging with him. Now the PC can't die anymore, because the god-part can't die physically. Except if the PC stops believing into his god-part, which would make the god-part stop existing and kill the PC. Very unlikely Countermeasure are "anti-god-weaponry" or aforementioned "stop-believing", for example due to insanity. The largest remaining part of the body will regenerate, all other parts just fall apart until there is nothing more left than dust. Organ donor? Not so much But I like the thought of him having to try to kill himself.

Re: Resurrection, my players dislike it I will try to go for capture & torture if I can, to demonstrate that going ahead and then die is not a good solution. Or going ahead, get shot down and lie in the mud for the rest of the evening. So much for spotlight. Rules knowledge: Only during game. I built all other characters except his, and I'm fairly sure I know the rules better than he does

Re: Resurrection, my players dislike it Battles: They (nearly) never run into battles where the only target is: "Get Out Alive", but instead, they have some other targets, like "Get the McGuffin" or "Safe The Hostages". There, survival is not the only goal. By the way, they screwed up one of those today I think I uncovered that today (game went very well, btw): His ressurect allows him to take bigger risks and therefore taking up a lot of spotlight. I took that into consideration while planning and built some traps/monsters in a way that would be impossible for him to bypass solo (which he still tried and then had to jump out of a window to not get slaughtered). Him being able to do solo-missions (nearly) without risk bugs people, which I can understand. They may have as many points as their character had when he/she/it died. Technically, that is a point against ressurection Since I have not gotten the complaint in person but rather around three corners, I did not think that very practical. But I probably will do that. It is the right choice after all. Yes, I do like what he brings to the table. I try to not to favour him, but when I write character background into my story, the PC with the best/most/longest backstory usually gets the most, which is him. But he won't get stronger stuff than the others. In fact, I would say that they already have more "power" (significantly higher AP Attack and Defenses, more point-effective builds, huge VPP, mental powers, and so on). Also a problem: He knows the rules well, the others don't. What he lacks in d6's, he makes up with a well-placed haymaker (happened today, poor mook). What I mean with "best" backstory: Imagine two stories, A and B. A goes like this: "Jane was always blamed for the death of her mother during birth by her father. Jane got abused by her elder siblings and ran away when she was very young to grow up at a local, very old witch. When she was older, she left home to see the world." And B is: "John discovered he could use some magic and took some lessons in witchery. He used his charm to sleep with all the pretty girls in town, but when things with one of the daughters of the local mayor got serious, he felt that he wanted more freedom and ran away to see the world, leaving his fiance behind." Both stories are rather clicheed (I toned A down and B up, and those stories are the same players in a completely different game), but B is still way more practical. Having the fiancee turn up is fun, and even though the first story had way more characters in it, they all are very boring (or hard to explain) to bring in as NPCs. He's good at the second type of story. And his new backstory has so many hooks (two pages of text with one hook every three lines), I don't even know where to start. That may be possible, but is very hard to handle for me, since they create their group dynamic themselves. I managed to have a good scene for everyone today. The background-issue increases this problem. Interesting, problem is (as you said) that this makes him even more integral to the plot, something I really don't want to do. I am planning to do something else: One of the other players asked me today if he could have some regeneration (or something along those lines), so his character could also take more risks. Why not? He also took quite a lot of BODY today and since the PC regenerates so slowly (1 per 20 minutes) he got quite a bit of healing from his team mates. Definitely. I warn players if they are about to do something really stupid (rarely happens anyway). I will fudge some dice if they would die to an unlucky hit in a random battle. But if they have a phase to abort with and declare that They Will Take It On The Chest against the haymakering Nazi Death Ray Robot with the Ultimate Killer Nuke of Evil, well, here's your damage roll. Thanks guys

Re: Resurrection, my players dislike it You guys make some great points. That is why I post things like this in this board I'd rep you all, but I can't On to FAQ: > Has this character ever been "left for dead", but later been able to surprise the opponents? Nope. He survived when he was thought to be dead (which surprised the opposition later), but that's about it. > Has he ever rescued any of the other characters (or otherwise been instrumental in a plot)? No, and yes, he is usually rather important. That is also because he is the de-facto group leader. This mostly due to group dynamics between players, but also because it fits the characters. He is also the character with most plot-ties in his backstory. Because he is nearly the only character with a workable backstory... > Have you ever had the character face his "Does Not Resurrect Against" condition, so that the other characters could protect him from it? No, but I will try to bring that up. Problem is: It's incredibly obscure and rarely any NPC will know of it. Having random thugs use it seems unrealistic. > Has this character ever been captured/imprisoned and needed to be rescued because he wouldn't have been able to free himself? Well, sort of. He would have gotten kidnapped so someone else in the group killed him off (Mind Control on Thug -> Thug uses Autofire RKA against a KO'd target which does not have persistent resistant defenses -> Very splat) before running. That also answers the last one Weird thing is: This scene is the one that bothers some of the players (the MC-guy had *TON* of fun with it). His Res came up twice until now (5th session), and the second time it was obvious that his "plan" probably won't work out and he might die (alone). So no, it's not a game-breaker at all. But I believe that they (those that criticise) really are afraid of their characters dieing, because they have been very careful in some situations. Yes, he is quite definitely better at RP. Better not in the sense of "you are great at sticking to concept" but in the sense "this player makes the story go further without sacrificing his concept at all". One of the other players usually picks concepts wich try to swim against the stream, try to block the plot and mess up the group. He's very thourough with it, which means he sticks 100% to his ideas, no matter how bad things will go. Zero compromise usually does not result in better games (contrary to what many seem to believe, I've seen this often enough). When we both are players (rarely the case, but does come up), I often build my characters around his, because I know that will work out very well. He'll leave me my space to RP, and add something to it which I could not do alone. I think so. He does try suicidal stuff. As expected, when you sink 70 Active Points (due to Extra Time it's only 17 real in the end, but still) into something, you will try to make it come up. He could have bought Teleport and some Armor for that, it would have been more effective in the two cases where it came up.

Re: Resurrection, my players dislike it He's quite the opposite of that. He's the most caring character in the whole group (mainly because he has such a horrible past where he messed up everything and killed so many people, you can fill in the details). He's also one of the deepest characters I have seen up to now, and probably the worst figther in the group. But yeah, your last sentence describes the problem very well. Any ideas on how to handle that?

Re: How would you build the power to Adapt to hostile conditions? I used an Absorption into Defenses inside a VPP once. If you get hit by an attack, your defenses against that attack only increase slightly. Bit complicated, but seems interesting. Character never say play

Re: Virtigo Flash is a clever way to build this.

Well, to make a long story short: One of my PCs has Regeneration with all the fancy stuff. I (GM) am very happy with the character, he is very happy with his character but the other players are not. They either feel jealous or say things like: "Where's the challenge/risk if you can't die?" Now note that rarely anyone ever dies in my campaigns, anyway. That's just the type of game I run. Everyone knows that too (at least they should, I played with them for a long time and we did not have any deaths ever, although I'm pretty good at making it look reeeaaally close). So, what would you do about this? I don't really want to confront them meta, because there is really nothing much I could say. I figured I might want to demonstrate that characters weaknesses. Honestly, the character is pretty powerful in different ways, mostly because he got a neat concept which allowed for so much, and he also produces more background than the other 4 guys summed up which makes me like him and probably be very nice to his suggestions. He does not abuse it, but he builds strong stuff with lots of good choices (VPP and Multiform always helps). The character still has quite a few weak spots: Psychological Limitations are easily triggered, his defenses are below average, his damage output is not very impressive either, he's got horrible EGO scores. I thought I could try to capture him (because they would leave him behind if he got shot since they know he can't die easily) and then extort something ugly from him. The player would not have a problem with that, but do you think that would make the group a bit less annoyed by his Free-Out-Of-Jail-Card?

Re: New Advantage: Combined Special Effects prestidigitator: 1 Marcus: 0

Re: So, what do you need? What about reverse Dispell? 2 or 3 points per 1d6, you have to roll the AP of the thing. That would work very well for anything we can build, but AP sometimes are quite high. Counter: Hard to Dispell/Control

Re: How Much Experience? Quote from my players: "XP? Well, if you want to give us some. We don't come here for the XP, you know." I was pleased

Re: Multiple Power Attacks: How much is too much? I can't say I've seen a build which tried to MPA much. I've seen linked a few times (Flash or Drain with Attack), but that's about it. If there was a problem with cheap stuff being to good, we would see some abuse, after all, it's incredibly easy to justify two attacks concept-wise.