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SangoProduction
2017-10-23, 08:00 PM
So, in a world of superpowers, there are powers that are neccesarily less powerful than others. This also means that there are powers that are lower than the median. Most of the lower power people would be content to consider themselves powerless, and leave the handling of issues to others of greater power.

But that is not always the case. Kamen Rider (just to take a well-known example from a well-known series) is one who fights regardless of powerlessness. He doesn't do it well, let alone effectively, but hey, that's the point of the series.

It's an interesting notion to play a group of underdogs. But, how does one make such a game engaging and enjoyable? I was thinking of using the Fate system, because you can mechanically build advantages before charging in, and mechanically even up a score that you were initially disadvantaged in.

But, what are good "goals" to set up for the would-be heroes to have in an encounter? In many instances I've seen in roleplaying games, defeating the bad guys is the goal in and of itself (maybe with the benefit of having better gear to defeat bigger bad guys to get better gear to...).

Quertus
2017-10-23, 08:06 PM
I'm a bit confused - did you mean to post this in the 3e forum?

Grod_The_Giant
2017-10-23, 08:23 PM
I mean, I imagine much of the charm would come from achieving traditional "stop the bad guys, save the world" type plots despite being underpowered (and usually showing up the arrogant "real" heroes in the process).

SangoProduction
2017-10-23, 09:14 PM
I'm a bit confused - did you mean to post this in the 3e forum?

The question's really system agnostic.

Kobold Esq
2017-10-23, 09:46 PM
Underpowered is relative. If you're underpowered compared to your foes, you need to be more creative, and the DM has not not just throw straight combat encounters at the party. The party has to be given the opportunity to get creative and find solutions. If a single player is underpowered compared to the rest of the party, that isn't going to be fun for that player, unless there is SOMETHING that they shine at.

Soranar
2017-10-23, 09:58 PM
Some of my favorite games have been in a fairly low power setting.

For instance we banned all tier 1 , 2 and 3 classes and most PrC

the game was pretty challenging and we had to fine tune a lot of class features to fill every niche but encounters were still pretty easy to handle

After that campaign we tried banning tier 1,2,3,4

And we banned necropolitan, warforged an dragonborn of bahamut

That got tough

Our trapmonkey was a ninja
The paladin wasn't allowed to get from smite to song or sword of the arcane order
The healer saved the day too often to count by bringing everyone back from the brink of death
The soulknife had the most utility through multiple instances of hidden talent

It was really tough
It was also very satisfying to play.