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Quertus
2019-03-18, 12:09 PM
So, something that has always bugged me about superhero systems is that you cannot make heroes from the comics / movies.

Let's take a look at professor X. In both the comics & the movies, he selectively telepathically paralyzes (with no memory of the event) a mall, a government building, and a huge chunk of the population of the United States. With just 2 supers, we're looking at the ability to send a telepathic message to everyone on the planet simultaneously.

Pick your superhero system of choice, and ask yourself - can that be done in that system? If so, what would it take?

For some other examples, oldschool Superman used to push whole planets around (heck, even Fry was moving stars), several heroes have put shields around entire planets (with varying degrees of success), numerous vile beings have mind controlled entire superhero teams or even the entire planet, and several characters have teleported or reality-shifted the entire planet (I believe even the Doctor has accomplished this particular feat).

What other truly epic heroic deeds can you think of superheroes (or even not so "super" heroes) accomplishing?

What would it take to accomplish these deeds in various existing superhero systems?

And are there any systems with good rules for this, where the "default" heroes can accomplish these truly heroic deeds?

I probably should organize this, by system and/or by deed...


DC Heroes.
So if you want to push the Earth into a new orbit: The baseline for weight is 50 lbs at 0 APs. According to Wikipedia, Earth weights about 1.31668 X 10^25 lbs. which would be 78 APs of weight. Anybody who can fly and can reach that level of strength - either normally or by spending hero points - can move the Earth.


zero cost,

(Homebrew? And if nothing heroic opposes it.)


Earth masses roughly 6*1024 kg. In Mutants & Masterminds/DC Adventures, that's 78 mass ranks. You need Strength 78 to lift it.

So...

Flight 1 * 2 PP
Strength (Limited to Lifting) 78 * (2-1) PP

So, 80 PP, you can move the Earth. At your kind of pathetic flight speed of 4 km/h, but still. You can do this with a typical starting character (PL 10, 150 PP) with just a little over half your initial PP budget. Because the Strength ranks are Limited to Lifting, they don't even break any of the PL limiters.

Superman as actually statted in the DC Adventures book can't do it. His lifting Strength is only 23 (200,000 tons). But he's actually useful for things other than very patient solar system remodeling.

Professor X is trickier and more expensive, but, distance rank 20 is enough that he could sit in a mansion in Westchester and have more than enough range to cover the entire contiguous United States. 22 will give him the whole planet. So:

Affliction (Will) (dazed→immobile→paralyzed) 1 PP/rank
+Area (burst) 20 +20 PP/rank
+Selective +1 PP/rank
Total cost: 22 PP/rank

There are other things you can add or limit the power with, which would make it more or less effective and expensive, but that's the basic effect. If we assume Professor X is PL 15 (like Superman) and the effect is PL-capped at rank 15, that's 330 PP. Which is a lot... Superman, as statted, is only 289 PP total, and Chuck has more powers than just that. But on the bright side, you can for super-cheap start adding Alternate Effects to the power, and spend those 330 PP again and again.




Mutants and Masterminds 3e

Moving planets? Let's take a standard flying brick with Strength 12. Power stunt it into Enhanced Strength, Limited to lifting, and throw a few flaws on (Concentration, Distracting, and Tiring, say; that's pretty reasonable for "moving a planet") and we get the cost down to 1 point/8 ranks; with 24 base pp to work with, we can go up to an effective lifting Strength of 192. If my math is correct, that's... more than the total mass of the universe. Exponents are dumb.
Putting a force field around the planet? Enhanced Protection, Affects Only Others, Affects Only Objects-- 1 point/rank. No RAW limit on how big an object you can affect at once...
Affecting the entire earth at once with a power? We'd need 21 applications of the Area modifier; that's a lot if you're talking about a PL-appropriate power, but if we just need to worry about mooks... your basic PL 10 psychic with ~30 pp in their array to play with could pull out, oh... Area 21 Affliction 1, Selective, and boom, you're pinging the entire world for 23pp. If you want to make it worse, slap on our flaw friends Concentration, Distracting, Tiring, add on Unreliable 2 (1/session), and we only need 34pp in our array to nail the entire world with rank 2-- more than enough to obliterate the base populace. And that's not even getting into the stupidity of Perception, Contagious effects...
Searching an entire city in a blink of an eye? XKCD estimates visiting every apartment in New York would take 10 years. That's only Time Rank 26; again, easy to hit with a power stunt to convert your ~30pp of super-speed tricks into straight Quickness.
Touching the minds of everyone on the planet? I believe all you need is something along the lines of Detect Thoughts, Ranged, Radius, Analytical, Penetrates Concealment, Extended...7, I think, is all you need; the planet is only about 4X10^7 feet in diameter, and Extended 7 multiples your range of vision by 10^7. Boom. Only 15 points, too; plenty of room to throw a couple Rapids in there for good measure.
Time, space and dimensional travel? They're plot abilities with absurdly low base costs. Easy to add onto any of the above.



Champions

World Domination: Major Transform 1 point, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Indirect (+1/2), Based On EGO Combat Value (Mental Defense applies; +1), Area Of Effect (4" Radius; +1), Continuous (+1), Penetrating (x2; +1), MegaScale (1" = 10,000 km; +1 1/4), Invisible Power Effects, Hide effects of Power (Fully Invisible; +2) (49 Active Points)


M&M.

And shout-out to 2e, which had...I think an extra called Progression that basically scaled values one step per PP spent. So that would make this kinda stuff fairly easy.

Telepathic message to the whole planet's easy. Mental Communication 4 (Area, Selective). 24 PP, no sweat.

Teleporting and reality shifting a planet is basically the same as pushing it, using Increased Mass. Expensive, but straightforward. Less expensive with flaws.

Forcefielding the planet...looks like the surface area of the earth is 197,000,000 square miles. Somewhere in the vicinity of 5.5 trillion square feet, if I'm calculating right. Create...33 could cover that, assuming you make the forcefield a foot thick. Thinner could lower the rank needed, and because volume rank is stupid there's not technically a minimum dimension (though I find 6" to be a sensible sanity limit). A Limit or two makes that quite affordable.

Regardless, you've still got the classic Extended 7 Radius Penetrates Concealment Vision, backed by a Perception Range Reaction Selective Affliction. At 7/rank +12 for the super-sense it's expensive, but doable.

Anymage
2019-03-18, 12:31 PM
Exalted.

You'll also run into one of the problems that Exalted faces. Galactic level supers, at least you can explain that they spend most of their time fighting galactic level threats. Being some of the most powerful superhumans on the planet means that you have a very small number of antagonists that the PCs can face, and practically nobody to reign them in if they go all murderhobo. Given that RPGs are still games as opposed to fully constructed stories, and that murderhoboism is a well known trend in RPGs, I see there being a lot of practical problems with the playstyle.

Imbalance
2019-03-18, 12:35 PM
HeroClix has done a fair job of codifying and individualizing thousands of characters and, in some cases, dozens of versions of marquee characters to represent what they can do or have done, but it's still a skirmish sim out of the box. Sure, you can homebrew roleplay with the system, but if you want to say Superman epically pushed a planet in-game, what? Are you going to pick up the map and move to a different table? Say Prof does MC the whole board, what next? Do you want Onslaught? Because that's how you get Onslaught. Thanos snaps his fingers so you randomly put half of your figures back in the box?

I mean, yeah, Clix has tried to capture that feel while keeping the game within balanced-ish parameters to varying degrees of success. Those legendary moments from the source material are orchestrated to be epic to the reader/viewer. Translating that for the player to accomplish in-game is a entirely different approach to story telling that all game makers strive toward, but it's ultimately up to the observer to interpret and embellish.

JeenLeen
2019-03-18, 12:45 PM
I think Mutants & Masterminds can. I'm not real adept at the system to build Professor X on the fly, but I'm pretty sure everything is there to make something like "Target Everyone on the Planet" with an effect of "Control" and a save DC so high they can't pass it (or only 5% pass if it's a 20 on a d20 always succeeds.)

JoeJ
2019-03-18, 12:46 PM
Your examples are quite feasible for DC Heroes. Everything in the game is measured using an exponential scale of APs (attribute points); so a character with a strength of 5 is twice as strong as a character with a strength of 4. M&M uses the same exponential scale, just using the word "rank" instead of AP.

So if you want to push the Earth into a new orbit: The baseline for weight is 50 lbs at 0 APs. According to Wikipedia, Earth weights about 1.31668 X 10^25 lbs. which would be 78 APs of weight. Anybody who can fly and can reach that level of strength - either normally or by spending hero points - can move the Earth.

NichG
2019-03-18, 12:58 PM
I'm running something now where this sort of thing is viable. The basic conceit of the system is that you can make a power that does pretty much anything within your theme for zero cost, but anyone (with powers) who would be affected gets a prompt to intervene even if they have no way to be aware of it - at which point the amount you spend starts to matter.

A concrete example of this is that one character on a destroyed alternate Earth that had been turned into an automated interdimensional doomsday device used a single action Lv0 power to decommission all the equipment on the planet and convert it into spirits in his service. But if there had been one villain crewing the weapon, they would have had to resolve interference first before it went off.

The only mechanical thing in this system stopping a starter character from turning all blood in the universe into acid is that there are other supers with blood who would contest it.

tomandtish
2019-03-18, 01:10 PM
Champions was always pretty good at letting you design comic characters. Back in the 90s I had most of the main Marvel heroes statted out pretty accurately (IMHO).

Where these type of games fall down is balance, because a lot of heroes aren't balanced in the comics. It took a lot more points to build an accurate Thor than it did to build an accurate Spider-Man.

John Campbell
2019-03-18, 02:05 PM
Earth masses roughly 6*1024 kg. In Mutants & Masterminds/DC Adventures, that's 78 mass ranks. You need Strength 78 to lift it.

So...

Flight 1 * 2 PP
Strength (Limited to Lifting) 78 * (2-1) PP

So, 80 PP, you can move the Earth. At your kind of pathetic flight speed of 4 km/h, but still. You can do this with a typical starting character (PL 10, 150 PP) with just a little over half your initial PP budget. Because the Strength ranks are Limited to Lifting, they don't even break any of the PL limiters.

Superman as actually statted in the DC Adventures book can't do it. His lifting Strength is only 23 (200,000 tons). But he's actually useful for things other than very patient solar system remodeling.

Professor X is trickier and more expensive, but, distance rank 20 is enough that he could sit in a mansion in Westchester and have more than enough range to cover the entire contiguous United States. 22 will give him the whole planet. So:

Affliction (Will) (dazed→immobile→paralyzed) 1 PP/rank
+Area (burst) 20 +20 PP/rank
+Selective +1 PP/rank
Total cost: 22 PP/rank

There are other things you can add or limit the power with, which would make it more or less effective and expensive, but that's the basic effect. If we assume Professor X is PL 15 (like Superman) and the effect is PL-capped at rank 15, that's 330 PP. Which is a lot... Superman, as statted, is only 289 PP total, and Chuck has more powers than just that. But on the bright side, you can for super-cheap start adding Alternate Effects to the power, and spend those 330 PP again and again.

What kind of sorry excuse for a supers system are you looking at that can't actually make supers? Savage Worlds?

JoeJ
2019-03-18, 02:15 PM
Earth masses roughly 6*1024 kg. In Mutants & Masterminds/DC Adventures, that's 78 mass ranks. You need Strength 78 to lift it.

So...

Flight 1 * 2 PP
Strength (Limited to Lifting) 78 * (2-1) PP

So, 80 PP, you can move the Earth. At your kind of pathetic flight speed of 4 km/h, but still. You can do this with a typical starting character (PL 10, 150 PP) with just a little over half your initial PP budget. Because the Strength ranks are Limited to Lifting, they don't even break any of the PL limiters.

Superman as actually statted in the DC Adventures book can't do it. His lifting Strength is only 23 (200,000 tons). But he's actually useful for things other than very patient solar system remodeling.

Superman had a strength of 50 in 1e DCH, which seems like the low end of his range in the silver/bronze age. 2e came out shortly after Crisis on Infinite Earths and dropped his strength to 25. That seems about right for when John Byrne was writing him. The current DCA/M&M rating of 23 may have been based on the animated series. It feels about right for that.

Hackulator
2019-03-18, 02:45 PM
Yeah I don't know what makes you say this, there are various systems where you can model that level of power, M&M easily. I'm wondering if perhaps you're being fooled by the fact that most of those games suggest starting at much lower power levels, however that doesn't mean you can't have characters that powerful.

Grod_The_Giant
2019-03-18, 02:53 PM
Mutants and Masterminds 3e can do some pretty stupid things, if you let it. You don't even need high level characters, just a willingness to allow (RAW-legal) hyper-specialized power stunts.

Moving planets? Let's take a standard flying brick with Strength 12. Power stunt it into Enhanced Strength, Limited to lifting, and throw a few flaws on (Concentration, Distracting, and Tiring, say; that's pretty reasonable for "moving a planet") and we get the cost down to 1 point/8 ranks; with 24 base pp to work with, we can go up to an effective lifting Strength of 192. If my math is correct, that's... more than the total mass of the universe. Exponents are dumb.
Putting a force field around the planet? Enhanced Protection, Affects Only Others, Affects Only Objects-- 1 point/rank. No RAW limit on how big an object you can affect at once...
Affecting the entire earth at once with a power? We'd need 21 applications of the Area modifier; that's a lot if you're talking about a PL-appropriate power, but if we just need to worry about mooks... your basic PL 10 psychic with ~30 pp in their array to play with could pull out, oh... Area 21 Affliction 1, Selective, and boom, you're pinging the entire world for 23pp. If you want to make it worse, slap on our flaw friends Concentration, Distracting, Tiring, add on Unreliable 2 (1/session), and we only need 34pp in our array to nail the entire world with rank 2-- more than enough to obliterate the base populace. And that's not even getting into the stupidity of Perception, Contagious effects...
Searching an entire city in a blink of an eye? XKCD estimates visiting every apartment in New York would take 10 years. That's only Time Rank 26; again, easy to hit with a power stunt to convert your ~30pp of super-speed tricks into straight Quickness.
Touching the minds of everyone on the planet? I believe all you need is something along the lines of Detect Thoughts, Ranged, Radius, Analytical, Penetrates Concealment, Extended...7, I think, is all you need; the planet is only about 4X10^7 feet in diameter, and Extended 7 multiples your range of vision by 10^7. Boom. Only 15 points, too; plenty of room to throw a couple Rapids in there for good measure.
Time, space and dimensional travel? They're plot abilities with absurdly low base costs. Easy to add onto any of the above.

None of which a GM should let you do, but hey. The only thing you really can't do is impose no-save conditions on other characters.

John Campbell
2019-03-18, 03:46 PM
One of my DCA characters had, as an incidental side effect of her main power, the ability to sense anything that interacted with photons in any way anywhere inside roughly the orbit of Neptune. Results of the combination of the exponential power ranks and the way Alternate Effects work... I had an uncapped, cheap-per-rank detection power using the same point total as my PL-capped, expensive-per-rank primary power.

Another was literally immortal. Not just unaging (though he was that too), or only killable in specific complicated circumstances, but actually unable to die in any way whatsoever. If killed, he'd just respawn 24 hours later. That was only a minor part of his powers - 21 of his initial 150 PP. His big thing was covering people in glue. (He was Elmer, the Modern God of Glue (http://www.ci-n.com/~jcampbel/rpgs/dca/pcs/character.php?char=elmer).)

I also built a villain for a game I was running (though I never actually used him) called the Inverse Ninja Principle. His sole power was the ability to summon anything between a single 228 PP ninja and literally 73 quintillion 15 PP ninjas.

SimonMoon6
2019-03-18, 05:27 PM
Superman had a strength of 50 in 1e DCH, which seems like the low end of his range in the silver/bronze age.

Don't forget that it is possible to "push" his strength, so his meager ;) strength of 50 can be temporarily raised up to 100, which is more than enough to move the Earth around.

Quertus
2019-03-18, 05:31 PM
So, systems I've played that have superheroes... Hmmm... I'm senile, and reserve the right to add to this later, but... Heroes/Champions, Mutants & Masterminds, Heroes & Heroins, Marvel facerip, Marvel (not facerip), Gurps, Rifts, and, given that one episode with the previous Doctor, I suppose I need add Dr. Who. Plus homebrew. And, this one time, someone played a Marauder who thought he was a superhero, so WoD M:tA (that character actually felt more like a superhero than most "superhero" characters, actually).

Of course, if there's multiple editions of any of these systems, assume that I'm only familiar with the "worst" version. :smalltongue:

For example, although I own M&M (somewhere), I'm not remotely familiar with half of those tricks. Although I will say, 5% of normal humans just ignoring Professor X's ability represent an epic failure of the system to instantiate the character.

Another thing that I'll admit had me biased is where the systems have the characters normally start, and how quickly (slowly) they advance. It doesn't matter if the system theoretically let's you push the planet, if you have to play for 40 years to get to that point!

And... I really need to add the answers I've been given to the OP.

JoeJ
2019-03-18, 06:05 PM
Don't forget that it is possible to "push" his strength, so his meager ;) strength of 50 can be temporarily raised up to 100, which is more than enough to move the Earth around.

True, but in some pre-Crisis stories it doesn't seem like he's even breaking a sweat when he moves planets around. Superman's power level seems to vary between different writers to an even greater degree than most comic characters, although maybe not as much as the Spectre's.

SimonMoon6
2019-03-18, 06:51 PM
True, but in some pre-Crisis stories it doesn't seem like he's even breaking a sweat when he moves planets around. Superman's power level seems to vary between different writers to an even greater degree than most comic characters, although maybe not as much as the Spectre's.

Agreed to some extent. I still have certain issues trying to figure out how to explain things like Superboy moving the planet by blowing at it with his super breath or how he could move all the planets in one galaxy to another galaxy by connecting them with a chain and carrying the chain with him through space. But generally, the pre-Crisis Superman had no limits on his strength (there was nothing too heavy for him to lift), even if we didn't always see him moving planets every day, and he was constantly pulling his punch, which explains why he doesn't always KO everyone he hits. For me, the only real way to gauge his strength is by how much damage he can do to other Kryptonians (or himself, as he was once mind controlled into beating himself up), but then we have to determine how invulnerable Kryptonians are, since they can't be hurt by *anything* (not counting their specific weaknesses) other than Kryptonians or people of equivalent power (or rarely, characters of greater power, such as Validus or the Galactic Golem).

But in regard to "not breaking a sweat," I'm not completely convinced that spending Hero Points to increase a character's abilities temporarily (whether with Dice Actions or pushing) necessarily involves the character straining. To my mind, these expenditures of Hero Points can sometimes simply explain these inconsistencies that often happen. (Which is another reason why the DC Heroes RPG is one of the best games ever for modeling superheroes: it allows for the inconsistencies seen in the comics to play out in a game.)

SimonMoon6
2019-03-18, 07:07 PM
Yeah I don't know what makes you say this, there are various systems where you can model that level of power, M&M easily. I'm wondering if perhaps you're being fooled by the fact that most of those games suggest starting at much lower power levels, however that doesn't mean you can't have characters that powerful.

Most games that I've encountered, other than TSR's Marvel Superhero RPG or Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG, tend to have low power levels as their default, and even if you can somehow theoretically imagine a character of greater power, it's usually far beyond what the game is designed to allow. Games like GURPS, Superworld, and even Champions... they don't want you to be able to play someone who can move planets. They don't even want to describe how you could build such a character. Some games have ugly kludges like "extra lifting" advantages that a person could take multiple times so that the game doesn't have to actually let you *really* have that much strength. Such games are not something I would have any interest in. I want to be strong in the real way. A lot of games are simply designed to let you play a normal person, possibly with a power or two... but not actually superheroes of the Pre-Crisis power level. GURPS is particularly bad in this way, being a game that's really about being a normal guy... and tacking on superpowers just doesn't work in that environment. It's just not a good game for superheroes.

But, actually, the way I judge a superhero game is more than just "can you make a character who can push the planet around"? That's an important aspect for every superhero game to have because otherwise, you can't play (or model as NPCs) actual superheroes like Superman (and then, what's the point of the game?), but it's not the only qualification to be a "good" superhero game. For me, a good superhero game needs to also make all character concepts quick and easy to both create and play. For example, any game in which Beast Boy's power to turn into animals is not an easy thing to build (hello Champions) or play (hello Champions) is a game that is terribly unsuited for superheroes. If I can't easily make Beast Boy, Metamorpho, Rogue, Deadman, Mimic, Green Lantern (both pre- and post-Kyle), or anybody else with versatile "meta" powers is a game I don't want to play. Likewise, if it is difficult to play such characters (like in Champions where I could have a Multi-Power, where I suddenly have to spend X amount of points to rebuild my character, which will only take me an hour or two, every single time I use my powers), then this is a game that is horribly unsuited for superheroes.

Also, any game that is overly focused towards normal people (like GURPS) is generally not going to work well. Or any game like D&D where you have to specify every single combat skill that you have or specifically do NOT have (this guy can punch, but not kick; this guy can disarm people but can't do a foot sweep; this guy can punch two people at a time, but not three; this guy can use a sword but not a halberd; this guy can use a short sword but not a dagger; this guy can throw dirt in your eyes, but can't punch you in the crotch)... that sort of game is also unsuited to represent martial arts oriented superheroes (like Batman) who generally aren't lacking any particular combat skill.

Those are my criteria.

Hackulator
2019-03-18, 08:44 PM
For example, although I own M&M (somewhere), I'm not remotely familiar with half of those tricks. Although I will say, 5% of normal humans just ignoring Professor X's ability represent an epic failure of the system to instantiate the character.

Another thing that I'll admit had me biased is where the systems have the characters normally start, and how quickly (slowly) they advance. It doesn't matter if the system theoretically let's you push the planet, if you have to play for 40 years to get to that point!

And... I really need to add the answers I've been given to the OP.

You have to remember that everything that happens in a comic book is happening by the equivalent of DM fiat. There is only so far game mechanics will go in getting to that, the last bit requires, well, DM fiat.

Also advancement speed is entirely up to the GM.


But, actually, the way I judge a superhero game is more than just "can you make a character who can push the planet around"? That's an important aspect for every superhero game to have because otherwise, you can't play (or model as NPCs) actual superheroes like Superman (and then, what's the point of the game?), but it's not the only qualification to be a "good" superhero game. For me, a good superhero game needs to also make all character concepts quick and easy to both create and play. For example, any game in which Beast Boy's power to turn into animals is not an easy thing to build (hello Champions) or play (hello Champions) is a game that is terribly unsuited for superheroes. If I can't easily make Beast Boy, Metamorpho, Rogue, Deadman, Mimic, Green Lantern (both pre- and post-Kyle), or anybody else with versatile "meta" powers is a game I don't want to play. Likewise, if it is difficult to play such characters (like in Champions where I could have a Multi-Power, where I suddenly have to spend X amount of points to rebuild my character, which will only take me an hour or two, every single time I use my powers), then this is a game that is horribly unsuited for superheroes.

Well, you can model all those superheros pretty easily in M&M.

icefractal
2019-03-18, 10:42 PM
You can easily do all those things in Champions, it just costs a lot of points. Or in some cases, not even that many points. While it wouldn't be appropriate for most campaigns, you can do this:

World Domination: Major Transform 1 point, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Indirect (+1/2), Based On EGO Combat Value (Mental Defense applies; +1), Area Of Effect (4" Radius; +1), Continuous (+1), Penetrating (x2; +1), MegaScale (1" = 10,000 km; +1 1/4), Invisible Power Effects, Hide effects of Power (Fully Invisible; +2) (49 Active Points)

This is a generally undetectable telepathic attack that will, within probably less than 15 minutes of turning it on, make everyone in the world who doesn't have doubly hardened mental defenses into your loyal followers. Or make a more subtle change, such as installing a telepathic "back door" you can use to bypass their defenses and make your normal telepathic stuff nearly automatic.

For reference, 49 points is below average by superheroic standards. A rocket launcher could easily cost more.

NichG
2019-03-19, 04:48 AM
(Homebrew? And if nothing heroic opposes it.)

It's a custom system (here's a link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pDnZ5NnSUeRwQEOuEjxMFGmT4isb9iGI). I wanted to try to distill down the superhero genre into an underlying question or point - basically, what is it that actually matters in a world inhabited by superheroes? The answer I came to is that everything that can be done with powers is essentially arbitrary, but the things that are not arbitrary are the psychological factors which apply to the individual heroes. Preserving bonds with childhood friends, gaining the respect or fear of others, protecting a place or an ideal - those things all matter because they matter to the human part of the character's mind, not because their power cares.

So actual victories and defeats, increases or decreases in power or importance are all based fundamentally on changes to a character's psychology more than they're based on changes to the way the world is. This is especially with the impermanence associated with superhero settings - people die and come back, people visit alternate realities, erase the timeline, clone it, and suffer an invasion from the original, etc. The erasure and restoration of the Earth is less important than the fact that seeing it happens makes a hero more jaded, or more paranoid, or more aggressive, or whatever.

I wanted a system that reflected that idea, so I made one in which there is almost no true mechanical limit on power or agency so long as the resolve and will to call upon that power exists in the player. At the same time, the system is designed to make it so that everyone lives in a perpetual state of mutually assured destruction - you can do almost anything in terms of effect, but there's also almost no way to prevent someone from doing something even worse in retaliation before they're taken out. Generally attacking with intent to kill (establishing a consequence that ends another Breaker's life) means that they have no reason not to borrow an infinite amount of XP against their mental state to make some overpowered Move in order to save their life at the cost of their sanity, as long as they value their life or whatever is on the line over the fallout from unleashing an insane, arbitrarily powerful force upon the world that wants to systematically end anything that threatens their existence. So you get a number of superhero tropes falling out naturally from that (namely, you have these overpowered fights that chew up the scenery, but they very rarely end in the death of a participant unless something very serious is on the line).

Quellian-dyrae
2019-03-19, 04:52 AM
More from M&M.

First and foremost, the sanest way to do stuff like this, if you're a GM wanting to run a game on this scale, would be to just houserule the ranks and measures table to scale even faster. I mean, that's not something you can do out of the box with the system, but from a practical standpoint it's easy and effective.

And shout-out to 2e, which had...I think an extra called Progression that basically scaled values one step per PP spent. So that would make this kinda stuff fairly easy.

Telepathic message to the whole planet's easy. Mental Communication 4 (Area, Selective). 24 PP, no sweat.

Teleporting and reality shifting a planet is basically the same as pushing it, using Increased Mass. Expensive, but straightforward. Less expensive with flaws.

Forcefielding the planet...looks like the surface area of the earth is 197,000,000 square miles. Somewhere in the vicinity of 5.5 trillion square feet, if I'm calculating right. Create...33 could cover that, assuming you make the forcefield a foot thick. Thinner could lower the rank needed, and because volume rank is stupid there's not technically a minimum dimension (though I find 6" to be a sensible sanity limit). A Limit or two makes that quite affordable.

Now if we're getting into insane, broken, never-ever-try-any-of-this-as-a-player-or-allow-it-as-a-GM-but-technically-possible-within-the-system nonsense...

For telepathically affecting everyone on the planet, with a solid effect rank, on a budget...huh, I thought you could combo Perception Area (Mental) with Mental Communication, but actually looking back over the exact wording of Perception Area it looks like that wouldn't work. Good on you, M&M.

Regardless, you've still got the classic Extended 7 Radius Penetrates Concealment Vision, backed by a Perception Range Reaction Selective Affliction. At 7/rank +12 for the super-sense it's expensive, but doable.

And if you really want to be nonsensical about things, the Summon power can be abused to trivialize point costs. Summons have 15 PP per rank. The GM would have to be insane to allow you to have a Summon* that basically lets you spend 30 PP to create a minion (or some arbitrary object or effect that mechanically functions as a minion) who can blow your entire budget on a single ludicrously overpowered move (possibly as an Affects Others Only Enhanced Trait so that you are the one actually doing it). But it is something you can technically do with the system, and on a starter hero's budget no less.

*Granted, I could probably end this sentence here, but that's another matter.

Jay R
2019-03-19, 09:44 AM
Most such things can be done -- by abusing the rules past the point a competent GM would allow.

Suppose the most powerful being on earth is worth 400 points. In Champions, you can have a 400 point sidekick for 80 real points, and double the number you have for 5. So for 85 points you have two 400 point sidekicks.
For 90 points, you have four of them.

For 80 + 165 = 245 points, you have 8 billion sidekicks -- everybody on Earth is at your beck and call.

Similar abuses of mega-scale and area effect would allow a character to use mental powers on the entire world.

They don't come up in games only because GMs put limits on total points and on points per power, as explained in the rulebooks. [In fact, the example of making the entire world your sidekicks came from an early rulebook, and was used as an example of why you must limit the powers.]

In some game from the early 1980s, the rules said that if a player found a clever way to exploit the rules for too much power, you should "congratulate them on their ingenuity and ruthlessly disallow it."

Quertus
2019-03-19, 10:15 AM
Most such things can be done -- by abusing the rules past the point a competent GM would allow.

They don't come up in games only because GMs put limits on total points and on points per power, as explained in the rulebooks. [In fact, the example of making the entire world your sidekicks came from an early rulebook, and was used as an example of why you must limit the powers.]

In some game from the early 1980s, the rules said that if a player found a clever way to exploit the rules for too much power, you should "congratulate them on their ingenuity and ruthlessly disallow it."

So, part of the reason I can't make real superheroes is because the rules encourage the GM to disallow them? And later games tried to just bake that into the rules / make rules with fewer "loopholes"?

JNAProductions
2019-03-19, 10:33 AM
So, part of the reason I can't make real superheroes is because the rules encourage the GM to disallow them? And later games tried to just bake that into the rules / make rules with fewer "loopholes"?

Do you actually WANT to play Superman? Because, face it, what actually challenges him?

And, moreover, how would the other players feel if you're playing Superman?

Jay R
2019-03-19, 11:17 AM
So, part of the reason I can't make real superheroes is because the rules encourage the GM to disallow them? And later games tried to just bake that into the rules / make rules with fewer "loopholes"?

No. You can't make over-powered superheroes because they don't lead to fun games for the other players. A good writer can make a good Superman story, by finding ways to prevent gross abuse of extreme power, but it's much harder to create a game scenario that Superman, the Atom, and Hawkeye can all enjoy and take part it.

[Note that in early Justice League stories, kryptonite was absurdly common, just to make it possible for Hawkman to save Superman as often as Superman saved Hawkman.]

Also, I reject your assumption that Daredevil, the Atom, Captain America, Night Owl, Elongated Man Mr. Terrific, and others aren't "real superheroes", just because they cannot lift planets or mentally control the entire world. There is a subset of real superheroes you can make, and a subset that you cannot make.

Quertus
2019-03-19, 11:19 AM
Do you actually WANT to play Superman? Because, face it, what actually challenges him?

And, moreover, how would the other players feel if you're playing Superman?

... Good question.

I guess... I have a concept of what "superheroes" means from comics & movies. If the system cannot meet my expectations, then it just feels... incomplete. It feels like your choices are "lame" or "GM fiat".

If the system technically could meet those expectations, but no PC will ever have enough points/XP to accomplish those feats, then it feels like your choices are, once again, "lame" or "GM fiat".

If you can accomplish those feats as a PC, but the system falls apart when you do, you are at least outside "lame" or "GM fiat", but into the realm of "gentleman's agreement" or "unplayable". This is arguably where 3e D&D lives.

So, I suppose, what I'd really like is either a) a system so well made that these classic superhero feats are able to be accomplished by the PCs without breaking the system, or b) a group that knows how to make cool epic superhero moments in an otherwise broken superhero system.

Also, hopefully, the group would feel great about me playing Superman (whether they were playing equivalently "super" supers themselves or not). Honestly, this whole "competence envy" thing is baffling to me. When the party is clearly not up to the job, but one team member is awesome enough to carry the party? Great times. I really don't understand all the hate that most posters seem to have for such power disparity. So long as you don't go into it blind - so long as you know that that's what you're getting, it's fine.

Quertus
2019-03-19, 11:28 AM
No. You can't make over-powered superheroes because they don't lead to fun games for the other players. A good writer can make a good Superman story, by finding ways to prevent gross abuse of extreme power, but it's much harder to create a game scenario that Superman, the Atom, and Hawkeye can all enjoy and take part it.

[Note that in early Justice League stories, kryptonite was absurdly common, just to make it possible for Hawkman to save Superman as often as Superman saved Hawkman.]

Also, I reject your assumption that Daredevil, the Atom, Captain America, Night Owl, Elongated Man Mr. Terrific, and others aren't "real superheroes", just because they cannot lift planets or mentally control the entire world. There is a subset of real superheroes you can make, and a subset that you cannot make.

... I can see how what I posted could be read that way. That wasn't quite what I meant.

What I meant was a double-meaning, for which your interpretation is an unintended third.

One thing I meant was, I want a system that can accurately model the feats of actual comic book / movie superheroes. "Real" here means "published".

The other thing I meant was, "really, really super - the superest of the super". Your examples certainly aren't the superest of the super.

I want a system that will model all published superheroes - and allow players to play PCs equivalent to all such superheroes, not just the least super of the superheroes.

Clearer?

-----

Now, as to your other points... Well, insert obligatory "I've played in a game with (figurative) Thor and a (literal) sentient potted plant - I was the potted plant" reference.

Now that that's out of the way, yes, you absolutely can have absolute power disparity and still have a fun game - if you have the right group. "Balance" and "Fun" are not synonyms.

That said, nothing in this thread should indicate to you that I have any intention of producing unbalanced superheroes. To not go down this wormhole, feel free to assume that I'm only discussing balanced high-end, world-altering superheroes.

JAL_1138
2019-03-19, 11:28 AM
Dunno how relevant this is, but there’s a GURPS build floating around somewhere that lets you obliterate all organic life in the universe for 53 points.

Quertus
2019-03-19, 11:30 AM
Dunno how relevant this is, but there’s a GURPS build floating around somewhere that lets you obliterate all organic life in the universe for 53 points.

Supposedly. I've heard it's been disproved as illegal or something, though.

Hackulator
2019-03-19, 11:34 AM
... Good question.

I guess... I have a concept of what "superheroes" means from comics & movies. If the system cannot meet my expectations, then it just feels... incomplete. It feels like your choices are "lame" or "GM fiat".

If the system technically could meet those expectations, but no PC will ever have enough points/XP to accomplish those feats, then it feels like your choices are, once again, "lame" or "GM fiat".

If you can accomplish those feats as a PC, but the system falls apart when you do, you are at least outside "lame" or "GM fiat", but into the realm of "gentleman's agreement" or "unplayable". This is arguably where 3e D&D lives.

So, I suppose, what I'd really like is either a) a system so well made that these classic superhero feats are able to be accomplished by the PCs without breaking the system, or b) a group that knows how to make cool epic superhero moments in an otherwise broken superhero system.

Also, hopefully, the group would feel great about me playing Superman (whether they were playing equivalently "super" supers themselves or not). Honestly, this whole "competence envy" thing is baffling to me. When the party is clearly not up to the job, but one team member is awesome enough to carry the party? Great times. I really don't understand all the hate that most posters seem to have for such power disparity. So long as you don't go into it blind - so long as you know that that's what you're getting, it's fine.

Other than the idea of powers being automatically successful with no chance to resist or avoid, which is something that good RPG systems will not allow players to do mechanically, I feel like people have described more than one system here where you can do what you are talking about. Even Superman meets people he's not really stronger than, and even Professor X meets people he can't just control telepathically. If you want to houserule away 1s always failing or 20s always succeeding to make it so normals can't do anything against supers that's a pretty basic houserule.

As to your comment about "competence envy", people want to play the game, not watch you play the game. If you were in a party with a character who automatically did everything so much better and faster than you that you never got to do anything, that would not be fun. If you don't get that, well then I don't know what to say. If you do get that, then you must be able to realize that moving that line back a little so the really powerful character was doing 90% of the stuff on his own and you and the rest of the party are basically allowed to participate in 10% of things would still not be fun for a lot (or all) people. Where exactly the line falls that makes that acceptable depends on the group.

Imbalance
2019-03-19, 01:04 PM
It honestly sounds like you'd be happiest just taking HeroClix and working it into a campaign. I have played matches that either reflected a book panel for panel or could have served as the film treatment's storyboard without any attempt to rp - it seriously just felt that way. RPG fans seem to want to shun it because it's "too kiddy" or "not deep enough" or doesn't require a ton of crunchy rulebooks and charts, but that's the feature that makes the combat dial system so adaptable. Plus, the list of characters is mind boggling, not just for DC and Marvel, but for an ever-expanding list of licensed IP. Where else are you going to find pre-made stats under the same system for an evil team-up of Joker, Shredder, Sarumon, and Ryu to take on Spock, Silver Surfer, and Gypsy Danger?

Quellian-dyrae
2019-03-19, 01:14 PM
Honestly, thinking about it some more, most of those things were in the range of 80ish or fewer PP for M&M. Actually...82 PP is probably sufficient.

Moving the planet was Strength 78. Flight 1 adds 2. Movement 1 (Space Travel) for actual astronomical speeds in space adds another 2. So 82 total. I suppose you'd also need Immunity 10 (Life Support) - or at least Immunity 4 (Suffocation from Vacuum, Vacuum Environment, Radiation Environment, Cold Environment) - to survive in space for any length of time, but eh you could probably make do with a high Fortitude for short trips.

Teleporting the planet would be Teleport 1 (Increased Mass 78), Movement 1 (Space Travel). Also 82. Dimension shifting the whole planet could be done for 82 with Dimensional Travel 2 with Increased Mass 78 (though it'd take another rank of Dimensional Travel if you want any dimension, but hey slap Activation 2 on it and you're golden).

The telepathically affecting the whole planet thing was 7/rank +12 for the sense. 82 for a rank 10 power.

A basic Create 33 is 66 points, so even without flaws it's fine.

And of course the global mass communication was a paltry 24.

Now, the afflicting the whole world thing uses something that's just hard-broken no matter what your level and what system you're in - being able to attack enemies in total safety from the comfort of your own home just doesn't work in an RPG period. So yeah, I think that sort of thing is always best reserved for sheer GM Fiat type stuff.

The rest of them...I mean, in my games, I use a "sanity limit" of PL+10 for power ranks that aren't otherwise PL-limited, but that's largely because I don't want this kind of raw astronomical scale stuff. When I threw a meteor at my players, sure I expected them to push it out of the way, but not as a single standard action, you know? But that doesn't mean these things are inherently broken. While extreme, most of them are rather niche. The difference between Power Lifting 20 and Power Lifting 78 in most situations in most games will be precisely zero.

A character could, in theory, make an 82 point Array, give it nine dynamic APs and leave the base slot non-dynamic, for an even 100 PP. If you're a PL 10 character, that leaves just enough to get your defenses to PL. You'd have squat for skills and advantages (technically you can buy them in your array, but you shouldn't). That's a larger array in both power and APs than I feel is reasonable; I tend to go with roughly 3-4 PP/PL, up to five APs (6 slots total), as my rule of thumb for reasonable arrays. With a bit of leeway on slots at higher PLs, say another one per 2 PL above 10. But hey, if you're in a group that's okay with that level of raw power and versatility, it's doable on a starter budget and, while I'd call it clearly overpowered, it's not necessarily game-breaking. (And you can always have fewer slots, I just went there because hey even hundred).

But that's at PL 10, which is really kinda meant to be a typical "city-scale" hero. At PL 15, where you're talking "world-class" heroes, you've got 35 PL left assuming all defenses at PL, enough to snag a decent set of say two skills at +15, two more at +10 (or one more at +20), and fifteen advantages. The array's still out of bounds by my standards, but not as egregiously, clocking in at somewhere over 5/rank and still a slot or two high. Honestly it'd probably be fine in a high-power game as long as you're not optimizing the slots much.

And at PL 20, which is intended to be cosmic scale...well, what do you know, 82 PP comes in at just over 4/rank, and ten slots is actually one below what I'd call the reasonable cap. You'll be spending 100 PP on defenses and probably want another 10 on attack bonus so your array's combat powers can actually be 4/rank affairs. That leaves 90, enough for a solid selection of skills, advantages, and maybe even some supplemental powers outside of the array.

Sooo...yeah, at my personal balance threshold and aside from my PL+10 max rank sanity limit (which to be fair I could see myself waiving for a PL 20 game), M&M does everything you want at PL 20, precisely where its general description of levels says it should.

With regards to balance in general, in addition to the above, having the group at generally the same level of competence makes things much easier on the GM. If you know roughly how powerful everyone is, it's much easier to design challenges that hit that "difficult but winnable" sweet spot and allow everyone to participate. It's one of the reasons I'm always baffled when I see an M&M GM tell their players not to worry about hitting their PL caps, or that they outright shouldn't unless they have a good reason for it. Why would you give yourself the headache of trying to design challenges for the equivalent of a PL 10, a PL 8, a PL 5, and a PL 3?

I do agree that in the general sense, it's better to have powerful allies than not. And if someone intentionally wants to play a less powerful character - for the RP, for a growth story arc, because they want to play a dedicated support build or optimize for something other than combat, whatever - that's totally fine. If a game gets going and half the players want to play awesome fantasy heroes and the other half are really digging the appeal of physically unimposing civilians thrust into peril from their previously-idyllic lives, needing to depend on their more powerful companions for protection and rely on cleverness rather than mechanical potency to contribute, by all means Lord of the Rings it up. But it's another story when most of the group is trying to play their Hobbits of the Shire game and one player rolls up with Aragorn.

penak
2019-03-19, 01:29 PM
subscribed, this seems like a very interesting thread

John Campbell
2019-03-19, 03:05 PM
So, systems I've played that have superheroes... Hmmm... I'm senile, and reserve the right to add to this later, but... Heroes/Champions, Mutants & Masterminds, Heroes & Heroins, Marvel facerip, Marvel (not facerip), Gurps, Rifts, and, given that one episode with the previous Doctor, I suppose I need add Dr. Who. Plus homebrew. And, this one time, someone played a Marauder who thought he was a superhero, so WoD M:tA (that character actually felt more like a superhero than most "superhero" characters, actually).

Of course, if there's multiple editions of any of these systems, assume that I'm only familiar with the "worst" version. :smalltongue:

For example, although I own M&M (somewhere), I'm not remotely familiar with half of those tricks. Although I will say, 5% of normal humans just ignoring Professor X's ability represent an epic failure of the system to instantiate the character.

It's a fundamental problem with d20 systems. Either you treat the 1 and 20 as magic numbers, and critical success/critical failure happen way too often, or you don't and it's way too easy to engineer checks so that the die literally does not matter (e.g. 3.5 skills). It's one of the reasons multi-die systems are better.

That said, like I mentioned before, there are extras you can add to the power to make it more effective. Slap on Increased Duration (+1 PP/rank) a couple of times to turn Affliction from an Instant to Sustained, so once initiated you can keep it going from turn to turn with just a Free Action, and give it Cumulative (+1 PP/rank) and Progressive (+2 PP/rank), so failures pile up and successful saves just mean "try again next turn". People will always roll 20s, but the number that continue to roll 20s every turn under your effortlessly ongoing assault will be diminishingly small. Keep it up for a few rounds, and you may not have literally everybody, but the exceptions will be a tiny fraction of a percent, and getting fewer and fewer every round.


Another thing that I'll admit had me biased is where the systems have the characters normally start, and how quickly (slowly) they advance. It doesn't matter if the system theoretically let's you push the planet, if you have to play for 40 years to get to that point!
So, um, did you miss the part where I pointed out that what it takes to push the planet in M&M/DCA is only a little more than half of a typical PL 10 starting character's PP allowance, and doesn't even break the PL caps?

FASERIP is the only other supers system I'm really familiar with (well, Savage Worlds Supers, but Savage Worlds is pushing its limits with Badass Normals, and is woefully inadequate for actual supers), and it's infamous for its random character generation system that can give you Thor and Aunt May in the same party. I rolled a character with that system once who could, out of the box, build laser weapons that did Class 3000 damage.


True, but in some pre-Crisis stories it doesn't seem like he's even breaking a sweat when he moves planets around. Superman's power level seems to vary between different writers to an even greater degree than most comic characters, although maybe not as much as the Spectre's.
Like I said above, Clark is statted in DCA at PL 15 and 289 PP. He's powerful, but not nearly the ridonkulousness of Silver Age Superman. Seems stronger than TV Supergirl, but then I've been complaining about her not being super enough. (It's a fine line with Kryptonians, showing off how powerful they are while not letting them just roflstomp all opposition. The Flash has a similar problem, where Barry should really just speedblitz anything that's not another speedster before they can even begin to react, but he doesn't because that would mean the show wouldn't be long enough to run commercials.)

Spectre's statted at PL 18 and 610(!) PP, with a note that he's sometimes as low as PL 12 (with guidelines for how to downgrade him to that), and sometimes just PL X, which is "This is not a character; this is a plot device. It doesn't have stats; it does whatever the GM wants it to, however the GM wants it to."

SimonMoon6
2019-03-19, 03:44 PM
Do you actually WANT to play Superman? Because, face it, what actually challenges him?

It depends. What do you mean by "Superman"? If you mean the Golden Age Superman, pretty much any mad scientist with a ray gun. The post-Crisis Superman is tough, but not too tough; even a mere nuclear bomb can harm him (enough to knock him out, but not kill him). It's only really the pre-Crisis Silver/Bronze Age Superman that has the crazy power level. But we can't just call him "Superman" because someone might think of the George Reeves Superman (who feels a need to dodge when a gun is thrown at him) or some other lesser Superman. Superman isn't one character, he's a million characters.

But what challenges the Silver/Bronze Age Superman? Lots of things. First of all, anyone with kryptonite. Second, anybody with any of his many many other weaknesses. Magic is a commonly appearing weakness. But he's also vulnerable to red sun radiation, in that it removes all or some of his powers (depending on the writer). Also, gravity powers can cause him issues, since many of his powers come from the lesser gravity of Earth.

But the thing is, if you're trying to challenge Superman physically, you're going about things the wrong way. You're not going to beat Superman physically... at least not normally. Sure, you can have him fight the Phantom Zone villains (or any other Kryptonians) and they can overpower him with numbers, since they are physically his equals. And people like Validus or the Galactic Golem are MORE powerful physically than Superman himself, so they can beat him up, if you really need to find a way to beat him up. But... that's not how you challenge him. You challenge his intellect. Ever notice that most of Superman's classic (pre-Crisis) villains are just smart guys? Lex Luthor, Toyman, Puzzler, Prankster... none of them can fight Superman physically. Even Brainiac is all about having a superior intellect, even if he does possess a unique ability in that he has a force field that not even Superman can penetrate. The point is that Superman's enemies are smart not strong because THAT is how you challenge him. Or you have them invent a gadget that does something uniquely interesting (like turning Superman into a baby, or making Superman lose control of his powers or something)... but not anything that simply causes Superman to "lose a lot of hit points".

Only an idiotic writer would try to come up with *physically* challenging opponents for Superman (like dumb Doomsday).




And, moreover, how would the other players feel if you're playing Superman?

They'd probably feel GREAT since this means that they too can play awesomely powerful characters that they wouldn't get to play in other games.

JoeJ
2019-03-19, 03:47 PM
But in regard to "not breaking a sweat," I'm not completely convinced that spending Hero Points to increase a character's abilities temporarily (whether with Dice Actions or pushing) necessarily involves the character straining. To my mind, these expenditures of Hero Points can sometimes simply explain these inconsistencies that often happen. (Which is another reason why the DC Heroes RPG is one of the best games ever for modeling superheroes: it allows for the inconsistencies seen in the comics to play out in a game.)

To push a Strength of 50 up to 100 for 4 seconds he'd have to spend 150 hero points, not counting any that were added before the roll (and since he'd have to roll at least a 75 without spending hp, I don't see that as happening except as a complete fluke). I'm okay with saying that some pre-crisis writers had Superman's strength up in the 70-80 range. (And much more recently, All Star Superman had it even higher).

Of course, if you want to raise his Strength and Body from 50/40 to 75/60, everything still works. For consistency you'd need to increase the powers of some of the other characters as well, but the game still works just fine at that level.


... I can see how what I posted could be read that way. That wasn't quite what I meant.

What I meant was a double-meaning, for which your interpretation is an unintended third.

One thing I meant was, I want a system that can accurately model the feats of actual comic book / movie superheroes. "Real" here means "published".

The other thing I meant was, "really, really super - the superest of the super". Your examples certainly aren't the superest of the super.

1st edition DC Heroes included what I believe was the entire JLA (circa 1985) as playable characters. They may not be the most super heroes to ever appear in any comic, but some of them are a lot closer to the top end of that than they are to the bottom.

SimonMoon6
2019-03-19, 03:51 PM
It honestly sounds like you'd be happiest just taking HeroClix and working it into a campaign. I have played matches that either reflected a book panel for panel or could have served as the film treatment's storyboard without any attempt to rp - it seriously just felt that way.

No... just no. As much as I enjoy Heroclix as a game... it's just not a comic book simulator.

The Joker can move just as far as the Flash on a map (depending on the versions of Joker and Flash). That's just not right.

There's a version of Superman who isn't strong enough to break down a wall. In that same set, there is a version of Batman who can break down a wall with his bare hands. But Superman just isn't strong enough.

Heroclix is an interesting game and has many good things going for it, but it is the WORST at trying to simulate comics. Want to have an army of non-powered guys with guns and knives take down Superman? You can do it in Heroclix... but you shouldn't be able to. That's just not comic accurate at all. Anybody with any kind of bladed weapon can possibly do 6 damage; Superman can resist maybe 2 of that damage. No Superman has more than 11 clicks of life. So, with three (admittedly lucky) attacks with a mere knife, Superman might be dead (well, "KO'd" technically). That... that's what you suggest as simulating comic book fights?

No, just no.

Lucas Yew
2019-03-19, 05:25 PM
Subscribing to see where this philosophical debate goes to...

P.S. I support the pro-"real"-super side, for now (as an avid "simulationist").

Imbalance
2019-03-19, 06:14 PM
No... just no. As much as I enjoy Heroclix as a game... it's just not a comic book simulator.

The Joker can move just as far as the Flash on a map (depending on the versions of Joker and Flash). That's just not right.

There's a version of Superman who isn't strong enough to break down a wall. In that same set, there is a version of Batman who can break down a wall with his bare hands. But Superman just isn't strong enough.

Heroclix is an interesting game and has many good things going for it, but it is the WORST at trying to simulate comics. Want to have an army of non-powered guys with guns and knives take down Superman? You can do it in Heroclix... but you shouldn't be able to. That's just not comic accurate at all. Anybody with any kind of bladed weapon can possibly do 6 damage; Superman can resist maybe 2 of that damage. No Superman has more than 11 clicks of life. So, with three (admittedly lucky) attacks with a mere knife, Superman might be dead (well, "KO'd" technically). That... that's what you suggest as simulating comic book fights?

No, just no.

I'm not calling HeroClix a simulator, but I am saying that as a loose baseline it can land itself remarkably close to the source material. Folks have made decent rp campaigns with minor tweaks. If you're looking at the stats as literally as your example (and are using the phrase "comic accurate" with a straight face), then no, it won't work. But if you take it with the same grain of salt that allows you to accept Hulk and Thor restrained by a tiny bolt on an alien world, then the potential becomes more apparent. Suddenly Joker's movement advantage isn't about speed, Batman breaking a wall that Supes won't isn't about power, and Supes losing to a street gang has nothing to do with their knives, but a story about how that could happen may take shape.

Have you and I had this same discussion before on Realms?

Jay R
2019-03-19, 07:28 PM
... I can see how what I posted could be read that way. That wasn't quite what I meant.

What I meant was a double-meaning, for which your interpretation is an unintended third.

OK, good. We're going back over things until we actually communicate. That's how the internet works at its best.


One thing I meant was, I want a system that can accurately model the feats of actual comic book / movie superheroes. "Real" here means "published".The other thing I meant was, "really, really super - the superest of the super". Your examples certainly aren't the superest of the super.

I want a system that will model all published superheroes - and allow players to play PCs equivalent to all such superheroes, not just the least super of the superheroes.

Clearer?

Then congratulations. As I documented above, Champions can do this. As I also documented, most GMs won't allow it, because they can't write good scenarios for it.

I once played a Superman-like character with levels of strength with varying Endurance cost. The result was a character who could use higher-than-most-heroes level strength all day without breaking a sweat, a higher level all day while using up his Endurance at the same rate he regained it, and mountain-lifting strength at a high Endurance cost that he could only do once or twice a day. [He only used his highest level of Strength once, against a large, powerful robot, which he demolished with one punch of 44d6 damage.]

If I ever have a cosmic-level game idea, I'll allow cosmic-level characters. I won't do it normally, for the same reason I won't allow 20th level D&D characters in a game aimed at first levels. But the rules certainly make it possible.


Now, as to your other points... Well, insert obligatory "I've played in a game with (figurative) Thor and a (literal) sentient potted plant - I was the potted plant" reference.

Now that that's out of the way, yes, you absolutely can have absolute power disparity and still have a fun game - if you have the right group. "Balance" and "Fun" are not synonyms.

That said, nothing in this thread should indicate to you that I have any intention of producing unbalanced superheroes. To not go down this wormhole, feel free to assume that I'm only discussing balanced high-end, world-altering superheroes.

OK. The problem is designing scenarios that can challenge such characters and allow them to use all their powers. In the best comic stories of the Silver Age Superman, he did not move planets, and in fact, wasn't challenged physically. We all knew he could beat Luthor with the flick of his little finger; the challenge was to find Luthor in time to :
a. save Lois Lane,
b. stop the tidal wave
c. prove the innocence of the man on death row,
etc.
The fight scene wasn't a fight scene; it was just Superman finding Lex's lair and nabbing him. The real climax was putting the clues together.

But most players with planet-moving power levels want to move a planet. And most gamers want the fight scene to matter. So games are usually run with power levels in which the fight scene really matters, and planets aren't moved.

But the system will allow any power level.

John Campbell
2019-03-19, 08:44 PM
Oh, and it's worth noting that at least one edition of DC Heroes had published stats for Doctor Manhattan.

Mechalich
2019-03-19, 09:04 PM
Then congratulations. As I documented above, Champions can do this. As I also documented, most GMs won't allow it, because they can't write good scenarios for it.

Yep. All comics-based superhero universes involve massive character balance issues that are resolved on the page (or the screen) only through very judicious management of who-targets-who and sometimes outright ignoring the amount of damage a given attack should do (I recall Lobo landing a clean hit on Nightwing in the most recent season of Young Justice that somehow didn't even break any bones). The minute you try to bring that sort of thing into a game you're forcing the GM to juggle every encounter in the same way an actual comic book writer must but with no direct control over the narrative.

At that point the system may actually be more of an impediment than a support and you might as well run your supers game freeform. The GM is actually on much stronger grounds to say 'no, you can't do that' in a freeform scenario than in one with rules because it's easier to proclaim fiat when you don't have to overrule another source at the same time.


But most players with planet-moving power levels want to move a planet. And most gamers want the fight scene to matter. So games are usually run with power levels in which the fight scene really matters, and planets aren't moved.

Worse, most players given a planet-moving power will realize that they can now make any problem currently located on Planet X by throwing said planet into it's sun and will implement said xenocidal tactic with a level of gusto that would make Freiza (who's not exactly unfamiliar with that move) blanch.

SimonMoon6
2019-03-20, 09:57 AM
Since we're on the topic of "How do you design adventures for a team of Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit", I'll mention some experience I've had in the past. At one point, I was running a superhero game in Mayfair's DC Heroes system. A new player joined and I helped him build his character, but I accidentally helped him make a ridiculously powerful character, since I didn't realize just how insane the Gravity Increase power could be. So, I had to think: how did actual comic book writers deal with the same problem? How do you balance Superman with Batman? (Kryptonite? Oh, that doesn't help me since this PC had no weaknesses.) How do you balance the Justice Society's adventures when you have the god-like Spectre alongside "ordinary guys with a small gimmick" like Sandman, the Al Pratt Atom, and Doctor Mid-Nite?

And I thought about the JLA/JSA crossover where Anti-Matter Man showed up. The rest of the teams had to deal with less powerful threats, while the Spectre had to fight the cosmically powerful Anti-Matter Man.

So, for example, in one adventure, I wanted the heroes to fight Aquaman's arch-enemy, Ocean Master, with his new bag of magical tricks. But the new PC would crush him instantly. So, I added an extra threat, a giant squid (with extra stuff going for him), that would be a decent threat for the overpowered PC. It's just a matter of making sure everyone has something on their own level to deal with.

Sure, the OP PC could've ignored the squid to fight Ocean Master, but then the squid would've killed everyone else. So, it worked.

Beleriphon
2019-03-20, 11:07 AM
Oh, and it's worth noting that at least one edition of DC Heroes had published stats for Doctor Manhattan.

M&M does as well: Power Level X - This being can do as they please. That's it, they're NPC in the vein of Mxyzptlk. They are plot devices that talk at you.

SimonMoon6
2019-03-20, 11:07 AM
I'm not calling HeroClix a simulator, but I am saying that as a loose baseline it can land itself remarkably close to the source material. Folks have made decent rp campaigns with minor tweaks. If you're looking at the stats as literally as your example (and are using the phrase "comic accurate" with a straight face), then no, it won't work. But if you take it with the same grain of salt that allows you to accept Hulk and Thor restrained by a tiny bolt on an alien world, then the potential becomes more apparent. Suddenly Joker's movement advantage isn't about speed, Batman breaking a wall that Supes won't isn't about power, and Supes losing to a street gang has nothing to do with their knives, but a story about how that could happen may take shape.

Have you and I had this same discussion before on Realms?

Quite possibly. But I feel like what you're saying is merely a variant of the Oberoni Fallacy, along the lines of "The game isn't bad because you can reimagine it to be different."

Regardless, I think Heroclix is absolutely terrible at what this particular thread is about. The original poster was asking for games that would let one represent the actual awesome power level of superheroes. Heroclix does not do this. Heroclix is designed to be a game where guys with knives can slaughter cosmic entities by the dozen. That's not what the original poster was asking for. Heroclix does not let characters like Superman be at their uppermost level of awesomeness. Heroclix NEVER lets characters like this be powerful. And that's by design, so that the nobodies of the world can defeat every other character, no matter how powerful. There is no version of Superman in Heroclix that is so invulnerable that he is immune to being stabbed by knives. Superman can never be powerful in Heroclix.

And you can't have characters with superspeed that can even run from one edge of the map to the other, a distance of, what, a couple of city blocks? They can't run that far in one turn, though some might (in the comics) be capable of traveling at the speed of light (or faster). Nightcrawler can teleport three miles in the comics, but he can't make it across this tiny map in Heroclix. Yes, there are exceptions with some special powers unique to a character (who never deserves to be that unique), but regardless, people with powers are severely limited in Heroclix.

Heck, people with flight can't even make use of this ability to fly up into the sky and hurl bolts of energy down at opponents on the ground without fear of retaliation. The best a flying hero can do is hover one inch above the ground... though they can fly on to the top of a building, where they then stay just one inch above the roof of the building.

JoeJ
2019-03-20, 11:17 AM
M&M does as well: Power Level X - This being can do as they please. That's it, they're NPC in the vein of Mxyzptlk. They are plot devices that talk at you.

I really like the PL X idea. It's a great way of dealing with NPCs that are basically just plot devices. It doesn't work well for player characters, though.

SimonMoon6
2019-03-20, 11:25 AM
I really like the PL X idea. It's a great way of dealing with NPCs that are basically just plot devices. It doesn't work well for player characters, though.

I think some of M&M's best ideas were borrowed from Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG. In DC Heroes, there are two "do anything" powers and they are designed perfectly for PCs.

One is Sorcery. You have X ranks (APs) in Sorcery. You can mimic any other power, splitting up your APs of Sorcery among the powers you choose to mimic this turn. There's a little bit of extra balancing by the fact that if you use too much power, you might take some damage to your mystical hit points (SPIRIT).

The other is Omni-Power for characters who CAN do anything, but usually don't. The pre-Kyle Green Lanterns were great examples of this. They COULD do anything but would usually stick to making green constructs and flying around. Omni-Power is similar to Sorcery, except you have to spend your most precious resource (Hero Points) to activate Omni-Power, with the more versatile powers costing you more (possibly a LOT more), so you usually don't want to use it a lot. I remember one of my players once saying that he would never make a character with Omni-Power because of the cost. Then I made him play a character with Omni-Power and he was using it all the time with no complaints.

A third power, Continuum Control, feels like it belongs in the same category, though it doesn't, since it only really allows one to control all matter and all of space and time. That's like only three of the Soul Gems Infinity Gems Infinity Stones.

John Campbell
2019-03-20, 12:12 PM
M&M does as well: Power Level X - This being can do as they please. That's it, they're NPC in the vein of Mxyzptlk. They are plot devices that talk at you.

No, Mayfair released a Watchmen supplement for DC Heroes that had actual stats for Doctor Manhattan, not just "PL X statless plot device".

Imbalance
2019-03-20, 12:35 PM
<snip>

Yeah, this sounds familiar. Nothing more I can say, except that you are missing my point.

JoeJ
2019-03-20, 01:18 PM
No, Mayfair released a Watchmen supplement for DC Heroes that had actual stats for Doctor Manhattan, not just "PL X statless plot device".

Yep. There was a Watchman sourcebook for 1st edition, and in 2nd edition his stats were included in the boxed set. I think a good argument could be made that Dr. Manhattan shouldn't have stats, but Mayfair obviously thought that he should.

Jay R
2019-03-20, 01:33 PM
The introduction to the last Champions game I ran included the following:


I am beginning an early Silver Age campaign. The characters will not be as powerful as you are used to, and the villains will be similarly de-powered. Because I wish characters to take the kinds of risks that comic book characters actually take, I guarantee that your character will not die. Bad things may happen, but they will not be permanent.

[Note: you are not immortal, and I cannot save you from your own stupidity. If you choose to dive into a volcano or a vat of acid, I can’t save you. But the normal run of comic book adventures is not going to do you in. Spider-Man does not, in fact, get shot to death in the comics. Take risks to save people. Really. That’s what heroes do.]

...

These are early Silver Age characters, which means that they have difficulties and weaknesses. Don’t try to make a character who can survive anything. The team books of the time leaned on the weaknesses of each character, allowing other heroes to rescue the one in trouble. (Kryptonite was extremely common in Justice League stories, for instance.) You may assume that I will arrange to take each of you out of the action occasionally, for story purposes. Don’t make me have to drop a mountain on you to do it.

...

Tell me what you want to do, and I will help you find the best way. But when we’re done, the character will be less powerful than you’re used to, and with greater weaknesses.

I know most of the ways to try to build a character worth much more than the rules intend. If you come up with such a strategy, I will congratulate you on your cleverness and ruthlessly disallow it. You must pay points for any technology you intend to use at will in adventures. Of course you have a phone at home, and can find a pay phone in the city, but if you want constant contact with the team, you need to buy it as a power. Even Batman’s rope is bought as the power “Swinging”.

This was for a game with 225-point characters. It also had a list of specific rules, with a kicker. You could choose to be an exception to one of the rules, and no two characters could be exceptions to the same rule. So they weren't things nobody could do; they were things only one person could do.

I did not have a specific limit to Active Points, but I did insist that I could add limitations to high-point powers. I also had a limit to Real Point (cost after all advantages and limitations are included). So a player could build an elite-level power, but I would choose limitations that would prevent it from destroying the scenario. One player had a character with near-Superman strength (and went toe-to-toe with Ultraman, the evil Superman from the Crime Syndicate). Another took it as an opportunity to play a Batman-like character, which usually doesn't work well in a game against super-powers.

Beleriphon
2019-03-20, 02:15 PM
No, Mayfair released a Watchmen supplement for DC Heroes that had actual stats for Doctor Manhattan, not just "PL X statless plot device".

Which I contend is silly because Doctor Manhattan is a naked blue plot device. Despite all of his power he actually doesn't do anything in The Watchmen, but that's a discussion for another thread about story telling in sequential art media.

All that being said M&M has a effect called Variable, high enough levels let a character replicate any other effect, even modify their own base statistics up and down. Admittedly Doctor Manhattan isn't quite the Cosmic Imp that you find with Mxyzptlk, or similarly omnipotent characters. That said, if you were playing a game using the Watchmen as your base Doctor Manhattan might as well be Mxyzptlk for all the character can hope to harm him or stop him.

In many ways a PL X character in M&M is meant to stop the idea that "If it has stats the players will fight it." Mxyzptlk, the Cosmic Imp, the Great Gazoo, Bat-Mite, Impossible Man, aren't fights. They're challenges, but you don't need stats for that challenge.

gkathellar
2019-03-20, 02:56 PM
In many ways a PL X character in M&M is meant to stop the idea that "If it has stats the players will fight it." Mxyzptlk, the Cosmic Imp, the Great Gazoo, Bat-Mite, Impossible Man, aren't fights. They're challenges, but you don't need stats for that challenge.

I still recall the Superman the Animated Series episode where Mxyzptlk first shows up. It basically served as an opportunity for the writers to stretch their creative muscles and have an episode entirely about Superman outsmarting someone. It was great, both in general and as a change of pace.

That's hard to do at the table, some of which is player psychology and some of which is the odd relationship between player skill and character skill in roleplaying challenges. If you can get past that, and if your players are willing and able to buy into it, though, it can be a lot of fun to set the rules aside for a minute - because they're useless to what you're doing - and just see where things go. But it takes a lot of trust!

John Campbell
2019-03-20, 03:41 PM
Which I contend is silly because Doctor Manhattan is a naked blue plot device. Despite all of his power he actually doesn't do anything in The Watchmen, but that's a discussion for another thread about story telling in sequential art media.

I tend to agree, but the question was whether superpowerful supers could be statted, not whether they should be.

Earthwalker
2019-03-21, 06:33 AM
For example, although I own M&M (somewhere), I'm not remotely familiar with half of those tricks. Although I will say, 5% of normal humans just ignoring Professor X's ability represent an epic failure of the system to instantiate the character.

Surly this is exactly the difference between a game and a comic book story tho. This isn’t a system issue its just the effect of the change of media.
Are you convinced a better way to handle powers is for super powers just to work and have a game where one of the powers is shut down someone’s brain. ?
GM “As you enter the lair of The super villain The Brain Surgeon ready to finally face him in a fight for the minds of Coast City….. You al moving your brains shut down”
PC “Do we get a resistance roll or something?”
GM “Nope I want the PCs to be special so all powers just work. Brain Surgeon shut your brains down, its his power”
GM “I am such a good GM”


Now, as to your other points... Well, insert obligatory "I've played in a game with (figurative) Thor and a (literal) sentient potted plant - I was the potted plant" reference.
Now that that's out of the way, yes, you absolutely can have absolute power disparity and still have a fun game - if you have the right group. "Balance" and "Fun" are not synonyms.
That said, nothing in this thread should indicate to you that I have any intention of producing unbalanced superheroes. To not go down this wormhole, feel free to assume that I'm only discussing balanced high-end, world-altering superheroes.
While your group handles a large power disparity a lot of other groups do not handle it at all well. So removing the power disparity is generally a good idea.
Now you pull this example out a lot and your group worked to fix the issue you created making a potted plant. That isn’t always going to happen for all people.
I am not saying that you cant have fun with unbalanced groups. I am saying it needs more work and a different attitude than some groups have and it should be something to be aware of.

Beleriphon
2019-03-21, 10:00 AM
I tend to agree, but the question was whether superpowerful supers could be statted, not whether they should be.

Oh they can be, M&M 2E I have a build for Unicron from Transfromers. For those not familiar he transforms into a moon, he eats planets. I used some absurd number of ranks of Growth, it cost over 1000 build points. It was stupid, but it is possible.

Quertus
2019-03-21, 08:57 PM
I really like the PL X idea. It's a great way of dealing with NPCs that are basically just plot devices. It doesn't work well for player characters, though.

It could work for PCs. I think several people have mentioned games built around that idea (or was that another thread? Darn senility).


Surly this is exactly the difference between a game and a comic book story tho. This isn’t a system issue its just the effect of the change of media.
Are you convinced a better way to handle powers is for super powers just to work and have a game where one of the powers is shut down someone’s brain. ?
GM “As you enter the lair of The super villain The Brain Surgeon ready to finally face him in a fight for the minds of Coast City….. You al moving your brains shut down”
PC “Do we get a resistance roll or something?”
GM “Nope I want the PCs to be special so all powers just work. Brain Surgeon shut your brains down, its his power”
GM “I am such a good GM”

Well, I've played under GMs who did just that - and who did that in systems where that was not a thing, and therefore the PCs couldn't that, but the GM's NPCs could and did. So... that would be one step better than my existing personal horror stories.

Can Professor X canonically shut down anyone's mind, no chance to resist? No, I don't think that he's quite that powerful, just really close. Like maybe shut down any non-telepath who lacks mental defenses or an otherwise "really powerful" mind.

However, what I was advocating would, in M&M terms, probably best be described as "extras get no save". Which might be an M&M default rule, for all I know.

So, for all I know, there is no difference between the implementations of the specific power I was referencing in a specific game vs in a specific comic book.


While your group handles a large power disparity a lot of other groups do not handle it at all well. So removing the power disparity is generally a good idea.
Now you pull this example out a lot and your group worked to fix the issue you created making a potted plant. That isn’t always going to happen for all people.
I am not saying that you cant have fun with unbalanced groups. I am saying it needs more work and a different attitude than some groups have and it should be something to be aware of.

Know your group. Balance to the table. Balance is a range, not a point.

Why assume that characters capable of pulling off such stunts must necessarily need to be in unbalanced parties with characters who cannot contribute at a higher level of war, when I had made no comments indicating that?

I'm just saying that this conversation, while it can be interesting, is irrelevant to the questions I'm asking.

NichG
2019-03-21, 09:43 PM
Games with no-save powers are doable, but it's best for a different genre than superheroes due to the meta they induce. The game has to be designed like chess where the conditions for being under someone's power are highly specific and absolutely telegraphed, in which case 'we walk into the lair without a viable defense' is a statement like 'on my turn, I'm going to put my king in check'. The result is more like a heist game than a heroes game I think (or at least more like Code Geass than Marvel).

Quertus
2019-03-21, 10:05 PM
Games with no-save powers are doable, but it's best for a different genre than superheroes due to the meta they induce. The game has to be designed like chess where the conditions for being under someone's power are highly specific and absolutely telegraphed, in which case 'we walk into the lair without a viable defense' is a statement like 'on my turn, I'm going to put my king in check'. The result is more like a heist game than a heroes game I think (or at least more like Code Geass than Marvel).

Again, the specific incident(s) I was referencing involved Mook muggles getting no save, not heroes getting no save.

NichG
2019-03-21, 10:33 PM
Again, the specific incident(s) I was referencing involved Mook muggles getting no save, not heroes getting no save.

Yes, that works without deforming the gameplay and it's basically the case in Limit Break. But I do take the point that part of the feeling of supers can be the idea that, since you tend to have a much narrower set of tricks associated with a given superhero than, say, a wizard, when one of those tricks just bounces off of a defense it can impact the feel of the character quite a bit more, especially if there's a random element to it. So I think it's an interesting design constraint to try to figure out how one would make a system where there are no generic defenses against powers, but which still feels superhero-y and is playable without feeling unfair. Limit Break doesn't succeed at this or at least doesn't attempt to go quite that far, but it would be interesting if it actually could have done so.

Earthwalker
2019-03-22, 06:13 AM
Well, I've played under GMs who did just that - and who did that in systems where that was not a thing, and therefore the PCs couldn't that, but the GM's NPCs could and did. So... that would be one step better than my existing personal horror stories.

Can Professor X canonically shut down anyone's mind, no chance to resist? No, I don't think that he's quite that powerful, just really close. Like maybe shut down any non-telepath who lacks mental defenses or an otherwise "really powerful" mind.

However, what I was advocating would, in M&M terms, probably best be described as "extras get no save". Which might be an M&M default rule, for all I know.

So, for all I know, there is no difference between the implementations of the specific power I was referencing in a specific game vs in a specific comic book.


I don't think I am making my point clear. I believe you goal is flawed because reproducing the powers / effects in comic books exactly build greater flaws into the Game experience.

When you get to a specific level.

Being able to shut down everyone's brain (like Prof X) I believe is a terrible power to have in a game if there is no way to resist. (The first time I quoted you, it was because you mentioned it wouldn't work on 1 in 20 people)

From your reply it seems like GMs are doing this to your character anyway even if its not in the rules. Am I correct you preferred solution for this problem is to put it in the rules and still have the GM do it. I ask because my preferred solution would be for the GM to just not do that.




Know your group. Balance to the table. Balance is a range, not a point.

Why assume that characters capable of pulling off such stunts must necessarily need to be in unbalanced parties with characters who cannot contribute at a higher level of war, when I had made no comments indicating that?

I'm just saying that this conversation, while it can be interesting, is irrelevant to the questions I'm asking.

Again I fear I am not making my point.
I was saying... You may be able to play a potted plant with Thor in your group and have fun.

If you came to my group and was playing the same combination it would not be fun for you. When my groups resident munchkin decided to fly off for adventure leaving the potted plant behind what would you do ? As a potted plant ?

Now you can say this isn't a problem with the game system but one with the group.

That's fine but its still thee as a problem. A problem that wouldn't be there if it wasn't possible to make a potted plant and Thor together.

John Campbell
2019-03-22, 12:08 PM
It could work for PCs. I think several people have mentioned games built around that idea (or was that another thread? Darn senility).
When you start having PL X PCs, it's no longer a role-playing game. It's just free-form cooperative storytelling.


Again, the specific incident(s) I was referencing involved Mook muggles getting no save, not heroes getting no save.

I don't believe there's any way by the M&M rules to deny even minions their chance to save, but since generic NPCs have stats of 0 across the board, it's pretty easy to make them only save on natural 20s, and minions only need one degree of failure to take the maximum effect. (The Cumulative and Progressive extras I mentioned are pointless against minions, but very powerful against non-minion targets.) When an Affliction hits maximum effect, the save frequency against it drops to 1/minute.

So, yeah, Chuck does his mind-whammy thing, and 5% of North America saves against it. In the first round. But the 95% that didn't save are hit by the maximum effect of the Affliction, and are paralyzed for ten rounds before they get a chance to try again. And the 5% that did save get hit again the next round, and only 5% of the 5% (that's 0.25%) roll another nat 20. And those get hit again the next round, and only 5% of them (0.0125%) get yet another nat 20.

By the time the first batch to fail get their chance to make another save, you're down to 1 in 10 trillion - or, statistically, nobody - still resisting. Because you have to succeed every time; you only have to fail once.

It's not that 5% of random mooks are immune to Chuck's mind-whammy. It's just that 1 person in 20 takes more than 6 seconds to lock down.


We had a problem player in our group for a while whose character concepts were just incoherent piles of the most game-breaking crap he could come up with. In DCA, that's awfully broken. One of his characters had an Affliction where the top effect was "controlled", and had Increased Duration 2, Cumulative, Progressive, Subtle 2, Insidious, and Contagious on it. It was like 9 PP per rank, but it was only rank 3 or so, so it was only about a 30-point power, and nowhere near our PL cap (standard 150 PP/PL 10 starting characters).

Targets couldn't tell they were being attacked, couldn't tell they were failing, the failures piled up until the target succumbed, and once they succumbed they were under his complete control, so he could have them just opt to stop making saves. And infected targets would infect others around them. It was fairly easy to resist, but everyone around him was being attacked all the time, everyone he had ever come into contact with was attacking everyone they came into contact with all the time, and everyone rolls nat 1s sooner or later. (And most NPCs didn't need to nat 1 to fail, anyway.)

The GM didn't have the sense to tell him no, and that campaign ended with everybody in the world (and a couple others that we visited) who wasn't immune to mind control as his puppets.

JoeJ
2019-03-22, 12:16 PM
It could work for PCs. I think several people have mentioned games built around that idea (or was that another thread? Darn senility).

Not in M&M it couldn't. A PC whose power is, "I do whatever I think makes for a good story" is incompatible with the rest of the game mechanics.

Quertus
2019-03-22, 02:01 PM
All - I've always played M&M where your alternate power effects had the same limitations as normal effects - you couldn't cheat the power level limit with saying, "but it's an alternate effect".

Citation on my way being a house rule?


I don't think I am making my point clear. I believe you goal is flawed because reproducing the powers / effects in comic books exactly build greater flaws into the Game experience.

When you get to a specific level.

Being able to shut down everyone's brain (like Prof X) I believe is a terrible power to have in a game if there is no way to resist. (The first time I quoted you, it was because you mentioned it wouldn't work on 1 in 20 people)

From your reply it seems like GMs are doing this to your character anyway even if its not in the rules. Am I correct you preferred solution for this problem is to put it in the rules and still have the GM do it. I ask because my preferred solution would be for the GM to just not do that.

Well, no, that's not quite right.

I am saying that what you describe as a fail state would be an improvement over what I've experienced. So... I suppose I'd take your "fail state" over a repeat of my experiences, even if it still has obvious flaws.

So, if we're doing theory-crafting (which wasn't my intention* for this thread, but whatever), now that we've established that there is a way to do what I want, is there a better way? In fact, two better ways have already been proposed.

One way, proposed by me, was to point out that there was nothing in the scenes that I described that indicated that Xavier could affect superheroes with his mass no-save power - it was all just muggle mooks, like the President, that were affected.

Another way to effectively reproduce the trick would be for it to be a triggered backdoor, that Xavier keeps spamming until he's hit everyone, then suddenly triggers, seeming to catch everyone at once, no save, but he's actually been setting it up for some time before he appears to use his power. A little less satisfying, IMO, but works with your "save on a 20" mechanic. Also, a little terrifying, to think that Xavier is constantly preparing for "just in case i need to shut everyone down". ... And now I've got a new idea for a character.

So, I guess point is, once we've got faithful reproductions, we can argue about the best way to implement said reproductions to optimize the game experience.

* My intention for this thread was to ask, can your superhero system of choice faithfully reproduce comic/movie superheroes, and the feats thereof; if so, what would that look like in said system?


Again I fear I am not making my point.
I was saying... You may be able to play a potted plant with Thor in your group and have fun.

If you came to my group and was playing the same combination it would not be fun for you. When my groups resident munchkin decided to fly off for adventure leaving the potted plant behind what would you do ? As a potted plant ?

Now you can say this isn't a problem with the game system but one with the group.

That's fine but its still thee as a problem. A problem that wouldn't be there if it wasn't possible to make a potted plant and Thor together.

And I am not in this thread advocating putting Thor and a potted plant together. I am asking which systems can faithfully reproduce Thor. Talk of party imbalance is off-topic.

JNAProductions
2019-03-22, 02:03 PM
And I am not in this thread advocating putting Thor and a potted plant together. I am asking which systems can faithfully reproduce Thor. Talk of party imbalance is off-topic.

Well, a lot of systems CAN do it. But you complained that they came with the note that you really SHOULDN'T do it.

Beleriphon
2019-03-22, 02:17 PM
I don't believe there's any way by the M&M rules to deny even minions their chance to save, but since generic NPCs have stats of 0 across the board, it's pretty easy to make them only save on natural 20s, and minions only need one degree of failure to take the maximum effect. (The Cumulative and Progressive extras I mentione are pointless against minions, but very powerful against non-minion targets.) When an Affliction hits maximum effect, the save frequency against it drops to 1/minute.

There actually are a few. 2E had a No Save extra for powers, but increased its costs by some absurd amount (I think 4 points per rank). 3E not so much. That said in both systems a minion that fails a save automatically takes the worst possible result of an effect. So that take the worst form of an Afflication, or are knocked out with Damage. Add to that attacking a minion is a routine check, so can default the result to 10 + attack bonus rather than rolling, and there's little reason to think minions aren't going down on the first successful attack that connects (which is probably all of them). They still roll resistance, but its not typically very high, and a 20 isn't an auto-success either on a resistance check.

Never mind area effects, or perception range effects, neither of which require attack rolls to start.

Quertus
2019-03-22, 02:58 PM
Not in M&M it couldn't. A PC whose power is, "I do whatever I think makes for a good story" is incompatible with the rest of the game mechanics.

Ah, context. I wasn't explicitly saying, "in M&M" - I misunderstood if you were.


When you start having PL X PCs, it's no longer a role-playing game. It's just free-form cooperative storytelling. .

Well, it's still role-playing. Just, mechanically, is not a "game" if the "PL X" is sufficiently broad. If it's a narrow "win button", then there's still a game.


I don't believe there's any way by the M&M rules to deny even minions their chance to save, but since generic NPCs have stats of 0 across the board, it's pretty easy to make them only save on natural 20s, and minions only need one degree of failure to take the maximum effect. (The Cumulative and Progressive extras I mentioned are pointless against minions, but very powerful against non-minion targets.) When an Affliction hits maximum effect, the save frequency against it drops to 1/minute.

So, yeah, Chuck does his mind-whammy thing, and 5% of North America saves against it. In the first round. But the 95% that didn't save are hit by the maximum effect of the Affliction, and are paralyzed for ten rounds before they get a chance to try again. And the 5% that did save get hit again the next round, and only 5% of the 5% (that's 0.25%) roll another nat 20. And those get hit again the next round, and only 5% of them (0.0125%) get yet another nat 20.

By the time the first batch to fail get their chance to make another save, you're down to 1 in 10 trillion - or, statistically, nobody - still resisting. Because you have to succeed every time; you only have to fail once.

It's not that 5% of random mooks are immune to Chuck's mind-whammy. It's just that 1 person in 20 takes more than 6 seconds to lock down.
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Well, sadness. That's 5% of the targets who more or less automatically know that something just happened - which fails to reproduce Xavier's feats.


We had a problem player in our group for a while whose character concepts were just incoherent piles of the most game-breaking crap he could come up with. In DCA, that's awfully broken. One of his characters had an Affliction where the top effect was "controlled", and had Increased Duration 2, Cumulative, Progressive, Subtle 2, Insidious, and Contagious on it. It was like 9 PP per rank, but it was only rank 3 or so, so it was only about a 30-point power, and nowhere near our PL cap (standard 150 PP/PL 10 starting characters).

Targets couldn't tell they were being attacked, couldn't tell they were failing, the failures piled up until the target succumbed, and once they succumbed they were under his complete control, so he could have them just opt to stop making saves. And infected targets would infect others around them. It was fairly easy to resist, but everyone around him was being attacked all the time, everyone he had ever come into contact with was attacking everyone they came into contact with all the time, and everyone rolls nat 1s sooner or later. (And most NPCs didn't need to nat 1 to fail, anyway.)

The GM didn't have the sense to tell him no, and that campaign ended with everybody in the world (and a couple others that we visited) who wasn't immune to mind control as his puppets.

Honestly, that sounds like a comic book to me! :smallbiggrin:

Beleriphon
2019-03-27, 04:10 PM
Well, it's still role-playing. Just, mechanically, is not a "game" if the "PL X" is sufficiently broad. If it's a narrow "win button", then there's still a game.

PL X in M&M is effectively Cosmic Imp status. Even the Freedom City Thanos/Darkseid expy is PL19 (which is one lower than the soft limit). In contexct, the Superman expy was PL13.




Well, sadness. That's 5% of the targets who more or less automatically know that something just happened - which fails to reproduce Xavier's feats.

Not if the power is sutble and insidious. It means 1) they have no idea it was used if it doesn't work, and 2) have no idea it was used even if it does work.



Honestly, that sounds like a comic book to me! :smallbiggrin:

Sounds like Stormwatch to me, which is very much a deconstruction of the superhero genre.

John Campbell
2019-03-31, 02:06 AM
All - I've always played M&M where your alternate power effects had the same limitations as normal effects - you couldn't cheat the power level limit with saying, "but it's an alternate effect".

Citation on my way being a house rule?


Yeah, that's a thing. I don't think anyone's said otherwise?

If you're talking about my character with the ridiculous sensing range, it wasn't uncapped because it was an Alternate Effect; it was uncapped because Remote Sensing doesn't fall into any of the categories that PL caps apply to. Basically, if it's not an attack, a defense, or a skill, it's not limited by PL.

Attack bonus + effect rank can't be higher than 2*PL. For resisted effects that don't have an attack roll, the effect rank can't be higher than PL. None of the defense pairs Dodge+Toughness, Parry+Toughness, or Fort+Will can be higher than 2*PL. No skill modifier can be higher than PL+10. If none of those caps apply, you can go wild.

This is the same reason you can get away with Strength 78 (Limited to Lifting) and move the Earth as a PL 10 character (or a PL 1 character, for that matter)... the "Limited to Lifting" makes the Strength boost not apply to your damage, so removes it from the PL-capped categories.

Where the Alternate Effect came in was that I'd implemented the Remote Sensing as an Alternate Effect of my light control power array rather than as a separate power, so instead of using the few points I might have dropped into it as a separate utility power, it was using the full point total of my light control array. And the primary power in that array was my main attack power, which had as many ranks as I could get and still be able to hit things with it (because, as an attack, it was PL-capped), and had a bunch of expensive extras inflating the price per rank, so it was a pretty hefty point total, and when translated to cheap, uncapped Remote Sensing ranks, meant a lot of Remote Sensing.


There actually are a few. 2E had a No Save extra for powers, but increased its costs by some absurd amount (I think 4 points per rank). 3E not so much. That said in both systems a minion that fails a save automatically takes the worst possible result of an effect. So that take the worst form of an Afflication, or are knocked out with Damage. Add to that attacking a minion is a routine check, so can default the result to 10 + attack bonus rather than rolling, and there's little reason to think minions aren't going down on the first successful attack that connects (which is probably all of them). They still roll resistance, but its not typically very high, and a 20 isn't an auto-success either on a resistance check.

It's not?

:checks the book:

Huh, it's not. Apparently we were playing with an accidental house rule. Probably leakage from 3.5.

Good news, Quertus! Get your Affliction DC up to 21, and you'll automatically pwn all minions in range who don't have exceptional Wills. They still technically get a save, but they can't actually make it.


Well, it's still role-playing. Just, mechanically, is not a "game" if the "PL X" is sufficiently broad. If it's a narrow "win button", then there's still a game.
PL X isn't just "this character has a power that limit-breaks". It's "this character does not have stats and the game mechanics do not apply to them". It's for characters like Mxyzptlk who are, for all practical purposes, omnipotent. If the PCs are PL X, what you're doing may be role-playing, but it's no longer a role-playing game.


Well, sadness. That's 5% of the targets who more or less automatically know that something just happened - which fails to reproduce Xavier's feats.
There are ways to fix that, too. Subtle makes it difficult to notice that a power's being used, and Insidious makes it difficult to notice the effects of a power.


Honestly, that sounds like a comic book to me! :smallbiggrin:
Thing is, we were supposed to be the heroes.

I guess it's like they say: You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a power-gaming munchkin.