Some observations about powers in superhero campaigns

[Nightshade]

Now that I've gotten a chance to look over the Super Powers rules, I just want to note to anyone thinking of using these for a superhero campaign that the budgets listed seem very conservative unless I'm misunderstanding something major in construction.

For example, Stormcloud, Steve Perrin's old PC and the exemplar superhero in the NPCs in the back seems to be built on 193 points approximately, which is about twice the budget listed for the superhuman budget.

(As an aside, he's also probably under-defended since Jason broke out the armor into much finer pieces than Superworld did (it only had three), and he doesn't cover most of them; for example he has no protection against such common attack forms in superhero settings as fire or light (in the original version Kinetic defense would stop fire, and Radiation defense would stop light)

As it is, I'd have to conclude that using the extent budgets its going to be very hard for a character to have an offensive or defensive power much better than equipment he could go out and buy in the modern world; as an example, 3d6 damage (not uncompareable to a high powered hunting rifle) is about a third of a superhuman budget (30 points), and buying an armor point against just the commonest attack forms you see in most such settings (cold, electric, heat, kinetic, light and radiation) is six per point, which will chew into it pretty fast.

Most non-combat abilities are much more modestly priced, but the above is making me think I'm missing something somewhere.

[rleduc]

While looking over the super powers in the book, and adapting them to one of my core settings I concluded that I would restrict my world to two power types – all supers in my world derive their power from a special energy source, so that would be one of the two power types and then “physical” would be everything else.

Obviously, an alternative would have been to increase the pool size.

[FunGuyFromYuggoth]

This is an excellent observation Nightshade. I haven't had a chance to roll up a superhero character yet and if your observations are correct about the unintended consquences of refining the powers in the new BRP, then the simplest solution is as you implied: double the pool and encourage that this be factored into the Errata.

(Sees a dhole. "We're going to need more dice...")

[Nightshade]

This is an excellent observation Nightshade. I haven't had a chance to roll up a superhero character yet and if your observations are correct about the unintended consquences of refining the powers in the new BRP, then the simplest solution is as you implied: double the pool and encourage that this be factored into the Errata.

(Sees a dhole. "We're going to need more dice...")

I suspect for full blown superheroes you'd probably want a bit more than that (because of the Armor issue if nothing else, but also because there's no discount for, for example, buying multiple offensive powers or transport powers). Of course unless there's a cap of some kind (I haven't read quite closely enough that I'd want to say there wasn't) you might run into some one-trick pony problems if you gave out, say, 240 points with people buying Armor and an attack and nothing else. There's a reason most modern superhero games have some sort of power constraint secondary system in addition to just the point budget.

[DreadDomain]

I suspect for full blown superheroes you'd probably want a bit more than that (because of the Armor issue if nothing else, but also because there's no discount for, for example, buying multiple offensive powers or transport powers). Of course unless there's a cap of some kind (I haven't read quite closely enough that I'd want to say there wasn't) you might run into some one-trick pony problems if you gave out, say, 240 points with people buying Armor and an attack and nothing else. There's a reason most modern superhero games have some sort of power constraint secondary system in addition to just the point budget.

All true.

I will probably sound out of this world but I made one attempt at constructing a very high powered super using BRP. I came to the (unfounded) conclusion that "reasonable" point budgets to build supers at different level could look like this :

Normal 10

Heroic 20

Epic 40

Street 80 Daredevil

Very Low 160 X-Men

Low 320 Spiderman

Medium 640 Iron Man

High 1280 Thor

Very High 2560 JLA

Now I wanted to tackle a few build to see if my theory was working but aside from the Thor level character I build, I didn't really have time to build some more so I could be off.

You have to know that my group and I are used to play with fairly high powered characters in Champions so we are not afraid one bit at the balancing act involve with a high budget point.

[Nightshade]

All true.

I will probably sound out of this world but I made one attempt at constructing a very high powered super using BRP. I came to the (unfounded) conclusion that "reasonable" point budgets to build supers at different level could look like this :

Normal 10

Heroic 20

Epic 40

Street 80 Daredevil

Very Low 160 X-Men

Low 320 Spiderman

Medium 640 Iron Man

High 1280 Thor

Very High 2560 JLA

You've probably got more spread in the middle there than needed--Spider-Man hasn't canonically been more powerful, or even more versitile than most incarnations of the X-Men, for example, and from their presence in the Avengers its not clear there's that big a gap between Thor and Iron Man (arguably Iron Man might be the more expensive because he's going to have to pay for multiple weapon systems, in fact, when Thor only has a sharply limited number of powers, albiet robust ones)--but I wouldn't be at all suprised that you'd need several hundred points for many typical comic superheroes.

Even in Superworld II (the full blown product, rather than the WoW version), with Steve's build system being less conservative in many ways than Jason's (which, to be fair, is set up to be used outside of superhero games, so it has to deal with issues Superworld didn't) it tended to be limited to upper-middle range Marvel style characters (largely because of the limiting factors on buying up many powers). Here, the raw costs are a big issue on simple power levels, and as I said, that's not even getting into certain issues involving versatility.

(Some of this could be addressed with a more extensive treatment such as Superworld II was, but even it didn't have an answer for characters who, for example, had a very wide range of attacks; theoretically low powered characters like Hawkeye or Green Arrow could be quite pricey simply because they had such a variety of options. There's a reason things like the Champions Multipower and M&M Arrays exist, but the tradeoff is once you have them available, you have to expect most characters to buy them).

[FunGuyFromYuggoth]

Does anybody have that ancient issue of Different Worlds with the 1980s X-MEN stats (albeit for Superworld) in them for comparison?

[ORtrail]

Yes, I do.

What?

Oh, I need to go dig it out? *mumbles to self*

Okay, points needed to build some X-Men (keeping in mind this was with the original WOW Superworld):

The Angel -143 pts, with Flight, Stats and Regenerate as the main costs

Wolverine -144 pts, with Claws (4d6 +2d6 DB), Martial Arts, Regenerate and some Heightened Senses

Colossus- 150 pts, with Armor (18/8/8) and Stats taking much of that (punch 1D3+6d6 DB)

Magneto- 259 pts, hard to build due to number and quality of his powers. Absorbtion/Forcefield (16/20/16) Magnetic Projection at 9D6, Snare Projection at 6D6, Flight, Stats, Telekenesis(metal) at 40 STR, Skills

Sprite- At the lower end, she took 114 pts, with Disrupt Touch at 7D6 and Insubstantiality

Keep in mind armor was rather low for most, and only needed for Kinetic/Electromagnetic/Radiation

One more edit: I should mention that in my WOW Superworld campaigns, I had a cap for the characters attack damage (4D6) but allowed them to increase it after that through Hero Points for each adventure (normal skills got regular rolls). This avoided some 8D6 Lazer Eye hero with a 95% attack chance and no other real powers or skills or stats beyond a bit of CON and DEX. The heroes tended to be more diversified (and were built with 125 pts plus 5-10 pts of Disabilities). Just FYI.

Edited July 19, 2008 by ORtrail

[Nightshade]

Does anybody have that ancient issue of Different Worlds with the 1980s X-MEN stats (albeit for Superworld) in them for comparison?

Well, I was going to say I did, but since ORtrail saved me the trouble of dragging them out...

To be fair, that was more points than either classic WOW Superworld or Superworld 2 gave out, either, but note it'd be considerably more expensive in the Power in the new BRP because of several changes in cost. For example, as I recall Energy Blast cost 3 in the earlier versions; its 10 per die in the book now.

(As I said, there were some reasons to fiddle with the numbers here the way Jason did--though I think the breaking down of armors more finely was a mistake--but you do have to account for it when comparing to the numbers ORTrail quoted. I'd expect those characters to cost at least half again as much in the current version).