differing power levels within a party: The Avengers

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

Do you use a house rule that makes Daredevil work more like Higher Purpose?

How do you mean? Daredevil already works like Higher Purpose: It gives you +1 to rolls. It's just the circumstances of application that differ. By the RAW definition of Daredevil, it applies when your character takes extreme risks.

Bill Stoddard

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by whswhs

By the RAW definition of Daredevil, it applies when your character takes extreme risks.

I thought it applied only to skill rolls.

[Fred Brackin]

The thing about speedsters of combat s[peed monsters is that even if they are no more capable than normla humans when they get to the combat if there is anything that a normal human can do the speedster can do it sooner and more often too.

Thus, if there is a definite and limited numbers of mooks for the normal humans to thump the speedster cou;ld depelete the supply before the human-types can get their turn.

This would not have happend in the Avengers movie even if Quicksilver had been there because there was an indefintely large supply of Chitauri goons.

This leads into the way to "balance" characters of different power levels. Give everyone the opportunity to do something impressive by their character's measuring stick and keep them all about as busy as possible.

This is the way they did it in the Avengers movie once they shifted into simultaneous action mode.

Spoilers folow:


















For example, track the action in the assualt on the helicarrier scenes. Iron Man goes to save the helicarrier. Cap needs to save Iron Man. Thor saves teh Black Widow from the Hulk. Hawkeye gets to show off his uncanny skill while being a bad guy. The Black Widow knocks out Hawkeye so he can be a good guy again. Fury is shooting bad guys off his own bridge and Hulk is just happy to be fighting someone.

See? Everybody's _busy_ and all the players gets a feeling of acomplishment in the end. That's how you handle a party of mixed power levels.

[aesir23]

The important thing isn't power level, but spotlight time. The Avengers worked because the writers gave Hawkeye and Black Widow important things to do.

It doesn't matter that the Hulk or Thor could make a gooey paste out of Black Widow, they couldn't have

Spoiler:  

tricked Loki into revealing his plan

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

What's not so clear is how many plot strings the writers have to pull to make this happen.

In an action movie, where the scenes everybody enthuses over are the fights, lots. In a book or game, where it's pretty normal for interesting spotlight stuff to happen that isn't a melee, it's not so bad if the characters aren't equally powerful in combat, as long as all of them are good at something.

Importantly, there are different kinds of differences in power level. Straight up combat force difference isn't so hard to work around, you can easily include dramatic stuff that isn't about combat. Differences power level that leave one character better than another at nearly everything - i.e. the one reflected in games by different point totals or drastically different levels, are much more problematic.

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by malloyd

In an action movie, where the scenes everybody enthuses over are the fights, lots. In a book or game, where it's pretty normal for interesting spotlight stuff to happen that isn't a melee, it's not so bad if the characters aren't equally powerful in combat, as long as all of them are good at something.

Actually, the AVENGERS movie is quite cool about this. The scene where the Black Widow talks to the imprisoned Loki is all about what someone who isn't a combat monster can bring to the mission.

[Anthony]

My experience with characters who rush ahead of the rest of PCs (stalkers, speedsters, whatever) is that they run into an enemy intended to be an interesting challenge for an entire team and wind up street pizza. Information powers in general (telepathy, etc) tend to be plot breaking without a whole lot of effort on the part of the GM, and powers like mind control should generally automatically fail on anyone important (if I were using GURPS for supers, which I don't, I would convert all those quick contest resisted powers to regular contests -- i.e. a simple unmodified will roll bounces mind control).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

My experience with characters who rush ahead of the rest of PCs (stalkers, speedsters, whatever) is that they run into an enemy intended to be an interesting challenge for an entire team and wind up street pizza. Information powers in general (telepathy, etc) tend to be plot breaking without a whole lot of effort on the part of the GM, and powers like mind control should generally automatically fail on anyone important (if I were using GURPS for supers, which I don't, I would convert all those quick contest resisted powers to regular contests -- i.e. a simple unmodified will roll bounces mind control).

You know, that mechanic could be useful. I suppose that "requires winning a regular contest" could be defined as a limitation with respect to "requires winning a Quick Contest." It makes your power much less combat-effective!

My expedient in my last GURPS Supers campaign was to have a lot of NPCs with either high IQ and therefore high Will (the technos and mages), or direct purchase of high Will (the combat monsters). It's a bit kludgy but not totally out of line with the way the comics portray such characters.

Bill Stoddard

[warmachine]

At the risk of turning this into a GURPS thread, would the Avengers team work as a balanced GURPS game? That is, is the GM spared having to frequently contrive the plot so lesser characters get sufficient spotlight time? In the film, are the writers contriving to make certain characters useful?

If not, do the better characters seem to be built using more points and giving the lesser characters equal points largely solve the problem?

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by warmachine

At the risk of turning this into a GURPS thread, would the Avengers team work as a balanced GURPS game? That is, is the GM spared having to frequently contrive the plot so lesser characters get sufficient spotlight time? In the film, are the writers contriving to make certain characters useful?

If not, do the better characters seem to be built using more points and giving the lesser characters equal points largely solve the problem?

Thing is, a highly effective skill character can be immensely useful to a party, even if they don't have the bank breaking super powers of say a world gater.

I've never had any issue in giving individual party members specific powers which are worth more points than entire other characters, in the same way I don't have an issue giving out individual items which are worth more than the networth of everything else another character may own.

Just make sure it works in the setting.