Help me pick a point total

[Mailanka]

I don't often ask for help on these forums, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

This sunday, I'm sitting down with a group of friends to hammer out some characters for a homebrew setting, Blackout Saga, which is inspired by Rifts in the sense of a post-post manaclyptic kitchen-sink setting. In my head, I have something of a gritty comic-book, anime feel to it. On the one hand, in the words of my friend, a "world where it rains all the time," but on the other hand, the players should stand out as heroes battling against impossible odds and displaying crazy, fun abilities.

Rifts (and the kind of anime Blackout Saga tries to emulat) sits right at the cusp between cyberpunk and super-heroes. On the one hand, both have lurking street rats, miserable former mercenaries, outcast mutants, and on the other, tend to see powerful psychics who can tear apart a power-armored soldier, elite commandoes and inhuman monsters (vampires, dragons and demons). The former suggests 300 points, the latter suggests 500 points, or more.

Originally, I had intended 300 points, but a friend asked to play a combat android who had lost its memory and thought it was human (certainly an interesting concept!), but found he didn't have enough points. At my request, he simply ignored point totals and made it from the templates in UT, and came to more than 600 points. In response, I tossed together a street-rat psychic type, and found I could make a pretty powerful psychic for less than 400 points, and a decently interesting one for 300. So I'm torn between the lower and the higher point totals.

300 points: Gives the players room to grow and emphasizes the grittiness of the setting. While the players can do cool stuff, they still run headlong into their own limitations. It's easier to add points than to take stuff away.

500 points: Gives room to make cool powers, and given the TL of the setting (TL 9-10), possibly necessary to allow the poorer, gadgetless characters to keep up with their power-armored kin.

Alot of people are probably going to try to split the difference and set it at 400 points. I know it's a possibility, but unless you have a compelling argument for it, I'd rather you didn't. The real question is: should I hedge low (and tell my robot friend to tone it down), or should I hedge high (and tell my street-rat psychic to turn it up a notch)

[garfield]

What about a disadvantage limit?

I would suggest to got for 300 points and be more lenient with adding fitting disadvantages.

[NineDaysDead]

Are you willing to use all the gritty rules? If you use all the bleeding/crippling/infection/fear etc rules from basic/bio-tech/high-tech/martial arts, you should get quite a gritty feel even at 500 points.

[Joel]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

500 points: Gives room to make cool powers, and given the TL of the setting (TL 9-10), possibly necessary to allow the poorer, gadgetless characters to keep up with their power-armored kin.

Poor, gadgetless characters will always have trouble keeping up with their power-armored kin, psychics can probably do it because their attacks can ignore armor, though at 500 points the power-armored guys can afford to buy some serious psychic defenses. Spending points on wealth and using that to buy yourself military hardware is practically always superior for combat based characters in the 9+ tech-levels unless you go up in the kilopoints.

[arnej]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

The real question is: should I hedge low (and tell my robot friend to tone it down), or should I hedge high (and tell my street-rat psychic to turn it up a notch)

Since you're asking for opinions, I'd say hedge low. 300 pts. Your amnesiac combat android can hide some advantages under Hidden Advantages, and they can come out as he earns more cp. Give him some disad that can trigger the additional ads (Nightmares, Flashbacks)

For example: ACA thinks he has a ST of 10. He acts like it, deals damage like it, etc. Player of ACA wants him to manifest his true ST of 20. He saves his cp and when he has 100 pts (or cheaper if he wants to throw on some limitations), ACA can either have a Flashback during combat, or a nightmare where he sees himself lifting trucks, and voila!

Besides, I think characters that get big in play are much more interesting than characters that start that way.

My $.02,

Arne

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

Are you willing to use all the gritty rules? If you use all the bleeding/crippling/infection/fear etc rules from basic/bio-tech/high-tech/martial arts, you should get quite a gritty feel even at 500 points.

This is true. My campaign is at the 800- to 900-point level. I use all the rules for accumulated wounds, bleeding, crippling, extreme dismemberment, fatigue, hit-location effects, knockdown, shock, and stunning. I also check for disease in plague-ridden areas, and penalize PCs who miss water, sleep, or food. This results in a very gritty feel! And I don't even use the rules for infection, partial injuries, severe bleeding, or horrible wounds to the neck/skull/veins/vitals, nor do I require Fright Checks for anything less than supernatural fear. "Turning on" those rules would make things even grittier.

To the OP: Don't equate "high-powered" with "cinematic." You can have a gritty, dirty, nasty game at 1,000 points or a game where all the grit gets swept under the carpet at 50 points. Either "feel" is 95% due to campaign ground rules and perhaps only 5% due to character abilities. Choose point level solely on the strength of what abilities you want to see in the setting.

[Fnordianslip]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

Are you willing to use all the gritty rules? If you use all the bleeding/crippling/infection/fear etc rules from basic/bio-tech/high-tech/martial arts, you should get quite a gritty feel even at 500 points.

This is amazingly good advice. My Wild Cards game feels gritty and is chock full of 500-900 point characters who are TERRIFIED of combat.

One thing you could do is just let the Combat Android guy start with a higher point total. Early on, he'd be more punchy in the physical department than the other characters. For him though, have him earn no character points for quite a while and instead simply start regaining his memory. This gives you a plot device to play with and lets him play what he wants. Make it clear to the player from the beginning that advancement will be slow with mostly regained memories as a reward.

[sir_pudding]

There really isn't any reason (other than tradition I suppose) that PCs have to have the same point totals. The last THS campaign I ran I didn't charge for racial templates and I didn't have any problems*, the PCs point totals ranged from 200 points (a Alpha Upgrade) to 600+ points (a SAI/Bushbot).

*Well with that anyway. Don't ever let a "loony" type player play the captain of a multibillion dollar spacecraft in a supposedly realistic hard-sf game.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

There really isn't any reason (other than tradition I suppose) that PCs have to have the same point totals. The last THS campaign I ran I didn't charge for racial templates and I didn't have any problems*, the PCs point totals ranged from 200 points (a Alpha Upgrade) to 600+ points (a SAI/Bushbot).

*Well with that anyway. Don't ever let a "loony" type player play the captain of a multibillion dollar spacecraft in a supposedly realistic hard-sf game.

One of the things I like about equal point totals is that it forces players to improvise. Are your point totals too low? Then how can you get what you want while staying in budget? Are your points too high? Then how can you expand your character in interesting ways?

Poor, gadgetless characters will always have trouble keeping up with their power-armored kin, psychics can probably do it because their attacks can ignore armor, though at 500 points the power-armored guys can afford to buy some serious psychic defenses.

This is true. However, gadgets only take you so far. You can't lug around a Heavy Machine Gun and wear power armor all the time, but with higher point totals, you can afford to buy innate DR or an innate attack that's comparable to the above. This is one of the reasons high-level Supers can afford to dismiss weaponry altogether, because it doesn't really matter if one player carries around an M-16 if another can inflict 20d of damage with a punch.

Thus, in my experience, higher point total games tend to diminish the importance of gadgetry

This is amazingly good advice. My Wild Cards game feels gritty and is chock full of 500-900 point characters who are TERRIFIED of combat.

Heh. I don't want my players terrified of combat, but I don't want it to feel like a four-color comic book either. But you're right, 9DD and Kromm give great advice: I can capture that feeling without worrying about powerlevel. I did it all the time in Exalted, and a good starting Exalted is much stronger than 500 points.

Wow, you guys really helped ^_^ I think I'll go with 500 points. That still leaves room to grow, lets our commando play more like a Black Ops character (which is one of his favorite games), grants the Android more access to his innate abilities, and will allow our psychic character to explore more options.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

One of the things I like about equal point totals is that it forces players to improvise. Are your point totals too low? Then how can you get what you want while staying in budget? Are your points too high? Then how can you expand your character in interesting ways?

Using my suggestion they still have the same budget after racial templates, so you still get that effect, but YMMV.