Conan the Wizard...is it a problem?

[larsdangly]

I'd prefer a game with your ST 30 fighter, DX 12 and agree it would be a blast to play, but in practice it isn't what people did with their resources under the old rules.

I feel like the new edition actually provides you ways to create very powerful characters who are unique and fun, by adapting the Supers rules (in the companion) to general play.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I view this as a kind of stand in for a broader issue with the older experience and advancement rules, which encouraged and permitted all characters to drift toward a common design having ST~DX~IQ~20. Whether you started as Conan or started as a wizard, this is where you would end up.

This was always the issue -- by the time you'd played for a couple of years, all the characters were carbon copies. Everyone had the same powers, skills, spells and attributes, and everyone pretty much always succeeded at everything. It wasn't so much the specifics of Conan the Wizard or Gandalf the Barbarian, it was the bland sameness of everything at higher levels. In effect, the game self-destructed at higher levels. It's why a lot of people left the game when Metagaming went out of business -- not only was there a lack of support, but there was also a recognition that the game was best played at low levels, and people tended to move on when they wanted to explore higher levels of play. Those of us who stuck with it for the next 35 years all pretty much solved that problem with one or more of the new rules in Legacy Edition -- in fact, talking about HOW to solve those problems is what lead to the community in the first place, I think...

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Elric never got stronger in the stories

He also never got better at spellcasting. Elric's a good example of why game systems shouldn't force a D&D style zero-to-hero development path on the players. Elric starts out being pretty "high level" -- few can match his knowledge of magic and inherited pacts from his background -- with about the only improvement being acquiring Stormbringer, and that was mostly about improving his physical stats, not his mental ones.

One of the things I originally liked about GURPS is that the rules encouraged you to just build a hero and go play, without being required to kill lots of giant rats outside the city gates to level up for a while.

[zot]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

He also never got better at spellcasting. Elric's a good example of why game systems shouldn't force a D&D style zero-to-hero development path on the players. Elric starts out being pretty "high level" -- few can match his knowledge of magic and inherited pacts from his background -- with about the only improvement being acquiring Stormbringer, and that was mostly about improving his physical stats, not his mental ones.

One of the things I originally liked about GURPS is that the rules encouraged you to just build a hero and go play, without being required to kill lots of giant rats outside the city gates to level up for a while.

Of course Elric trained as a sorcerer for 1000 years and he is an incarnation of the most powerful being in the Multiverse, the Eternal Champion. It's hard to improve on that... 😀

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by zot

Of course Elric trained as a sorcerer for 1000 years and he is an incarnation of the most powerful being in the Multiverse, the Eternal Champion. It's hard to improve on that... 😀

Exactly! I mean, how many more xp do you want once you start play when that's your backstory?

[larsdangly]

Where did you get the idea that Elric was 1000+ years old at the opening of the stories about him? I've read these a dozen times and never noticed that.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I'd prefer a game with your ST 30 fighter, DX 12 and agree it would be a blast to play, but in practice it isn't what people did with their resources under the old rules.

I feel like the new edition actually provides you ways to create very powerful characters who are unique and fun, by adapting the Supers rules (in the companion) to general play.

I would be very interested in this idea. How would you go about doing that? Do you have some rules for characters buying those abilities at high levels? What does a high level character who has some look like?

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

He also never got better at spellcasting. Elric's a good example of why game systems shouldn't force a D&D style zero-to-hero development path on the players. Elric starts out being pretty "high level" -- few can match his knowledge of magic and inherited pacts from his background -- with about the only improvement being acquiring Stormbringer, and that was mostly about improving his physical stats, not his mental ones.

One of the things I originally liked about GURPS is that the rules encouraged you to just build a hero and go play, without being required to kill lots of giant rats outside the city gates to level up for a while.

Yeah, pulp characters, like the super-heroes they gave birth do, didn't tend to change a lot. I imagine it made it easier for the writer to sell short stories with the same characters...brand recognition.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

Where did you get the idea that Elric was 1000+ years old at the opening of the stories about him? I've read these a dozen times and never noticed that.

Ditto. I too have never read anything that indicated that. The Melnibonean empire only reigned for 10,000 years, and I think there were like 400+ emperors.

[larsdangly]

Originally Posted by Tywyll

I would be very interested in this idea. How would you go about doing that? Do you have some rules for characters buying those abilities at high levels? What does a high level character who has some look like?

My 'base' rules for this are in the Companion volume that was published with the LE boxed set in the spring. I then adapt them in two ways:

1) dial the starting superhero point pool down to whatever power level I'm trying to create. The default is 32, but that gets you someone with powers like a comic book character. Something in the range 10-20 will get you something more like Beowulf

2) I expand the list of spell-like powers to include almost any spell, following the pattern of point costs established in the Companion rules

I've created several characters this way; the only one who has show up and done things in play is an NPC encountered by the players in my current campaign; she appears to be a simple traveller but has strange gaps in her memory and people who confront her 'off screen' end up dead with bizarre injuries. Her back story is that she is a sort of demi-god but doesn't know her own past or understand her powers because she blacks out when she manifests her exceptional strength and resistance to injury.