Do you see some templates more than others [MH]

[ericthered]

I was just looking over monster hunters, noticed some trends in my games, and was wondering if anyone else had noticed them.

I see lots of Witches, lots of warriors, and lots of Inhumans. Techies are not uncommon, nor are commandos or sages. I can think of maybe one each of Experiment, Psi, and Crusader in all of my games. I have never seen anyone play a sleuth.

Does this match what everyone else is seeing? Is this a result of a certain style of play? Has anyone seen the elusive sleuth?

[RyanW]

I've only run once, but when I did we had a swordmaster, a gunslinger, a werebear, and Steve from accounting.

[johndallman]

We started a campaign recently, with an experiment, a techie, a witch, a sleuth who dropped out, and an inhuman (weretiger). It seems to be working so far: the experiment and the weretiger are the primary fighters, with the witch and the techie trading off support roles.

[Christopher R. Rice]

You using MH Power-Ups for that game?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

You using MH Power-Ups for that game?

I don't know if anyone has used anything from that book, because I'm a player, not the GM, and nobody has mentioned it.

I'm playing the witch, and finding myself using all my experience points just buying up Path skills, plus a few IQ-based skills that I didn't start with. It's a deliberately slow-development campaign, awarding about one character point per session.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

You using MH Power-Ups for that game?

It's available to the players, and the techie is using the Inventions system, but I don't think anyone's using the named power-ups.

[Gnome]

My group once started a MH campaign that died out after about 5 or 6 sessions.

I played a Sleuth, and in my short experience he was awesome!
He wasn't too effective in fights, although with guns even a background character can be somewhat useful, and Stealth allowed him to always start with a strong sneak attack.
Outside of fights, though, a high skill in Talker! turned out to be akin to mind control for normals, and a high skill in Detective! allowed him to quickly figure out what was going on. I put most of my slush fund points into IQ to pump up those two skills, which I think are really, really strong in this type of game, as well as Craftiness to boost my Stealth to 20.

The other characters were a Witch, a Commando, a Techie, and a Crusader. The Crusader felt next to useless, because the Witch could do everything he did and more. The Commando was our main striker, and the Techie helped with utility things like breaking into the secret base, etc. The Witch felt WAY overpowered. We all had universal Wards on all the time that basically made the monsters not scary since they almost never succeeded in breaching the Ward. The Witch basically had to step aside to let others do their job rather than just solving every problem with some creative use of magic.

[GarenLiLorian]

In my long running, multi-group campaign, we've got:

0 Commandos
2 Crusaders (one Native American, one Catholic)
2 Experiments
8 Inhumans (2 werewolves (a basic and a muscle), 1 vampire (fixer), 1 dhampir (whitecoat), 1 demonspawn (gifted - Psi), 1 homebrewed dragon (fixer) 1 homebrewed Djinn (basic) (died in play), 1 mummy (muscle))
1 Psi
2 Sages (one standard, one Handy)
1 Sleuth (played once)
2 Techies (quickly decommissioned, as we are terrible at the gadgeteering rules)
2 Warriors (one of them shading to Psi; cribbed off of a Kai lord from the Lone Wolf books)
4 Witches (2 of which don't play often, and 1 semi-retired). There's a great deal of continuing discussion and heartache around the balance of RPM against powers.

The Dragon, the Sage (normal, not handy), the Experiment, and the remaining Witch are the stars of the story, with the Psi, Kai Lord Warrior, and Catholic crusader being supporting characters and the rest as recurring guest stars or occasional stars of a spin off session.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I don't know if anyone has used anything from that book, because I'm a player, not the GM, and nobody has mentioned it.

I'm playing the witch, and finding myself using all my experience points just buying up Path skills, plus a few IQ-based skills that I didn't start with. It's a deliberately slow-development campaign, awarding about one character point per session.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

It's available to the players, and the techie is using the Inventions system, but I don't think anyone's using the named power-ups.

Nice! I'm curious how that plays out. We kicked the tires on the system while in playtest, but not a lot of examples were made.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by GarenLiLorian

The Dragon, the Sage (normal, not handy), the Experiment, and the remaining Witch are the stars of the story, with the Psi, Kai Lord Warrior, and Catholic crusader being supporting characters and the rest as recurring guest stars or occasional stars of a spin off session.

That sounds like an awesome approach. Did your players make the supporting and spin-off characters themselves?