DF: Power Ups at 400+ points

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Powers is your friend here, and can be used to create all kinds of totally impossible "epic" abilities. These would cost more points than spells or cinematic combat skills, but not cost FP or rely on skill rolls, and possibly create much more profound effects.

I'm imagining Epic Cleric Loaves and Fishes! providing nourishment for large parties indefinitely (yes, yes, I suppose they could call down pillars of flame and part seas), Super Swashbuckler Rose-Trellis Balcony Leap! letting guys with big fancy hats, Gene Kelly-like, ignore gravity while hopping around the battlefield, and Awesome Barbarian Spinning Whirlwind of Steely Death! letting lightly armored warriors buzzsaw through hordes of minor opponents. Not sure if I'd start extrapolating from maneuvers, imbuements, or powers, but there's definitely lots of room for serious epic abilities, a la video game finishing moves.

I might also start making suggestive glances in the direction of Mass Combat.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Azinctus

Kromm has said that in his Fantasy campaign there were no limits but fighters limited themselves to level 25 because they found brawling, thrown weapons, power blow and other things more useful and interesting.

Originally Posted by blacksmith

Some of this is also about how you build the challanges.

This is all true. Suppose you can hit any location on any foe reliably with a sword, and deftly enough that your enemy can't usefully defend. At that point, you have no incentive to get better with a sword. But what if the GM tosses in monsters whose Injury Tolerance means that they only take meaningful damage from crushing attacks and have no vulnerable spots? Opponents who can't be beaten down, just grappled and tossed in the Magic Mountain of Unmaking? Ones that emit death auras and have to be attacked at a range? A prize that can't be won in a swordfight, only in a boxing tournament? Then you might want Axe/Mace, Wrestling, Bow, Boxing, etc.

Niche protection isn't about forbidding Bow to the non-scout, Boxing and Wrestling to the non-martial artist, and so on; it's about making sure that the scout is the best archer, the martial artist is the best unarmed fighter, etc. Once all the PCs have their primary combat skill at, say, 25, it makes sense to diversify. This doesn't mean invading somebody else's niche to the tune of skill 25. This means settling for a 16-18 in these other areas. They are, after all, backup skills for rare challenges, not your stock in trade.

Another thing to consider is that all attributes are useful to every adventurer. This requires setting aside combat and taking the longer view. Why wouldn't some epic barbarian want IQ 13, say, so that he'll be better at all IQ-, Will-, and Per-based skills, including a lot of the skills on his template? The same goes for the wizard and DX . . . hey, it's nice to be able to hit with Deathtouch and Fireball, and have good active defenses vs. scary, high-level foes. An across-the-board +1 to +3 to all attributes for every PC is entirely sensible, and maintains niche protection simply because when the dummy PCs with IQ 10 go to IQ 13, the smarty-pants ones with IQ 15 go to IQ 18 (and probably higher).

This last point applies equally to other traits of broad utility. Just about every PC in my high-powered campaign ended up with Combat Reflexes, and this didn't devalue the guy whose shtick was speed and defense, because by then he had Basic Speed 10.00, Enhanced Parry, Enhanced Dodge, etc. on top of Combat Reflexes. Likewise, most of the PCs ended up with high Per, but the barbarian scout whose thing was Per remained the master of spotting stuff, because he had gained Discriminatory Smell, Infravision, Subsonic Hearing, etc. via totemic animal-spirit powers.

Finally, if you're going all old-school, there's really no reason why every PC shouldn't gain HP. The same goes for higher "saving throws," which in GURPS means better HT and Will for making resistance rolls. Even Extra Life might fit . . . when the HP run out or the resistance vs. certain death fails, and Luck is all used up, the player can burn an EL and decide he made it anyway.

[blacksmith]

Originally Posted by Kromm

This is all true. Suppose you can hit any location on any foe reliably with a sword, and deftly enough that your enemy can't usefully defend. At that point, you have no incentive to get better with a sword. But what if the GM tosses in monsters whose Injury Tolerance means that they only take meaningful damage from crushing attacks and have no vulnerable spots? Opponents who can't be beaten down, just grappled and tossed in the Magic Mountain of Unmaking? Ones that emit death auras and have to be attacked at a range? A prize that can't be won in a swordfight, only in a boxing tournament? Then you might want Axe/Mace, Wrestling, Bow, Boxing, etc.

Or buying up speed and move to be faster so that you can keep up with foes with steps of 2 or even 3. Enough ST to do damage to foes with lots of DR that you otherwise would not. These are examples that fit into the characters main method of fighting but make the character better with out changing the skill involved.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Azinctus

Does that mean a cleric can buy Power Investiture 6?

Clerics can already buy PI 6, but a suitably epic game might let them go even higher. I wouldn't bother adding any additional spells -- at that point, the true benefit is the bonus being given to all of the existing spells.

Or would he be better to have some kind of Divine power made up by his infinitely creative Games Master?

Definitely! I can think of dozens of Holy powers just off the top of my head -- think of every "miracle" you've ever heard of, from Biblical to cheesy movies. Let the cleric go crazy buying powers covering walking on water, summoning holy fire, etc. Pick up DF9: Clerics and DF5: Allies for inspiration -- both have tons of custom holy powers (the former for clerics, the latter for its Divine Servitors).

Powers are definitely the easiest way to soak points IMO -- you can come up with new abilities almost indefinitely, with a little imagination. It's the "classes" that don't get access to powers that I'd say are more challenging. :)

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

For combat, one of the biggest problems with 25+ is that location penalties dont scale. At 25 even poking people in the armor chinks and eye slits poses no real challenge, its the opposing sides active defense that willl foil you.

So your solution to this is to make higher skill worthless? Really?

If you're having trouble challenging your fighters, try giving them something harder to do than mowing down mooks on a brightly-lit featureless plain after a good night's rest and using their favorite equipment...

[DAT]

Originally Posted by Xplo

...If you're having trouble challenging your fighters, try giving them something harder to do than mowing down mooks on a brightly-lit featureless plain after a good night's rest and using their favorite equipment...

For a Knight with main weapon skill of 24, I normally expect base modifiers in the -8 to -15 range for most serious encounters: i.e., -5 to -10 for lighting, -1 to -3 for terrain, weird attack angles some times or another -1 to -2, small targets some times -1 to -3, etc.

e.g., on an old, slime coated, partially collapsed, swaying bridge over an underground lake attacking a long tenacled demon in the lake who just took out the Cleric's Continual Light ... -14 to hit a tenacle, and then the thing can still defend ...