differing power levels within a party: The Avengers

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by whswhs

My experience running supers campaigns is it's not the bricks who destroy the scenario and make the other characters useless. It's the mind controllers, and second to them the speedsters.

I'm curious. How about magicians? Have you had any experience with them? It seems like they would have all sorts of abilities that could short-circuit any adventure.

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Okay, I totally understand mind controllers. Why speedsters?

Hmm, maybe because they get to act before others players do? Sometimes, doing something is enough and you don't really need that many superpowers for it. Out of combat, every super can stop a mundane bank robber (or observe the kidnapping). But only the speedster is the first to get there.

In combat, sometimes the fight starts before anyone but the speedster has a chance to get there. (Unless the supers are the target of the enemy, but that might not be the most interesting kind of battle.) At best the speedster gets a few rounds of solo combat, at worst the speedster finishes the battle himself. This problem is exaggerated by making it difficult to design proper challenges and needing multiple weaker enemies to make fights reasonable interesting.

But this isn't a world-breaking problem, I think. It's just that one player gets to do so much more interesting stuff than the others. It's game-breaking.

Regards
Ts

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ts_

In combat, sometimes the fight starts before anyone but the speedster has a chance to get there. (Unless the supers are the target of the enemy, but that might not be the most interesting kind of battle.) At best the speedster gets a few rounds of solo combat, at worst the speedster finishes the battle himself. This problem is exaggerated by making it difficult to design proper challenges and needing multiple weaker enemies to make fights reasonable interesting.

This is actually a kind of a problem with speedsters (and stalkers, and flyers . . . ) that commonly . . . isn't.

In a way, it shows up in strategy games. For instance, there's a game where Cossacks are ridiculously fast horsemen compared to other units. That seems to make people think that their speed alone is a gamebreaker. The game has two types of those cossacks - the cheap but weak version and the normal version. Well, the cheap one is near useless other than for scouting. Why? Because even though they outmanoeuvre the enemy heavy cavalry and heavy infantry easily, once they actually get to the objective, they still need to defeat the static defences. OTOH, the normal version is actually a decent hit-and-run unit, but they can't stand up to other 'brick' and 'dps' units once those get into range.

Same thing I wonder about speedsters: Okay, so she gets to the crime scene faster. Are you saying she has points for being a speedster and for single-handedly defeating the opposing force that was intended as a reasonable threat to a group of 3-5 supers? Yes, speedsters are great for cleaning up weak targets spread around the city. Is that such a big part of the game?

[Ts_]

Well, there's a couple of things.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Same thing I wonder about speedsters: Okay, so she gets to the crime scene faster.

Which does not even have to be a big fight, unless it's the showdown. So the speedster gets to do "easy" stuff more often (the mundane crime that any super supposedly can handle), ergo the player gets more spotlight time.

But if it comes to combat ...

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Are you saying she has points for being a speedster and for single-handedly defeating the opposing force that was intended as a reasonable threat to a group of 3-5 supers?

Well, I'm saying it is hard to design that reasonable threat in the first place. On top of that, as a cautious and inexperienced GM for inexperienced players, I probably tend to design less than deadly showdowns. So there is something the speedster can do while the others can only walk to the scene. The player of the speedster gets spotlight time again, even if it isn't as significant to the overall fight as the punches of the brute.

Even when the team is collectively at the battlefield, the speedster still gets multiple actions per round and never wastes time acquiring a new target. The player has more fun due to this, imho.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Yes, speedsters are great for cleaning up weak targets spread around the city. Is that such a big part of the game?

Any spread on the battlefield (5m between enemies is enough) gives the speedster a huge advantage over non-speedsters. If multiple enemies approach outdoors (in a high-visibility inner-city fight), there are likely some the speedster can get to before the others can get there.

Of course the speedster shouldn't run into a clustered mob of dangerous enemies all by himself. But that mob shouldn't stand around like that either with explosive-like IAs coming their way soon, so being spread is a perfectly valid thing for enemies to do.

Anyway, this if from my very limited experience with super games. Next time, making sure that everyone can get to the fight on time and switch between targets quickly will be one of my priorities or else the melee brute is stuck in the background again ... (Be it due to the blasters or the speedsters.)

Regards
Ts

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

The Avengers, as portrayed in the current movie, are an example of a team with radically different power levels. The major leaguers (Thor, Iron Man, Hulk) are nearly invulnerable to the attacks of the minors (Hawkeye, Captain America, Black Widow). Yet they manage to work together and do useful things.

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

Different people bring different gifts to the party. Sure Iron Man, Hulk, and Thor, bring raw power. Captain America is a brillant tactician and combat leader, work with him and your group is more powerful. Hawkeye and Black Widow bring skill to the party. Black Widow is a spy/manipulator. She gets the enemy to do stupid things. Hawkeye can put an arrow in so many places, and do a great deal with them. He's the helping hand when you need him most.

Other Avengers from the comics had further stunts. Wasp, because she was small, fast, and had a good energy projection, could reduced large foes to helplessness, fast. Tigra had speed a keen senses. Quicksilver had superspeed. Scarlet Witch could twist luck around her little finger.

No matter what the gift, Captian American made them re-enforce each other.

[vicky_molokh]

IME one of the scariest supers* concepts is someone like Mystique, but with Improvised Morph. At 250-300 points and with some mental gymnastics, an improvised morph with some proper limitations (resulting in an affordable cost) becomes a serious Jack of All Trades, always having a solution to a problem. At 1000 points, the Improvised Morph gets enormous flexibility for a very affordable cost.

Modular Abilities (Skills) come a close second in terms of scariness, depending on just how much use there is for having a point in any skill (or even several). (IME, a single point is a lot.)

* == it was not quite a Supers campaign in most senses, but the characters pretty much were.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Okay, I totally understand mind controllers. Why speedsters? (Recently there was a comment that ATR is not much of a win-enabler for its point cost.)

I mean, they can get to the scene early (but alone), and can maybe do research and the like faster (depending), and they're sorta adequate in combat (but not as much as various Innate Attack blasters, including some tricky Maledictors).

It depends on how you build the speedster.

A lot of systems have artificial restrictions to prevent speedsters from totally dominating the game. For example, you'll have most abilities take the form of exponential growth in effectiveness, but speedsters will have linear growth in number of actions (Champions does that, for example—you can multiply lifting strength x100 fairly trivially, but you can't multiply speed x100). And most systems don't even give a nod to kinetic energy varying as the square of speed. GURPS Altered Time Rate certainly doesn't!

Even with those limitations, though—I played a speedster in a friend's campaign (the one that was the playtest for GURPS Supers). She had Basic Speed 12, and Dodge-16—or 17 from Daredevil if she was doing something bat**** crazy. A character who always goes first, who gets two actions per second, and who can effectively never be hit makes a pretty effective combat monster.

Bill Stoddard

[mehrkat]

I played a character in a modified Shadowrun who was a Troll physical mage idiot savant with 3 levels of extra speed. In that system it gave you an entire extra die to decide when you moved and an extra move for every 5 on the roll.

On average I moved at least twice before anyone could react. Luckily I was dumb as a post but I could do 2 stupid (hulkish things I) before anyone else could do one smart thing and it changed the entire flow of the game. I tried to make them quick moves so they didn't take much time but speedsters really can change the entire game.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I'm curious. How about magicians? Have you had any experience with them? It seems like they would have all sorts of abilities that could short-circuit any adventure.

I haven't seen a lot of magician characters in my supers campaigns.

Bill Stoddard

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Dodge-16—or 17 from Daredevil if she was doing something bat**** crazy.

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

Originally Posted by whswhs

I haven't seen a lot of magician characters in my supers campaigns.

I haven't used the GURPS magic system in a Supers game, but I've gotten close enough with fantasy games, and with even three or four hundred points, it becomes nearly impossible to stop them. They have so many options. They're mind control, plus all of the other stuff they can do. They can teleport. They can toss up Force Walls. They can becomes invisible and silent. Looking at the 500 point Master Mage template in Supers, it looks like he would cause me way more trouble than would the 2,000 point brick. I would have no idea how to create interesting things for him to do--and that's if he's alone! Put him in with the Sifu and the Blaster and the Man Plus and how do I ever give the other characters time in the spotlight? How do I even get them to work together? And those are guys he doesn't just completely overshadow, like the Mesmerist.