Building better Supers templates

[Michael Thayne]

This is something I've been thinking about for awhile, and this thread will build on threads I've started here, here, and here. The specific issue I want to address here is that the templates in Supers leave a lot to be desired relative to, say, the ones in Monster Hunters.

"Supers" covers a wide array of power levels, but I think I'm going to target roughly the power level represented by The Avengers. Batman-types rarely make a great deal of sense alongside heroes with actual powers, whereas Superman is a little too hard to provide decent challenges for, or make work on a team. The Avengers feel more like a sensible RPG party.

In qualitative terms, that means taking on national- or global-scale threats, but not doing it by being straightforwardly more powerful than an entire national military. Rather, they do things that conventional military forces can't do. In many ways, they're I-Scale: the first Iron Man movie shows him blowing up a tank, but it doesn't seem like tank-busting is a core competency for him, and the F-22 raptors he has a run-in with are treated as much more of a threat than they would be to a character built on the Archetype template from supers. And if they need to destroy anything larger than a tank, they'll do it by getting inside and destroying it from within.

Quantitatively, I think we're talking about characters built on around 1000 points, but that could be adjusted up or down slightly as templates get fleshed out. The following skeletal Brick template seems like a good starting point for building something like the Ed Norton / Mark Ruffalo Hulk:

ST 29/90 [100]; DX 14 [80]; IQ 10 [0]; HT 14 [40]
Will 14 [20]
Combat Reflexes [15]; DR 2 (Tough Skin, -40%; Super, -10%) [5]; High Pain Threshold [10]; IT:DR (30) (Super, -10%) [203]; Luck [15]; ST +9/70 (Super-Effort, +300%) [351]; Weapon Master (Improvised Weapons) [35]
Brute!* (VH) DX+2 [48]-16

*Brute! covers Boxing, Brawling, Climbing, Jumping, Wrestling, ad Sumo Wrestling for all purposes. It also covers Axe/Mace, Broadsword, Shield, Throwing Art, Two-Handed Axe/Mace, and Two-Handed Sword for improvised weapons and shields. Make an HT-based roll for Lifting, a Will-based roll for strength-based intimidation, and a Per-based roll for Scrounging to scrounge improvised weapons. Characters with Trained by a Master or Weapon Master can make an IQ-based roll for Breaking Blow or Flying Leap, and a Will-based roll for Power Blow. The GM should allow players with Brute! to spend wildcard bonuses points on Player Guidance to find the perfect objects to use as improvised weapons: maybe there's an I-beam laying around at the construction site that's just the right size for your ST, or you smash a car and fragments fly off that are the perfect size to be used as improvised shields.

To build other templates, I think it helps to have lots of implied limits on traits, trait levels, combinations of modifiers, etc. For a blaster, I think it could make sense to require them to spend roughly half their point budget on an upper I-scale (or lower D-scale) attack (or attacks, bought as alternative abilities) tricked out with lots of nifty enhancements. Something designed to be as useful as ST 29/90, but not necessarily as optimized as an innate attack could be.

Oh, and it should be possible to spend character points (and wildcard bonus points, etc.) temporarily invoking the Cinematic Explosion rules.

More ideas to follow.

[Phantasm]

One thing to consider is the breadth of powers available to PCs in a party.

Consider the following Avengers team:

Captain America - supersoldier, melee combatant with some ranged capability, born leader
Quicksilver - speedster, average human strength, perceives things faster than others, dodges bullets
Scarlet Witch - ability to cause weapons to malfunction, make her opponents suffer bad luck
Hawkeye - archer with a bunch of trick warheads, decent melee fighter
Swordsman - Hawkeye's mentor from the circus, expert melee fighter with a sword that has been tricked out to shoot beams
Wasp - shrinks to a small size, flight when shrunk, close-range electro-shocker
Goliath - grows to about 10-20 feet tall, superhumanly strong and durable, scientific genius

That's a fairly low-powered Avengers team, all about 500 points, give or take.

Consider another Avengers team:

Beast - furry blue scrapper, bench-presses a ton
Captain America
Iron Man
Thor
Moondragon - telepath, telekinetic, supremely arrogant
Wonder Man - invulnerable, superhumanly strong
Vision - android who can shoot beams from his forehead and alter his density to pass through things or be exceedingly dense
Wasp
Yellowjacket - same basic powerset as Wasp, a later identity for Goliath above
Hawkeye
Jocasta - android with lesser-adamantium body and optic blasts
Hellcat - scrapper with steel claws in her gloves
Captain Marvel - bench-press 10 tons, cosmic awareness
Swordsman
Mantis - empathic martial artist

The two teams have highly variable skill sets and point values. (And yes, both were active teams at different points in the team's history.)

Mind, I agree that we need better Supers templates. I'm just saying "Avengers may not be the right model". Come to think of it, I'm not sure what is.

[Flyndaran]

Super teams are never made of comparably powered members. They only work, because writers force the weaker ones into the spotlight and hamper the powerful ones.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Super teams are never made of comparably powered members. They only work, because writers force the weaker ones into the spotlight and hamper the powerful ones.

For a while, Brave and the Bold was a popular title featuring Batman and Superman team ups. While I admit that a prepared Batman should probably be able to kick Superman's *ss, for the most part they live in two different worlds.

Very few writers can write Superman well, because he's too powerful. Read the Injustice comic for Superman written right after he has turned evil and is trying to run the world.

Batman is almost as hard to write for.

I have ran in supers campaigns, but I don't like them too much because they tend to run as well as a badly written comic.

[Dwarf99]

There was a Pyramid fix on Strength above 22 that basically "fixed" superstrength. I found that you could get damage comparable to Superstrength at similar cost. At least for Strength up to 100. I didn't check any above 100. I'm not entirely sure I need to.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Mind, I agree that we need better Supers templates. I'm just saying "Avengers may not be the right model". Come to think of it, I'm not sure what is.

I think GURPS Action provides guidance here. Comic book superhero teams are often formed on the basis of popularity and availability, not whether the characters make a good mix of abilities. And as noted writers try to make sure low powered characters get their chances to shine. That's a lot harder for a GM to do without railroading characters. In my opinion, the weakness of the templates in GURPS Supers is that they seem to focus a little more on duplicating comic book archetypes and a little less on templates that work well for teams. An alternate template design would think about appropriate niches for a superhero team and assume similar power levels, possibly allowing for power-ups from I to D level and so on. For comic book models you're probably best off looking at characters who started as team mates - early X-Men or the Fantastic Four.

Actually if you powered up the various Action templates you've got a basis for superhero templates. Use the Shooter as a model for a ranged attack specialist, the Big Guy for bricks, the Investigator for super sleuth types, etc.

As an aside, I think Batman works pretty well with Superman or the Justice League. When you're dealing with very powerful characters, ironically the stories can wind up being more about solving puzzles than brawling and that makes characters like Batman look more impressive.

[Michael Thayne]

I probably should have clarified that when I talk about the Avengers, I'm talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe versions. When I first saw the movie, I found the idea of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor all being about equally matched in a fight odd. But that's apparently what we're to believe about them.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I probably should have clarified that when I talk about the Avengers, I'm talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe versions. When I first saw the movie, I found the idea of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor all being about equally matched in a fight odd. But that's apparently what we're to believe about them.

I think that's a mistaken way to look at it. When I look at the final combat sequence, I see the various characters as playing the roles of different types of military unit: air cavalry for Iron Man, armor for the Hulk, artillery for Thor, infiltration for the Black Widow, ground combat for Captain America, sniper/observer for Hawkeye. Those types of units aren't "equally powerful," but armies find uses for all of them, often together. And you also have Captain America in the role of tactical command, where his abilities are invaluable.

Now, to be sure, that was a better piece of writing than a lot of comic book stories. GURPS Supers could have used more attention to how you make a team with disparate power levels work.

Bill Stoddard

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Batman-types rarely make a great deal of sense alongside heroes with actual powers, whereas Superman is a little too hard to provide decent challenges for, or make work on a team. The Avengers feel more like a sensible RPG party.

Batman is a very high point character in most versions: while he lacks official "super powers", most iterations of the character have just about every "mundane" Advantage (and quite a few cinematic or downright "silly" ones) at his disposal. He's probably the most iconic "super normal" there is... and that assumes you don't allow him what I refer to (I assume supplements I haven't read have a better term) "genre powers". It isn't quite the same as a setting rule because it does not apply to everyone, but in the setting a certain Exotic Advantage is no longer Exotic (often it is being used in place of a Skill or to remove a roll).

For example, in a setting where Danger Sense normally has to have a Power Modifier, Batman gets the wild version without one or else with a Modifier that indicates its represents his peak human senses and vast combat experience, or Serendipity, Ridiculous Luck and Super Luck to represent his Detective Skills. Even without those, however, like I said his Attributes and Advantages (think of all the Social ones enjoyed by Batman/Bruce Wayne) really start to add up. In some versions, Batman flat out has technology based super powers! Relevant to the discussion, when a normal person is properly built on a Supers budget, he or she can indeed "hang" with the Supers in some capacity, though it does become more and more niche the higher you go.

Countermeasures for Power Modifiers are also an important part of this as are many other setting tools. In Marvel Comics, for example, there are pretty much countermeasures for almost everything, though some are more common and/or effective than others. Unusual Background costs are also important; even a relatively modest one can provide enough points for a good Social Advantage. None of these are "full proof", but only in the way that most specialists and generalists can overlap leaving the specialist less than special.

[Michael Thayne]

I'm not necessarily claiming that slavish imitation of what's on the screen in Avengers gets you equal point totals for all the main heroes. I'm more thinking in terms of how the Monster Hunters series takes what we see in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and comes up with a set of templates which all the same point value and which roughly correspond to Buffy and other Slayers (Warrior), Angel/Spike (Inhuman), Giles (Sage), Willow (Witch), and even Riley (Experiment).

I think the following might make a nice "typical" deluxe Innate Attack for blasters operating on the scale we're talking about:

Burning Attack or Crushing Attack 15d (Armor Divisor (5), +150%; Increased Range, x100, +60%; RoF 7, +70%; Variable, +5%; Other Enhancements, +100%; Super, -10%) [357]

Here "other enhancements" will be things largely chosen for flavor, e.g. the +100% version of Surge for a lightning bolt. Blasters that are partly serving the role of fighter jets should probably have Flight and Enhanced Move 6. Throw in a bunch of secondary abilities, and we're up to approximately the point total of the skeletal Brick template I posted in the OP.