Anybody with experience with 1000+ cp superhero campaigns?

[Kaspar]

Planning to run a superhero game, with the characters being amongst the most powerful supes in the world. Bu the pricing of high levels of Strength, DR and Innate Attack doesn’t really work beyond the confines of a low-tech fantasy settings. The difference between a 100 ST character and a 200 ST character certainly is not worth 1000 cp. Maybe 50 cp at best. Same with enough DR to be immune to small arms.

For me, I really don’t see the need for a strength beyond ‘can toss tanks and smash skyscrapers’ but even that is too pricy by RAW.

Do you have any suggestions for alternate rules here?

[Phantasm]

Sounds to me like you may want KYOS (Knowing Your Own Strength, from one of the Alternate GURPS Pyramid isssues).

One house rule I'm using with my space opera game's psychokinetic and psychometabolic psionic powers, and which may be relevant to supers, is to scale the effective DR granted by powers (though not equipment) by the SSRT while keeping the price per level the same:
1 level [5] = DR 3
2 levels [10] = DR 5
3 levels [15] = DR 7
4 levels [20] = DR 10
10 levels [50] = DR 100
16 levels [80] = DR 1000
etc.

Combine with "Cosmic: Does Not Round Up to 1 (+50%)" on higher levels of Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) for folks who are meant to be highly durable. High levels of IT:DR can go a long way.

[pawsplay]

Do you have the Powers and Supers books?

[Fred Brackin]

From experience with very high pt games in 3e and 4e my advice is to design the characters to match their concept while _ignoring_ point costs.

This requires only one rules change i.e. the one where all characters are supposed to be built on the same number of cp. Off-hand I can't tell you where that rules is anyway. It may be only an "implied" rule.

It also puts an end to "competitive" character building where many players think chargen is a contest of ingenuity and rules knowledge. For Supers especially it should be about getting out of character creation with the character you want to play.

Make the players describe their characters in comic book terms add some questions of your own. For example:

"ApexMan is strong enough to lift and throw a tank, ignore most normal weapons and fly faster than a jet fighter!"

"Gotcha. Has anyone ever taught him how to fight?"

"No, he relies on his natural speed and co-ordination which are quite high."

"Okay. We'll add in some telescopic vision to help spot things while flying, something for high altitude breathing and a natural sense of direction and we might be done after that."

[pawsplay]

I think one valid approach is to make a 250 point adventurer, and then add whatever powers fit, no budget. Batman gets to be a 550 point character.

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

From experience with very high pt games in 3e and 4e my advice is to design the characters to match their concept while _ignoring_ point costs.

Originally Posted by pawsplay

I think one valid approach is to make a 250 point adventurer, and then add whatever powers fit, no budget. Batman gets to be a 550 point character.

This.

The few times I ran a supers, I had them create a normal character first, usually with 150/-25 or 250/-25 points, or with a template I created. Then I would sit down with them and we would decide what their power was, how it worked, and as the GM I would write it up. After which I would fine tune it so that everyone was closer to "power level" together.

At that point, everyone had different point costs.


When it came to damage, I use my own house rules. For you, I would change Innate attacks to function like Telekinesis. The level is treated as a comparable ST level.

So an innate attack 10 deals the same swing damage as an ST 10 person. This might seem like a major nerf but remember this is still a ranged attack AND at higher levels it will out pace straight ST due to it costing less by default.

Crushing Attack 100 cost 500pts, deals 13d cr. at range.

For 500 points the Brick gets +50 ST, dealing 7d-1 or 9d swing damage, but also has HP 60.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

I think one valid approach is to make a 250 point adventurer, and then add whatever powers fit, no budget. Batman gets to be a 550 point character.

I have done this to great advantage in my own games. 250 pt. Action characters + build-to-concept for powers works nicely for superhero games that are along the lines of Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, Outsiders, adult Titans, etc.; reduce to 75 to 150 pts for "mutant high school" type games (original New Mutants, Generation X, various incarnations of Teen Titans where they're actually teenagers, etc).

The trick is making sure they have room to grow with earned XP.

[Phantasm]

One thing to note is that DR 42 will make someone immune to most conventional weapons, up to most police sniper rifles that are chambered in .308 Winchester/7.62x51mm NATO (doing 7d pi); add a level of Hardened for most AP rounds on the market. Most police handguns are 9x19mm Parabellum rounds, doing around 2d+2 pi, so being immune to most police handgun fire (that are not folks like Dirty Harry) is only DR 14.

I don't know how much damage your players are planning to dish out, but being able to tank their own hits with DR and IT:DR is always a plus. This includes costumes/uniforms made with TL 9 Reflex ballistic fabric, if the game permits.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Kaspar

Planning to run a superhero game, with the characters being amongst the most powerful supes in the world. Bu the pricing of high levels of Strength, DR and Innate Attack doesn’t really work beyond the confines of a low-tech fantasy settings. The difference between a 100 ST character and a 200 ST character certainly is not worth 1000 cp. Maybe 50 cp at best. Same with enough DR to be immune to small arms.

For me, I really don’t see the need for a strength beyond ‘can toss tanks and smash skyscrapers’ but even that is too pricy by RAW.

Do you have any suggestions for alternate rules here?

For high power supers you should really use:
-Super-Strength(Supers 25) for high ST type things.
-Damage Reduction(Supers 122/Powers 53) instead of super high DR.
-Embrace the D-scale and C-Scale damages,limits and effects(Supers 19). (M-scale tends to get silly)
-Extreme Scores rules on B349.
-Wildcard skills. Most Supers in most games can do too wide things to be captured by the normal skill system.


Think about and codify:
-How powers interface/interfere with powers that have a different power modifier in your world, or just go with all having "Superpower" as power modifier.
-What are the mind control and similar power limits, people usually hate a "save once and be mindcontrolled forever" type things.
-What is the resource that the characters are to run out of and how fast? And how fast do they regenerate? It can be as simple as FP or it can be the Impulse points from their wildcard skill or just character points for buying success.
-The limits from I-Scale/D-scale/C-Scale.
-How much points can characters use for different things?

Those are some things I have found I needed in a 3000+ point campaign,

[GodBeastX]

For DR pricing I follow an House Rule that Christopher Rice came up with.

To make the math simple, you take the max DR of the campaign and you divide it by 15. That is the DR you gain every 5 points instead of 1. Therefore DR would be the same price in a game like Dungeon Fantasy, but if you're in an Ultratech Game where things do 75 damage regularly, you don't need to try and buy DR 75 to match a power armor someone can buy off a store shelf much easier.

This follows the same reasoning as why ST might be cheaper in higher TL from GURPS Power-Ups 9 - Alternate Attributes. There is precedence in GURPS to change the point value of what is ST and what is DR, maybe even HP itself.