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Mr. Belding posted:And you want them to do so by having bigger numbers on a sheet? That would be hollow and unconvincing. "Nick Fury has 5 refresh; Iron Man has 2. When he burns all his Fate Points, it's possible for Nick Fury to invoke SHIELD COMMANDER, LOTS OF GADGETS, HOWLING COMMANDO and FURY NEVER QUITS and the room's HELICARRIER CONTROL ROOM to give Iron Man up to a mild consequence! In response, Iron Man is batting a +6 and, being in Powered Armor, automatically ignores Fury's stress track! Balance!
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Mar 26, 2016 05:45
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Lurks With Wolves posted:The way I see it, there's two main reasons to dislike Strange Fate. First, it's really crunchy for a Fate game. That works for games like Base Raiders, where having a bunch of little mechanical bits to fiddle with feels appropriate and having big stratified gaps between tiers of superpowers fits. And then there's games like Kerberos Club, where that level of crunch doesn't feel super appropriate because you want a party with both the Stone Man and a daring adventuress who only has a grappling hook and dreams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6-o4gomRc
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Mar 26, 2016 05:46
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Mr. Belding posted:And you want them to do so by having bigger numbers on a sheet? That would be hollow and unconvincing. no but tiers create a rift that's very hard to overcome
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Mar 26, 2016 06:37
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Golden Bee posted:"Nick Fury has 5 refresh; Iron Man has 2. When he burns all his Fate Points, it's possible for Nick Fury to invoke SHIELD COMMANDER, LOTS OF GADGETS, HOWLING COMMANDO and FURY NEVER QUITS and the room's HELICARRIER CONTROL ROOM to give Iron Man up to a mild consequence! Well, the idea of "more refresh vs static stats" philosohy is more a flexibilty vs power debate. Nick Fury has 5 Fate Points and, therefore, can succeed on more tasks and declare more story elements without compels where Iron Man is great at physical damage, but is only good at that (in this example) and, therefore, must rely on compels heavily or keep only to his niche. So, Nick ends up more generally competent where Iron Man is bound to a niche or constantly hitting setbacks. It's not perfect, but it helps close the gap enough for most players.
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Mar 26, 2016 07:14
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I'm saying it doesn't work with tiers, because in comics, anyone can beat anyone. (Except Squirrel Girl, who has the aspect SQUIRREL GIRL WINS SOMEHOW). In Red Robin, The Boy Wonder could pull off something and defeat Superman. In Action Comics, Superman might fly into orbit and incapacitate the Bat Family. Anyone can beat anyone; that's why tiers don't make sense for supers. --- Let's say the heroes are fighting thugs. For Batman, a group of thugs may be a bunch of mooks -- with a good enough roll, he could swoop in, use a stunt like "I am the Night" and send half of them running. They'd attack him back, he'd defend well and get a boost, which he'd use for Martial Arts asswhupping. If he doesn't, he'll probably get some cuts and bruises. For Superman, it may just be a scene aspect: "ARMED GOONS" -- that can he can overcome in a roll. The challenge is if he can do it while also disarming bombs or protecting hostages. If he flubs his roll, the goons probably get what they want (which, unless they brought magic or space rocks, doesn't include harming Supes. He's the LAST SON OF KRYPTON, after all. If they give him consequences, they're almost certainly social, like: "Off-Balance", "Flummoxed", or something else reflecting his mental state. For Static, these thugs alone could present a challenge worth a full combat, especially if the leader is a good kid he knows from high school. If the gang has rubber bullets, the element of surprise, or wooden baseball bats, he could get hosed up. --- If Bats wanted to defeat Superman without any Kryptonite, he'd do it the way he normally does: argumentation. Even Alfred pulls this off sometimes, like what Superman is trying to create a One World Government: Injustice: Gods Among Us posted:ALFRED: Master Clark, will you be staying for Tea? Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Mar 26, 2016 |
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Mar 26, 2016 07:40
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Golden Bee posted:I'm saying it doesn't work with tiers, because in comics, anyone can beat anyone. (Except Squirrel Girl, who has the aspect SQUIRREL GIRL WINS SOMEHOW). I'd disagree there. By and large "anyone can beat anyone" doesn't hold true. For example, "street level" characters like Luke Cage or Daredevil just plain don't fight (let alone win) against massively powerful opponents like Silver Surfer, Thanos or Galactus. Now, that said "power levels" in superhero comics can be pretty broad...but they definitely exist. Some superheroes are known for punching above their weight class (batman is a classic example) but that only holds true if you assume that the batman who pals around with superman is on the same tier as the batman who punches thugs in Gotham alleys, which just isn't true. That's one thing you have to keep in mind when judging superheroes: just because a hero has the same name, face and identity in one comic does not make them the same character. In Batman comics Batman is a detective, competent brawler and keeps going no matter the odds. In a Justice League (or similar) comic Batman is a super-gadgeteer on par with Tony Stark, one of the greatest fighters in the world and can take damage that would wreck an SUV. If you're going to stat them up you've got to keep that in mind.
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Mar 26, 2016 07:59
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On the other hand, Spider-man's beaten down a Herald of Galactus before, and Luke Cage took on Doctor Doom over a matter of 200 dollars owed and won.
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Mar 26, 2016 08:18
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Power tiers aren't unique to Strange Fate in RPGs - most superhero games have some kind of weight class mechanic, whether it is power levels or point totals. Comics themselves often measure their characters with pseudo-game stats. It's a common trope.
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Mar 26, 2016 08:18
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but those go out the window when the stakes are highoriongates posted:I'd disagree there. By and large "anyone can beat anyone" doesn't hold true. or you just realise that as the danger escalates heroes will rise to the occasion.
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Mar 26, 2016 08:23
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I ran Kerberos a few times (the seeing is amazing) and I houseruled that tiers instead give you a +2 result, plus for a fp you could ignore tier differences for an action. I think power tiers are fine in a Supers game, but there soul be ways to get over them, otherwise you lose a big part of the genre.
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Mar 26, 2016 08:31
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Hugoon Chavez posted:I ran Kerberos a few times (the seeing is amazing) and I houseruled that tiers instead give you a +2 result, plus for a fp you could ignore tier differences for an action. yeah actually thinking it over myself i was thinking something like this as well
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Mar 26, 2016 08:42
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Covok posted:Reading the thread I linked earlier, Daring Comics seems on the heavier end of Fate games. It defaults to skill points and, in addition, includes something called hero points. City Creation/Supporting Cast creation is legit great and interesting stuff
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Mar 26, 2016 14:04
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Covok posted:What's the best place to find art for a superhero character, outside using established heroes or deviantart (because everyone knows of it)?
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Mar 26, 2016 14:46
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Cycloneman posted:Grab a free copy of Champions Online and use the character creator in that. I think Paragon Chat would be better for that, aren't 90% of the costume parts in Champions Online unlockables/cash shop/loot/whatever?
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Mar 26, 2016 15:32
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unseenlibrarian posted:On the other hand, Spider-man's beaten down a Herald of Galactus before, and Luke Cage took on Doctor Doom over a matter of 200 dollars owed and won. The Spiderman Vs. Firelord thing is pretty widely recognized as a case of terrible writing. All it proves is that comic books don't really make much sense sometimes. Luke Cage vs Doctor Doom is pretty believable. Doctor Doom's whole thing is being able to prepare tons of evil schemes to unleash on his foes and he had no friggin idea that Luke Cage would be willing to go that far for 200 bucks, so he was completely unprepared for that confrontation. And of course, I'm sure it was just a doombot. It's always just a doombot. And to be clear, I'm not saying that it's impossible for superheroes (especially in groups) to fight above their weight class a bit...but those classes do exist and you aren't going to see heroes crossing over multiple "tiers" without mcguffins or just plain terrible writing. I'll go a step further and say that, in RPG terms, power-tiers are actually really useful when done well...not so much when it comes to making PCs, but when it comes to making villians. One big problem you run into is finding a good team opponent: a powerful villain who can fight the whole team one vs. many. A lot of systems can't handle just giving the big bad guy X more levels of superstrength or supertoughness or whatever. A simple tier system where you can say something like "when fighting an opponent of a lower tier you get to roll twice and take the best" or something of the sort...a consistent, significant but not dominating advantage. It can make a big difference (and on the other hand it lets PCs trounce the occasional Stilt Man-class villain easily when they need a confidence boost).
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Mar 26, 2016 19:25
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Scyther posted:I think Paragon Chat would be better for that, aren't 90% of the costume parts in Champions Online unlockables/cash shop/loot/whatever? They are, yeah, but you can uncheck "Hide Unusable items" in the character creator and then use most of them without problem.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:22
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If I was doing Magneto in FATE, I'd just give him something like: MASTER MUTANT: When he's not accompanied by underlings, Magneto can act as many times per rounds as the number of PCs-1. and THROW BLOB AT THE PROBLEM: When not using Master Mutant, Magneto can, once per scene for free, pass a consequence on a to willing members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. If he wants to do this again, he spends a fate point; he can't reuse the same member. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Mar 26, 2016 |
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Mar 26, 2016 22:54
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Here's my old thread about Marvel RPGs: Marvel Roleplaying: With Incredible (40) Power Comes... Probably the most interesting thing to come down the pike in superhero games recently is Masks, which aims really squarely at the Teen Titans/New Mutants/early Spiderman "young heroes" scenario. What's most interesting about it is that it is NOT based on your powers. In fact, you just check a couple of boxes on a list of options and those are your powers. Instead, it's based on your emotional role in your super-team. You're the lady who is the most recent incarnation of the Red Rocketeer, so all the expectations and history of all the previous Red Rocketeers are bearing down on you. Or you're a delinquent who is always getting into trouble with the law, but do you really have a heart of gold or are you going to switch sides at some point? Or you're just REALLY happy to BE HERE!! Or you're from another planet or dimension or whatever and humanity is so fascinatingly primitive, but compelling somehow... And so on. The key is that when you use your powers, the question isn't how strong they are, it's how well you deploy them to achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve. Remember that time when Spiderman held up a collapsing building just for a few seconds so someone could get away? Does that mean that somewhere someone has written down "Spiderman can pick up a building" and that's true about Spiderman? No. That's not how comics work. They work based on the goals of the characters as contrasted with the goals of the opposition in the moment. I played a game where I was the Janus, which is the character that has a really elaborate/urgent secret identity for a bit. You pick from a list of obligations that you have to fulfill. If you start to miss rolls your obligations pop up. I played a dude who was taking care of his little sister, had a delivery job for a too-hip restaurant ("Hey guys, I brought dinner! Artisinal chorizo and acorns!"), and a girlfriend in a rock band ("Our new single is called 'Everyone Saves The Mayor'...are you listening to me??") and of course, these things always came up just as he was racing off to battle some evil that only he could deal with. Masks has a system where your character's emotional traits (expressed as Superior, Dangerous, Freak, etc.) adjust not only as you use them but as others with influence over you in the setting tell you who you are - when you're a Superboy and Superman says "Kid, you're a bomb waiting to go off", that hits hard. In our game at one point I had broken a promise to my little sister to help her with something and she pitched a tantrum: "You don't care about me, you're a monster! I hate you!" and of course, in the melodramatic world of comic books that hits hard. The next time you deal with some dude throwing a bus into a bank, you're going to be more of a monster or more dangerous, OR you're going to work twice as hard to prove them wrong. That's pretty cool.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:56
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Are there any good podcasts with Marvel Heroic actual play? I don't think I totally get it. 
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Jun 19, 2016 16:31
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Honestly, I think just diving in and giving it a go is the best way to learn how to play. There's also a couple of ongoing games---and one about to start---that will let you see how the rules work: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3775889 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3778032 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3779441 But as far as podcasts go, there's this session of a Civil War campaign: http://www.idleredhands.com/?p=2185 And here's an interview with Cam Banks: http://www.thewalkingeye.com/?p=1651 Another actual play podcast: http://www.thewalkingeye.com/?p=1601 And one more why not: http://vigilancepress.podbean.com/2012/02/26/marvel-actual-play-demo/
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Jun 19, 2016 16:57
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ibntumart posted:Honestly, I think just diving in and giving it a go is the best way to learn how to play. There's also a couple of ongoing games---and one about to start---that will let you see how the rules work: It also seems that heroes with multiple power sets are at a really big advantage. Am I missing something?
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Jun 19, 2016 18:14
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It isn't that big since most of the time you can't use two power sets to do one action; it usually boils down to one or the other. If it doesn't, more dice is really an only incremental advantage unless you have the plot points to buy them into a result. It's a game that benefits from sitting down and playing through a scenario or two because some of the simple seeming features (order of turns for example) end up having a tremendous impact.
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Jun 19, 2016 20:56
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Crossposting from the Master CYOA thread since some of y'all might be interested:ibntumart posted:So I finally decided to stop hemming and hawing and put up my CYOA already:
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Jun 22, 2016 13:11
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I wanted to putout a feeler and ask: What is people's thoughts on Mutants and Masterminds 3E? Things it does well, things it does poorly, pitfalls for characters to watch for in creation and powers, anything that happens to be stupid poo poo, whatever you got. In a few months the plan is to start a campaign in it once our Shadowrun 5E game wraps up, so hoping to see if anyone has cool info past what reading the main book and some side stuff can tell me.
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Jun 29, 2016 07:36
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It's a d20 system.
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Jun 29, 2016 07:55
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In order to be a bit more helpful: M&M has a really robust Character creation system. You can build pretty much anything and have a very definite ruleset for every power. Now, the game is pretty heavy, but it works rather well (it's a very modified d20 game), so if you don't have an issue with heavier systems you won't find any problems on that front. The real issues with M&m, I think, are balance and feel. Balance is pretty iffy. 3rd edition did do a lot of work to be more balanced that 2nd, and without any play experience I can only say that it looks like a good effort, but probably not enough. If you have a min-maxer in your party, you're going to have a hard time making everyone else useful in a fight. Now feel, it's a bit odd of a complain but it's something every d20 system seem to struggle with. There isn't very much support in the book for anything outside of combat. Everything has a combat explanation and if it doesn't it just feels bland. Sure, a good GM can go over that and rule new ways to use powers, create super-drama and stuff like that, but there's very little in the RAW that helps with that. The only other problem is preparation. As with many d20s the preparation times can be pretty high if you really want to play with the rules AND give your players a good challenge. There's also no Monster Manual (there are lots of stated villains and you can always grab something from the forums and file off the serials, but still) so it's a lot harder to pull things out of your rear end and have them work. All in all, M&M is a great game for supers and I had a blast running 2nd edition for a long while. It depends very much on your play style. When I ran 2nd edition I was still heavily into d&d 3.5 so it felt really natural. Nowadays I'd miss a lot of stuff from more modern rpgs.
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Jun 29, 2016 12:40
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M&M 3e also has a ton of DC material if that floats your boat. I don't know the game well, but that's probably your best "monster manual" imo.
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Jun 29, 2016 14:45
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I've noted its d20 roots more than a few times to myself and others, for sure. It... seems to avoid the hilarious ac is useless/1-2 good saves and a third gaping weakness forever thing that 3.x works with, I think? I'll try and get hold of the DC stuff for some examples if nothing else. I'm in as a player, and our GM has making sure that we don't end up with one person with zero combat ability or the like as a priority, so people are all effective. So, I trust him to do good stuff, and as he is a big prepper who just makes piles of contingency stuff that will get used some day or year, it seems all the big issues have a handle on them maybe. I've played in and ran some HERO 5th and 6th, so not a stranger to it, but I didn't want to just assume I know what's up based on that experience. This all bodes well then, I think. Thank you for the info!
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Jun 30, 2016 17:43
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Moinkmaster posted:I've noted its d20 roots more than a few times to myself and others, for sure. It... seems to avoid the hilarious ac is useless/1-2 good saves and a third gaping weakness forever thing that 3.x works with, I think? The people at Green Ronin's forum are always super eager to share their builds [/rul] and it's a good place to get some ideas for your heroes. [url='http://roninarmy.com/threads/149-Jab-s-Builds!']This guy, for instance, has stated a huge number of Marvel and DC heroes. (He's probably a bit insane and smells of cat pee)
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Jun 30, 2016 21:02
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Both my Tuesday and Wednesday games are cancelled this week so I'm running a Marvel Heroic Roleplaying one-shot today (This Tuesday) and tomorrow (This Wednesday) (two seperate one shots) at 8pm. Microphone required. No obligation to be in both. If you're interested, join here. Covok fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jul 12, 2016 |
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Jul 12, 2016 23:06
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My experience with M&M 3e was building a godlike healer mixed in with some self regeneration and invulnerability. I could, literally, bring anyone who had died within like an hour back to life unharmed, so long as they were in a quarter mile radius of me, while also being basically impossible to take down. It completely destroyed the tone of the game, not because it trivialized stuff, but because everyone else in the party decided to play wolverine due to it, so they were all perfectly willing to rip the arms off a simple burglar, because hey, Panacea will just heal them after the fight. It has some big issues with balance, and defensive powers are much stronger than offensive in my experience. Bringing people back to life or healing from someone punching a hole in your stomach is much easier than punching said hole.
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Jul 13, 2016 03:49
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The thing with M&M, HERO, GURPS, or any effects based cape system is that since the individual abilities are balanced in a vacuum, it is very easy to end up building something that fucks the game one way or the other. Either there's a suite of powers that is a bargain for what it does (usually any ability to buy a package of abilities, movement powers in M&M 2e) or there's a suite of powers you're an idiot for buying in a certain way (basically anything that shows M&M's 3.X roots). Full bodied effects based systems basically require a table agreement not to make the game squeal like a pig, the MC (or the player who knows the system best) vetting characters, and/or a long list of banned or houseruled stuff.
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Jul 13, 2016 08:22
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It's the same as with any rules-heavy game, really, but super games just have a wider range of effects and more noticeable consequences. As usual, the GM has the right to veto or tone down any character, and the players should try and play the game instead of the GM. In KittyEmpress' example, I think there's nothing wrong with having a god-level healer, but ripping people's limbs off and then patching them up is just bad roleplaying. Dying in itself is also really traumatic even if you can make them come back from the death, the GM can use that and create plot hooks and a bunch of fun stuff.
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Jul 13, 2016 08:54
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I ran Marvel Heroic Roleplaying yesterday. I enjoyed running it, but it was a dud on my players. The main complaint seemed to be building dice pools were really slow as did play. They felt they needed approval for what they used which surprised me since I felt it was just "this is what I do and how I do it." It's worth noting I was the only one who read the book and often had to explain rules. Any idea how to speed up play and encourage players to feel comfortable taking whatever dice feels apporiate to them?
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Jul 14, 2016 23:02
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MHR is better in the second or third sessions as people "get" it. Having a visual reference also works, if you're at the table.
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Jul 15, 2016 00:45
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So, how do you make yourself bulletproof in Mutants and Masterminds 3rd edition? Having a little trouble with that.
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Sep 8, 2016 09:05
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Covok posted:So, how do you make yourself bulletproof in Mutants and Masterminds 3rd edition? Having a little trouble with that. i dunno about bullet proof persay but if you tucked a few of them in your shirt it might do ok
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Sep 8, 2016 09:21
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Elfgames posted:i dunno about bullet proof persay but if you tucked a few of them in your shirt it might do ok I don't even begin to follow what you meant.
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Sep 8, 2016 09:44
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The book is quite thick.
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Sep 8, 2016 09:47
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Take enough Impervious Toughness (page 141) that bullets won't damage you.
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Sep 8, 2016 10:02
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