Superhero RPG

[GreatLemur]

I hate to open this can of worms, but I have to object to a little multiplication and division as being "tons of math."

It ain't, really, but there are definitely some folks I wouldn't ask to build their own M&M characters, never mind Hero System characters. Most of my group's got more of a background in Amber and World of Darkness than in crunchier games, and one of them has a real problem with numbers in general. I completely love building Hero System characters, but I know for damn sure that I can't expect all gamers to feel the same.

 

[Mallus]

Not class based, but this looked so fun I could not resist it.... snip...

That's awesome! He could be the Joseirus of Earth Cinco! BTW, what system is that I don't recognize it.

My Joseirus does, in fact, wear the gold and lapis lazuli Mask of Ramon-Ra, but it isn't the source of all his powers. He also flies (about as fast as a sports car) in his flaming Chariot of Ra, from which his buff tag-team partner throws the Lariat of Ra.

The funny thing about my Joseirus is that he can't actually wrestle. It's all fake. I used various M&M powers to mimic wrestling moves, but I didn't bother to make resemble real wrestling. So he's just magically immune to grappling attempts. His 'holds' only require a touch (I describe them as quickly tying a foes soul into knots) and his 'throws' are teleportation (up only) that works on others, so a typical fight sees Joseirus zooming around the battlefield in his chariot like a pudgy little fighter plane slapping at foes, which sometimes freeze or vanish and appear in the air. Or he creates a pyramid out of nothing and drops it on them.

This fits his background as a short out-of-shape teenager from LA, who got his powers from his distant con-artist relative from the 40th century.

Oh, and his 'costume' consists of him going shirtless, wearing brown corduroys, Chuck Taylors, an anhk, and the aforementioned mask.

 

[BASHMAN]

That's awesome! He could be the Joseirus of Earth Cinco! BTW, what system is that I don't recognize it.

My Joseirus does, in fact, wear the gold and lapis lazuli Mask of Ramon-Ra, but it isn't the source of all his powers. He also flies (about as fast as a sports car) in his flaming Chariot of Ra, from which his buff tag-team partner throws the Lariat of Ra.

The funny thing about my Joseirus is that he can't actually wrestle. It's all fake. I used various M&M powers to mimic wrestling moves, but I didn't bother to make resemble real wrestling. So he's just magically immune to grappling attempts. His 'holds' only require a touch (I describe them as quickly tying a foes soul into knots) and his 'throws' are teleportation (up only) that works on others, so a typical fight sees Joseirus zooming around the battlefield in his chariot like a pudgy little fighter plane slapping at foes, which sometimes freeze or vanish and appear in the air. Or he creates a pyramid out of nothing and drops it on them.

This fits his background as a short out-of-shape teenager from LA, who got his powers from his distant con-artist relative from the 40th century.

Oh, and his 'costume' consists of him going shirtless, wearing brown corduroys, Chuck Taylors, an anhk, and the aforementioned mask.

The System is Basic Action Super Heroes, aka BASH! I mentioned it before in an earlier post, but here is a link to the website to check it out: BASHRPG.COM

As for this new info, I would give him an additional advantage: Super Vehicle for the Chariot [super vehicles have powers just like characters] with flying x3, Superspeed 2 [Limit: only for movement] giving it a move speed of 18 squares, or 180 mph at non-combat speeds. He also has the advantage: Sidekick for his "Buff tag-team partner" unless he is a fellow hero on the team.

Does this character have any established enemies, btw? It'd make a good disadvantage to pay for the super vehicle (if we are trying to keep this "points legal", but I often play fast & loose with this when making a conversion of an established character.)

Being immune to all grappling attempts can be easily added as: Ghost Form: [Limitation: Only for escaping grapples and holds].

Btw, This character is quite hillarious. Our Fanzine, BAM! Basic Action Magazine is starting a collumn featuring a "Character Spotlight" which will include people's homemade super-heroes and villains. I think that Joseirus would be a fun character to feature for this, if you are open to it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What takes so much time in Character Building in HERO and M&M is not so much the math as the pure flexibility of the sytstems involved.

Theyre may literally be a hundred ways of achieving the effect you envision in your mind, or a thousand ways to build a PC...and there really isn't anyone besides a GM telling you "No, you can't do this" to tell you not to do that.

And, of course, with each tweek, you must recalculate your points.

That said, I did find that the easiest way to speed up character building in HERO was to design a Character Sheet in a spreadsheet program. Everything got calculated automatically as I shifted points around. Unfortunately for me, I used a spreadsheet that is no longer supported by its parent company (Microsoft) and opening those files in other programs has had less than stellar results.

Still, I know for a fact that there are Excel spreadsheets that do as much. There may be some for M&M as well.

 

[jmucchiello]

I agree. For as complex as M&M is, HERO is like that squared. M&M also has templates, lots of ready-made characters if you don't want to spend 2 hours on a scratch-build. BASH! has no templates, but scratch-building might take a half hour if you don't know the system, 10 minutes if you do know it.

5th ed HERO has several books that make building supers much easier than before:

UNTIL Superpowers Database, Revised
UNTIL Superpowers Database II
Gadgets and Gear

And that doesn't count books like Ultimate Brick, Ultimate Speedster, Ultimate Martial Artist, etc that go into depth on ways to develops characters of those types.

Of course if you can do the math, you'll save a lot of money.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Too true, but there are occasionally some ideas on power building that you might not have thought of yourself!

 

[Driddle]

What takes so much time in Character Building in HERO and M&M is not so much the math as the pure flexibility of the sytstems involved.

Theyre may literally be a hundred ways of achieving the effect you envision in your mind, or a thousand ways to build a PC...and there really isn't anyone besides a GM telling you "No, you can't do this" to tell you not to do that.

And, of course, with each tweek, you must recalculate your points.

That said, I did find that the easiest way to speed up character building in HERO was to design a Character Sheet in a spreadsheet program. ...

Yep. Sometimes too many options cause as much of problem as too few. There's an optimum balance somewhere between limited class character design and wide-open design. ... Unfortunately in the case of the latter, people end up blaming the math instead of realizing they really just want someone else to tell them how to do what they want to do.

 

[BASHMAN]

5th ed HERO has several books that make building supers much easier than before:

UNTIL Superpowers Database, Revised
UNTIL Superpowers Database II
Gadgets and Gear

And that doesn't count books like Ultimate Brick, Ultimate Speedster, Ultimate Martial Artist, etc that go into depth on ways to develops characters of those types.

Of course if you can do the math, you'll save a lot of money.

Adding more books to the pool of system materials makes the game EASIER? You know there is something foul in denmark when this is the way it works. At least in D&D, adding more books is intended to make the game harder.

 

[Jim Hague]

Yep. Sometimes too many options cause as much of problem as too few. There's an optimum balance somewhere between limited class character design and wide-open design. ... Unfortunately in the case of the latter, people end up blaming the math instead of realizing they really just want someone else to tell them how to do what they want to do.

I'm afraid you're rather badly mistaken. Some people do have problems with the math, especially with extremely complex power and character builds. That would be why there's a number of character generators out there for games like HERO and MnM - to make the math easier and faster. Please don't make sweeping, insulting generalizations when, frankly, those generalizations are entirely wrong.

 

[BASHMAN]

I'm afraid you're rather badly mistaken. Some people do have problems with the math, especially with extremely complex power and character builds. That would be why there's a number of character generators out there for games like HERO and MnM - to make the math easier and faster. Please don't make sweeping, insulting generalizations when, frankly, those generalizations are entirely wrong.

QFT

Some HERO system powers can be really complicated.

What if I have a multipower attack that is an inobvious accessable focus, but is ussable only at night, but gets through NND, and has charges?

That is several cases of having to multiply by 1.2 or 1.3 then divide by 5 multiply it all by 2 and then multiply by .6 and then by 1.5... Ridiculous. [and yes, I know those are not the exact things you mulitply or divide by, so don't come squealing that I don't know what I'm talking about]. The numbers are not the issue-- it is the number of steps involved in figuring out just 1 power.

In BASH! I made this real easy-- each power can have only 1 limitation that you will get any discount on. I just shave the cost down by 1, to a minimum of 1. Meaning if you have a 1 point power, you probably WON'T take a limitation on it. Oh well, certainly is simplier than the mess presented above.