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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 6515024" data-attributes="member: 907"><p>IME, there are two kinds of "overpowered." The first is "overpowered versus the world", which only exists in games that care about encounter balance and such anyway. If a group of characters is normally expected to handle so and so much in the way of opposition, and they easily handle half-again that much, there's something fishy going on. But that kind of overpowered can be compensated for by increasing the opposition, and decreasing the XP (so instead of having 10 "moderate" encounters to level, you'd have 10 "hard" ones).</p><p></p><p>The second, and worse, kind of overpowered is "overpowered versus the other PCs". I don't mean that in a PVP kind of situation, but rather a situation where one character is a lot tougher than the rest, to the point where anything the DM does that can threaten that character will utterly squash other characters. I ran into this in a game of Mutant: Undergångens Arvtagare (Swedish post-apocalyptic game), where one of the PCs was a robot (which meant he had some base armor), had taken the robot ability that gave extra armor, and then wore actual armor on top of that. He subtracted something like 12 points off every hit scored on him, in a game where the default blackpowder pistols dealt 2d8 points of damage, or a big and strong guy using a heavy melee weapon might do 2d8+1d6. The only way of really threatening him would be to bring in something that dealt a lot of damage - and any damage that would reliably go through his armor would at least cripple any other PC. That's the kind of overpowered that really causes problems.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 6515024, member: 907"] IME, there are two kinds of "overpowered." The first is "overpowered versus the world", which only exists in games that care about encounter balance and such anyway. If a group of characters is normally expected to handle so and so much in the way of opposition, and they easily handle half-again that much, there's something fishy going on. But that kind of overpowered can be compensated for by increasing the opposition, and decreasing the XP (so instead of having 10 "moderate" encounters to level, you'd have 10 "hard" ones). The second, and worse, kind of overpowered is "overpowered versus the other PCs". I don't mean that in a PVP kind of situation, but rather a situation where one character is a lot tougher than the rest, to the point where anything the DM does that can threaten that character will utterly squash other characters. I ran into this in a game of Mutant: Undergångens Arvtagare (Swedish post-apocalyptic game), where one of the PCs was a robot (which meant he had some base armor), had taken the robot ability that gave extra armor, and then wore actual armor on top of that. He subtracted something like 12 points off every hit scored on him, in a game where the default blackpowder pistols dealt 2d8 points of damage, or a big and strong guy using a heavy melee weapon might do 2d8+1d6. The only way of really threatening him would be to bring in something that dealt a lot of damage - and any damage that would reliably go through his armor would at least cripple any other PC. That's the kind of overpowered that really causes problems. [/QUOTE]
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