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DMs! Have you ever had a “boss encounter” turn into a cakewalk? What happened?
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<blockquote data-quote="Dessert Nomad" data-source="post: 7538911" data-attributes="member: 6976536"><p>I accidentally killed a BEBG in a Champions game years ago.</p><p></p><p>The setting was relatively generic non-Marvel, non-DC world with superheroes. There's an important bit to know about the rules: In the Hero rulesystem (at least at the time) you had two main types of attacks. Regular attacks did X dice of Stun (knockout, recovers quickly) damage, and averaged one point of Body damage (death, takes time to recover) per die. At superhero power levels, normal attacks just do stun damage to heroes, and will probably one-hit knockout and injure a normal person. They represent the usual beams, punches, and so on. Killing attacks did X dice of body damage that ignores normal defense and is only stopped by resistant defense, plus multiplied the Body damage by a die to determine Stun damage. They represent guns, claws, antitank rockets, highly focused beams, and the like. A regular person would have no resistant defense, and superheros tended to have some, but less than their total defense (like they might have a force field that was resistant, but would be vulnerable to guns if the field is down). Because they use a multiplier, the Stun damage was really variable, so killing attacks can also be a good way to try to incapacitate someone stronger than you.</p><p></p><p>My character was a telekinetic who had a variety of powers that he could choose from for an action (simple blast, telekinetic 'move things', killing attack, etc.). I was alone and encountered a demonic-looking guy flipping over a police car. I was pretty sure he was way out of my league, as he had been built up as someone the entire group would end up fighting, he wasn't just a regular criminal. I felt like I needed to stop him or at least try, but didn't have any chance in a standup fight. This is a perfect time to use a variable attack, so my character unleashed his killing attack on this demon, hoping to get lucky and knock him out, and not really worried about killing him because he's a giant demon so obviously isn't going to die easily. The GM agreed and thought my desperate attempt to take the guy down in spite of being outclassed was pretty heroic, and we both expected that I'd try, fail, and get knocked out, even though I got lucky and opened with either a crit or a high roll.</p><p></p><p>However, the demonic villain was actually a premade villain from a source book, and when the GM looked up his stats, he actually had no resistant defenses at all. No armor, no force field, nothing bought as 'resistant defense', he was as vulnerable to things like guns as a normal person other than having about twice the 'hit points' to soak damage. And I was using an superpowered attack that did something like 4 times as much damage as a gun, and rolled on the high end of that. So after a double take at the guy's stats, the GM narrated that I had just ripped this guy into bloody pieces in a single strike. At the time, in real life I was not going to be able to play with the group for a while, so I think his original idea was that I was going to be captured and my rescue would be a plot point for the group. Instead, my character was tied up in the court case for ripping the guy to pieces in front of cops, and we both shook our heads at the super villain who was attacking cops without being able to shrug off bullets.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dessert Nomad, post: 7538911, member: 6976536"] I accidentally killed a BEBG in a Champions game years ago. The setting was relatively generic non-Marvel, non-DC world with superheroes. There's an important bit to know about the rules: In the Hero rulesystem (at least at the time) you had two main types of attacks. Regular attacks did X dice of Stun (knockout, recovers quickly) damage, and averaged one point of Body damage (death, takes time to recover) per die. At superhero power levels, normal attacks just do stun damage to heroes, and will probably one-hit knockout and injure a normal person. They represent the usual beams, punches, and so on. Killing attacks did X dice of body damage that ignores normal defense and is only stopped by resistant defense, plus multiplied the Body damage by a die to determine Stun damage. They represent guns, claws, antitank rockets, highly focused beams, and the like. A regular person would have no resistant defense, and superheros tended to have some, but less than their total defense (like they might have a force field that was resistant, but would be vulnerable to guns if the field is down). Because they use a multiplier, the Stun damage was really variable, so killing attacks can also be a good way to try to incapacitate someone stronger than you. My character was a telekinetic who had a variety of powers that he could choose from for an action (simple blast, telekinetic 'move things', killing attack, etc.). I was alone and encountered a demonic-looking guy flipping over a police car. I was pretty sure he was way out of my league, as he had been built up as someone the entire group would end up fighting, he wasn't just a regular criminal. I felt like I needed to stop him or at least try, but didn't have any chance in a standup fight. This is a perfect time to use a variable attack, so my character unleashed his killing attack on this demon, hoping to get lucky and knock him out, and not really worried about killing him because he's a giant demon so obviously isn't going to die easily. The GM agreed and thought my desperate attempt to take the guy down in spite of being outclassed was pretty heroic, and we both expected that I'd try, fail, and get knocked out, even though I got lucky and opened with either a crit or a high roll. However, the demonic villain was actually a premade villain from a source book, and when the GM looked up his stats, he actually had no resistant defenses at all. No armor, no force field, nothing bought as 'resistant defense', he was as vulnerable to things like guns as a normal person other than having about twice the 'hit points' to soak damage. And I was using an superpowered attack that did something like 4 times as much damage as a gun, and rolled on the high end of that. So after a double take at the guy's stats, the GM narrated that I had just ripped this guy into bloody pieces in a single strike. At the time, in real life I was not going to be able to play with the group for a while, so I think his original idea was that I was going to be captured and my rescue would be a plot point for the group. Instead, my character was tied up in the court case for ripping the guy to pieces in front of cops, and we both shook our heads at the super villain who was attacking cops without being able to shrug off bullets. [/QUOTE]
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DMs! Have you ever had a “boss encounter” turn into a cakewalk? What happened?
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