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<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9537277" data-attributes="member: 7026617"><p>Its going to be difficult to get <em>completely</em> balanced characters in supers games because there are so many moving parts (because supers are so varied) that it can be hard to see every possible interaction with them. That said, secondary balance mechanisms like M&M's PL and Fuzion (and later Hero's) Rule of X can pick off the low-hanging fruit; heck even the normal capping Hero had deals with some of that, just inflexibly. You <em>can</em> do things to do so more thoroughly, but they're more work than most people want to bother with, as they either care less, would rather just eyeball it and ad-hoc it, or solve it at the GM's end (the worse way to handle it IMO).</p><p></p><p>Out of curiosity, was your experience with it with the Worlds of Wonder version of Superworld or the later standalone version? Steve had reworked how BRP hit points worked such that the latter shouldn't have normally been unusually lethal, but I don't think that was done in the former.</p><p></p><p>GURPS Supers suffered from the fact supers worked pretty heavily against the natural bent of the system, and as such was going to produce something that looks more like <em>Invincible</em> than a typical supers setting. I don't know if the 4e version has addressed this better or not.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>There is something to that, but its not a problem without a solution if one wants to bother. First, you have to note that few superhero comics really lean away from combat all that heavily; even Batman gets in a lot of fights once you start counting. He just also does a lot of other things. With superhero <em>teams </em> there's rarely not sub-specializations, but few are <em>purely </em>combatants, so they should usually serve some other functions. That said, not all skill sets are going to get equal screen time, but that's a problem in all campaigns, not just supers.</p><p></p><p>At the other end, there are ways to equalize combat capability somewhat without having everyone identical. The animated Justice League is kind of a poster child here, as Superman was somewhat compressed down, and they did things like anytime there was a really hardcore opponent, they'd stick Batman in one of his vehicles with missiles and the like. They also quite clearly separated off the original JLA (which tended to be punchier) from latter day members in the Unlimited version, so you pretty much almost never saw the more powerful members actually working with the weaker. </p><p></p><p>There are other methods that work in the fiction but are harder to make work in a game unless you have a very cooperative player group like putting like up against like and <em>only</em> up against them (so Batman ends up only fighting against Sportsmaster not against Black Adam). Even with people who are genre-savvy and appreciative it can be tricky to make that work, however, since among other things it can feel much more artificial in a game. (I've never done it with supers, but I did it with a Scion 1e game because once you got to demigod its a virtual necessity, and its a tricky juggling act).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 9537277, member: 7026617"] Its going to be difficult to get [I]completely[/I] balanced characters in supers games because there are so many moving parts (because supers are so varied) that it can be hard to see every possible interaction with them. That said, secondary balance mechanisms like M&M's PL and Fuzion (and later Hero's) Rule of X can pick off the low-hanging fruit; heck even the normal capping Hero had deals with some of that, just inflexibly. You [I]can[/I] do things to do so more thoroughly, but they're more work than most people want to bother with, as they either care less, would rather just eyeball it and ad-hoc it, or solve it at the GM's end (the worse way to handle it IMO). Out of curiosity, was your experience with it with the Worlds of Wonder version of Superworld or the later standalone version? Steve had reworked how BRP hit points worked such that the latter shouldn't have normally been unusually lethal, but I don't think that was done in the former. GURPS Supers suffered from the fact supers worked pretty heavily against the natural bent of the system, and as such was going to produce something that looks more like [I]Invincible[/I] than a typical supers setting. I don't know if the 4e version has addressed this better or not. There is something to that, but its not a problem without a solution if one wants to bother. First, you have to note that few superhero comics really lean away from combat all that heavily; even Batman gets in a lot of fights once you start counting. He just also does a lot of other things. With superhero [I]teams [/I] there's rarely not sub-specializations, but few are [I]purely [/I]combatants, so they should usually serve some other functions. That said, not all skill sets are going to get equal screen time, but that's a problem in all campaigns, not just supers. At the other end, there are ways to equalize combat capability somewhat without having everyone identical. The animated Justice League is kind of a poster child here, as Superman was somewhat compressed down, and they did things like anytime there was a really hardcore opponent, they'd stick Batman in one of his vehicles with missiles and the like. They also quite clearly separated off the original JLA (which tended to be punchier) from latter day members in the Unlimited version, so you pretty much almost never saw the more powerful members actually working with the weaker. There are other methods that work in the fiction but are harder to make work in a game unless you have a very cooperative player group like putting like up against like and [I]only[/I] up against them (so Batman ends up only fighting against Sportsmaster not against Black Adam). Even with people who are genre-savvy and appreciative it can be tricky to make that work, however, since among other things it can feel much more artificial in a game. (I've never done it with supers, but I did it with a Scion 1e game because once you got to demigod its a virtual necessity, and its a tricky juggling act). [/QUOTE]
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