"Okay, I'll just lie here..."

[Jack of Shadows]

I've been playing Champions for years. I really enjoy the superhero genre. But as anyone knows who has ever played Hero system, combat takes forever to play out. And not playing it out isn't an option - combat is what supers is all about!

Sunday we had a session of our longterm ongoing Champions campaign. We've recently added a new player. Her character was knocked unconscious about halfway through the combat. She spent the rest of the session trying to find something to occupy herself while the combat continued, until her PC finally recovered consciousness near the end of the session.

In game time that all took maybe a minute. But it real-world time it took a couple of hours.
I don't know how the system could be altered to avoid this problem, but it's often possible for a character to get knocked out at the beginning of combat and have a player spend the next 3 or 4 hours of game time waiting for their PC to wake up. Speaking from personal experience, that sucks big time.

Just had to get this off my mind. I felt so bad for the new player.

Yes this sucks, it's why I switched to Mutants and Masterminds. Same ability to tweak your character to what ever you dream up AND combats don't take entire sessions to play out. I ran Champions for a very long time and was never happy about how long combat took. If you can, convince your group to try M&M. I think they'll all be much happier.

Jack

P.S. Silver Age Sentinels (non-D20) is also a good alternative but might be TOO much of a change for Champions players.

 

[radferth]

It's good she learn early: bring a book or video game or something to champions, because sometimes you're gonna get knocked out early in combat. Every group I have played with has just accepted this. Perhaps a better game master could set things up so this doesn't happen, but not any that I have had. It puts champions in the interesting position of actually having more of a penalty for a character going down, in this case, a couple of hours of boredom in RL.

 

[Conaill]

And the GM didn't give her an NPC to run in the meantime?

*tsk, tsk, tsk*

I 100% agree! Giving players who are out of the action an NPC to run makes for a fun change of pace for the player, it relieves some of the burden from the DM, and combat typically gets far more exciting because all of a sudden you get NPC flunkies with personality and tactics.

Having to sit out several hours of gaming is just plain bad DMing, IMHO...

 

[Krolik]

One thing a GM can do in situations like this is have NPCs around to help unconscious characters. The UNTIL medic, the passing doctor, or even an NPC hero which the GM plays can all be used to assist recoveries for unconscious player characters. Things like that can add flavor to a game, introduce interesting NPCs into the game, and just make the overall gaming experience that much better for everyone involved.

As for Champions' combat times in our games I would say that most last about 2 hours with the occasional big brawl taking three. The tactical combat's part of the fun of the game system.

 

[sniffles]

Yeah, I was sort of wishing the GM could offer an NPC to run, or find some way to move the combat along a little faster so the player of the unconscious character doesn't spend so much time out of the game. I just felt so bad for our newest player. I find that in our group combat always takes hours, and most of our sessions are at least 75% combat. The rest of the session is usually just getting us to the combat or mopping up afterward.

I've played M&M, but I found it not as flexible as Champions in creating powers, and I didn't like it that there was no actual damage. I like being able to roll all those d6s for damage.

 

[shilsen]

Yeah, I was sort of wishing the GM could offer an NPC to run, or find some way to move the combat along a little faster so the player of the unconscious character doesn't spend so much time out of the game.

Why not suggest it to the DM? Speaking as a DM, I try to make sure nobody is being left out of the action, but sometimes a reminder is nice. Something which I've done when there were no NPCs around is have players of non-functional characters roll the dice for the enemies. Not only do they get to continue taking part in the combat, but they get to be the ones who crit the PCs

 

[Laslo Tremaine]

Facetiously, I will say that the solution to your problem is to play Mutants & Masterminds.

Not so facetiously, though, this was one of the main reasons I stopped playing Champions (and this is coming from someone who was a complete Hero fanboy for a good 15 years).

One thing that our group did was to give each player three points that they could use in a session. Points could only be used to revive your character when they were unconscious, or to turn a failed roll into a success. At the time we called them "But wait..." points or Beedubs. They really made the game much more enjoyable for everyone.

 

[sniffles]

Why not suggest it to the DM? Speaking as a DM, I try to make sure nobody is being left out of the action, but sometimes a reminder is nice. Something which I've done when there were no NPCs around is have players of non-functional characters roll the dice for the enemies. Not only do they get to continue taking part in the combat, but they get to be the ones who crit the PCs

I think that's what's irritating me about the situation - it didn't occur to the GM that it sucks for this new player to be out of the action for so long. It sucks for any player to be out of the action that way. But he either doesn't notice (he's really kind of oblivious to time when we're playing), or it doesn't occur to him that just watching the game isn't as much fun as playing it (roleplaying is his only social activity).

 

[Krolik]

A lot of this rests on the GM's shoulders. A good GM knows the limits of the character he is attacking and understands what will or will not knock the character out. In my 2.5 decades of gaming I have seen far too many GMs who are adversarial to the players rather then being the master story teller. A lot of GMs have a "me against them" mentality and get their thrills wasting the players. This GM should have known it was the player's first Champions game and flubbed the roll to keep her playing.

 

[sniffles]

A lot of this rests on the GM's shoulders. A good GM knows the limits of the character he is attacking and understands what will or will not knock the character out. In my 2.5 decades of gaming I have seen far too many GMs who are adversarial to the players rather then being the master story teller. A lot of GMs have a "me against them" mentality and get their thrills wasting the players. This GM should have known it was the player's first Champions game and flubbed the roll to keep her playing.

Your username intrigues me.

My GM isn't adversarial, but he does have a tendency to assume that if he's enjoying what's going on, we'll all enjoy it too. He was enjoying running the villains, and I think he forgot that one player didn't have anything to do. I wouldn't have wanted him to fudge the roll, and I doubt the player would either (she's new to Champions but not to roleplaying). But it would have been nice to find a way to speed up the passage of action. The player was starting to look awfully bored, and I don't think the GM noticed.