Super Powers in Fantasy RPGing

[RangerWickett]

Enkhidu, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I'm interested in hearing about the kinds of characters you've played or encountered who have abilities that the rules don't easily emulate. A lot of classical folklore stories and fairytales have characters with unusual magical abilities, or powers like second sight or the ability to talk to animals, which D&D doesn't handle very well unless you want all your characters to start as 10th+ level spellcasters. I'd like to hear about the characters you've played, and how you managed to finagle those characters into the rules.

One quick example, from my game, I ended up with a pair of dark elven warriors who became bonded at their souls. One of them was killed by the PCs, and the other contributed some of her soul to bring her friend back to life. The benefit was that they were connected and could sense what the other was experiencing, which aided them when they fought together in combat. The drawback was that whenever one was hurt, the other was too. Like those cool twins in the old G.I. Joe cartoon.

Then there was 41, an outcast from his monk's order, whose soul was removed from his body as punishment for crimes he couldn't remember. Being soulless, a lot of magic couldn't hurt him, and I just let him have that ability for the sake of flavor. It wasn't really overpowered, but then again, his player wasn't a powergamer and didn't actively try to abuse it. Eventually he created a new soul for himself, but by that point he was turning so evil that his character became an NPC.

 

[mistergone]

I played a character that had a dog like the one in the Weis & Hickmas series (not Dragonlance). But that wasn't really the character itself.. I mean, he could like command the dog and it would sort of help him out, and it could never seem to be killed... Not a huge advantage, really. Only played the character a couple times.

Is this leading up to a plug for FCtF? 'Cause sorry, I'm not gonna buy a pdf. I just decided I don't like them. Plus, when I really want supers, I'll play supers like Mutants & Masterminds. Otherwise, I have no problem fudging minor lil powers for characters.

 

[RangerWickett]

Is this leading up to a plug for FCtF? 'Cause sorry, I'm not gonna buy a pdf. I just decided I don't like them. Plus, when I really want supers, I'll play supers like Mutants & Masterminds. Otherwise, I have no problem fudging minor lil powers for characters.

Well, that was indeed something I had in mind. But y'know, we sell print versions too. You can get a perfect-bound version of the book for about as much as it would cost to buy any other gaming book of comparable size.

Aye, I was hoping to help a few people out by showing them how we'd handle characters such as ones they might mention, using the FCTF rules, but I suppose people haven't had much trouble in that area. Of course, that's what's great about good gaming material: you never realized you wanted it until you saw it. F'rinstance, I never considered plane-traveling in my game until I bought Manual of the Planes, and now I make occasional use of the book (plus I think it's very well-written).

Hm, maybe I'll get more success if I go for the straight superhero route. Everyone touts Mutants & Masterminds, and once I manage to read a copy of it, I'll know for myself. But no matter how good it is, competition will hopefully lead to better quality for all involved. And anyway, we cover some niches that M&M doesn't do so well, like d20-compatibilty.

But back to the sticking point you mentioned, FCTF has a reviews score of 4.6, with five reviews. M&M has a score of 4.86, with 7 reviews. Obviously, even if it's not rated as high, FCTF has to have something that impressed the reviewers. When the revised version comes out, I encourage you to buy a print copy and see for yourself.

 

[Enkhidu]

If it makes you feel better, RW, I bought FCTF about a month and a half ago, and have been playing around with the idea of starting a campaign that uses Powers instead of magic items - a very Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sort of thing.

Personally, I think the PDF y'all put together is a nice piece of work, great for low power superheros (though, like all d20 games, it seemed to fall apart at the high end - Superman was never meant to be expressed in d20 terms, I guess!).

 

[Synicism]

I've done something like this in my Oathbound campaign that is sort of a takeoff from an old 2nd Ed Planescape campaign that featured characters who developed the ability to wield what amounted to super powers (incredible speed, flight, teleportation, shooting energy). More anime than four-color, but you get the idea.

As a template, I used FFG's fighting school "spend XP for a neat character perk" system, but expanded the chart to 20 techniques (maxing out at 40th level, though none of my PC's has gotten there).

Basically, each "path" represents a set of related abilities that build upon each other. The lower level abilities are cool, but not that powerful. Batman-level stuff. The higher level abilities are distinct super powers - examples might be the abilty to fly at your base movement rate with perfect maneuverability, the ability to boost your movement rate tremendously, or the ability to move your base movement as a free action once per round.

 

[the Jester]

A number of years ago a high-level 2e dnd campaign I ran turned superhero when the pcs started acquiring odd powers and such.

There was the Shadow, who used a wish from a ring to gain the ability to turn into shadow, and his sidekick Shade.

There was Dr. Magic, a wild mage who took what I guess amounted to a prestige class that let him try to modify his spells on the fly- shades of metamagic.

There was Iron Dwarf, a dwarven cleric of the philosophy of technology, who wore a suit of magical intelligent technological armor named Adam that eventually left to go "find himself". By the end of the campaign, Iron Dwarf had built nuclear power plants to power the city the heroes built after evacuating all the inhabitants of their home continent to a parallel plane they called Utopia, which had no sentient humanoids and teemed with life.

They had a plane-shifting cloud castle for a lair.

It was a fun campaign and it got extremely out of hand, with the first appearance of Master Control, a sentient program who is a seriously bad long-term nemesis that haunts my current pcs as well (having made the transition to a new universe when Tharizdun ate nature and destroyed all my old campaign worlds).


It was tons of fun for everyone...

 

[Marius Delphus]

Playing with fantasy "superhero" archetypes. As described, these characters would probably be of "epic" levels... but I'd find being able to build a "super" type progression *toward* these epic level characters interesting:

The Consummate Warrior: This fellow doesn't need a special sword, doesn't need special armor, doesn't need a special mount, and doesn't need advice. He can use any weapon to hurt any opponent. Any blow he suffers is only a scratch... unless of course he's Met His Match, in which case you know the battle in progress will ruin a large neighborhood. May also be unarmed... whatever his specialty.

The Shadow Thief: It's not magic, but this fellow can simply go practically anywhere and elude practically any pursuit. Carries with him the Luck of the Gods: even if caught, stripped of all his toys, and imprisoned in the deepest, dankest cell on the planet, he'll not only find a way out but will also disappear completely. Isn't necessarily dangerous except to people trying to hide something he wants.

The Mystic Channeler: When this fellow is surrounded in a numbus of fire and hovering a foot or two off the ground, he can do practically anything... because he commands *power.* Not a spellcaster, because he doesn't speak magic words, make magic gestures, or fiddle with critter bits. Not a psion, because the power he commands *is* magic. Unconfined by "spell lists" or any such nonsense, what he says, *goes.*

The Ultimate Sage: Ask him anything. If *he* doesn't know the answer, he'll find someone else who used to live on the planet that *does.* Part oracle, part sage, this fellow allows the spirits of the knowledgeable dead to occupy his body and dispense information through his mouth. He can effectively translate any language, relate the legends of any civilization, and explain any thinly veiled reference to the past.

There are more along these lines, but that basically covers the breadth of options I'd want fantasy supers rules to handle, at a minimum. I've taken a long hard look at FCTF's "powers as gear" rules myself, and I'm definitely interested in any more info on the subject.

 

[zouron]

Well one character I especially remember for breaking the mould/suepr natural like was a human rogue/sorcerer, his stats were on the extremely good side and thus made me able to do him as a kind of living version of the grim reaper so to speak, with scythe etc. However not looking much of a skeleton I made him use body paint to compelte the illusion, the spells were based on what ability I thought he had, I spend lotsa ranks in intimidate/hide/move silent to make him be scary, gave him a few more disgusting habits as well and a mobid way of speech.

Normally I wouldn't have thought him possible, but it was just able through a combination of things, however the downside to this approach is of course that cause he was a very flavour based character he only thing that kept him on par with the rest was his simply outstanding stats.

I think one has to remember mostly aobut these iconic characters, that while they are born strong, most of their legend take place after they have become super experienced, using core rules, you want to keep adding strength to herc, and get him strength based items to increase it, an immortal of course needs some kind of magic, but at low level LOTSA hp and some acting., and so on. However these of course will not be the super beings at first or ever that one sees from movies, there you will probably need some kind of special template or similar.

FCtF is a nice product a little bit tasking to use, but nice

 

[RangerWickett]

Them's are some tall orders ye got there, mister. Epic level indeed.

Lesse. The warrior isn't that hard. Super strength, power, skill, and invulnerability are all pretty easy to handle, since they're just numerical bonuses, and those are simple to quantify.

The thief, too, is not that difficult, since most of that would be skill bonuses, and perhaps a luck-based bonus to saving throws and checks in general. The powers in FCTF are neutral with regards to explanation, so the Invisibility power could represent actually turning invisible, or psychically causing others to not sense you, or being so good at sneaking that you can practically go anywhere. Or my personal favorite: you're so insignifcant that no one notices you.

The scholar we can handle too, since he just needs a helluva lot of skill points. Ability to communicate with spirits sounds like a distinctly magical/psionic ability any way you slice it, and we have pretty solid guidelines for turning spells into super powers. Of course he'd also have related cool powers, like telepathy, clairvoyance, and probably supremely good AC since he just knows how people fight, and he can see it coming a mile away.

The mage, though, is a bit tricky. If he can do anything, well, godlike powers are hard to emulate, unless you just want to make the character able to wish at will. Eek, I don't think we actually do have rules for that. I mean, it's kind unbalanced to be able to do whatever you want. However, you could easily load the character up with a few key powers to handle most of what he'd ever want to do. Energy Attacks, Flight, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Shapeshifting, various defenses, etc. Hmm. I don't have a 'dispel magic at will' power, but it could be easily created with the guidelines of turning a Quickened Dispel Magic into a super power. It'd be fairly high level.

Nifty ideas, though. Sounds like they'd make a good group of PCs.

 

[Sen Udo-Mal]

Well, that was indeed something I had in mind. But y'know, we sell print versions too. You can get a perfect-bound version of the book for about as much as it would cost to buy any other gaming book of comparable size.

There is? I haven't seen it yet
Now if you have a book version I will have to find it. I have been interested in this BUT I am iffy on PDF (i have a couple so I am not 100% against them).

Sorry to ask but did you put out the book of extra power also?