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With all this talk about "balancing" the fighter against the wizard class, has anyone done anything about the more extreme power difference found in many superheros games? How did y'all balance, for example, a player running a Batman - level PC while another runs a Superman or Green Lantern PC? Limit them, powerwise, ala the "power level" found in M&M?
I dont worry about balance in any regard other than that all characters have a place and value in the group; thus no character can do everything. Things such as making a single warrior balanced; meaning able to outright kill a mage say half the time in any situation; is just silly in most respects.
As for supers; why would you want everyone to be Superman; then no one would be super; balancing Superman to Green Arrow; do we really want that. When I run super games; every hero has his niche and that is what gaming really is anyway for characters and players alike. I dont want Batman thumping Superman, but then Superman cannot do everything either; he is not the detective and doesnt have the street connections that the Bats does. So really; it is about style; some people want to codify style.
I think this debate spawns from MMO's which have really inhibited good rpg gaming. Take a look at Wolverine; he is not the tuffest guy in the galaxy, or even on Earth in the comics; but in his own words "I am the best there is at what I do" that is the whole thing about a niche character. Take a couple skills and be the best, find a team to take up the skills, talents, powers you dont have and thus be overall stronger than the individual. Take a look at Thor and Loki; on the other end of the spectrum; are they balanced? that is a really tuff question; sure Thor can thump Loki in hand to hand; but is that Thor or Majolnir, which incidently; Loki had created by the dwarves. That brings on the whole question of Gear. Gear has more to do with balance than anything in any game.
The whole premis of the Incredibles keeps coming back to me; "if everyone is special; than nobody will be" Is every game going to have to start scripting laws like they have in The Legion of Superheroes; where no power or ability can be duplicated by another super so that all players can feel special?.
This whole balance thing is a big can of stinky worms. Best way to go here is let the GM handle balance and play the character you want; your player premise, goals, and background are more important than anything to the direction of the game.
How did y'all balance, for example, a player running a Batman - level PC while another runs a Superman or Green Lantern PC? Limit them, powerwise, ala the "power level" found in M&M?
It depends on the game.
In a point buy system like M&M, DC Heroes or Champions, I would have a power limit (either formal or informal).
In Villains & Vigilantes -- where you randomly generate your hero's powers -- we would just grin and bear it, although in that game many powers were basically in the same ballpark as far as usefulness is concerned (e.g. Flame Powers, Lightning Powers and Vibratory Powers each have an attack and a defense and do roughly the same amount of damage). There were exceptions, though (e.g. Heightened Strength could be +3 Str or +30 Str, Armor could be 31 points or 130 points, etc.).
I never cared for Marvel Superheroes RPG because (among other reasons) you could easily end up with Thor or The Fabulous Frog-Man, depending on how lucky your dice were.
With all this talk about "balancing" the fighter against the wizard class, has anyone done anything about the more extreme power difference found in many superheros games? How did y'all balance, for example, a player running a Batman - level PC while another runs a Superman or Green Lantern PC? Limit them, powerwise, ala the "power level" found in M&M?
I believe Superman, Green Lantern & Batman are all PL 16 in the new DC RPG, which uses the M&M rules.
Bats is a gigantic skill & feat monkey, while the other two have all their points in powers.|
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While it's not 'comic realistic,' M&M tends to divide power level into two components; offense and defense, and each of those divide as well.
Offensive PL is the sum of your ability to hit a target, and the amount of damage you inflict. The Hulk isn't terribly accurate, but he hits like the train that brought the bus. Spider-man doesn't hit nearly so hard, but he's very accurate.
Defensive PL is the sum of your ability to dodge / evade an attack, and your ability to suck up / ignore an attack that hits. The Hulk can take a tank shell to the chest, but isn't exactly an artful dodger. Spider-man can dodge automatic weaponsfire, but a single bullet could kill him.
The 'balance' sought by designing PL this way appears to be intended to allow Spider-man and the Hulk to each be awesome, in certain situations. If the enemy is Quicksilver, the Hulk's never gonna hit him. If the enemy is the Juggernaut, Spidey's never gonna be able to punch him to death. Each character has foes that are going to be problems for him, requiring them to do creative stuff (area of effect earthquake inducing super-stomp, drop a building on him, etc.), or, in a game based on comic book heroes, leave that guy to teammates who are better suited to hitting someone that fast, or hurting someone that tough.
Comic books tend to not design superheroes this way. Superman is supposed to have Hulkbusting levels of strength and toughness, *and* is able to move at super-speed, giving him incredible accuracy and dodging ability (which he almost never uses effectively, since he could beat most threats facing the JLA before Batman knew they were in a fight). Comic-book writers clearly don't write for gaming groups, and the teams are in no way balanced. Heck, Superman is 10x *smarter* than Bruce could ever be, and has access to technology vastly superior to Waynetech, he just conveniently turns into a big, strong moron (without super-speed) whenever Batman was around, so that Batman could be all smart and cool.
Marvel tends to do the same thing. Thor's been a warrior for something like 3000 years, fighting giants and other gods and various threats that could seriously muss his hair, and leading entire armies into war, and yet Captain America, with his fifty years of training, is regarded as the superior fighter, as if to compensate for not having the ability to bench press the space shuttle.
In a game, GMs who engage in this sort of fluffing of the 'weak' character would receive only scorn from the players, as the player of the weaker character would likely feel patronized, and the player of the powerful character would be frustrated that the other guy is being pumped up at his expense.
With all this talk about "balancing" the fighter against the wizard class, has anyone done anything about the more extreme power difference found in many superheros games? How did y'all balance, for example, a player running a Batman - level PC while another runs a Superman or Green Lantern PC? Limit them, powerwise, ala the "power level" found in M&M?
The super hero world is vastly diffrent from medieval fantasy so balance really isn't a factor.
If as an example you wanted to run a street level campaign then superman would be outta place but batman would fit in and shine. If you really wanted to crank up the power to the level of being able to hurl planets then superman is fine and batman is kindda outta place because of lack of effectivness.
Every time my group heres some one grip about "wizards are too powerful or Druids should be nerfed" we laugh a little because our group knows how to build fighters well enough that within 2 to 3 hits at most the big bad evil guy is going down.
Granted most of us don't play fighters because we like to role play spellcasters and be very desciptive with the spell effects. To us fighters don't have as good a rp potential.
We don't allow paladins because we all hate the class but we have a ton of rangers and other fighter types as long as they can cast spells.
Game balance is a new and in my opinon something that should die a very quick death and never come back because game balance is killing the fun of being a unique charecter class.
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The whole premis of the Incredibles keeps coming back to me; "if everyone is special; than nobody will be" Is every game going to have to start scripting laws like they have in The Legion of Superheroes; where no power or ability can be duplicated by another super so that all players can feel special?.
This whole balance thing is a big can of stinky worms. Best way to go here is let the GM handle balance and play the character you want; your...
The comic PS238 kinda touches on that concerning the same superpowers, one of the characters is a FISS(?), Flight, invulnerability, super strength... and she has a FISS number of 76(?) (basically there's 75 others in the world that has the same powers). A superhero team maybe wants one person who's a FISS and they're not viewed as 'special' as the others in a world with superheroes... There's some brief character development in there as she tries to cope with it.
I agree with Steven that fighters can turn out a mess of damage in the higher levels.
On Saturday night I was confronted by a undead Anti-Paladin Death Knight sort of opponent (CR roughly 26) and I'm level 12 Paladin and Cavalier 4 Total lvl 16. I wasn't mounted at the time (still living in the 30 day hole from the death of my last mount).
The Anti-Paladin appeared first and hit me with a double baned sword and his Smite aimed on me causing me to lose almost 150 hp.
I got my return attack and was under speed at the time. I hit four of five times with benefit of Smite and a Flank bonus (which was improved from my companion to +4 instead of +2 and my Cha was 22 for +6 modifier). My smite was doing +24 damage due to fighting and undead and I had the Channel Smite (knight saved for half on all four of the ones that hit) which I used to burn through 5 Lay on hands.
I had no criticals and I still did over 200 points of damage. It was no 'pun-pun' but it did a good smack of damage (and smite neutralized his DR).
Unfortunately, the death knight got his turn to go and ripped me apart.
He was in negative hit points thanks to my attack and a couple of others but he had a feat to keep him going long enough to steal my corpse and all my gear.
Now, while I was focused on the Death Knight, our wizard took out eight CR 6 wraiths in a two round period of time (nasty ones too that drained d8 Cha on a hit so even though they were lousy for hitting us with a +6 vs touch, it was lethal for people to get hit more than once and death had an extra caveat that the body faded and all memory of the person went with it making even true resurrection impossible).
We are all tossing around pretty major damage and combats tend to have more casualties now then at lower levels. We often walk away with one or two needing a raise dead, resurrection, or reincarnation.
I believe Superman, Green Lantern & Batman are all PL 16 in the new DC RPG, which uses the M&M rules.
Bats is a gigantic skill & feat monkey, while the other two have all their points in powers.
Superman is PL 15
Batman is PL 12
Green Lantern is PL 14
While Batman is capped for a PL 12 character, he has almost the same number of power points that Superman has.
For contrast, Darkseid and Black Adam are both PL 16.
With all this talk about "balancing" the fighter against the wizard class, has anyone done anything about the more extreme power difference found in many superheros games? How did y'all balance, for example, a player running a Batman - level PC while another runs a Superman or Green Lantern PC? Limit them, powerwise, ala the "power level" found in M&M?
I can't speak for other super hero games, but one thing that you can do in Mutants and Masterminds/DC Adventures is that, say, if I want to handicap Superman, I can throw red Kryptonite at him, reduce his stats, and give him a hero point for activating a complication.
The buy in for the game, from the players, is that the GM can do some wild stuff, pay a hero point to the player, so long as it moves the story along and at some point in time, the player gets to be heroic.
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There's no true way of balancing things in Mutants and Masterminds. Some combos are flat out more powerful than others. The Power Level is designed to cap character's damage, and it does work. However, there are just some powers or abilities that do not rely on damage to end fights/encounters.
Characters with high levels of Super Strength can just throw their opponents into space.
Gravity Control is basically Super Strength in an area effect, without needed attack rolls and grapple checks. Opponents are automatically caught with no save.
There's not a real easy way to handle a Super Speed character if he wanted to do hit and runs at extreme speeds (speeds beyond sound is enough) that I can think of.
If a player really wants to break things he can. But the nature of the Mutants and Mastermind prevents it somewhat. If the Super Strength character actually throws somebody into orbit, there are massive RP consequences. It is also very easy for GMs to build NPCs to specifically deal with certain power sets. Unlike PF and D&D where magic is needed to fight magic, there are a lot of ways to get around certain builds.
The other thing is balances things somewhat is M&M basically has no reward system other than XP. If you defeat a villain, you basically only get XP and RP rewards. There's not items characters can really keep and use. There's not money to buy magic items. Because of this, there's no incentive to be broken. All your character needs to be is good enough to survive. It's sort of self balancing in the sense that lack of material rewards means players do it for the fun and story, rather than material wealth.
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The other thing is balances things somewhat is M&M basically has no reward system other than XP. If you defeat a villain, you basically only get XP and RP rewards. There's not items characters can really keep and use. There's not money to buy magic items. Because of this, there's no incentive to be broken. All your character needs to be is good enough to survive. It's sort of self balancing in the sense that lack of material rewards means players do it for the fun and story, rather than material wealth.
Interesting point.
I think it is important to note that fiction is a very different medium from role playing games. In fiction, one person controls everything. As some of the examples point out above, authors can pull punches and set up situations to let everyone shine.
In role playing games, the GM, players and even the dice have some control. Setting up the same situations as you find in fiction is never a given.
In my opinion, the best way to deal with this is to enlist the help of the players. Ask them to define the niche they want their character to fill and ask that the other players respect that. How broad or narrow that niche is depends on what the GM and players are comfortable with.
If it is a point based game (like most superhero sistems usually are) just give both heros the same number of points. Supes *may* be more inteligent and have some alien science knowledge, Green Lantern has military training and what amounts to the most powerfull computer/weapon in the universe and the Flash can literally think at lightspeed, but Batman is still a better strategist, a trained detective, a well rounded scientist and an expert in security sistems and a great computer hacker and a dozen other things based in skills and feats. There is a reason the Justice League keeps the powerless guy around, you know?