At what point is it too much?

[shazam]

I understand that I should be unbound by point limits when making antagonist but I don't want to make one that just steamrolls over the characters, unless that was the plan, anyway what I'm asking is what is a reasonable amount to a antagonist without making him a team killer.

[WildKnight]

May 25, 2011 16:12:07 GMT -5 shazam said:

I understand that I should be unbound by point limits when making antagonist but I don't want to make one that just steamrolls over the characters, unless that was the plan, anyway what I'm asking is what is a reasonable amount to a antagonist without making him a team killer.

Depends entirely on the team. Stone counts in MURPG are mostly irrelevant in terms of the "power level" of individual characters. Instead of focusing on stone count, take a look at the team you've got and decide how much of a challenge you want the antagonist to be in a fight. If you want him to be seriously challenging, give him the ability to get around the defenses of a majority of the team, and to defend (but preferably not ignore) the primary offensive abilities of the team's hardest hitters.

[terrafate]

Generally when making an antagonist in my games I make them just like I would a character that I would play for any game...only bad. I do use a stone count and it is the same stone count that my players had when they built their characters. I do however take into account any LOE spending they have done. Unless they are meant to be a reoccurring baddy, I generally give them any defenses that a normal character would have. That's for an easy baddy, for a medium baddy, I usually go about 20 stones higher, a harder one is 40 stones more then what my players started with so forth and so on.

This is a very good topic by the way. I'm interested in what others have to say about this.

[malice]

Generally I use the "no stone count" concept to add depth and dimension to a character rather than raw power. It's sort of the difference between vertical and horizontal development, with vertical being "power" and horizontal being things like Inventing, Business Skills, and the Immortal modifier. Inventing means almost nothing on an NPC because they exist and operate outside of the player timeline, so they have whatever you want to give them, and you use the number to write down just how good you want them to be.

It's not that hard to look at existing characters and decide where you want your NPC's numbers to be. For example, if I want a formidably trained melee combatant I'm looking at 6 or more Close Combat. Then I'll factor in his/her ability bonus. Upon seeing that the stones generated don't do squat I might create a modifier or piece of equipment that gets him/her where I want. Never once to I consider cost, because I have a picture in my head of how I want this character to be, and I'm just drawing that picture with a CAD.

No it doesn't have a Zonkers Space Plasmoid Kannon +35, or a Ranged Combat of 75 to fire it, because that's not how I envisioned it. It's easy not to make the NPC overpowered when the character I had in my head isn't overpowered.

My custom-built NPCs DO end up costing more than the PCs pretty often, but that's just because if you're building a robot pre-Avengers book you wanted it to have lots of cool sensors and Enhanced Vision eventually got expensive. The MN still wasn't high enough to see the PCs and a lot of the functions are redundant, but the character feels more correct then a stripped-down-to-stay-within-budget character. That's just one example, there are plenty more where the system doesn't support a concept well enough so you just ignore cost (Support characters are especially ignored by MURPG).

My strong custom-built NPCs end up costing more than the PCs and also being pretty strong, but their powers are designed to create an effect rather than to win. So if I make a character who can apply penalties to all the PCs the players will feel like they're dealing with something nasty due to the cost of such powers. In reality the NPC has a specialized role that won't win fights, just make them harder. Other NPCs might cripple 4 out of 5 of the party members, with the 5th being the character who gets no spotlight ever. Say you have a team of telepaths and one brawler who feels out of place, insert mentally invulnerable enemy. Flipside, you have a team of Shadowrun-type mercs who tend to have a lot of stones to swing around but not a lot of a certain kind of defense (Say mental). Suddenly a basic telepath becomes a serious threat, but a more interesting (and more expensive) telepath is a more intimidating but less life threatening alternative (Fear + Mental Bolts makes team of low-int low-mental defense guys cower and say "Oh no!" but it doesn't auto-win like a standard mind controller).

[kito]

Got to say i like your way alot. i just kinda make villand that can handel themselves well, in most situations. e.g

Cold Front is one of my reacuring villans. he has transform by tuch ice. mastery of element ice with maipulate element and absorb element. and is a ninja. he tend to be a ok villan for most my heros to fight altho i have no idea how manny stones he costs. i just kinda made him and use him at need. i thend to just draw my villans out of a hat for each day and make a new 1 each week. i find no matter how strong the villans i make are. good team work will overcome even the strongest villan.

[jayholden]

Remember that if there are 3-4 characters costing 40 stones each, it's not unreasonable to throw out a "big bad" boss villain that's 120-160 stones. Not that I bother counting; I find the methods WK and Malice advocate to be easiest. I also think that defining a battle style (i.e. aggressive/cautious/manipulative/chaotic) that suits the villain's personality can be just as important as defining what the villain can do powers-wise.

[pgholland]

Always go with what you feel. If you have a team of heroes who can't output more than 5 or 6 combat stones, any villain with a consistent defence of 7 is overpowered, no matter their stone cost. On the other hand, if they can give out 10=15 stones of attack and your villain only ever has a defence of 2, they are going down very quickly, or will never manage to hurt them as they try and maintain their defences.

I tend to make, then revise as we play the game- if suddenly they are too strong or too weak, adjust them on-the-fly, raise or lower stats: so long as it's fun the players will never know nor care.

[Manah]

pgholland echoes my thoughts here. Stone count is irrelevant. What you want to focus on is how easily your villain can beat the players' defenses, and how hard it is for players to do the same to them.

If it's unbalanced for what you want, make it so it isn't, depending on the level of difficulty you want a given fight to feel like.

[swsquall]

My method is similar to Malice's. With my group at home, I find that I have to have a Plan A-ZZ, and even then, they tend to surprise me by taking directions I'd never thought of. If you have a group like that, it's great. One of the best experiences I've had as a GM have been having to come up with some random villain or scenario on the fly because my group did something I didn't expect.It's great for your on-the-spot creativity.

I tend to have just a general idea in my head of what I want my antagonists to be. I almost never write a sheet/CAD for them, because, like pgholland, I'll scale them to what my group's general power level is/how much challenge I want them to be, and like Malice, I tend to not care what they cost. Don't try to limit yourself to a stone count with a villain. If you want them to be something the heroes need experience/time to beat, make them that way. If you want a combined effort of the team to actually do some damage to them and drive them off for a bit, let it do that. It may seem a bit unorthodox, but it's what I've found to work best with my group.

[bangbang]

The villains agenda and how they approach it will dictate how "difficult" they are to handle. A villain with superior invis and teleport can rob banks at will (not to mention, sneak in and wreak havoc with the hero's base computers). Some of your big ultra badasses (Kingpin, Doom) do a lot of work behind the scenes of their crimes. Villains with layers between them should be the big baddies the heroes face, while throwing in a few straight ahead bangups (a "force of nature" villain [Hulk type], a crazy killer [joker type] and so on).

[Neros]

I usually make the antagonist out from how I feel he should be and just set the Abilities, Actions and modifiers. But I also look at what the players can do to ensure that they can harm it, not get KO'ed easily with one attack and that it isn't completely immune to the players effects.