the authority?

[green5865]

hello
im still new to the boards so i dont know if this is section to post this question if not sorry
how many stones would it take to run a the authority type power level game(i know there is allready a authority game but i find this system more comic book and easier to play)
thanks

[Hypester]

I'd say typically 100 Stones. My friends and I ran a 500 Stone RP one time and the only thing we could do was use absolute powers and stuff at that level. At 100 Stones you can get what you need to do ANYthing without having enough stones to do EVERYTHING.

A good benchmark is Power Cosmic... at Level 10, power cosmic costs 95 stones... that's enough power to do ANYTHING that you can possibly conceive of. That means cheap players can take disadvantage to Power Cosmic, make what is essentially a ten stone character and tack on ultimate power onto it in a 100 Stone RP. Basically the Doctor.

On the alternate Spectrum, a 100 stone Midnighter looks like this:

______________________________
Abilities (16w)

Intelligence: 6
Strength: 4
Agility: 4
Speed: 4
Durability: 4

Actions (57w)

Ninja: 8 (30w)
- Agility and Strength or Weapon Bonus
- Paramilitry Espionage
- Stealth Movement
- Close Combat
- Thrown Weapons
- Stick Weapons
- Ranged Combats
- Midnighter Multi-Style

Social Skills: 5
- Superhuman Community
- Indimidation
- Apollo
- Interrogation
- Carrier

General Knowledge: 5
- Assassain Biology
- War Psychology

Technology: 7
- Sci-Fi Tech
- Earth Tech
- Carrier Tech

Vehicle Operations: 7
- All Vehicles

Detective [Hunting/Tracking]: 7
- Urban Clue-Finding
- Cosmic Evidence

Modifers (37w)

Prescience

Superhuman Senses (+4)

Accelerated Healing Factor

Photographic Memory

Mental Defense (+1)

Reflexive Dodge (+3)

Toughness (+1) no AP

Targetting (+5)

Equipment (4w)

Midnighter Costume (+2 to def)

Midnighter Thrown Weapons (+3)

Midnighter Melee Weapons (+3)

Challenges

Deadly Enemies (-5w)

Hautned Past (-5w)
__________________________________

There he is... now if you have players who create characters, irresponsibly, that is, trying to squeeze every stone of power out of the character that they can... or worse, all going after the same 'types of character' (the last think you want is a team of power cosmics) you may want to kick it back to 70 stones, that'll still let players make JLAish level characters without allowing them to make the game unplayable based on their characters.

Other notes on running such a game: You may need to set limits. Having two-three invulnerabilities not only makes for an undamagable character, but for one with little to no combat use, and thus, no fun.

You also should not be afriad to use action numbers and modifers on villains that are well above 10. Especially if you are trying to capture the feel of "The Authority." A race of Phoenixes or Heralds may be necessary. Also, absolute powers such as Prescience, Density Manipulation, Invisbility, Invulnerabiilties, Copy Action, Steal Superpower, Transform Other by Touch, Teleportation, Reconstitute Self, Hex-Spheres... in fact, all sorts of magic is useful for dealing with characters of that scope and power.

Regardless, it's a hard road to travel. Good luck.

[Beacon]

I see the Doctor more as a Master of Magic (with all or most of the other schools of magic also taken). There really isn’t much that the Power Cosmic lets you do that the right balance of magic and imagination (and a GM who doesn’t mind power-gaming*) won’t also allow you to pull off.

*Which is kind of a requirement when running the Authority. If a GM is going to let Apollo substitute all his physical abilities for a Mastery of LIGHT (Superman’s solar-powered body aside, how does light translate to strength anyway?) then surely they’re be willing to wave the six stone effect limitation.

[green5865]

thank you hypester & beacon
as i said im still new to the system i have the main book so far
its a great easy to learn system but i think ill run a few lower power level games at first befoure i try the authority.
thank's for the wright up on the midnighter .

[Beacon]

Does anyone have the Authory RPG? That’d probably prove really helpful here.
www.guardiansorder.com/games/authority/



I’ve never considered myself particularly good at making accurate conversions of existing characters (mostly because I hate trying to quantify the over the top abilities of superheroes) but I figured I might as well include some notes to help whoever does take on the task.

Jack Hawksmoor

Jack is the King of the Cities. Some might even say Master of Cities. Yeah, I know that it seems like my solution to everything is “when in doubt” use a Mastery but it really is the best solution I can think of right now. Specialties could include substitute for ability (agility and strength), manipulate (though not so much create) cities, psychometry (see telepathy), force field (to simulate his ability to protect himself by wrapping chunks of the city around himself*), and the “power weaker away from source” disadvantage**. It might also be wise to base his action number on the population of his current location.

*Tough the argument could also be made for transform self into city with a conditional toughness modifier to simulate his rather…unique battle armor.

**Though he’s really closer to having an extreme version of the “leaving location X will eventually cause death” challenge Captain Britain took.

Other powers could include:

Self Contained Life-Form (sort of…the guy eats pollution) while in cities.

Acrobatics

Wall crawling

Teleportation
-Cities Only

Leadership

[Beacon]

Engineer

The Engineer is tricky.

Sure she’s a powered armor character (sorta) but she’s hardly a conventional one.

The closest that I can think of to a Marvel analogue for her nanotech is Fixer’s Tech Pack and that’s a bit of a stretch in my mind. Her extreme adaptability feels more like a high level version of metamorphosis (yeah, these are gonna be 100 stone characters all right) and the nanites in her blood could translate into things like a healing factor, an adamantium skeleton (functionally anyway), and – in a fairly literal sense – biocomputing.

Maybe a little of “column A” and a little of “column B”. Maybe the way to go is to make a few of the more common powers (flight, some ranged weapons, a little toughness, some sensory powers, ect) functions of the armor while giving the healing factor, adamantium skeleton, ect to the actual character. The metamorphosis could probably go either way.

Angie herself would have the usual subjects in terms of that type of character; high intelligence, technology/computing, inventing, general knowledge, relevant social skills, ect. I could even see Psycho-Centric Power Template working for her. Sure it’s a little sketchy when PCPT is used with non-mentalists but its pretty obvious Fixer took the power and gave it a different name so there’s certainly a precedent.

I’m starting to think the hardest part about her will be keeping her down to nine actions and that’s a large part of why I brought up metamorphosis in the first place.

[Beacon]

The Doctor

Okay, first off, let’s get the non-fantastical aspects of him out of the way. The guy was a millionaire (though they never specified how so it’s probably inherited) just before his teens and a dot-com billionaire just after them. He gave most of his money away so it doesn’t enter into his wealth rank. I don’t remember any real details on the dot-com thing but I see it as being a number of things; maybe he was a phenomenal businessman who saw a need and exploited it, maybe he was a phenomenal con-man who saw an opportunity and exploited it, maybe he was just really lucky, or maybe it was something else entirely. Depending on which it was it could greatly impact his CAD.

Now, what has he really done with his powers?

I can’t remember any actual Summoning (though he might have, I have a terrible memory) and the visiting previous Doctors in the “Garden of Ancestral Memory” was more of a Magical Travel specialty than anything else so I suppose Summoning might be out. Speaking of Magical Travel, I think I’ve got the power nailed down relatively well…

Magical Travel (powers such as dimensional travel and teleportation may be used on friends or foes even when not used on the Doctor himself)
-Garden of Ancestral Memory
-Astral Projection
-Dimensional Travel
-Flight
-Teleportation

Sorcery makes for a nice grab-bag of magic powers. That might come in handy when imprisoning an enemy in a cage of magical flame (though I suppose you could do that with MoM too).

Witchcraft is a must have for Earth’s Shaman and, despite the name, Asgardian Sorcery is also a good fit for the nature-based magic of the Doctor. Both would come in handy when it comes to transforming enemy armies into butterflies (the power might have been bought with an area effect).

I haven’t read the Jenny Sparks mini but I’ve read he brought her back from the dead in that one. Thate could be Magical Healing (albeit a rather extreme version), Necromancy (which seems most appropriate), or Voodoo (though this doesn’t feel right because she didn’t come back undead). Overstrain would probably be appropriate here because I also read that the resurrection took a lot out of him (or rather, the planet he drawls his powers from). Given the scope of his powers in general, overstrain might come in handy with some of his other powers.

Mastery of Magic is an obvious one simply because it is a prerequisite to most of the other actions.

The Doctor also has a number of vaguely defined extra senses. One of them seems to be empathy (power out of control). Other possibilities may include other telepathy options, animal senses, cosmic awareness (though a cheaper global awareness is more appropriate), precognitive flashes, prescience, radar sense, sonar sense, and vision powers (or a “cybernetic senses” package deal).

How many pervious Doctors have there been? I’m basing this one off of Jeroen because he’s the one I’m most familiar with but he’s got to be ungodly powerful just going by the nature of his powers. He’s as powerful as all the previous Doctors combined (as was each of them) and that adds up after a while. Lets assign a number to the original (1). Assuming the second was equally powerful (1=1) then the third would be twice as powerful (1+1=2) and so would the fourth (1+1+2=4), the fifth (1+1+2+4=8), and so on (16, 32, 64,…). Even if this is only the tenth Doctor (and I’m certain there have been more than that) and the original was a measly fifteen stone character then we’re still looking at the current guy as being a character with creation stones in the thousands (256*15=3840). Maybe Power Cosmic is the way to go after all. How many levels of PC can you get with three thousand white stones? Heh, whatever it is, it still leaves me with 840 character creation stones for additional Abilities, Actions (heh, maybe he could just buy PC nine times…no, scratch that… also take phoenix force a couple times to boost your energy output), and Modifiers. With that many stones laying around, his tiny little “junkie” challenge is barely worth taking.