Power Levels..What is your opinion?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Over in Your Favorites,

Lance Dubois wrote:

"Are these characters powerful because of years of playing or because everyone wants to be ultrapowerful in the first place???????????????"

MIC Rules replied:

"Usually a little of both. What stats do you consider ultra-powerful? Stats above AM, UN?"



Now, My question is, what constitutes powerful, or too powerful, or not powerful enough to all of y'all?

Come on, lets get some feedback on this.

Low-Powered Hero - Any character than can't reliably pull Good or Excellent feats on most action and/or lacks even Excellent (Remarkable if device based) damage/damage resistance potential. Most goverment operatives... and folks that probably shouldn't be trying super heroics. Sometimes typified by high-ranking but relatively useless powers.

Standard Hero- Most character's that don't fit the definitions of the other rankings. Most X-Men and Avengers.

Super-Hero - Any character that can regularly pull Remarkable feats on most actions and/or has amazing damage/damage resistance regularly.

Powerful Hero - Any character that can basically pull an Incredible rank feat on basically anything (that matters in terms of super-heroics) and has roughly that rank in defensive ability too (perhaps a few odds and ends of +2CS/-2CS rank... but for core actions... Incredible). Also, any character with a Monstrous damage potential/damage resistance regularly period. Spiderman and the THing are "powerful" in my book.

Uber-Powerful Hero - Anything better than that (pull Amazing or better on basically everything, anything capable of Unearthly damage/damage resistance). The Hulk is Uber-Powerful... as are most DC characters.

Godlike Hero - anything that fits both of the Uber-Powerful qualifiers or anyone with a stuntable (and combat related) CL1000 power. Superman is Godlike and so is Firelord (though he somehow lost to Spidey).

Entity Non-Hero - Anything that qualifies under both definitions of Godlike. Marvel entities and most DC gods.

Yeah, I'll agree with Sway on all of the above except I'll even move Godlike down a bit. If the guy is pumping out 250 per attack, that's god like in my book.


Gerrod

Any stat or power rank of shift rank is overkill, cheating and unnecessary.

:D

Low-Powered Hero - 150-200 CP

Standard Hero - 250-300 CP

Super-Hero - 350-400 CP

Powerful Hero - 450-500

Uber-Powerful Hero - 550-700

Godlike Hero - 750-800

Entity Non-Hero - 900+

[www.classicmarvel.com]

I'm gonna weigh in on this...because the stuff on that piece of paper (aka character sheet)
is a collection of data. I try to take into consideration the history, and the *way* the
player plays... Given that I've been gaming with some of my PBEM buddies for years, I know
what they like to play and *how* they like to play, too...

What might be "too powerful" for one player might be just fine in the hands of another player.
That's why I try to handle things on a case-by-case basis, rather than trying to squeeze every
one into some pointless point-based creation system. That's part of the job of being a GM/Judge
or whatever.

I have players who like to play "lower end" heroes, I have some that like to play higher end...
and they co-exist pretty well thus far...


I find creative ways to keep things on an even keel--without destroynig their fun or mine...

Just my 2 pence worth...

Niniri

In my opinion as a Game Judge, as a rule, a PC should not have an ability or power ranks greater that Unearthly. However:

(A) The Class 1000 Invulnerability v. a particular effect is permitted, and

(B) Exceptions are what prove a rule. That is, if a PC comes up with a decent and well thought our proposal as to why his or her character is walking around the Earth with Shift-X Strength or three times per day can generate a Plasma Blast at Shift-Y Intensity, then I am not so intractable as to disallow the abiltiy or power.
The proviso to my generosity however is quite resolute; That character will encounter foes who occasionally have Shift-Y or higher defenses or resistances and at least during one scenario be mind-controlled into using those Plasma blasts against their own teammates or homecity.


Some players and judges suffer from "power-creep"; They have tasted the fruits of Shift-X, Y, or Z energy blasts or protective powers and find that Monstrous to Unearthly doesn't give them the kick that it once did.


In general I believe that Shifts X, Y, and Z abilities or power effects should never be put into the hands of PCs, unless , the Game Judge is running a campaign where the heroes don't have much of a chance unless one (or more) of them can attain Shift-X (or higher) damage against the foes they are facing or generate Shift-X ( or higher) forcefields in order to have a chance to survive what is challenging them.

So here is my Power Level table. It is not very original.

Low level: Remarkable or less.
Mid level: Incredible to Amazing
High level: Monstrous to Unearthly
Extreme level (As a rule, off limits to PCs): Shift-X to Shift-Y

Only the Hulk or Thor (in my MU) can attain Shift-Z power levels with Adrenaline Surge and Unfettered Might.

I feel that power levels has a lot to do with the campaign in question. I like to keep things in relative terms instead of absolute terms. If you have a team where one member has the overall stats and powers of Aunt May and another with Iron Man but they're supposed to battle together I would say that there was a power level problem. If the campaign was designed for the Aunt May level then Iron Man is too powerful. If it was designed for Iron Man, then Aunt May is not powerful enough.

I try to stay away from saying things like "Silver Surfer is too powerful." Instead I prefer a phrase like "Silver Surfer is too powerful for this campaign." I realize that in the campaign setup these seem as very similar statements. However, when we're all posting up our favorite characters the campaign information is rarely listed and that seems to be where this thread originated from.

In my campaign we attempt to stay at a Spider-Man power level. It helps when setting up heroes and villains. I also have a feeling that this influences my view-points when reviewing the home-growns on this site.

To me, the three most popular heroes (i.e., characters players are likely to want to role-play) that can give a campaign fits because of their enormous power levels are Thor, Iron Man and the Hulk. Each can reach astronomical levels of power that enable them to trash all but the most powerful opponents with ease. Not only are these three characters difficult for most villains to challenge, they tend to dominate their campaigns unless EVERY one is running a character with similar levels of power--it is hard to imagine Daredevil or Hawkeye being of much consequence in a campaign featuring Thor and Iron Man, for example. It's like having a campaign in the old AD&D game mixing 1st level characters with 20th level characters.

But there are a number of ways to deal with this. If your players insist on using characters with vastly different power levels, you can try to "boost" the power level of certain less powerful heroes. This is usually accomplished with a technological upgrade. For example, Hawkeye once had battle armor designed him by Tony Stark. Why not have him use it again? You could also give him more powerful arrows (again, designed by Stark or some other techno-whiz), or have Henry Pym give him a stash of growth serum in a pinch (Hawk used to go as Goliath for a while). I find most of my players don't mind if I boost their character's power levels.

However, when you're dealing with huge power inequities (and Hawkeye vs. any of the aforementioned heavies certainly qualifies), it may be necessary to "depower" or otherwise limit the uber-heroes. In each case, there are some ready-made rationales for this based on actual comic book history. You could, for example, place your campaign in a time period when Iron Man's armor put him roughly in Spider-Man's class. Another way to limit Iron Man is to put limits on Stark's physical stamina (i.e., his artificial heart starts to give out after 10 turns of combat, reducing all of his FASE stats by 2CS each additional turn). Similarly, you could force a player that wanted to play the Hulk to use the grey Hulk, who was far less powerful than Green Genes. You could also force a player running Thor to use the Eric Masterson version of goldilocks; Masterson was unable to tap into the full power of Thor because he didn't know how. He was also far less skilled in combat than Thor.

While some players might protest these forced changes at first, I have found that they eventually enjoy the challenge of adapting to these changes, taking it as a challenge to their role-playing skills.

Of course, you can always come up with a nasty villain or weapon that has a particular power that can neutralize even the most powerful heroes, but IMHO, you can only do that reverse "deus ex machina" type gimmick so many times before it gets old.

Are we just talking about Pregenerated Characters?

Hi All, I ran a PBEM game that had Niniri in it. Her character was Lady Silver Hand. A While back she posted her character and recieved a severe roasting that it was too uber powerful. Now when this character was played during the game I had this concern as well but I put faith in the character that they would not abuse what they had. It was faith well placed and Niniri even had put in limitations and played this limitations when ever I implemented them in game.

Thus my point is that some characters may be Uber Powerful but at the end of the day it is the Player that controls it. The more powerful the character the more I am likely to place a severe limitation to balance this.

So what is too powerful? I would say Pc's with more than one STAT over Monstrous with two or more powers over Monstrous.

With that said the GM should be able to manage the power level differences in game between PC's Play to the Characters Flaws/weaknesses.

too powerful? it depends.

A character can only be too powerful if he's compared to other character within a game, you can have a low level space hero that would be uber powerful on an Earth setting while he would be a close to a weakling in space.

A few months ago, I was involved in a game with EgoOverdrive as the GM, it was a low-powered setting where the players had to be Captain America/Black Widow types of character... either low powers or equipment/skills. My character was a Poison Ivy-like doctor who researched poisons and viruses for years, throughout her experimentations she gave herself superpowers, resistance to toxins, poisons and diseases at Unearthly rank...

that was her only power, the rest of her arsenal were darts containing poisons and different types fo chemical...

does the Unearthly rank makes her too powerful? I don't think so.

Now, if this character also had regeneration, chemical touch (poison) and other powers at such levels, she would have been way too powerful for the setting of the game, but in another game, she could have fit in really well.

-Whatever is causing the Joan Collins 'tude, deal with it. Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever, but get over it.