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Aberrant RPG - Power Caps


Corbin

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I was just wondering if any of you ST's out there have ways of limiting your PC's so they don't become too powerful or much more powerful than the other PC's in your group? For example mega str can really do a lot more damage than a character with TK blasts.

In my game we just have damage caps, no one can do more than 28 dice of damage with their powers and moves. We've been playing our game for some time and it seems to be working well, but i'd love to hear about differnt ways to placeing limits from you guys.

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I have always used situation to control my group, I have always tried to leave as much of the original rule stucture intact, otherwise my players tend to bitch. Never really had a problem serious enough to merit using caps.

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When I was talking about power caps i meant that the players were limited in how much they could do in damage and have in soak so that one PC who is a power monger wouldn't be ten times more powerful than the others. Two characters made on the same amount of points can be really differnt in power levels. If I let one player get mega str 5 and invunrability then I would have to increase the power of the NPC's that they fight and there by forcing the other PCs to take huge amounts of soak and damaging powers just to compete with the powerful pc and npcs. Its hard to challenge one Powerful PC and not overwhelm the non power mongers. The reason that I started giving caps on damage was that it made the players be able to make up Chracters that were interseting and differnt than your average power monger. There has been no struggle of how to use experiance points to compete with the other PC's of the game wich seemed to be happening before the caps. Are the chracters in your games all really powerful so this doesn't become a problem? Or do your PC's don't mind when one is much more powerful? Or maybe its just me smile

Please let me know what ya think.

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YES! If you are going to use the storyteller system, you need to set certain limitations on your players. I prefer the concept method, myself.

You know, "Your character has flame-based powers, right? So why do they have Physical Invulnerability? Try going for Body of Flame instead. I know it isn't as 'effective', but it is within your characters concept."

If your players complain, ask them why. If it is just a points thing, tell them to chill. If they want to be invulnerable to everything, tell them okay, as long as that is all they do.

Remember, the concepts of "Magic" or "Quantum Manipulations" are usually bad things, as they let folks take any and all powers.

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Jager, gonna have to defend the concept of Quantum Manipulators here. Prodigy was conceived of as having basically having two core concepts, one initial; all around good at everything guy and one follow up, bright guy who starts figuring shit out. That is where he came up with most of his powers. His intellect allowed him to start understanding the quanta he could now perceived. So long as there is strict understanding, Quantum Manipulators can be pretty fun. One of Prodigy's weirdest problems was that he was so focused on manipulating quantum fields that he was effectively powerless against baselines. Until the gadget rules came out at least.

However, I still don't see the need for caps. Fine, someone in the game has spent all of their points on turning into Herc Jr.? Big deal, there are lots of ways to mess with him without resorting to a simple array of bigger and tougher NPCs that are guaranteed death for anyone else. Stun Attacks that he can't soak. Telekinesis that keeps him at bay. Holos that confuse and disorient him. End result, you've challenged the brick without risking everyone else's hide.

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I have to agree with Prodigy on this one as well.

Remember when a recent poster started getting a lot of crap concerning his playing piece? Psychological questions aside, the majority of it was because he couldn't deal with the idea that his magnificently Byronic angel of vengeance wasn't invulnerable. It may have been hotstuff in the small game world of friends he was accustomed to but in the meta-world of the forums people approached the problem from different ways and there were vulnerabilities galore. Just not a lot that were exploitable by your simple brick.

Now extrapolate from that starting position; everybody is vulnerable to something or someone, therefore the only reason to resort to caps is to keep people from taking advantage of methods which prevent your troupe from telling the stories they would like to tell. If this isn't an issue (a tight friendly group, roleplayers instead of power mongers, ect) then the idea of caps seems wasteful. If you have problems with players, and continue to game with them, then caps seem like a good idea, otherwise just choose a different system.

I'm sure Corbin's game benefited from caps, and yours might as well. Afterall, BM2 has devoted his time and gaming to pointing out only a fews ways to rape the ST system. Does this mean the system is broken? I dunno; Quantum Promise plays a style of game that I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole but I've never felt the need to tell him he was wrong to play that way. Actually, I spent more than a little time explaining ways to optimize his fun and understand the system a little better... He was polite when he asked and I generally help people that ask me to. I still wouldn't touch that style of game but only because it's not the style I enjoy.

If you feel the need for caps then use them but you may want to consider that it is being used because of a specific problem with a specific group of people.

Wizard is a tabletop character and wouldn't survive in the worlds where the one-combat-per-gaming-session is a rule. She also has the ability to destroy cities faster than anyone could stop her. Overall she's been considered an addition to the games she's played in and I've had fun by role playing my answer to the question "What would you do with the power of a god."

I don't mean to rap on you or your game, really. It's just that when the subject of caps comes up it feels like the question is becoming, "What would you do with some moderately interesting and game balanced powers that prevent you from altering the world unless you are pathologically patient." There's nothing wrong with that style of game if everyone is having fun but... You change the rules to enhance playability and fun, otherwise why change the rules?

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Okay, what I was aiming at was the concept that "my character can have any concept in the book, cause I say he can".

I have had to deal with players who look for the loopholes and keep trying to exploit them. They can make the gaming experience less fun for the other players who aren't min-maxing and are trying to run an interesting concept over the 'most effective at what I do' concept.

Yes, any character can be bludgeoned down my an over-reacting ST, but that isn't fun and lousy for the whole game.

James, I mentioned QM's because that was one of the end-runs a player tried with me. His concept was that he visualized the whole world as quantum, so he could do anything and develop any power. Not that he specialized in actual QM powers. Another player tried that with magic and spells so they could have the same effects. I find that frustrating.

As a ST, I tend to be liberal with my points, so players can flesh out their characters. That requires me to be vigalent with how they spend them, though. The pity is, the worst abusers can often make some of the most interesting characters if they are just reigned in occasionally. Its just a game and not a competition.

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Nice ideas and thougts guys,

You got me thinking (which happens time to time) about why in my game I use the caps and I have enjoyed hearing about everyones ways of dealing with it or having games and gamers where they don't have to deal with it.

Its made me think that I should talk to the players more about what they are doing with their chracters and what the other players feel about their fellow PCs.

And I hope you guys don't think my games are too battle centric (which I understand considering my neverending paragraph that I previous wrote, my apoligies on not spacing it out better smile ).

To be honest the fights are my least favorite part of the whole gameing experiance and I consider it a minor victory if we get through a night of gameing without a single fight.

When I started gameing our games consisted of a bunch of fights with a small insert of roleplaying to break up the fighting, but as my group and I have played, things have changed to where the the fights only pop in to add some excitment to the game.

In reality our games are more Soap Operas with dice than anything else.

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