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Character generation
May. 30th, 2004 09:48 amWe were missing three people last night for gaming, which is the magic number at which we do something else -- so Jason, Wendy, Chris Belfey, and Sherilyn worked on Champions characters.
Several hours and they didn't get them done, unsurprisingly, but good progress -- Sherilyn tried and discarded two character concepts, and she's currently angsting about how 250 points isn't enough to make a world-saving hero (about which she may be right, and we may have to up the starting point total to do the kinds of stories I want; life is short). Wendy didn't get far with hers and I didn't hear much about it, but the characters that got some fleshing out have lots of plot hooks and interesting intraparty conflict potential. Chris in particular is making a character with a compelling backstory... though his conversion from evildoer to dogooder still seems to have happened under obscure circumstances, and I'm going to have to ask him about the cause of it.
The Rule of X is going to be hard to enforce, but I'm going to try. Sherilyn wants a complex character with a wide arsenal of powers, which is going to make her X kind of low (so I might come up with another factor for X to represent 'my best attack isn't as effective, but I have a diverse arsenal'). I have to make her fit in the same campaign as Chris's character, who is clearly committed to maxing out a huge attack and high speed and OCV, and with Jason, who is trying to create a energy projecting wizard using the heavily-limited, high-power spells copied right out of the Fantasy Hero Grimoire (the concept should work okay, given that we're talking about a mystic-themed campaign and the character has had some kind of interdimensional training in a more traditionally "mystic" place; I've suggested that 'magic skill roll' be replaced by a regular activation roll, and I'm disallowing the Spell (-1/2) limitation since there isn't a gamewide 'magic system' for it to apply to).
So we'll have to compare X and adjust characters, once they're made. People also seemed moderately to like the mechanism I thought of for enforcing a close X: if the highest-X character in the group wants to increase his OCV or attack, but it would create too big a spread between him and the lowest-X character, he can spend some of his XP on the lowest-X character's powers, represented as figuratively taking your own time to drag the other out to practice combat acumen.
I forgot to ask Jason if he understood that removing that limitation does increase the real point cost - but I'm sure he understands the math. I also have to warn him that he's probably going to find himself annoyed by all the gesture/incantation/focus/concentrate requirements, since -- unlike D&D -- to get the point break for these limits they actually have to inconvenience you at least some of the time, but that's a Hero wizard for you.
Several hours and they didn't get them done, unsurprisingly, but good progress -- Sherilyn tried and discarded two character concepts, and she's currently angsting about how 250 points isn't enough to make a world-saving hero (about which she may be right, and we may have to up the starting point total to do the kinds of stories I want; life is short). Wendy didn't get far with hers and I didn't hear much about it, but the characters that got some fleshing out have lots of plot hooks and interesting intraparty conflict potential. Chris in particular is making a character with a compelling backstory... though his conversion from evildoer to dogooder still seems to have happened under obscure circumstances, and I'm going to have to ask him about the cause of it.
The Rule of X is going to be hard to enforce, but I'm going to try. Sherilyn wants a complex character with a wide arsenal of powers, which is going to make her X kind of low (so I might come up with another factor for X to represent 'my best attack isn't as effective, but I have a diverse arsenal'). I have to make her fit in the same campaign as Chris's character, who is clearly committed to maxing out a huge attack and high speed and OCV, and with Jason, who is trying to create a energy projecting wizard using the heavily-limited, high-power spells copied right out of the Fantasy Hero Grimoire (the concept should work okay, given that we're talking about a mystic-themed campaign and the character has had some kind of interdimensional training in a more traditionally "mystic" place; I've suggested that 'magic skill roll' be replaced by a regular activation roll, and I'm disallowing the Spell (-1/2) limitation since there isn't a gamewide 'magic system' for it to apply to).
So we'll have to compare X and adjust characters, once they're made. People also seemed moderately to like the mechanism I thought of for enforcing a close X: if the highest-X character in the group wants to increase his OCV or attack, but it would create too big a spread between him and the lowest-X character, he can spend some of his XP on the lowest-X character's powers, represented as figuratively taking your own time to drag the other out to practice combat acumen.
I forgot to ask Jason if he understood that removing that limitation does increase the real point cost - but I'm sure he understands the math. I also have to warn him that he's probably going to find himself annoyed by all the gesture/incantation/focus/concentrate requirements, since -- unlike D&D -- to get the point break for these limits they actually have to inconvenience you at least some of the time, but that's a Hero wizard for you.
