When should your RPG be point buy instead of class based?

[Whipstitch]

If she can block attacks with those, that should function more like a Brick soak than a Dodge anyway.

Not really. Super powers are really diverse and make no goddamn sense, so ultimately you need to accept a heavy degree of abstraction and concentrate more on things like whether or not the power is a passive ability rather than fret too much about whether the no sell is due to intangibility, flash steps, magic bracers or selling a shitload of comics. For example, Captain America and Wonder Woman can theoretically no sell damn near anything with their shield or bracers but those powers are conditional and not passive. Super speed, sneakiness or extreme skill can all directly result in Steve or Diana getting punched right in the mouth whereas Superman's toughness functions more like a GTFO ability vs. people too low level to hang with Kryptonians.

[Username17]

Since HERO isn't balanced at all if you don't have impromptu balance discussions and negotiate a place for each character on the spectrum of available numbers, I don't really much care if a bunch of people claim to have played the game without doing that. HERO requires a lengthy discussion of balance points and acceptable point expenditures between the player and the GM. If you weren't doing that, you were playing the game wrong. And if a lot of people chime in to say they weren't doing that, it just means a lot of people were playing the game wrong.

What is the point of "Martial Artist" as a class? If you have soak and dodge as meaningfully distinct mechanics, I can understand needing a defense class that's not Brick, but if you have Speedster then you're taken care of. "Martial Artist" feels like it has the same problem as "Fighter." It's not quite as bad as Fighter, because at least there are a lot of good abilities people will believe are "martial arts," but at the same time, anyone with the good martial arts abilities will shade into a different archetype.

First of all, the power fantasy of being "super strong" is different from the power fantasy of being "super fast." That is why The Thing is a different character from Quicksilver. But the fantasy of being "super skilled" is also different, which is why Hawkeye is different from both.

Martial Artist characters are probably tough and strong and fast, but they win because of a mix of those and skill and gumption and shit. Not because their powers overwhelm the problem. So Spiderman, for example, is a Martial Artist type. He can't lift and throw the kinds of things that Thor or Hulk can, he can't run as fast as Quicksilver and doesn't have the arsenal that Iron Man does. But he's still a high end Avenger because he's the most popular Marvel character he's pretty good at a lot of things. Like Captain America. He's a generalist.

It's a very important trope. Remember that some of the most popular characters fit into this mold rather than being Speedsters, Bricks, or Capes.

I really don't know anything about Wonder Woman. I had always assumed that she could, if not bounce bullets off her chest, tank a lot of force through raw toughness. I pretty much thought of her as "female Superman" minus flying. Supposing I'm wrong about how much-super toughness I have, doesn't she have some kind of indestructible armband things? If she can block attacks with those, that should function more like a Brick soak than a Dodge anyway.

Wonderwoman in particular gets changed around a lot. Sometimes she's a literal demigod who can fly and bounce bullets off her chest, sometimes she's just a highly trained Amazon warrior princess who can block bullets with her arm bands. So one version is like a female Superman and the other version is like a female Captain America.

When I step back from emulating existing characters and think about inventing new martial artists, it seems to me that people who literally do Asian martial arts should be either flying, nuking things with energy blasts, using utility psionics, or have some mystical invulnerability. People who don't do kung fu but are just "good at fighting" should either be gadgeteers, or really low-level Bricks and Speedsters.

The Martial Artist type doesn't necessarily practice Eastern martial arts or even a specific martial art. They just have "being skillful" as a higher priority than strength, speed, blasts, or super weapons. They might have a power (like Spiderman's wall crawling or Angel's flight), they might have a signature item (like Captain America's shield or Aquaman's trident), but they win combats because of their "martial prowess" rather than overwhelming opponents with their powers or toys.

That is the Martial Artist class. And it's an important one. And it's one that scales to any power level, since you could always be less strong than the Hulk but still win because you are more skillful.

-Username17

[Orion]

That is the Martial Artist class. And it's an important one. And it's one that scales to any power level, since you could always be less strong than the Hulk but still win because you are more skillful.-Username17

I almost objected to this on the grounds that there is a minimum level of super strength you need to win against Hulk. You don't have to be equally strong, but you do have to be capable of hurting him. Then I realized I was making a mistake. I was thinking of the archetypes in terms of role protection or lists of available powers, such that a "martial artist" became a "brick" as soon as they bought any level of super strength. But of course, we're not talking about that. We're talking about allowed ranges of numbers. So if I understand correctly, what you're saying is that martial artists are allowed to have superhuman strength, even strength that is explicitly a superpower. They're just not allowed to have a large amount of it compared to other characters on the same level. The point is that a level 5 hero can either be a Brick and get Super Strength 6 and Combat Skill 4, or be a martial artists and get Super Strength 4 and Combat Skill 6. Is that correct? If so, that brings me a lot closer to your position, but I'm still skeptical because I've never seen a game where being "skilled at fighting" did anything. Whether it makes you better at avoiding attacks, or better at hitting attacks, or deal more damage with your attacks, it's always interchangeable with "strength," "speed," or "reflexes." The only difference is that those all suggest related utility powers and open up new ways to solve problems in the story, while being "skilled at fighting" doesn't. If you already have a "speedster" profile, I would expect their +to hit, +to doge, +to damage, and +to soak to be almost identical to the "martial artist's" numbers. The martial artist will still need a utility schtick, which will almost certainly be technological, so unless your classes only affect combat they might want to be rolled up as a gadgeteer.

With the Avengers, I flatly refuse to accept that Spidey is the same level as Thor, Quicksilver, or Iron Man. Iron Man can fly so good he can escape combat by going stratospheric, and in some versions can respond to events anywhere in the world in a timely fashion. He has AoE weapon that can drive off whole packs of mooks. In his downtime, he can make spare suits to power up cohorts, design power plants and AIs to solve various problems, and screw the rules he has money. Spiderman can travel vertically where there's buildings and punch out mooks one at a time in between rounds spend on full dodge. Since he's so much lower level than the rest, you don't need a martial arts archetype to explain why he's different from them. He could be a lower-level Iron Man (he has a self-made suit with vertical mobility and wrist-mounted ranged weapons), a lower-level Quicksilver (he can fight humans by avoiding all their attacks, and his horizontal mobility is better than human normal), or a low level Hulk (he can punch out enemies without using weapons, he can take a hit better than most, and he can save people from small rubble)

[schpeelah]

Flipside: people who engage in cooperative storytelling quite often really want to engage in cooperative fanfiction, particularly when the particular game is explicitly inspired by character driven fiction like the superhero genre. The fact that Spider-Man is a highly popular member of the Avengers fighting alongside Iron Man and Thor means you need to support Spider-Man expies fighting alongside Thor expies. You can only really get away with saying no to extreme power imbalances like Batman vs. Superman.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Since HERO isn't balanced at all if you don't have impromptu balance discussions and negotiate a place for each character on the spectrum of available numbers, I don't really much care if a bunch of people claim to have played the game without doing that. HERO requires a lengthy discussion of balance points and acceptable point expenditures between the player and the GM. If you weren't doing that, you were playing the game wrong. And if a lot of people chime in to say they weren't doing that, it just means a lot of people were playing the game wrong.

This is a weird shift, because originally you were incredulous that such a thing had actually happened and were asserting that if it had happened it was 'very bizarre,' i.e. that it must have been vanishingly are. Well, you did get a bunch of further examples of that happening, so it seems like it's not actually that rare and now you're shifting goalposts.

Going off about how other people are 'doing it wrong' is also weird. I don't think the text actually supports you; this kind of negotiation isn't really mentioned, certainly not as some sort of vital necessity. There's an actual character creation checklist in my book, and 'negotiate your class' simply isn't on that list.

And while I agree that the game is better if you do negotiate your class, the kind of unbalancing that really upsets people isn't in the CV/DC/SPD/etc. numbers. The Mental Mole's numbers can be completely innocuous and he will still cause table flips. A dude who hits hard and also accurately mostly just gets voted MVP more often.

[DSMatticus]

For what it's worth, I have only GM'd HERO (and not to run a supers game), and we handled chargen vaguely as Frank described except far more informally. We chatted back and forth online about what everyone wanted to play, what they wanted to be good at, what they were willing to not be good at, and I had some vague idea of what the "center" should be and suggested numbers around that to reflect their strengths and weaknesses. Because it's fucking HERO, and you absolutely cannot make an even approximately balanced party without active GM participation in the process. I don't find it as surprising as Frank that other people don't do that, because I have long since stopped finding it surprising that people are generally shit at balance. Apparently a decade (and change?) of internet arguments haven't quite beaten the optimist out of him.

Now, as far what the HERO system books actually say? They tell the GM to be an active participant in vetting and balancing all the god damn time. It's #8 on the character creation checklist. There's even an optional (90% of the book is optional, so no surprises there) rule of X where you are supposed to plug all of a character's offensive and defensive capabilities into a formula and the result shouldn't exceed a certain amount. Now, I've never even heard of someone using the rule of X, but that's not really the point. The point is that the HERO book itself is acutely aware that it does not produce balanced results, and it can't go more than a couple of pages without reminding the reader that the GM needs to be involved in deciding if their character is balanced or not. If your GM takes a laissez-faire approach to balance, yes, he is totally ignoring what the book actually says. Negotiation and GM vetting is mentioned everywhere. You probably saw it so many times you just started tuning it out.

[Orion]

Every time Frank mentions Rampant, all I can think is

[angelfromanotherpin]

Because it's fucking HERO, and you absolutely cannot make an even approximately balanced party without active GM participation in the process.

This is false. I've been in groups that managed it.

Now, as far what the HERO system books actually say? They tell the GM to be an active participant in vetting and balancing all the god damn time. It's #8 on the character creation checklist.

I don't think anyone's advocating to kick the GM out of character vetting in this or indeed any game. But the details matter, and what the book (at least in the edition I have) actually tells you to do re: balanced characters bears very little resemblance to Frank's 'negotiate damage/defense/combat value tradeoffs.' The #8 thing on the checklist is 'submit for GM review and approval,' which is importantly different than 'prenegotiate improvised class limits relative to other characters.' In the DM section, under the headings 'Participating in the Character Creation Process' and 'Building Balanced Characters,' there's nothing about that sort of negotiation. It's mostly 'you are going to find that some abilities generally problematic; spot-fix those things,' and 'make sure people don't spend all their points on fightan.' The part about keeping characters from stepping on each others schticks is making sure two characters don't both have the same basic concept and power set.

[DSMatticus]

This is false. I've been in groups that managed it.

No offense, but I trust this about as much as I trust people telling me they played in a campaign where the fighter was the best party member. It's totally possible, but nine times out of ten it's not that that they were the best party member so much that nobody was paying attention to how much they sucked.

But more to the general point, do not even pretend HERO/Champions/etc look anything like any other game in existence when it comes to GM vetting. There is no comparison. It is not just that specific abilities get called out as potentially problematic (where specific abilities is a fourth of them), character creation and the GM section are full of warnings that you, the GM, must be ever vigilant lest you or your players fuck everything up. It is nothing like D&D, at all.

The #8 thing specifically calls out for the GM to make sure that characters are "well-rounded." The rule of X is explicitly intended to resolve the "someone maxed everything" problem. The book is aware of these problems, makes the GM aware of these problems, and strongly suggests the GM do something about them. Over and over and over. Both with vague hints and fairly detailed optional guidelines. HERO is a game that wears its DIY approach to balance on its sleeve, and you are definitely supposed to actually DIY instead of not doing it at all.

[OgreBattle]

So how does "skillful martial artist" work in a game with superman and ironman, but not in D&D?

[Chamomile]

Is skillful martial artist, as a concept, not viable in a game of D&D? So far as I know there's nothing wrong with the Monk concept, its execution was just balls in 3.X.

[hyzmarca]

The problem with doing classes for a hero is that they're all practically unique classes.

Lets take a look, really.

Spider-Man's powers are:
Wall Climbing - At Will
Enhanced Strength - Always
Enhanced Agility - Always
Combat Precog (Spider-Sense) - Always
Signature Weapon - Web Shooter (Ammo Limited)


And that's just his basic kit.
When he levels up he gets
Spinnerets - At Will web shooting

And then on his next level up he gets mystical stinger things that are quickly forgotten about.

And that's not mentioning temporary kit like the Iron Spider Suit, the Symbiote and the Spider-Mobile. Or temporary powers like Six Arms.



Then there's Wolverine. His Powers are
Enhanced Senses
Adamanium Bones
Claws
Regeneration

As he levels up, his regeneration gets stronger. Sometimes he loses his Adamantium bones.

They might both be martial artists, but they're very different.

Matt Murdock's Power is Blindsight, and that's it. He's otherwise just a crazy dude who dresses up like the devil and fights mafioso and ninjas and ninja mafioso.

Captain America's Power is Peak Human Physiology, all of his stats are maxed out to the racial maximum. In D&D terms he has 18s all the way down the board. He also has an indestructible shield that can block any attack and works as a thrown weapon, and a bunch of skill points in Leadership and Diplomacy.


Hulk only has Strength and Regeneration, but his power schedule is "Angry" and his single power takes the form of a strength multiplier based on his anger level. The madder he gets the stronger he gets, with no upper limit.
He also has a number of feats or manuvers, such as the Thunderclap, where he claps so hard the shockwaves injure everyone around him, and jumping across oceans. Leaping is his primary mode of travel.

Mister Fantastic is smart and stretchy.
Johnny Storm is on fire.
Invisible Woman can become invisible, and also project forcefields. When she turns evil she can use these forecefields as weapons, either crushing people, exploding them from the inside, or cutting them with absurdly thin blades.

The Thing is made of rock. This gives him super strength and durability, but it's set, unlike Hulk's. And he doesn't leap around. Both may be bricks, but they're very different bricks.

This is, of course, because superheroes aren't created to play games with, they're created to tell comic book atories with. And powersets that make for interesting stories arent the same ones that make for balanced games.

If you want to emulate your favorite characters you have to do a lot of tweaking. A

[RadiantPhoenix]

The problem with doing classes for a hero is that they're all practically unique classes.

Lets take a look, really.

Spider-Man's powers are:
Wall Climbing - At Will
Enhanced Strength - Always
Enhanced Agility - Always
Combat Precog (Spider-Sense) - Always
Signature Weapon - Web Shooter (Ammo Limited)


And that's just his basic kit.
When he levels up he gets
Spinnerets - At Will web shooting

And then on his next level up he gets mystical stinger things that are quickly forgotten about.

And that's not mentioning temporary kit like the Iron Spider Suit, the Symbiote and the Spider-Mobile. Or temporary powers like Six Arms.

Peter Parker is also a comic-book smart-guy and can thus make basically any super-gadget the plot requires. Like his web-shooters.

[virgil]

So how does "skillful martial artist" work in a game with superman and ironman, but not in D&D?

Keep in mind that Captain America is not in the same league as Iron Man. The martial artists that can compete use kung fu as a power source for full blown eastern mysticism, which more than a few people stop counting as martial arts and put them in some other category.

Did you know one of Iron Man's major nemesis is a martial artist, who can most definitely compete?


The various comic book characters that are near-solely fueled by kung fu are largely in the same tier as Wolverine. Except for Karate Kid, I don't know of any comic martial artists that are in higher tiers without their martial arts becoming a secondary powerset.

[Stubbazubba]

Is skillful martial artist, as a concept, not viable in a game of D&D? So far as I know there's nothing wrong with the Monk concept, its execution was just balls in 3.X.

Frank's description of the Martial Artist isn't a Monk, it's a Fighter:

The Martial Artist type doesn't necessarily practice Eastern martial arts or even a specific martial art. They just have "being skillful" as a higher priority than strength, speed, blasts, or super weapons. They might have a power (like Spiderman's wall crawling or Angel's flight), they might have a signature item (like Captain America's shield or Aquaman's trident), but they win combats because of their "martial prowess" rather than overwhelming opponents with their powers or toys.

That is the Martial Artist class. And it's an important one. And it's one that scales to any power level, since you could always be less strong than the Hulk but still win because you are more skillful.

[Josh_Kablack]

But of course, we're not talking about that. We're talking about allowed ranges of numbers. So if I understand correctly, what you're saying is that martial artists are allowed to have superhuman strength, even strength that is explicitly a superpower. They're just not allowed to have a large amount of it compared to other characters on the same level.

Yes. Captain America (Martial Artist) is the sort of super-strong what can throw a motorcycle across a room. Spider Man (Martial Artist) is the sort of super-strong what can lift a bus full of bystanders. These are both feats of super-strength, and notable in their solo books. But in team books, their super-strength is an aside, since they get to pal around with characters like Thor (Cape) who can carry a loaded 747 and the Hulk (Brick), who can literally move mountains, plural.

[Whipstitch]

So how does "skillful martial artist" work in a game with superman and ironman, but not in D&D?

D&D and comic books both have the same consent problem--people sometimes nope the fuck out when a character's abilities change too much. However, lots of comic book and manga martial artists are mutants, explicitly magical, robotic, augmented or are space aliens, so you can end up with a much higher ceiling than that of a shit covered farmer who joins the militia. If you're doing the super hero equivalent of 1-20 at some point you probably going to prestige class and and have overlap with other archetypes but then again the same thing goes for a brick who nabs himself an Infinity Gem.

[momothefiddler]

Fucking seriously? You've never had a GM who had a problem with you maxing out the CVs, Defenses, Speeds, and Damage outputs at the same time? Really? That's such a weird claim that I can't even decide whether you're just doing your weird contrariness trolling or whether you're actually reporting your own true and very bizarre life story.

Since HERO isn't balanced at all if you don't have impromptu balance discussions and negotiate a place for each character on the spectrum of available numbers, I don't really much care if a bunch of people claim to have played the game without doing that. HERO requires a lengthy discussion of balance points and acceptable point expenditures between the player and the GM. If you weren't doing that, you were playing the game wrong. And if a lot of people chime in to say they weren't doing that, it just means a lot of people were playing the game wrong.

To be fair, I didn't actually make that claim. I've never played HERO. I specified point-based games. But your original claim was "Nobody does that", which is pretty clearly wrong. Your new claim "People who do that are doing it wrong and shouldn't" is actually something I'll take a lot more seriously, though I think it is theoretically possible to make it work (e.g. make your point totals low enough compared to your caps that people can't max everything out, and they won't, and thus they'll have trade offs - I've played games where this happened.)

[Username17]

HERO specifically exhaustively and repeatedly tells you to do exactly the thing I was surprised that hogarth claimed he had never done. I honestly have a very real suspicion that most of the people who claim they weren't doing it actually were and just doing it informally. I stand by calling bullshit on anyone who says that their Champions GM wouldn't raise a fuss if they maxed out their defenses and their combat values and their attack dice at the same time. I would totally believe that there are people who played in games where the GM never explicitly stated such a limitation, but if push cam to shove and you showed up with a Speedster/Martial Artist/Brick those GMs would say "no." They just fucking would. Maybe they'd say the character was too min/maxish, maybe they'd say it wasn't well rounded enough, whatever.

-Username17

[momothefiddler]

Hrm. A valid argument. I do recall a point-buy game where there ended up being a lot of negotiation regarding which pool of points things got to count as and what things were allowed. There was never any explicit cap tradeoffs or variant caps per player to match concept, but there were a lot of things that could be argued as an informal attempt at that.

Alright.

[Grek]

As a point in favour of Frank's soft classes idea, M&M has it explicitly stated in the rules that every campaign has a Power Level, and that if any of your Accuracy + Damage for an attack, Toughness Defense + Evasion Defenses, or Willpower Defense + Fortitude Defense is higher than twice the Power Level, your character is numerically inappropriate for that campaign. Also, if you show up with any of those pairings having one number more than 1.5x the other number, the DM should make you change it unless you have a very, very good reason why it should be allowed.

M&M doesn't have the same classes Frank is suggesting for HERO, but there definitely are classes that you're going to end up adhering to just because those are what the system supports well.

[Insomniac]

HERO is a game where you can buy your Offense and your Defense bonus. It can be very easy for somebody you took just a trivial amount of Martial Arts and then did something like...

OCV, Hand to Hand Combat, Limited to Martial Arts only, Obvious Inaccessible Focus (Sacred Talisman from my Kung Fu instructor) and just be totally off of what other people bring to the table. If most people think 6 or 8 or 10 is sufficient, a martial artist could accidentally show up with like, 15+ with even trivial expenditure of points and never miss his or her opponents, which is obvious problematic.

This goes to blasting and other powers. The things to watch out for are exclamation point/DANGER powers and people buying their OCV and DCV and defenses through a bunch of Foci or "Limited to X only" or needing Activation rolls and the like.


That isn't so much a problem with min maxing or munchinkinism. It can just accidentally occur. And with groups of 4 or 5 people, it is very likely that it will. That is why with point buy, probably even dramatically more so than in class based games, MC and group creation of characters with accuracy, damage and defense guidelines and hard caps is essential.
Especially in a game like GURPS or HERO where players are almost certainly going to be very new to the system if not reading it for the very first time.

I mean, yeah, you could choose to tell the players to just go willy nilly and bring whatever they choose is sufficient, just like you can drive 30 miles over the speed limit with one hand while drunk and wearing an eyepatch. You could do that, but you're probably gonna crash. And just because the game doesn't turn into a steaming pile of wildly divergent offense and defense power levels one time doesn't mean you won't plow into that abutment the next time.

[Insomniac]

Edit: Keep in mind just how large a very comprehensive and crunchy system can get, too. Hero 5th edition, called FRED by many (Fifth Revised Edition) is a honking, intimidating book. Its like a 600 pager hardcover that was so intimidating that there were rumors around that it could stop small caliber handgun and rifles as a sort of uber-geeky body armor. Its absurdly large and intimidating. You'll probably be helping people make their first or second characters anyhow because the game is OMG ITS HOOJ HALP ME! big.

FrankTrollman said anything beyond the most trivial, linear arithmetic turns people's brains into butterscotch pudding and a lot of point buy systems have Derived Attributes, subtraction and addition and multiplication of power costs.

The power costs such and such base points and then +1/2 minus -1/4 +1/4 then -1/2 and you're buying it through an Elemental Power Framework so that means...

That means the new player's brain is now butterscotch pudding.

[Foxwarrior]

What's the point of being so comprehensive and crunchy if everything's made up and the points don't matter?

[hogarth]

Fucking seriously? You've never had a GM who had a problem with you maxing out the CVs, Defenses, Speeds, and Damage outputs at the same time?

Generally we played at a low enough power point level that maxing everything out at once would be impossible without silly levels of cheese.