Have you ever played in a WoD game (new or old) with a power level that was massively beyond the power level assumed for that game? Like, for example, a Masquerade game where everyone was third or fourth generation, or a Mage game where everyone were third and fourth degree masters?

I read a thread on another website talking about how they played a TriStat dX game using d20s (a human game uses d6'es and a regular superhero game uses d10s) and three hundred point build (where normal games use fifty or something like that).

The result was one of the characters had a lifting strength greater than the total mass of the Earth. Apparently the game fell apart in short order, but the concept intrigued me.

Anyone ever played or run an uber-high-powered game? Maybe not one of (literal) Earth-moving proportions, but you get the drift.

I played in a tabletop Requiem game where we each had an elder and a neonate, with the neonates being the childer of the other players' elders. The elders in that were very high powered, with mine having at least 3 disciplines at 5 and 7 blood potency (I very quickly defected from Primogen of the Carthians to the aide of the Ordo Dracul Primogen when I heard they could stop me drinking vampire blood). That was a very awesome game.

Hmmm... stats-wise, the most high-powered I've ever played starting out was 140-freebies for a VtM vampire. Generation wise, I think the lowest I've got is a 7th. I've been in other games that allowed characters to start out in the 80-100 freebies range. As a general rule of thumb I pretty much don't play vampires that have to start at the standard 15-freebies, because I've done 15-freebie neonates to death.

IC-wise, the most high-powered I've been involved in was a tabletop Archons game. That is, the PCs went around from city to city acting as archons for one of the justicars. That was pretty fun.

As for characters that started out at 15-freebies but then over the course of a long campaign became massively overpowered... my kender Malk at one point was down to 5th gen, after he took part in a group diablerie of a Setite. (There was a Tremere ritual involved which allowed the entire group to benefit.) He also ended up with a bunch of extra abilities and Setite disciplines. But that was a horribly munchkined-out game. ;) Afterward I nerfed him back down to where he was before the game and decided none of it had ever happened. His default state is 9th gen with about 300 XP points put into him (though I usually have to nerf him down from that if I want to play him as a PC anywhere).
This message was last edited by the user at 08:23, Wed 23 May 2007.

I ran one that for our group was over-powered (30 freebies at the start) But, that's just my group. However, what my group found out during the course of the game was that action and violence became insanly easy to finish (for them or their opponent) and we generally found that at a certian level, whoever goes first wins.  Of course, we play so loose with interpretations of the social/mental disciplines that sometimes a brewing fight ends in a small pre-combat phase.

Anyway, in everyone's games, might I ask, did those people that ran the game find it difficult to present a real challenge to their plyers?

Hrm. It's been awhile since I played Masquerade, so my recollection of the Freebie system is very poor. It seems to me like 30 freebies isn't that much when the default is 15. How would you say your characters were insanely powerful at that level?

Of course, I guess I should bear in mind that the old WoD was set at a higher default power level than the new one is.



Anyhow, these are great examples, keep them coming. Hopefully one of these days I'll be able to run a Mage game and actually USE all those awesome fourth and fifth-level Arcana powers.

The freebies would raise a skill or what not at a set ammount if I remember right. a 3rd dot would be the same cost as a first.

Eh I would say they are insanely powerful just because resolutions of conflicts are extremely easy to do. Physical battles don't cut it at a point and social conflicts can be resolved in a snap with the right combination of disciplines. Lord knows with 30 freebies, you could get a Brujah up to 5 presence and 5 celerity if you take 7 points in flaws...and nothing else.

But even when someone doesn't munchkin out their char...

I guess I am saying, in my own way, is that I found it hard to adequately plot out a proper antagonist or antagonists with my charcaters, because at the level they were they were way over-powered compared to normal people or neonates, and seriously underpowered against any obstacle above their level. My PCs were in some kind of limbo where things beneath them were waaaay too easy, and to make something that could give them a challenge, I would almost guarantee half of the party wouldn't survive the encounter.

Hmmmm. Well, in the games where I've played characters starting out at 100-freebies, the epic scope of the storyline went up a corresponding amount too. One of them on here was VtM: Eternal Nights (ran 2003-2004), which was sort of "The Whole World is Doooooomed if the PCs don't figure out how to thwart the Bad Guys fast enough" kind of scope. (Literally. There were some evil Technocrats that had some worldwide apocalyptic plans in mind to eliminate all supernaturals once and for all, in one swell foop.)

I'm running a game where PCs start with 50 freebies. It's actually not as much as it looks like - it's enough to make a character that has a few of the level 5 disciplines/spheres/gifts/whatnot, but not very many. You certainly can't make an ancient powerful being, and many of my NPCs are still more powerful than them. I've not had any problems coming up with interesting things for them to do, but my game isn't particularly combat-oriented much of the time. It isn't an endless series of "here's a monster. go fight it." in D&D style. There are a lot of social conundrums and intellectual enigmas going on too, and they aren't very straightforward.
This message was last edited by the user at 00:10, Fri 25 May 2007.