I generally have players roll the percentiles and THEN pick the column.  Makes char gen a bit more interactive & choice driven.

The harshest roll in VnV is a 1 in powers (ie =3 with a weakness).

If someone gets that, I'm fine with them modifying one or two powers up a bit, so it's almost like they have Power #1 x2 and Power #2 x2 -- and keep the weakness.

Rules actually say to do that, so I figure I'm not too out of line...

Someone had posted a table where the lower the number of powers the more choice the character had.

So if you rolled a one or a two you could pick your powers. On a one you even picked your weakness. the choices were more limited from there until they were completely random.

----------------------------------------------

I pretty much do the same thing.

That is what I am doing in my game for the folks with low powers. That being said I have rolled up several really neat heroes just picking from the column as I roll, even with a low amount of powers. Half the fun is tying everything together. :)

A Powers roll 1 is 2 with a weakness.

At that point I would probably let the player choose their power and their weakness.

In reply to The Guardian (msg #34):

Of course I also allow people to re-roll 1's so the fewest you can get is 3 powers with a weakness.....that does help a little.

So two things: 

1. I'm interested to know people's take on Size Change (Growth UP).  AND
   
2. What would you do if you rolled a villain NPC who is pretty awesome?  Would you play her to her full ability?

1 - SIZE CHANGE
Basically, I want to 'game balance' a player who can grow *really* big (lvl 4) and gets ~ 1400 HP and 3d10 HtH.  He also has regeneration, Weakness Detection, and Height INT & AGI.  In many ways, if he Weakness Detects someone, they are toast.

We are looking at a few ways to balance them out.  A friendly player / GM advistor (and GM in another VnV game) suggested
<quote WW>The system I finally settled on was that the initiative upon which a character acted was modified by whatever agility modifier the new size generated.
A character with a 25 agility that rolled 10 for initiative acts on phase 35. If that character grew to level four size on that phase, their agility would drop by 12, so I drop their initiative by 12 declaring that their next action would occur on phase 8 would be their last on that turn. By the same token, if that same character rolled a 4 for initiative on the following turn, allowing them to act on phase 17, then opted to shrink to normal, increasing their agility (and initiative) by 12, they would be allowed to finish their action (shrinking back is movement only) on phase 14, but would not be able to act more than the number of phases remaining in the turn.
Basically, the agility modifier from growth's weight modifier would cause the character to lose an action or act later but never to gain one.
It also made sense to me that the weight factor was applied to the hit points directly, rather than re-figuring them for each size. Otherwise, the character tends to heal faster at larger size which sets up a situation in which the power can be abused.<quote>
And I added that the character can't roll with punches AND may get KO'd if they lose too many HP AND that their HP are proportional with size.
The hero would still be pretty amazingly tough -- but i think the player might chafe at that.  They may be willing to stop their Growth at max Lvl 3, but I'd like to allow them to do what they rolled ... just don't want it to ruin the game for the others.

2 - Super-Duper Powered Villain NPC's
As for the villain -- I rolled up 2 doozies, and they have been a lot of fun so far, but my concern is they may be unfair b/c they are pretty darned strong, even at Level 1.  The main balancer here is that there are ~ 5 heroes and only 2 villains.  But these villains seem pretty tough.

Any ideas?  Opinions?  Thanks in advance!

http://www.patric.net/morpheus...random_power_gen.htm

From Morpheus



I like this.

I don't think Weaknesses nec are so bad.  Generally I keep them, unless it's a stat with a huge loss.

I don't think Weaknesses nec are so bad.  Generally I keep them, unless it's a stat with a huge loss.

1. Actually, the whole 'Size Change' issue seems to revolve around the prodigious amount of hit points the character's have when grown. It is entirely possible to eliminate Goliath without eliminating his hit points. If the wimpy, agile genius turns invisible and flys up to the back of Goliath's head and kicks him, he would gain to hit bonuses for being invisible and attacking from behind. Utilizing these bonuses to do a special attack to the head would multiply the chances of knocking Goliath out by four, and Goliath would need some special senses to be 'aware' of the attack so that he could roll with the damage. It seems to me, that it's more difficult to handle those that shrink to microscopic (or smaller) size. "I jump on the villain's back and shrink to microscopic size, climbing between the cells in the skin I make my way through his ear canal to his brain pan, then return to normal."
   
2. The heroes in my game recently disbled a granite golem while doing less than an eighth of its total hits. The creature failed a consciousness roll, so I had it get stuck in a hole that had been smashed in the floor. If it ever succeeds with a wake-up roll, I'll rule that it finally tore its way free. This could be bad as the thing still has 484 hit points and does 5d10 damage. The creature is being played to its full ability, but I intend to try hard not to squash the PC of anyone who's still logging on.

A few belated thoughts.

First, the shrinking into someone's brain and expanding is -- I would say -- not terribly heroic. But that is beside the point. :)

The size up is very tough, but remember he weighs probably six tons or more at that size. This is going to limit some places he can stand without breaking stuff or sinking into the ground. He also suffers that -12 Agility penalty. Even with H. Agility, that will take a bit of a bite out of things. (I would, by the way, allow the higher Basic Hits to affect healing rate while grown.)

He's also subject to some attacks that can zap him despite hit points. And that unconscious roll is one thing I'd bring into play, too, although I tend to ignore it most of the time to avoid the extra die rolls.

Second, by all means keep the villain tough. You are not obligated to murder the heroes just because you beat them. You can also arrange for things to draw the villain away. "I'd love to stay here and beat your face into the pavement some more, but the Prometheus diamond requires my attention."

I've found heroes tend to do better than I expect them to do against villains.

In reply to Kid Kinetic (msg #41):

I am reposting this from another game but it is my little foray into keeping a lid on Size Change (Larger) without utterly nerfing it. (I just had issues with any character having enough hit points to literally withstand 3 large nukes (20d20 damage each) and still have over 100 hit points left (granted that damage pretty much assures unconsciousness, but that is not my point...lol)

In case anyone is interested here is something I submitted to the V&V Forum on the Monkey House Games website regarding my suggestions on dealing with Size Change (Larger):

The height and weight of the person change as noted in the rulebook. They do NOT take an Agility penalty for the increased weight (likewise smaller people do not take a bonus for decreased weight). Hit Points are calculated as for the regular height then multiplied by the Height Factor. Carrying Capacity (and HTH damage) is calculated as follows: Height Factor x Normal CC + ((Height Factor -1) x 1000). The person receives Invulnerability per ATTACK equal to the Height Factor – 1 rounded up (to reflect proportional increases in thickness of skin, muscle, bone, and other tissue).

Here is an example of how it would look:

Base Stats: Str 15, End 15, Int 12, Agi 12, Weight 180, Height 6 ft (HPM 3.8)

Normal Size: CC 439 lbs, HTH 1d6, HP 16

1.5 Size: CC 1159 lbs, HTH 1d10, HP 24, Invulerability per Attack 1, (wt. 612) 9 ft

2x Size: CC 1878 lbs, HTH 1d10, HP 32, Invulnerability per Attack 1, (wt. 1440) 12 ft

3x Size: CC 3316 lbs, HTH 1d12, HP 48, Invulnerability per Attack 2, (wt. 4860) 18 ft

4x Size: CC 4756 lbs, HTH 2d8, HP 64, Invulnerability per Attack 3, (wt. 11520) 24 ft

5x Size: CC 6195 lbs, HTH 2d8, HP 80, Invulnerability per Attack 4, (wt. 22500) 30 ft

6x Size: CC 7684 lbs, HTH 2d10, HP 96, Invulnerability per Attack 5, (wt. 38880) 36 ft

7x Size: CC 9073 lbs, HTH 2d10, HP 112, Invulnerability per Attack 6, (wt. 61740) 42 ft

I felt this was a good compromise to still allow for those with Size Change (Larger) to benefit from it but not to the ludicrous levels of HP from how it is as written. Likewise it counters the penalty to Agility that is the bane of some of the larger/heavier types.

In another thread this was posted:




I wonder what the complaint about healing in the game is.

I'm certainly not against healing spells, mutant powers, or psionics that heal, but I've never found the healing rules in the game broken.

I've really never felt a reason to 'keep a lid on' Size Change: Larger. I merely enforce the agility penalty to it's full extent. You only get ludicrous amounts of hit points if you fail to do so.  The example Bonespike used has 85 hit points at size three, but only fifty at size four because agility zeroes out. At size seven the monstrosity has 266 hit points, but an accuracy of -8, and the only agility saves that succeed are when a critical success is rolled. Add to this the initiative being four or less (yes, I do keep the negative numbers), with no action possible on any turn more than half the time, and the power seems nerfed to start with when you get to the largest sizes.


Perhaps the complaint is that it takes a full night's sleep to heal, and then it goes slowly. It's probably just my inane focus on instant gratification, but that's what always bothered me about the healing.

In reply to Star Master (msg #44):

The problem begins if the character was fortunate enough to also acquire Heightened Agility (either one). The character that brought about my thought processes on this issue had an Agility high enough that even at Size 7 it would have had an Agility higher than 10. At Size 3 the character would have had 1300+ hit points, an Agility of 20, an accuracy bonus of +3, a carrying capacity of over 200,000 lbs with a HTH of 6d10. This would be at 18 feet in height and about 4000 lbs weight. At Size 7 the weight would be about 62,000 lbs and the height 42 feet. The modified hit points would be over 11,000. The carrying capacity would be almost 2.7 MILLION lbs with a HTH of 10d10. The Agility would still be 12 for a +1 accuracy. You see the dilemma that comes up. I felt my solution provided a considerable amount of balance. My solution would have that same character having a CC of about 62,000 lbs with a HTH of 5d10. The hit points would be 525, a considerable difference from over 11,000 (at Size 7). At Size 3 that character would have 225 hit points.

I guess it is just a personal thing, having a shred of balance. Maybe that makes me a weak GM in that I don't want to deal with it as written but I can live with that. :p

As GM, of course, you can do anything you like. This is written in the rules somewhere I believe.

Frankly, if I had a character that I felt broke the game, I would just be honest and say we need to change something -- dropping the H. Agility when growing would be my first thought.

I let really weak characters tweak and reroll, so as GM I reserve the right to unbreak the game if random rolls cause a problem.

All these things are true.

But you know, I've made up 8 V&V characters here on RPoL now. Some have been really very weak compared to the monsters thet stood beside, but no GM has ever tweaked my weaker characters down.  But the tough ones that I have rolled have always been tweaked down.


If Size Change is such a problem, why doesnt each GM who dislikes it simply say in their Char Gen, 'if you roll SC, reroll' ... or 'chose another power in its place'.   Why wait till somehow rolls it, then tell them that you'll not allow them to have what they rolled, that you intend to tweak it down?

In reply to Magnette (msg #47):

Well, now that I have decided how to handle it if someone rolls it I will have listed ahead of time my changes. If they don't particularly agree with how I houseruled it they can either have that be a dropped power or roll again. That being said I still think the power is useful (even a slightly above average stats character would get some tweakage from it without losing accuracy) just not nearly as over-the-top as how it is rules as written.

GMs are not perfect, of course, but I know I always try to make decisions that improve the overall game for all players. That means making sure even "weak" characters have some sort of way they can shine or play an important role. It also means making sure none of the characters is so unbalanced that it undermines the game.



In Bonespike's example the "problem" arose because of the combination of SC and H. Agility. The GM cannot predict every possible combo that might lead to difficulty.

Is there any mechanism in this game's rules/mechanics for grappling; grabbing hold of some little shit, and beating the hell out of him ... in a way that, once you've successfully held them, it's easier to hit them round after round?

In reply to Magnette (msg #50):

VnV version 2 has mexican wrestling rules which cover it.

Cos I'd love for one of my characters to be able to do this.

Not sure why, but I always have players min-maxing their heroes.  Have never had problems with certain players, but a few show the signs in character creation.

I'm probably one of them.  I never try to overpower, but I always try to make something interesting/great/fun when I get Mutant Power, Body Power, Psionic, etc.

I rolled Silver Dragon w/Psi Power and Magic Spells, which was a lot of fun to come up with.  Switched it all to 'Chi Powers'.  Talk about a crazy combo -- when the GM saw what I rolled, I think they got worried too.

When I started playing, the GM said Silver Dragon was the heavyweight hero in the group -- but he didn't have any heavyweight powers, just potential, IMO.

In reply to Silver Dragon (msg #53):

Speaking of Magic Spells I have been thinking about them some. If each spell is roughly equivalent to say 2/3 or 3/4 of a power then by 4th level a character with Magic Spells would have about the equivalent of 3 or 4 new powers whereas others have small incremental improvements to one attack type, one damage type, one attribute, etc. Wondering if anyone else feels a little twinge of concern about the possible ramifications of such a difference in power between levels? It isn't like I totally want to nerf Magic Spells but there is a definite difference between 3/4 of a power and a +1 to one attack. Thoughts?