Rate My Build (Heroes)

Games Sentinel Comics RPG
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For Fjur's submission, I will likely be able to rate it on thursday.

For KJ_Max's submission, I'm uncertain of when I'll be able to rate it. I will make an initial note that you didn't swap abilities between Archetypes; You swapped them between Power Sources. Specifically, you swapped Halt from Alien for A Plan For Everything from Genius. This distinction can be important, and I'm inclined to say that your build would function mostly the same if you just used Halt instead (at a quick glance).

 

Otherwise, when I get around to rating builds, I'll either edit them into this post or post them fresh here.

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I corrected the swap detail, that paragraph was the last bit I typed. 

Halt only functions at close range and doesn't have the element that simulates absorbing part of the incoming energy.

 

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@kj_max

As a GM, I'd probably frown upon your swap, and at least ask you for some sort of tradeoff to balance for it.

Basically, you dropped one ability that was readily at your disposal for another that does the same, but at broader range and plus an extra effect... narratively fitting or not, that seems a quite obvious move to wedge out more power :)

 

On the other hand, I love the backstory you're telling there! Very cool, imaginative, and really gives a good idea of how your Hero ticks.

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I agree with der andere Jan. If I were your GM, I would encourage you not to swap things around.

Also, I know some of us are thinking it, so I'll just say it: Tek seems a bit like Unity, but from SPACE. ; )

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It's been a while since I've played the card game, so I don't think I'd come across Unity.

The idea for Tek (still not sold on the name) goes back to a weekend several years ago when I watched Dispicable Me, The Increadibles, Megamind, and about a dozen episodes of Invader Zim, because the winter weather was so bad I didn't go out for three days and I was out of things to do. 

On the balance question, I put some thoughts on the character creation thread where the subject had already come up.

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Where as to me, it seems a lot of posters here get locked into Guided Method (The book does 90% of the work for you) or Constructed Method (the book does 40% of the work for you), that they just ignore the Third Method (You have a concept? You build it!). In my limited free time, I've been trying to update the Cauldron heroes to SC:RPG, and lemme tell you, you can't do a bunch of them without using the Third Method. Sometimes the Constructed Method just doesn't work for what you want to build. 

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" Where as to me, it seems a lot of posters here get locked into Guided Method (The book does 90% of the work for you) or Constructed Method (the book does 40% of the work for you), that they just ignore the Third Method (You have a concept? You build it!). In my limited free time, I've been trying to update the Cauldron heroes to SC:RPG, and lemme tell you, you can't do a bunch of them without using the Third Method. Sometimes the Constructed Method just doesn't work for what you want to build."

That's been my impression too so far.

 

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Because I've usually come up with the character concept / personality before I even start character generation, I've almost exclusively used the third method of just building it. :-) It's really a fun exercise in posibilities, and has always resulted in me rethinking aspects of the character that make them (to me) more interesting! 

EDIT: I was wrong -- I use the second method and never the third. :-\ 

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You can do whatever you want to do, no one is going to stop you. Some of us may want to fully realise our character concept, without heeding constricting rules; and some of us may want to follow those rules, because they help maintain a balanced play experience. No one way is better than the other (although I do personally prefer one way other the other, as you can see above : P).

(Also, if we want to continue this discussion, I suggest someone start a new thread. This thread is for rating hero builds, not discussing levels of rule-following. ; ))

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So I got the book yesterday and decided to try out character creation. I had a character in mind and tried to choose abilities that would support her power set, so I am well aware she’s nowhere near optimized, but I still felt like sharing:

 

Smokescreen

Alias: Alexa Stanford

Gender: female

Age: 22

Height: 1.65 m

Eyes: brown

Hair: black

Skin: caucasian

Build: slim

Costume: When Alexa “suits up”, her whole body gets covered in a thick, sooty-black skin. With her movements, cracks form in the skin that immediately meld together again. thick smoke is constantly billowing from those cracks. Her eyes in this form glow like red embers

 

Backstory: Alexa was possessed by a spirit at the age of fifteen. Under the control of that spirit, she went on a destructive rampage until stopped by a group of villains. The spirit was exorcised from her body, but a tiny part of it remains. That part is no longer strong enough to take control outright, but it is a constant battle of will for Alexa to maintain power over her own body. The more she taps into the spirit’s power of controlling smoke and heat, the harder that battle becomes.

Feeling the spirit grow in power within her, Alexa has decided that she should use that power to make up for her previous misdeeds for as long as she can. And if she is with other heroes, at least someone will be near to take her down when the spirit finally wrests back control.

 

Background: Former Villain

Power Source: Supernatural

Archetype: Armored

Personality: Distant

 

Principle of Whispers: You hear a voice in your head that no one else hears. The voice tells you things which might be true or false, but the voice certainly seems to know a lot.

Principle of the Indestructible: You ignore damage from unpowered close-combat weapons and attacks such as clubs and non-powered fists, or basic ranged attacks such as slings and arrows.

 

Powers:

Fire: 8

Strength: 8

Duplication: 10

Agility: 10

Awareness: 10

 

Qualities:

Otherworldly Mythos: 10

Imposing: 8

Acrobatics: 6

Close Combat: 10

Possessed: 8

 

Abilities - Green

Sootskin (Armored): Reduce any physical or energy damage you take by 1 while you are in the Green Zone, 2 while in the Yellow zone, and 3 while in the Red zone

Mirrored Strike (Dual Offense): Attack using Duplication. Attack a second target with your Min die.

Smoke Ring (Living Bulwark): Attack using Fire. Defend another target with your Min die.

Strike from Concealment (Unstoppable Charge): Attack using Agility. ignore all penalties on this Attack, ignore any Defend actions, and it cannot be affected by Reactions.

Principle of Whispers: Overcome against a challenge that involves information you have no real way of knowing and use your Max die. You and each ally gain a hero point

Principle of the Indestructible: Overcome in a situation where you charge headlong into danger and use your Max die. You and each ally gain a hero point

 

Abilities - Yellow

Billowing Cloud (Mass Modification): Boost or Hinder using Fire and apply that to multiple close targets

Smoke and Mirrors (Reach through Veil): When a nearby ally would take damage, Defend that ally by rolling your single status die and move them elsewhere in the same scene.

 

Abilities - Red

Where there’s Smoke, there’s Fire (Powerful Strike): Attack using Fire. Use your Max + Mid dice

Funnel the Strike (Reactive Defense): When an opponent Attacks, you may become the target of that attack and Defend by rolling your single Close Combat die.

Reveal the Thing Inside (Ultimatum): Hinder using Imposing. Use your Max and Min die. Boost yourself or an ally with your Mid die.

 

Smoke Shield (Impenetrable Defense): Defend using Duplication with your Max + Mid die against all attacks against you until your next turn

Army of Spirits (Summoned Allies): Use Duplication to create a number of d6 Minions equal to your Mid die. Choose the one same basic action that they each perform. The all act at the start of your turn.

 

Abilities - Out

Boost an ally by rolling your single red Status die

 

Comments

Armored really isn’t a very good Archetype, but most of the other choices I rolled didn’t work with the concept at all. It does have the added advantage of turning the skin from a purely cosmetic thing into a valuable part of the character. It also made Indestructible an easy choice for the second Principle.

Fire here is more representative of creating and controlling hot smoke than actual fire for this character.

Before starting chargen, I had envisioned the character more as someone hangs out in the backlines and uses smoke to conceal allies (Defend) or choke and blind enemies (Hinder). The way the dice and abilities fell, she’s more of a front-line tank now, but still does some of that. The duplication power also gave me the idea to have her create duplicates of herself out of smoke, which is more interesting than just formless clouds.

Status dice are 10/8/6 which is not ideal, but it fits very well story-wise. It represents how Alexa has to concentrate more on keeping control of the thing inside her the longer the battle goes.

Red abilites especially were chosen more for flavor than for optimization. If I really wanted to optimize. I’d probably have gone with Eruption + Improved Immunity, both using Fire, for the obvious combo potential.

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Smokescreen seems to have well-rounded Powers and Qualities. 

Inherent damage reduction, Green d10 attack that can't be defended against, multi-boost, and an ability to yank an ally out of trouble -- that's a nice set even without the others.  

Only thing that might be missing is a movement ability, but that's a 50/50 thing on the published characters so I'm not sure how important the system considers a movement power or ability.

 

 

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Vines And Leaves Skitter And Grow

First Impression: Vines (as it will be referred to from here on out), is a wide area controller. 

In the Green Zone, Vines begins with two solid battlefield control options. Grasping Vines allows them to lock down one or two targets quite effectively with precision, while Vine Assault allows them to erode away the health and immediate effectiveness of a wide range of foes (hopefully not catching allies in the process). Speedy Shrub gives a way to reposition safely, offering offense with some limited defense stapled on. 
In the Yellow Zone, Vines pulls out some new tricks. Independent Vine has it sprout a hefty friend to fight alongside it. Risky Lash allows Vines to pour on the offense across multiple targets, at the risk of some self damage. Growing too fast can leave it low on nutrients after all. This is balanced by Natural Absorption, where Vines metabolizes the poor mooks that it fells in it's overgrowth across the battlefield.
In the Red Zone, Vines stick with it's guns. Inescapable Vines means that the targets of it's offense will always be restrained, while Overwhelming Foliage let's it stop as many foes or threats as it wants in their tracks at the drop of a hat. 

Overall, Vines is a very solid wide area controller. I have solid mental images of what it's doing in an action scene. It's main weakness is dealing with single targets, but more on that below.

In terms of a team setting, Vines really wants allies who are adept at handling solo, dangerous targets. It's best option for dealing with them on it's own is Overwhelming Foliage, which is very potent, but lacks consistency beyond tying them up in place for someone else to beat on.

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TEK

I'm going to add some extra text to this one, since I'm finding some difficulty expressing how I feel about the comments made by @KJ_Max about the creation system.

Interstellar granted the Technology d12 and Self Discipline d6.

Alien granted the Robotics d10, Vitality d8, and EMG d8, and raised either the Vitality or EMG die to a d8.

Minion Maker... Ah, here we go. I'm not going to write a rating on Tek, because there was a major creation mistake here. Tek only distributed one of their d8s from Alien in this step, and it's to a power that's not on the list given in Minion Maker. They should have assigned one or more of their three d8s from Alien to a power listed in the Minion-Maker archetype, and then assigned any remaining d8s to qualities listed in the Minion-Maker archetype. Once this is fixed, I will either edit in a proper analysis or make one in a new post.

KJ-Max, I would recommend not building a Minion-Maker as your first character, regardless. They are more complex than most of the archetypes present.

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Smokescreen

First Impression: Smokescreen is a solid up in your face tank.

In the Green Zone, Smokescreen brings on the pain. Strike From Concealment gives them an unblockable attack, while Mirrored Strike allows them to handle two foes to some degree. Smoke Ring is an interesting battlefield control trick, as it can incline enemies to target her instead of whoever she's defending. Sootskin rounds it out with some solid DR, covering both physical and energy damage.
In the Yellow Zone, Smokescreen diversifies their kit. Billowing Cloud gives their allies a chance to set up or locks out set up foes from their full effectiveness momentarily, while Smoke and Mirrors can get an ally out of dodge when hit with an attack. Both are useful tricks to have, and fit well with the theme she's got so far.
In the Red Zone, Smokescreen seems to lose focus. Where There's Smoke, There's Fire is potent offense. Smoke Shield allows them to turtle up for a round, but I'm not the hugest fan of it thematically. I'm not sure whether it's the name, or the actual ability text, but it doesn't seem to fit in very well. Same goes for Army Of Spirits, to a degree. It makes some sense with her backstory, but I'm not able to really picture what she'd be doing to lead into using it.

Overall, Smokescreen is a very capable front line fighter. Damage reduction and utility offenses early on give her a direction that can rarely go wrong, although I'm still a bit confused by the Red Zone.

In terms of a team setting, Smokescreen really wants allies who can wear down multiple targets at once for her. While Mirrored Strike is a good start, and DR helps, Smokescreen might feel a bit helpless mechanically if she get's swarmed by minions in large numbers.

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I think I probably got caught up in following the threads foward and back -- I'm not sure I assigned ANY of the three d8s.  The Flight comes from "retcon" and Alien Polymath is her "unique".  That would explain why it seemed like the example characters were getting so many more dice.

Going to rework some things. 

* Changes made, marked with a dash before the power/quality.

Oh -- thank you.

 

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I will likely be able to rate it on thursday, now that the error has been rectified. Unless someone else posts between now and then, the analysis will be edited into this post.

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Thank for rating Vines etc., catDreaming! (I have considered renaming it simply "Brambles." I do realise that most people don't have time to say a six-word name during battle, but I wanted to keep with the Spirit Island theme.)

I'm glad it came across so clearly as being a "wide area controller." I definitely wanted its schtick to be Hindering (and Attacking) multible targets.

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On Vines/Brambles...  Is Natural Absorbtion as creepy as it sound?

 

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Yep... I guess it is. I did not think through that ability when I assigned it. : P

138

Thanks for the evaluation of Smokescreen. I took a critical look at my red abilities and I see how they don't fit very well thematically. And when I took another look at the abilities in the book, I realised there is a whole page of red powers that work with qualities instead of powers that I had completely missed when building the character. Several of those powers fit Smokescreen's build much better, so I'll be rebuilding that part of the character.

Edit: I have chosen two new red abilities and updated Smokescreen's post. I do like the ability selection better now and I think she's keeping focus on her role as tanky front-line fighter/protector with these abilities.

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With Tek and Smokescreen updated, now seems a good time to update analyses on them. First Smokescreen, since I only need to update the end of their analysis, then Tek, since I need to write one wholesale.

Smokescreen

First Impression: Smokescreen is a solid up in your face tank.

In the Green Zone, Smokescreen brings on the pain. Strike From Concealment gives them an unblockable attack, while Mirrored Strike allows them to handle two foes to some degree. Smoke Ring is an interesting battlefield control trick, as it can incline enemies to target her instead of whoever she's defending. Sootskin rounds it out with some solid DR, covering both physical and energy damage.
In the Yellow Zone, Smokescreen diversifies their kit. Billowing Cloud gives their allies a chance to set up or locks out set up foes from their full effectiveness momentarily, while Smoke and Mirrors can get an ally out of dodge when hit with an attack. Both are useful tricks to have, and fit well with the theme she's got so far.
In the Red Zone, Smokescreen doubles down on what they do well. Where There's Smoke, There's Fire gives a potent offensive option, Funnel The Strike, allows Smokescreen to force enemies to target her, and Reveal The Thing Inside is an excellent utility effect for slowing down one foe and preparing herself or an ally for further action.

Overall, Smokescreen is a very capable front line fighter. Damage reduction and utility offenses early on give her a direction that can rarely go wrong, and her options only expand in those directions further as the fighting get's more intense.

In terms of a team setting, Smokescreen really wants allies who can wear down multiple targets at once for her. While Mirrored Strike is a good start, and DR helps, Smokescreen might feel a bit helpless mechanically if she get's swarmed by minions in large numbers. Smokescreen does grow stronger in a team as well though, with Funnel The Strike allowing her to force an enemy to target her when they would target an ally.

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Tek

First Impression: Tek is fundamentally based on their creation of minions.

In the Green Zone, Tek begins by... making minions. To break into mechanics for a moment, Tek's average minion created in the Green Zone using Robotics/Technology on Create Arcanotech Drone will be either a d6 or a d8, with a lean towards a d8. To support her minions (or her allies), Tek also has Arcane Infusion, one of only two Hero abilities in the game that can create persistent non-exclusive bonuses. An important note regarding minion creation: Only one bonus may be consumed to grant a minion an ability, and only one ability may be granted. 
In the Yellow Zone, Tek starts to lose a bit of cohesion. I'm having a bit of difficulty reconciling the name Multipurpose Drone Swarm with the effects of the ability, and I heavily disagree with the swap from Halt to A Plan For Everything. For the sake of coherency, I will be going into more detail on why I have such strong opinions on this below the team setting section of this analysis. Field Upgrades... Well, it exists. It does give the chosen minion a bonus which can be used for either trying to note get one-shotted by any attack that comes at it, or be used to amplify an action, or be used by Tek to grant an ability to another minion if one is created after this point. The average size increase granted by Field Upgrades will be either a d8 or d10, leaning towards a d10, so it's likely to keep the minion alive for another turn cycle. Important note, and so I bold this: Field Upgrades is not able to grant new minion abilities to it's target. 
In the Red Zone, Tek hunkers down for the long haul. Thinking Sideways is a potent defensive measure, and Alien Vitality can replenish large amounts of health in a pinch.

Overall, Tek can't do much without her minions. This is not to say that's always the case; It's just very much true for the Minion-Maker archetype as a whole.

In terms of a team setting, Tek wants allies who can draw attention away from the minions she is making. Without that, it's quite likely that her minions will be disposed of as low risk targets during a fight by minions or other side threats to whatever the main one is. Allies who can also generate boosts (that they consent to being consumed) will also boost her effectiveness.

 

Now, as for the swap of Halt for A Plan For Everything... I understand if it's meant to have Tek absorbing the energy of whatever she's intercepting. However, it doesn't fit with the rest of her thematic kit. Her gauntlets being used are listed as energy manipulators, but lacking the absorption power, it doesn't make a ton of sense that the energy used in the interception can be absorbed for a net gain to be discharged after a delay. Or that she can accurately use such powers in response to something from range. I could be very easily misunderstanding your intention though.
As for an argument as to why Halt can fulfill the same soft mechanics in combination with Field Upgrades or Multipurpose Drone Swarm, consider the following. If Tek is being attacked from long range, she can already have existing minions who can Attack go after that target, or can just have a Defend minion ready to Defend her each turn. If Tek is being attacked at close range, and can trigger halt, the energy being absorbed can be flavored as why her Multipurpose Drone Swarm is able to heal her allies, or can be channeled into whatever new form and/or bonus the minion targeted by Field Upgrades recieves.
If you are planning on using A Plan For Everything as a way to consistently generates bonuses for use in giving minions abilities, I also have some possibly bad news. Your average bonus made from A Plan For Everything is a 14/8, or more precisely a 1.75. You will get a +2 more often than a +1, but that is also contingent on Tek being attacked instead of her minions.Which, if she's at range, requires there to be a visible connection or reasoning to imply that taking her out should shut down the drones (interestingly, rules as written, minions remain active even if the hero creating them goes OUT).

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Would you rather we ask questions about the feedback here, or take them to another thread to keep this one clean for the characters and comments?