The Supermen - starting with more than 5k XP

[Garner]

Hello everyone,

I'm slowly talking members of my usual gaming group into the idea of a Battletech RPG. At the moment, I only have two definately interested and willing, and experience with other RPGs suggests that micro-scale parties will always suffer from skill or tallent deficits even if individual challenges and encounters are planned and scalled down to match them.

I always fear running a GMPC, for all the various problems that can arise from that style of play, and I'd like for my players to really fall in love with their characters and the setting so as to be my apostles to the rest of the group.

To this end, I'm thinking of going through the character generation with a higher than normal XP pool, but I'm not really sure yet what would be 'advantageous' and what would be 'munchkinitis'

Would a 6k starting pool be a good idea, or is that overkill even for deliberately overpowered characters?

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I'm not sure I understand what the point would be.

I mean, you COULD start D&D characters at 5th level or 10th level etc.  But why bother?  There's fun to be had as 'noobs'.

As a rule of thumb, I'd strongly recommend against starting 'up-powered' characters in ANY game system unless you're both very familiar with the system AND have a special campaign in mind.

If you don't think 5000xp characters can be made to do anything 'well enough', you might want to re-evaluate what 'well enough' means.  In Total Warfare terms, you can make an elite character with better than standard piloting/gunnery TNs, for example.

In ATOW, there are rather harsh penalties for attempting unskilled actions.  You need to be really careful to not over-specialize, and giving more than the standard points to players who are not familiar with the system is more likely than not going to backfire, imo.

[Garner]

Okay... The point would be improving survivability and functionality for a two man team. Maybe I didn't make that clear?

Let's take the D&D model. We have two players, who will be playing one character each. Plaer 1, let's call him Zimmy, only ever plays rogue type characters. Player 2, let's call her Zimmina, prefers to play brute force fighters. The party, in D&D terms, lacks a wizard and a healer. There are certain situations they will struggle with that a party of 4 would waltz through, and there are other situations that they may not be able to survive at all. In 3rd edition D&D, we could use the gestalt character option from Unearthed Arcana and let them combine two classes each, but A Time of War is classless, and all I have to work with are the starting XP pools.

Let's look at this in terms of BattleTech archetypes: Imagine that we start with 5k XP. Zimmina is going to play a mechwarrior and Zimmy is going to play a scout with no vehicular capibilities. On the ground, away from Zimmina's 'Mech, the party of two has a serious lack of skills and options. There are entire vistas and avenues of plots and adventures that would prove an insurmountable challenge because they just don't have enough skills to cover a lot of options.

Adding a third player into the mix dramatically changes the economy of specialisations. In fact, our total gaming group can number up to 10 players, plus a GM. Balancing fights and challenges requires some effort, but at least we can be relatively sure that every core role will be covered, and very rarely will the entire party be unable to proceed with an adventure because we lack a specialisation.

But at the moment we don't have that kind of luxury. We have two people interested in playing. I have plenty of ideas for adventures, the players are increadibly inventive and adaptable, but they won't be able to execute a lot of plans.

So I'd like to start them out with characters that have broader skill ranges, rather than just two or three maximised skills. Raising their starting XP pool seems like the way to do it... so how much should it be raised by?

[Labyr]

I'm not sure that you can really compare starting with more XP is that same as starting at a higher level in D&D. Characters gain power very quickly in D&D, going from level 1 to level 2 the amount of damage a character can take nearly doubles. Not so in AToW.

If you think running really strong characters could be fun, you could be right and it is worth a go. I would suggest that you put definite hard limits on how high their starting skills can be, otherwise you may just wind up with over specialized characters.

Another thing you might want to consider is giving each player character a hireling or a retainer that has a completely different skill set. So each player can have a Mechwarrior or vehicle pilot if you want to break out the maps, but they can also have a surly streetwise tech or a jaded personal body guard to interact with the seamier side of the Battletech universe.

[Acolyte]

Let them play more than one character each. With the BT setting if you're not a MechWarrior and the GM is running a Mech battle that character sits on the sidelines. Not very much fun. At the very least let them have control of an NPC during times when their character is not involved in the action (ie, one of the MechWarrior character's lancemates even if only defined to TW satandards).

Generally, I find it very useful for each player to have a main character that they concentrate on and a bunch of secondary characters to run when the main isn't in the action. Also, in my current game, I have one character who is in the command lance (and is in fact the commander) and one in the recon lance. If both are in the feild, the first character controls the entire command lance and the recon player controls the entire recon lance. Gives my as GM less to do.

   - Shane

[BirdofPrey]

If survivability is an issue, raise the BOD multiplier for their HP and give them better bodyarmor.

[monbvol]

5k XP can be a lot for someone who does not have to worry about a Vehicle, Rank, or Title trait but with your situation I'd suggest the rule of thumb I use for my campaigns.  If the campaign is to feature more than one or two fights where the Vehicle trait is a neccesity to take part in then increase by 500 XP.  If you need some Officers or people with access to decent gear another 500 XP.  If you need a Nobleman of some respectable station again another 500XP.  Some combination of the three go ahead and stack it up.

The number one issue that no one has actually hit on yet that will be a problem is if you do limit to only one character per player.  The number of actions that can be taken per turn.

The reality is even if the skills are higher than normal it still doesn't improve your rate of fire.  As such more care will have to be taken with the encounters.

So yes you can compensate higher XP so that shots will land more often over time and thus compensate for the lack of volume of fire but with the high lethality of AToW compared to most other games it would be advisable to pay attention to the kind of return fire your characters will be receiving.

[Orion]

I'm not sure I understand what the point would be.

I mean, you COULD start D&D characters at 5th level or 10th level etc.  But why bother?  There's fun to be had as 'noobs'.

Let me chime in for the opposing view - I see very little fun in playing noobs, and it would be a very hard sell to get me to try a new system in which I had to play one.  I also usually don't want to play the uber characters - drop me a mid-range character in any system, and I'm the happiest.  But, I have no interest in the entire zero-to-hero gaming paradigm, so take that into consideration.

As a rule of thumb, I'd strongly recommend against starting 'up-powered' characters in ANY game system unless you're both very familiar with the system AND have a special campaign in mind.

I agree with this for the most part.  It's not the power level of the characters that matter, but the intricacy of the rules.  In some systems it is just as easy to play the elite warrior as the noob; in others it requires far more knowledge to play at high power,  Some systems have a multitude of seldom-used rules that are better left to the experts, but aren't required to play at high power levels.  So, they might be okay starting at any power level, just limit the number of rules they need to understand when they start.

[Garner]

Hi everyone,

I've avoided trying to clarify my situation, as it started to feel like I wasn't even asking the right question in the first place, but I have attempted to answer my own question with some test cases and I may have struck upon a decent arrangement that may be of interest to others.

Some background/clarification:

I was not looking to create maxed out characters with my players; in hindsight, I should have picked a different title for the thread. If I were simply concerned about the durability and survivability of the players in combat, I'd look at hero rules from AToW:C.  I may do so anyway, but my issue was wanting to build jack-of-all-trades characters. While I know it works well in other situations, for this particular game I would regard having each player control multiple characters to be a bad solution.

I'm looking to ensure that two characters can, between them, cover a comprehensive skill base at a functional level. I understand that the duo would still be limited by quantity/economy of action, as there's only so much that can be done in the space of a single round. I would simply like them to have a wider array of actions they can perform at a reliable level of proficiency.

My original thinking was that allowing 6k starting experience would afford the players to take two passes at Stage 3 modules and at least one pass through Stage 4, with enough points left over to see a higher than normal number of skills in the +3 to +4 range.

Experimental Character Readouts:

I've tinkered with this a bit, and created a few characters by the life module process, starting with 6k XP. It seems to me that one has to be careful to pick a diverse range of modules to ensure a diverse skillsets.

A noble who takes military school, military academy (basic/mechwarrior), university (management/analysis/military science), and a tour of duty will be a decent MechWarrior, but her protocol skill will make Hermes Conrad weep in jealousy. A denizen of Solaris VII who's taken  the Solaris Internship, Insider, and Games modules will have a slew of skills, but none at very high levels and (depending on fields) they will be mediocre at a lot of things rather than good at a moderate number.

Mixing up trade schools and intelligence operative training with exploration started to produce more sprawling skillsets, but in the end, I wasn't happy with any of the results as it felt like I would have to demand unnaturally eclectic character concepts to see the results I was hoping for, so I've settled on another idea:

Create a character using a 5k starting pool. At the end of optimisation, each player receives an additional 500xp that may only be spent on new skills, or improving existing level 0 skills. 

Without the Fast Learner or Tech Empathy traits, this simple gesture lets a player pick up an additional four skills at +4, or six at +3. It feels overpowered compared to a normal starting character, but not so much that the characters could steamroll through any given challenge.

A few further tests suggest that such a two man party, thus cultivated to have a wider skillset, could face an exponentially more diverse range of challenges. My hope is that this will allow the players to form even stronger attachments to their characters while introducing them to a wider variety of skills and game elements in the process. I further hope this will lead to their help in encouraging the rest of the group to join in for a larger campaign, where the overpowered characters could become significant NPCs.