Gauging power levels

[figurefour]

I think in the first scene, almost any villain or group of villains will get their ass kicked unless they dramatically outnumber the heroes. Your Doom Pool will be tiny in the first scene, which makes a big difference in how hard a conflict can be.

My advice would be to let the heroes kick ass in the first scene while you build your doom pool. Save the excitement for the SECOND action scene.

[Shingen]

I think in the first scene, almost any villain or group of villains will get their ass kicked unless they dramatically outnumber the heroes. Your Doom Pool will be tiny in the first scene, which makes a big difference in how hard a conflict can be.

My advice would be to let the heroes kick ass in the first scene while you build your doom pool. Save the excitement for the SECOND action scene.

While the villains would be short on doom pool for effects, they'd still have all their powers and any fight can build the doom pool with opportunities. The more fighting, the more 1s, the more the doom pool go up. But there is something to be said for letting it build up so it can be used by bigger baddies.

[MidnightBlue]

My advice would be to let the heroes kick ass in the first scene while you build your doom pool. Save the excitement for the SECOND action scene.

And give the players a chance to see how cool their characters can be...maybe overconfidently so...

[Spatula]

So, you, who have actual gaming experience with MHR – what kind of power level I should be aiming at with the villains? Since I'm expecting probably 3-4 players and the choice of heroes is relatively free, the possible power level range on the PC side is rather wide. Of course, I can make the final decision at the gaming table when I know how many players I have and the heroes they've picked, but I'd be grateful if you can give me some pointers to help me gauge the situation.

I don't think it's possible to really evaluate character strength in a vacuum with MHR. Ultimately it comes down to what a character's die pool will look like when compared to opposing characters' die pools. There are a couple of angles to consider:

1. Narrative Strength. Some characters have widely-applicable powers that can be easily used in all sorts of situations (e.g. Graviton or Magneto). Some are much more one-note, like most super-strong/super-tough types. The former will be able to build decent die pools in response to most opposing actions. The latter will be more constrained in what they can accomplish within the fiction of the game world, and will probably be unable to fend off attacks that don't directly target their strengths.

For example, someone like Armadillo can do OK vs your average physical hero. But he will have trouble forming a substantial die pool against attacks that don't target his invulnerable hide.

2. Affiliations. If a character is tagged as a minor Watcher character, the affiliation dice are stepped down (d4/d6/d8 instead of d6/d8/d10), which impacts the strength of the die pool. Which affiliation die is being used is also going to have an impact.

If you throw together three villains that all have D4 Team ratings, they are not going to perform at their best. If you put together two villains with D8 Buddy and D4 Solo, as soon as one is taken out, the other is going to be in trouble.

3. # of Power Dice. Having two power sets and/or SFX that can double power trait dice makes for a more effective character. The most useful SFX for increasing the die pool are Multipower, Versatile, Unleashed, and Area Attack (vs multiple opponents only). Characters with only one power set and no SFX that can give them more dice from their powers are at a disadvantage.

4. Specialty Dice. Does the character have any specialties that are applicable to the actions he or she will be taking? Because specialty dice can be split up, a Master specialty taken at 2d8 can possibly make up for a lack of power trait dice.

All hero datafiles have d6/d8/d10 affiliations. Almost all heroes have 2 power sets or the ability to get multiple dice out of their power sets. And almost all heroes have one or more specialties that they can use when in their element. So any villain that is lacking in any of those areas is already at a disadvantage. And that's before you get into number games of how many heroes vs how many villains, or the size of the power trait dice in each character's pool.

[figurefour]

While the villains would be short on doom pool for effects, they'd still have all their powers and any fight can build the doom pool with opportunities. The more fighting, the more 1s, the more the doom pool go up. But there is something to be said for letting it build up so it can be used by bigger baddies.

Building the Doom Pool as you fight won't really gain you an advantage. (Unless you're really good at gaming the Doom Pool mechanics.)

Players can gain Plot Points at about the same rate that you gain Doom, but since players never have to worry about the size of their Plot Points, you're at a disadvantage in that game.

You're "better off" (for a given value of "better off") letting the players spend their Plot Points to overpower the villains (they probably won't want to just sit back and hope they roll well when they can buy an advantage and kick ass NOW) and save your Doom for when you want things to get seriously interesting.

[dgh1973]

A lot of good commentary here and the one thing I'd like to add comes straight from the (wrong universe of) comic books.

The Dark Knight Returns is a book where Batman (with a little help) defeats Superman.

I've never seen a supers game that makes this kind of scenario easier or more possible to imagine than MHR. If a player is clever and uses their abilities to their fullest in Resource creation and Effects, there really isn't much reason for them not to be able to level the playing field a bit.

Doc_Nova posted a great write up of the mechanical influences, and highlights the detail behind what makes this possible in the system. I think it's brilliant.

[Supplanter]

Don't try to build up the doom pool across scenes as a crutch for your Big-Bad. Really big doom pools are a drag. Make a tougher Big-Bad! And to let your Big-Bad thrive in an early encounter, populate that encounter with distractions the heroes can't ignore - minor characters; mobs; environmental disasters (like burst gas mains or exploding volcanoes) written up as large-scale threats; a toddler with leukemia holding a tiny American flag while feeding an ice cream cone to her puppy directly under a falling safe. That kind of thing.

In a late encounter, the Big-Bad is supposed to lose. That's why we don't call them "super-villain comics."

Updated to add: IMHO!


Jim

[figurefour]

I think the Doom Pool is a pacing mechanism, sort of like a "tension throttle".

You build the Doom Pool early on to build up the tension (don't let it build too high, or your players may have heart attacks). Then you release the tension into a scene to create EXCITEMENT! Then things have probably winded down a bit, so you can ramp the tension up a bit.

I agree that you don't want to build the Doom Pool TOO high, but that doesn't mean you want to start every scene with it empty.

As a guideline, I think you probably want to keep it at three dice or less, but the size of those dice is a bit less important than the number of them.

2d12 in the Doom Pool is scary, but 8d8 is probably worse. (From a rough statistical perspective, I believe stepping up a die and doubling a die affect the expected result very similarly.)

[Supplanter]

I think the Doom Pool is a pacing mechanism, sort of like a "tension throttle".

You build the Doom Pool early on to build up the tension (don't let it build too high, or your players may have heart attacks). Then you release the tension into a scene to create EXCITEMENT! Then things have probably winded down a bit, so you can ramp the tension up a bit.

I agree that you don't want to build the Doom Pool TOO high, but that doesn't mean you want to start every scene with it empty.

As a guideline, I think you probably want to keep it at three dice or less, but the size of those dice is a bit less important than the number of them.

2d12 in the Doom Pool is scary, but 8d8 is probably worse. (From a rough statistical perspective, I believe stepping up a die and doubling a die affect the expected result very similarly.)

Actually, I pretty much agree with this.

One of the Dave Chalkers in my group, though I won't mention any names, is adamant about the importance of relieving the doom pool by spending it during an action scene for bits of business - interrupts; party-splitting; scene distinctions and complications; sudden appearances of new foes. Then you allow it to constantly replenish via the usual methods while this is happening. The Civil War action-scene options sections provide at least some guidance on this. Now this unnamed Chalker does disagree with me about the futility of healing actions per the RAW, but that just means he's fallible, not wrong about everything.

I think your benchmark of 3 dice or less left between action scenes is excellent, BTW.

It's probably also worth taking the power-profile of your play-group into account too. If you've got a Sorcerer or Element Controller in your party, their datafiles purchase great flexibility in what they can do at the cost of extra effort: they have to spend an action to create an asset and then wield the asset. And they have to succeed at creating that asset - by rolling against the doom pool in most cases. (As I read the rules.) So the size of the doom pool can affect different heroes to very different extents.

Semi-separately and IMHO, some Watchers on the board sound like they feel practically obligated to build the DP up to 2D12, like if that doesn't happen they've failed somehow, and we'll all make fun of them here. I don't think that's true at all. And by the rules, 2D12 isn't actually supposed to get you much, as a Watcher. It just lets you end a scene whose trajectory is so obvious that it's not worth anyone's time to finish playing it out. It's not supposed to be a hose-the-PCs mechanic. It doesn't mean you can declare the heroes captured unless they were already well on the way to defeat. It's not a Get Out of Jail Free card for your villain. (Ironically, escapes should probably be way cheaper than 2D12. Imagine what Lockheed's SFX looks like if you flip it to work for a Watcher character.) Me, if a scene is dragging, I'm happy to let the Watcher end it for free!


Jim

[dgh1973]

Semi-separately and IMHO, some Watchers on the board sound like they feel practically obligated to build the DP up to 2D12, like if that doesn't happen they've failed somehow, and we'll all make fun of them here. I don't think that's true at all. And by the rules, 2D12 isn't actually supposed to get you much, as a Watcher.

/agree

I think the rule that says that's when you can shut down a scene covers that pretty well - the old "if you pass store X on the right you've gone to far" idea.

I figured the point of that rule was to say if you have that in the pool you've gone a bit overboard and this will help you mitigate.

A high doom pool means things have been going poorly for the heroes, you don't want to work toward that as a goal unless it's important somehow to your plot or themes and even then I'd try to make it a rare occurrence.