Basic Action Super Heroes!

My idea is to use the movie The Warriors as the setting for a 1-shot game where the players follow the movie sequences.
The issue I'm having is creating basic human characters that don't seem all identical.
And since they don't have "powers" Only skills, and perhaps a little martial arts use.
I was just hoping for a few suggestions.
Thanks in advance.

Hey loudriver, great game idea. BASH, even at low campaign levels still offers lots of versatility. The real difference in characters comes from their quirks, background stories, drives (motivations), and the style of how the player portrays them in the game. Look at the typical tough-guy action heroes of the eighties. There's very little statistical difference between characters played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, and Sylvester Stallone. Statistically they are all Brawn 2 (though one of them could be argued to have Heightened Brawn as well).

Skill selection, advantages/disadvantages are going to be the most defining traits. With only about 20 character points to play with, a player will be trying hard to make those few points work best for their concept. Not everyone is going to play the same concept.

The Swan-like, best fighter of the group, character will probably want to invest in the Leadership advantage to help support that role. He’s not going to be the strongest guy in gang so he might only be Brawn 1 with Heightened Brawn plus a good range of Martial Arts Mastery abilities (probably at rank 3). His Agility is going to be at rank 2 for sure, to ensure better striking odds.

The gang’s muscle character will probably be Brawn 2; maybe with Heightened Brawn just to enforce to everyone that he’s B.A. Baracus tough. He will probably be Agility 1 with Martial Arts Mastery 1 (Tough or Grappling style). A ‘Knock-Yer-Block-Off’ Special Attack would really demonstrate a devastating ability to damage opponents in a fight (just be sure to add a +1 or +2 to the attack bonus to help ensure he can hit as well as damage). As for advantages, he’ll probably have Frightening Presence or Never Surrender (or both).

There might be a brainy guy on the team with a Mind 2 or 3 with the Gadgeteer advantage who might be good at improvising real-world tech kind of powers: for instance wiring an IPod, if set in modern times, to temporally provide Skillful 3 (Security: Disabling Security Alarms and Cameras) power to help the group break into, or out of, some high-tech facility (not that that is likely to happen in a game centered around The Warriors sequences…).

Just remember that what ever they are supposed to be great at, they need to have a rank 2 or greater with that ability (maybe bolstered by the Heightened power) so that they will have decent odds of pulling it off.

You might also want to write up signature moves that each character can access by spending their Hero die or just as custom Advantages. Some of course are already there, Like Never Surrender for Ajax or Leadership for Swan.

But you could do stuff like -

'I Know This' - Increase the character's Mind by +3 for a single check. Say for figuring out that the an enemy gang has set a fire on the train tracks to mess up the warriors getting home.

Ladies Man - You Mind is increased by 2 when making defensive checks against a power or suggestion made by a woman.

Can't Touch Me - Minions get no bonus for numbers against you in melee. This has no effect on mobs, there are just too many of them for you to deal with.

Check the Pipes - You automatically succeed on a single Brawn check to lift or hold on to something.

I was also thinking that since the warriors are just human that 100 hits might be too many. Should I just use the minion scale and give them 20-30 hits?

No. 100 Hits means they are an important character. It does not matter if they are a mere mortal. There are plenty of supers with the "normal" disad for instance that are just very skilled people with a few gadgets. They all still get 100 hits.

Since all the characters - PC and NPC alike are non-powered AND non-super, you may want to use the non-super stat scale from BASH Fantasy and BASH Sci Fi, if you have access. That would give you a greater range of stats in your characters, instead of all of them being at the low end of the BASH supers bar. Then the strong guy can have a Brawn of 4, the fast fighter can have Agility 4-5, etc.

If you don't want to use the Fantasy stat bar, you could change the benchmarks for your own stat bars for the game. Agility 5 doesn't mean you are among the fastest people on earth. It means you have the co-ordination of a martial artist or olympic athelete. Each level of Brawn means you can bench press level x 100 lbs. or something.

Then you would have real Stat differences between the characters.

BASH Supers is written to allow for all sorts of heroes - powered and non-powered. So it has benchmark that reflect the possibility of having the Superman and Robin on the table at the same time. Your games scale is much tighter. How much stronger is Ajax than Rembrandt really?

BASHMAN wrote:No. 100 Hits means they are an important character. It does not matter if they are a mere mortal. There are plenty of supers with the "normal" disad for instance that are just very skilled people with a few gadgets. They all still get 100 hits.

Thanks Bashman, that makes a whole lot of sense. Thanks for the clarification.

Baelor wrote:Since all the characters - PC and NPC alike are non-powered AND non-super, you may want to use the non-super stat scale from BASH Fantasy and BASH Sci Fi, if you have access. That would give you a greater range of stats in your characters, instead of all of them being at the low end of the BASH supers bar. Then the strong guy can have a Brawn of 4, the fast fighter can have Agility 4-5, etc.

If you don't want to use the Fantasy stat bar, you could change the benchmarks for your own stat bars for the game. Agility 5 doesn't mean you are among the fastest people on earth. It means you have the co-ordination of a martial artist or olympic athelete. Each level of Brawn means you can bench press level x 100 lbs. or something.

Then you would have real Stat differences between the characters.

BASH Supers is written to allow for all sorts of heroes - powered and non-powered. So it has benchmark that reflect the possibility of having the Superman and Robin on the table at the same time. Your games scale is much tighter. How much stronger is Ajax than Rembrandt really?

You know it's funny you mentioned the different stat bar. I was talking about this with my buddy and I actually brought up the idea of having different definers for each level of the attributes.
It does make a lot of sense as honestly everybody in the warriors would truly have a brawn of 1 if I go by what the core rules state. None of them even come close to being as strong as a pro NFL player. None of them are PhD material. Maybe Cleon came close to an Agility of 2 before he got himself racked by the Riffs.
I think redefining the values might indeed make sense. I'd probably use 75lbs as the dividing factor. Most players could bench 75, fewer, 150, and maybe only Ajax, or Vermin at 225. But that would put 375lbs as the max, which lets face it, only the strongest humans can really do that. Sure there are the freaks that can bench 500+ but those guys are pretty rare.

It also means you fights will probably not take too long. If everyone is brawn 1, then a fist fight could take forever. Especially if characters have things like Tough martial arts or similar. And the characters will seem more different to the players, which is really important.

Best of luck with the game, BTW. I love 'the Warriors'!

That's a really great point about brawls taking forever if the heroes have 100pts and only 1X modifiers. Thanks Baelor, I appreciate your, and everyone's help. I'll make a more formal announcement once the game launches. I'm sure I'll be looking for online players.

The Heroic scale (as opposed to Super Heroic in BASH! UE) works as follows for BRAWN:

0: Cannot lift 50 Lbs
1: can lift 50- 100 lbs
2: 200 lbs
3: 300 lbs
4: 400 lbs (Human maximum)
5: 800 Lbs

You can apply similar benchmarks for Agility, with 5 being beyond human ability.

Thanks for the separate scale Bashman, I'll be using this for my Warriors adaptation.