Tips for making characters WITHOUT going over-budget?

xBlackWolfx · Post by **xBlackWolfx** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 4:18 am

A recurring problem I've been having is making my characters with too many points. Often I end up 5 or more points over budget for the intended power level! I'm having this problem mostly with magic characters, because I feel so inclined to give them a huge number of abilities.

First I made a world-class character who's also meant to be physically powerful (he's a druid, so he kind of has a 'wild-man' theme to him). He ended up being worth like 45 points, so I had to decide which of his spells to remove, and that wasn't an easy choice since he has so few of them to start with (most are worth 4 or 5 points).

Today, I started work on a street-level witch character. This time I tried giving her low attributes (B1 A1 M2), so I would have more to invest in powers (kinda thought the druid's attributes were mostly what ate up so many points), and most of her powers have the casting limitation to further reduce the cost. But somehow, I ended up giving her 23 points worth of powers. Spent the rest of the day trying to whittle it down to 17. And I was trying to be careful to not go over-budget this time, but obviously I somehow lost count. Ended up having to remove pretty much half of her spells, since most of them were only worth 1 or 2 points.

I didn't have this problem with a werewolf character I hand-made, so I think it might just be a problem with magic characters since I'm inclined to give them so many spells. The book itself only has two pre-made examples: one's mystery-men-level and the other is world-class. The world-class one is the kind of character I tend to aim for when I make mages.

Does anyone have any tips? Right now, I'm thinking about just making a street-level paragon to see if I go over-budget with that.

Post by **BASHMAN** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 12:25 pm

Yes I have a few tips:

1. Multi-Powers, especially for spells that are not likely to be used simultaneously. This will turn an extra 4 point spell into an extra 1 point spell.

2. The "Grimoire" and "Versatile" Advantages. You do not need to take the "Swiss Army Knife / Kitchen Sink" approach to character building. Let these advantages give your character the abilities you need at the time you need them, instead of trying to prepare for every possible contingency. You save a lot of points this way.

3. The "Omnipotence" Power. Yes, 5 points per effective level may seem like a heck of a lot, and also some Narrators may not allow it; howevever with even just Ominipotence 5 (with a casting or item limitation) can a a ton of versatility to a character, not only to add the occasional 1 point power but to augment and change existing ones as you can use it to add an Enhancement to a power as well.
Indeed, there is going to be a "Magic Only" variant of "Omnipotence" called "Sorcery" in the final volume of Awesome Powers.

xBlackWolfx · Post by **xBlackWolfx** » Mon Feb 23, 2015 1:05 pm

Hmm, didn't think of multi-powers. I always thought of multi-powers as being abilities that come from a single device with multiple uses (like chains being able to do damage or immobilize) or powers that were mutually exclusive, like a character who can only use one of his powers at a time (such as he wouldn't have his superstrength if he was flying and vice-versa). Ironnically, I felt like I was abusing the 'multi-power' thing with my druid build, perhaps I should've used it more.

That will probably help him out, giving him an 'elemental' multi-power. The witch might also be able to benefit from a 'curse' multi-power.

Thanks.

edit: oh, and the witch DOES have a grimoire, and the druid has versatile (he doesn't own a book, honestly I kind of think he may be illiterate).

How would grimoire work with a multi-power anyway? Would I just get the points back that the multi-power is worth, or could I replace individual abilities in the multi-power? I'm guessing the first. The latter looks like it could be exploited way too easily.

Post by **BASHMAN** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 1:22 am

You really should ask your Narrator when it comes to a game balance decision like that.

If you already have Grimoire and Versatile, I'd suggest leaning on them some more, and removing some of the powers on your sheet less likely to be used in a session, and save them for use with your Advantages.

xBlackWolfx · Post by **xBlackWolfx** » Tue Feb 24, 2015 10:16 am

Well I'm the narrator here (or at least, I hope I will be, sister's having a few issues learning how an rpg works it seems...) I'm mostly coming up with npcs, and some characters for my own amusement. For some reason, I'm having a lot of fun just designing characters! And besides, it helps me pass the time until my sister learns enough about the game to actually design a character...right now I'm just trying to get her to understand the concept of stats. Yeah I know, I might not succeed, honestly I'm attempted to just make a character for her and run her through a game to give her a demonstration of how this all works.

Post by **BASHMAN** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 6:34 pm

Okay, cool. Designing characters is always fun; probably one of the better ways to learn the ins and outs of a game system as well.

MrJupiter · Post by **MrJupiter** » Sun Mar 22, 2015 2:03 pm

Hey, xBlackWolfx, don't forget that you can re-assign a few of those cool powers as power tricks and stunts. For instance Spider-Man's ability to use his webs to create baseball bats and stuff (so common in the web-slinger's old, '60s-era cartoon series) could be just a web-based, Conjuring power stunt.