... I hate "building" characters, so much so, that I'll spend hours/days creating a system that lets me generate them randomly.
Such is what I've done for the Marvel Multiverse game.
The tables are a mix of all the classic dice, though primarily percentiles and 3d6 -- the game's core mechanic.
First you roll your rank. There are different tables for how varied you want your power levels to be.
Then you roll your origin and occupation -- these give you your "tags" and "traits" as per the rules.
Then you roll your core stats depending on your rank. For example rank 2 looks like this:
3-4: 0
5-8: 1
9-12: 2
13-15: 3
17-18: 4
The bell curve favors a number equal to your rank and these results tend to give you slightly higher abilities than your starting ability points would normally allow. Example, rank 2 gives you 10 ability points to spend with a ability cap of 5 (so you could have four abilities at 0 and two at 5, extreme but allowed). With 6 abilities (Melee, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic) rolling on the above table would average you a total of 12 (6 2s) not 10.
NOTE: Abilities in this game range from -3 to 9. Negative scores are very rare though. The "typical" person has 0 in all abilities (the game considers the average civilian to be rank 1, but they're really more akin to a rank 0). The way I figure, Marvel Multiverse abilities translate to the old FASERIP system as follows:
-3 -- Shift 0
-2 -- Feeble (2)
-1 -- Poor (4)
0 -- Typical (6)
1 -- Good (10)
2 -- Excellent (20)
3 -- Remarkable (30)
4 -- Incredible (40)
5 -- Amazing (50)
6 -- Monstrous (75)
7 -- Unearthly (100)
8 -- Shift X (150)
9 -- Shift Y (200)
Rank 2s are given 8 powers. 1 power equals 1 ability point and as per the rules you can mix and match these. Rank 2s total points are 18 (10 ability points + 8 powers). So if you spent 12 points rolling above, now you're only going to have 6 powers. I favor stronger abilities and fewer powers (this game gives A LOT of powers and this can be cumbersome for play -- not remembering what they all do (similar sounding names) and trying to decide which one you should use, although some are never "used" they are simply built in; permanent buffers, such as mighty 1-4 (super-strength that increases your damage multiplier).
NOTE: Not all powers are actual powers, many are basically just maneuvers; feats if you will.
In my random system, when rolling a power, you first roll to see which power set table to roll on, then you go to that table and roll for a power. If you roll a power that has prerequisites, you must take all of them. The one prerequisite I ignore is "rank". So, if you had 6 powers and the first one you roll has 2 prereqs, you must take all 3 and now you only have 3 powers left to roll for. If you don't have enough powers left to cover all of the prereqs, you work backwards to a lesser power that you can afford. Or, you can sacrifice some ability points to make room for more power slots.
You may continue rolling in that power set or roll randomly for a new power set table.
Here's a sample character I rolled up (and a character sheet I made; still tweaking...):
Whyspurr is rank 1.
Origin: Unknown (as opposed to hi-tech, mutant, alien, special training, etc.)
Occupation: Outsider (conveniently, this goes great with her origin)
Tags:
- Mysterious: The character has no idea why or how they have their powers.
- Connections--Outsiders: Connections basically allow you to occasionally call in a favor. This one requires a clever explanation as she doesn't know how she has her powers, so who is she calling for favors???
- Fresh Eyes: You have an edge on logic checks when trying something for the first time.
- Stranger: You have "trouble" on checks trying to fit in locally.
- Sneaky: Others have "trouble" trying to spot you if you're hiding.
As a rank 1 character she gets 5 ability points and 4 powers; total value: 9. With my creation tables her abilities add up to 7 so she only gets 2 powers which is MINISCULE for this rpg's intentions, however having a 2 in both resilience and vigilance make her a very durable rank 1, in that her health and focus are both 60 (focus fuels some powers).
I rolled telepathy for her first power set and then cloak for the power. Cloak requires that you have telepathic link (basic telepathy) and that you are rank 2, but, I ignore rank prereqs. So those are her 2 powers. Cloak allows you to hide your presence from someone, but being rank 1 it's not that strong because of her low logic defense (target number: 10 on 3d6 + vigilance score) -- however, she has sneaky as trait which gives people "trouble" (disadvantage) trying to spot her, quite convenient!
So, she's a durable, sneaky telepathic in the most basic sense. Not a scrapper. The most damage she can hope to do is marvel die (d6) x1 +1, so 2-7, or double that on a "fantastic" success. That's... not a lot, but, that's rank 1 for you.
Now, with "building" in mind, would she be better off knocking a couple points off her abilities and grabbing 2 more powers? Maybe, because as she is, she can't do much except sneak around and communicate telepathically -- she'd make a great spy. However, she can sustain a decent amount of damage.
When "building" heroes for this game, I would always put the most points into resilience and then vigilance. A rank 1 hero could, by-the-book, have the following build: 0,0,0,0,1,4, with the 4 in resilience that would give you 120 health, better than half the Marvel Universe! A clever selection of 4 powers and you've got quite a bad-ass rank 1 hero (except for damage, rank 1 damage is highly limited). Why wouldn't you do this every time? This is why I don't like "point-buy".
But, let's roll up one more power for her just to see what would happen. Sticking with the telepathy power set, I rolled Mental Punch*, which lets you do focus damage on a melee attack instead of health damage. For this to be worth it, she needs a better melee score, so now I have to take away 2 points from her other stats, one for the power and one to add a point to melee. So I would drop vigilance and agility each down to 1. Now her melee attacks have a x2 multiplier (according to MY HOUSE RULE, not official rules; see below) and can affect health or focus.
*Psylocke's psi-blade is sort of like mental punch. Psylocke also has "telekinetic attack" which stuns as well as damages and can be done from a distance, so this one might in fact be her psi-blade. She also has flight (?). Seems Psylocke's powers have changed somewhat. Traditionally, her psi-blade severely stuns anyone she hits with it; it's a finishing move. These days she can manifest this as a bow and arrow, apparently.
*Another point -- all of the character profiles use these generic power descriptions, e.g., mental punch, telekinetic attack. The term psi-blade is not used anywhere on Psylocke's sheet.
Tying health to one stat might be a system flaw. You could go the FASERIP route and tie health to Melee, Agility, & Resilience, and tie focus to Vigilance, Ego, & Logic. (then x this total by 10). So, Whyspurr would have 50 health instead of 60 and 20 focus instead of 60. Minimum health and focus for anyone would be 10. Spiderman's health would grow from 90 to 150 and his focus would fall from 90 to 70. Flipping through the hero profiles shows that this method would have results that are surprisingly close to the way they are (Spiderman's health jump being one of the more extreme changes).
Another critique...
Damage.
Damage is based on your rank. There are 6 ranks (1-6). Rank 1 is pretty much normal human level hero, rank 6 is cosmic level hero. You have 4 types of attacks: Melee, Agility, Ego, and Logic, all do damage according to your overall rank, not your ability score. So Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) who is rank 4 (with Melee 2, Agility 2) has a baseline of rank 4 damage with all attacks, so her regular punch is as mighty as her telekinesis, and, mightier than most of the Marvel Universe (actually her telekinesis is mightier still because of power boosts). So if she uses a gun she does rank 4 damage. Punisher is only rank 2... see where this is going?
NOTE: How damage works: All rolls are 3d6. One of those d6 is the Marvel Die. If your attack succeeds, your damage is your Marvel Die x rank + ability score. Damage possibilities. Note: Marvel Die 6 is a Fantastic Success which means double damage or added effect or sometimes both.
- Rank 1: 1-6 + 1 (2-7)
- Rank 2: 2-12 + 2 (4-14)
- Rank 3: 3-18 + 3 (6-21)
- Rank 4: 4-24 + 4 (8-28)
- Rank 5: 5-30 + 5 (10-35)
- Rank 6: 6-36 + 6 (12-42)
My change: Damage multiplier is your individual stat not your overall rank. So, Melee 3 equals a x3 multiplier. Agility 4 equals a x4, Logic 2 equals a x2, and so on. In some cases, some high ranked characters will have up to a x13 multiplier with this ruling, e.g., a 9 melee with mighty: 4, and that's fine. No more Clea (rank 6) or the Invisible Woman (rank 4) kicking the ass of the likes of Daredevil, Elektra, Punisher, etc. (all rank 2) without even using their powers! So the above progression continues as follows:
Minimum multiplier would be 1, even for stats of 0 or less.
Fights in this game can last awhile, so more damage is not a bad thing.
This wouldn't affect Whyspurr really, unless she picked up a gun, then her agility of 2 would give her a x2 multiplier.
So rank still matters the way I do it because lower ranked characters still have lower stats and fewer powers and traits. It doesn't change the game too much, just makes things more logical to my brain.
Of course, you could ignore every mention of the word "rank" all together and roll up your stats simply by rolling a d6 for each, giving results 1 through 6, equivalent to "good" through "monstrous" in the old FASERIP system (by my calculation). Roll for origin and occupation and then roll 1d3 extra traits and 2d6 powers for a true random old-school experience! (Then again, Champions is old-school too and that's as point-buy as it gets... ugh!)
All for now, ideas for XP and advancement, another time.
Meanwhile, my thoughts drift back to Traveller and a certain fantasy offshoot I occasionally work on...
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