Brutal butt-kicker

[JThunder]

I've got a player who leans heavily on the martial artist character concepts (rarely takes utility type powers) because he wants to be able to fight better than everyone and survive hoards of thugs while still being relatively "normal."

I don't want the routine encounter for this player to become "bad guy shows up, martial artist beats the snot out of him, day saved... send in the next bad guy." Any recommendations for alternative heroic activities and/or encounters for such a character? Rescuing kittens in stuck a tree would be easy for someone who can fly, but no travel powers for this martial artist either. He typically gets around by taxi or even the bus.


Also, despite his personal code of no killing, the hero has a need for finality in his conflicts and tries to inflict crippling injuries on his more dangerous foes. The more challenging the fight, the more brutal he gets with this --trying to shatter knees, hyper-extend elbows, or going for the broken back. I'd like to be able to reuse more than a couple of these villains, but I'm running out of ideas for how to do so. Some of the ways I've been falling back on include:

• villain has a previously unknown healing factor (gets old quick)
• cyborg rebuild, "We can rebuild him," government black ops group looking to turn him into an agent
• exo-skeleton, a full power armor suit compensating for the crippling injury with renewed mobility
• mutated, evil scientist offers the villain a second chance by subjecting them to experiments
• cloned, replacement body (another mad scientist schtick)
• magic healer, could be a sympathetic neutral or good guy, or maybe a villain with an agenda
• deal with the devil, wants revenge so bad that the devil grants him a second chance... with bonus power!
• someone else entirely, a new person using the crippled individual's name & costume
• lucky! (injury wasn't as bad as originally thought and villain recuperates normally)

Any other recommendations for bringing back fun bad guys who've otherwise seen the end of their active villainous lifestyle?

[hellica]

I'd suggest you could have their be a kindof secret supervillain clinic, similar to the Night Nurse thing from Marvel that could provide some seriously good healthcare.

And if you don't want everything to be a straight fistfight encounter with him, you should try and take advantage of the rather poor way he gets about. If he's in a taxi all the time, having a superstrong villain with high impervious values assault him by stomping on hs car and trapping him in it could make for an interesting encounter. He'd learn the value of escape artist and have to think his way out of the situation.

Tbh, I've always fonud though, that if a player just likes fights, then you should just provide some kickass oppurtunities for dynamic and cool fights really. Elevator shafts, bottomless pits, traffic jams, crashing car through front of a building. All proved good fun for me

You could also ram home his limited utility by having summat happen like him being in taxi on bridge in jam and getting hit with a tsunami.

[FuzzyBoots]

You can probably get some ideas from watching a few of those Walking the Earth series like Kung Fu, but you could have him do some interludes where he has to help people in other ways. Maybe the Projects need fixing up. He's hired in part due to his martial arts skills, to defend them against gangs, corrupt construction workers, and rampaging monsters, but in between fights, he's also doing things like helping nail up boards, providing medical care, and counseling troubled teens. Or he's asked to do a martial arts exhibition for a similar good cause, perhaps to raise money for a charity. Lastly, perhaps his master has suddenly died and he's catapulted into the intrigue as he tries to figure out how his master died and if someone might be behind the death. All involve skills and roleplaying outside of the fighting, but also allow for the periodic battle to show off his forte.

^_^ As for injured villains, one way to deal with it is for them to fight him in non-physical ways. What's to stop one of them claiming that this guy jumped him unprovoked and that he's now suing the martial artist for a few million bucks to cover physical therapy and mental anguish?

[JThunder]

Good ideas. I like the idea of changing up fight scenes. I have no problem with providing plenty of fights (other than losing great villains to crippling attacks), but the lawsuit and "Night Nurse" for villains and lawsuit ideas are great.

I'm also thinking about playing out a scene of hit and run combat where the villain doesn't want him to stand and fight but rather run and defend (like Kraven the Hunter), so I'm thinking about putting several friends & loved ones in jeopardy, like in booby-trapped cages, and the hero has to run the gauntlet and free everyone while the evil predator guy stalks him.

[FuzzyBoots]

^_^ Similar to the "villain sets up a situation where the hero must defend others rather than fight", also consider just having a mass attack with knots of defenders and let the player choose how to play it out when the villain is breaking into the cashbox, three teenagers are trying to wrest a laser rifle from one of the minions and it looks like they're about to lose grip, the town matron is running at a group of thugs with a frying pan upraised, and another group of residents are having a running gunfight in the smashed-in supermarket. If you really want to bring a dose of humility to the character, don't worry about setting it up so that there's a best-case scenario. Instead, he has to triage the situation and figure out where his efforts are best spent. If you want to throw more of a bone, there can be an "arming/training the villagers" scene which gives them some advantages in advance or you can simply fudge the rolls so that the defenders do fine for themselves as long as he's actively aiding them.

I'll admit that most of my ideas on this topic center around the image of The Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven, lone warriors doing their best to aid a town when bandits/robber barons/revenuers descend upon their town and the hard choices faced since they can't necessarily defend everyone.

[Blackbot]

What does he do to opponents not dependant on their bodies?
I don't know how many super powered people are running around in your setting, but he might fight a puppet master who already is crippled and just uses innocent people to endanger the martial artist - and his crippling attack might backfire big time when he sees that the person he just crippled was just mind controlled and is, in fact, a hero unfortunate enough to have worn a special device (which of course he can find when examining the unconscious body - we do want to let him a chance to avoid this mistake!). And how do you cripple a person without body, a restless soul possessing bodies? He might be connected to a special artifact the hero has to find and destroy - but until it is found, he might have several fights against people empowered by the spirit. And maybe there is more than just one artifact - he might have split his soul into several pieces, and it might take the hero some time to find them or another encounter to find another piece to destroy.
(Totally not a Harry Potter fan here *looks innocent and whistles*)

[UnkindMirror]

The problem with players crippling villains really is that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, old chestnut that it may be. Applies to any long-term consequence, whether it's crippling or killing.

At some point or another, it's the player-characters who will, at least temporarily, be defeated and at the villain's mercy. Pretty much a genre-staple.
And if the character is known for breaking his captives' bones or crippling them long-term in some fashion, well then he should really expect to get the same treatment. At which point his "normal" character is pretty much screwed.

I don't even mean to suggest that this should be forced, but getting captured is not an unknown thing in the games I'm familiar with, so he should be made aware of what's going to happen then. Otherwise it would make the villains look pretty weak and ineffectual, if they can't even give as good as they get.

I suggest you discuss this with him, and see if he's willing to play that way. If not, maybe he'd like to reconsider his own approach.

[JThunder]

The Puppet Master idea is okay, but sending innocents against this player's character would be pointless. He made him tough enough to withstand small handgun fire (although shotguns and rifles would hurt a little) so normal attacks aren't even a threat, and is good enough that most ordinary people wouldn't hit him anyhow. Maybe if I brought some low-level heroes (whose powers aren't necessarily overpowering and have a better chance of hitting) against him using a Puppet Master controller type.


The problem with "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" is that I don't want to punish the player, so I do have to limit what they try to do to him. And, actually, its the ones that use brutal or lethal attacks that push him to resort to the brutal tactics of crippling injuries. I've tried throwing him off balance a couple of times by having convenience store hold-up thugs and bank robbers as well as even a couple of minor villains surrender immediately upon seeing the hero because of his reputation as "the Back-Breaker!" Crime stopped, but no reward for the effort... no hero point for standing there and scaring the bejeebus out of the already cowardly. Just sometimes, mind you. I don't want to take the fun out of his character.

I do want to bring someone against him to defeat him and then put him into a vulnerable position, but the harder I try the harder he fights. I have done it once already with another martial artist who was physically weaker and unable to hurt him, but gave her gloves with tiny drugged needles powerful enough to slow and eventually knock him out. The back and knee breaking attacks started after this incident, so... there ya go. Apparently the violent streak is my fault.


I think I need to put him against more non-fighting types with situations where fighting isn't much good and has to think more... forcing him to rely on his defense to avoid attacks while trying to reach an object such as a shutoff switch for the villain's master plan or some McGuffin that will enable him to (briefly, and once only) meet the foe on equal footing. Like maybe an intangible foe (making artial arts skills pointless) hurling psychic energy bolts at him while he tries to reach some kind of ectoplasmic disruptor rifle to fight back.

[UnkindMirror]

The problem with "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" is that I don't want to punish the player, so I do have to limit what they try to do to him. And, actually, its the ones that use brutal or lethal attacks that push him to resort to the brutal tactics of crippling injuries. I've tried throwing him off balance a couple of times by having convenience store hold-up thugs and bank robbers as well as even a couple of minor villains surrender immediately upon seeing the hero because of his reputation as "the Back-Breaker!" Crime stopped, but no reward for the effort... no hero point for standing there and scaring the bejeebus out of the already cowardly. Just sometimes, mind you. I don't want to take the fun out of his character.

I do want to bring someone against him to defeat him and then put him into a vulnerable position, but the harder I try the harder he fights. I have done it once already with another martial artist who was physically weaker and unable to hurt him, but gave her gloves with tiny drugged needles powerful enough to slow and eventually knock him out. The back and knee breaking attacks started after this incident, so... there ya go. Apparently the violent streak is my fault.

What I was trying to say is that this isn't about punishing the player for me, but about campaign tone. Generally, the GM sets the tone by how the villains behave, what methods they employ. If the player goes beyond that by using more permanent/violent methods, that can shift the campaign tone, but it should shift it for everyone. If the player gets to break knees and such, while villains don't when they have the opportunity, I find that jarring, it's not consistent. If the players lower the bar of acceptable behavior, it's rather unlikely that villains wouldn't follow suit.

Don't get me wrong, it's fine to play such a game if that's the intent. But I'd expect it to come with a high character-turnover rate because capture/defeat should equal career-ending injuries for both sides, not just one side.

If you don't have a problem with what I see as an inconsistency in tone, then there's obviously no need to do anything about it. But if you don't want the game to go that way, the first thing to do is talk with the player about his methods.

[FuzzyBoots]

Worth noting too that it doesn't have to be the player that gets crippled. Having their best friend/mother/mechanic show up with knees bent the wrong way and a note saying something along the lines of "I thank you for your excellent lesson" can still show the example he's providing.

[JThunder]

I do like that. He's very fond of his supporting cast.

[imfarias]

Sounds to me like what you need is a copy-cat. Maybe a small cult of them, dressing in a similar fashion to the PC, going around maiming people they feel deserve it.

He'll get blamed for the first few but even after it is discovered that it is not him, he'll still get blamed for the actions of "his cult." They could start out with genuinely bad guys: local drug dealers, abusive husbands/fathers. But they work up to more gray areas like loitering drop outs, homeless that beg on neighborhood streets, people they suspect of crimes.

If the PC hasn't done something by then, have one of them cripple somebody for dating outside of their race.

Yeah, it's pretty Iron Age but so is breaking a guys back for being too dangerous for prison.

BTW, what do the other PCs in the game think of his tactics?

[JThunder]

Copy-Cat is a great idea!! I think I could add to it by having it discreetly started by one of the previous victims (indirectly, of course) just to ruin the hero's rep... maybe make a long arc out of it where, after putting a stop to the cult, the hero ends up back at square one with the still maimed villain but no concrete evidence to take to the police. Will he punish the already maimed individual further or just threaten another maiming?


There's only one other player and they don't always play simultaneously. I run solo adventures for both as well as team-ups. When they're together, the maimings don't happen, and while the other player knows about it, he insists that his character wouldn't believe it unless he saw it happening.

[Belial666]

Use villains or even heroes that are angry/unsettled at his methods that don't use your usual straight-up fights. A few examples from my campaign setting;

1) Temporis is is a gal that uses teleportation as her preferred method of combat. She'll teleport in from a nearby building, use a teleportation attack on her target, then teleport out of reach. She rarely does real damage to her enemies; instead, she uses really annoying nonlethal teleports; into a Peru-bound airplane, into the International Space Station, on a survey ship in the Antarctic, into a cave in China, into Ford Knox and so on. Even people that can fly with great speeds usually take minutes to get back into the action (being able to fly does not make you able to navigate correctly) and she doesn't stay around to actually fight either; she teleports into her objective, takes what she wants, teleports out. Sort of the ultimate mobility challenge that frustrates quite a few people.

2) Brightfire is a lady of Chaos that likes to impose laws of a sort (yes, the contrariness is the point). She casts subtle spells triggerred under certain circumstances. I.e. her attacks are Subtle, Insidious and Variably Triggered 13. She can attack someone without them knowing or feeling attacked at all. But say that she chooses the trigger to be "touching pink". The next thirteen times they touch pink, they are going to get blasted. And since she can choose whatever trigger she wants, she can "curse" people into doing specific things or not doing specific things, with variable results if they do - or if they don't. Setting up whole chains of events where multiple people have multiple triggers for different things is her favorite passtime and she almost never engages in a straight fight.

[Shoe2]

another thing I am suprised that was not mentioned is LAWSUIT! Supervillains can use the law to thier advantage siting cruel and unusual punishment/assault and battery...etc Remember the jerk who sued the people who's house he broke into because he injured himself when breaking in AND WON!? this could be a real deal for the hero. If he is goverment sanctioned he could get benched/fired or put into prison!