What would you change in DCA builds?

[pawsplay]

So, you don't like the Green Arrow character. Okay.

[hs5ias]

I've altered quite a lot of the builds for my own versions.

I've changed the balance of Will defense and Fortitude defense. In my builds the maximum for pp in Fort def is 4. So my Batman has a Fort defence of only 8. There is just a limit to how much punishment an ordinary human can take. In return though it allows me to give Batman a really high Will def, which to me seems more appropriate. Conversely my Superman has a really high Fort def, but a much lower (though still good) Will def. My Wonder Woman is balanced on the two defense scores.

I've toned down some scores here and there that seem a bit inflated, such as Bolt's intelligence or Big Barda's agility.

I've generally increased the quantity of skills and advantages of many characters. Conversely I've pared back on the fighting ability of many of Batman's rogues, and also reduced the sometimes excessive use of the Defensive Roll advantage.

I've given Green Arrow and most of the other archers trick arrows as devices. I've raised the rank of effect of these to about 7. I made the points balance out by making the basic arrow multiattack (archer characters in the comics seem to be able to fire at a tremendous rate).

My Aquaman is PL14. He is now very close to Wonder Woman in physical stats and fighting skills.

I've reworked the Metal Men, trying to make them more distinct from each other and to better reflect the elements they are made of. I've also added in the seventh Metal Man, and the second metal woman, Copper.

Here and there I've actually broken canon. I've excised the word 'Evil' from all villain names and groups. No one calls themselves 'evil'. The Brotherhood of Evil is now just 'The Brotherhood'. Evil Star is now Power Star (and I've given him a straight duplication power of himself, rather than chibi versions of himself).

Overall my builds are more elaborate and expensive, as I indulge myself in playing around with the system.

[Batgirl III]

One thing I would work on is giving Green Arrow some more damage potential. Power Attack aside, his arrows are great against minions, but against the average PL 10 character they just don't do anything besides hit very, very well. A player-designed archer would be beefed up better.

But, um, Power Attack (and all the other special Manuvers) is kinda the hallmark of Team Arrow; Ollie, Roy, Connor, and Mia (even Diana, in her own way) all have sky-high accuracy for their Power Levels paired with modest Damage. This lets them nail hard to hit targets or take the tradeoffs needed to put more power into overcoming easier-to-hit, harder-to-hurt enemies.

Ollier's Sandard Arrow, with Power Attack, can range from Damage 5 to Damage 10 -- that's enough to hurt Superman. Sure, Clark isn't likely to fail the check, but we're talking about a PL10/145PP character versus a PL15/289 point demigod.

[Quistar]

Pardon me while I smack my head...yeah, Power Attack does help.

And I do happen to love Green Arrow (the one before the New 52 at least). I was just frustrated trying to use him against a similar PL character and not getting much in the way of results. Obviously I needed to up my game while running that battle.

- Andrew <:-(}

[rstehwien]

For all the DC builds when used in my game I need to go and rebalance all the attacks, defenses, saves, etc to be within PL tradeoffs unless there is a really good reason for some weakness. My personal experience shows that the game works best when things are within +/-5 of PL for tradeoffs. So if someone says they are PL 10 then their attack/effect (for all attacks), dodge/toughness, parry/toughness, and fortitude/will needs to reflect that. If they don't, then they are likely to be KOed in one round by one of my players because one of them probably has something that targets their weakness.

All that is personal preference.

As for fixes things like Blaze's "Granting Wishes" should be fixed. By the rules as soon as she changes her array around, all wishes are cancelled. Don't think I want any of her wishes. This is an example of a place where the rules aren't adhered to, they didn't need to put the powers in an array (not like they were limited on points), and ended up giving an example to players of building a power to save points but that wouldn't work as intended.

I've been playing m&m for nearly 10 years. What I've learned about the game in that time is that it's written in a "do as I do" rather then "do as I say" style. A sourcebook will tell you "A" and then there will be dozens of examples in the rest of the books showing where the writers didn't do "A": such as in the 12 characters in DCA and the benchmark table.

That is the truth sir! So many of the writups disregard their benchmarks. While I don't think that they should be a slave to the benchmarks I do think that official writeups should represent the best examples. My only problem comes when the character isn't very usable - like they are PL 13 and have a will save of 2 (making them the toy of any mentalist with no effort).

[Quistar]

Martian Manhunter's telepathy powers need to be higher ranked, and I'd add some kind of psionic attack power to his array. He comes across in game as far weaker than his comic book appearances would suggest.

- Andrew <:-(}

[Sid]

I've noticed a few characters are below their PLs for what I would say is their Iconic attacks, which is wrong. Off the top of my head, Grodd has that issue and it appears that Martian Manhunter does as well. Grodd I believe is PL11, but his Mind Control is PL8 which is very easy for PL10 characters to save against. It's easy enough to fix once you realize there is an issue, but I'm not sure why they decided to put those types of abilities so far below PL.

[Earth-Two_Kenn]

Probably because if Grodd's mind control was all that there'd be more times when Flash rushes at Grodd and Grodd uses his Force of Mind to make the Flash go kill Ralph Dibny or the President or Iris West or someone. Grodd's mind control is very useful against civilians; it's not often great against other supers.

[Sid]

Probably because if Grodd's mind control was all that there'd be more times when Flash rushes at Grodd and Grodd uses his Force of Mind to make the Flash go kill Ralph Dibny or the President or Iris West or someone. Grodd's mind control is very useful against civilians; it's not often great against other supers.

But with an Affliction 8, and Controlled being the Third Degree failure, it'd be nearly impossible for it to work and be maintained on anyone with even the lowest Wil. Especially since it's not even cumulative.

Just flipping through the book, PL4 "Policeman" type characters routinely have a Wil of 2, hell PL1 Scientists have a Wil of 2 as well, which means Grodd would only have a 25% chance of Controlling them on any given turn that he actively tries to control them, and the civilians would have a 75% chance of breaking out every six seconds (although it'd take a full minute to shake it off the 3rd degree condition).

Being so far under capped (He's PL12, it's a full four levels under the cap), it actually isn't all the good against civilians since there is a 50/50 chance that a PL1 character will either be just dazed (in which they can run) or unaffected.

[Arkrite]

This is true, but also consider that anybody who isn't considered a "Hero" is usually run by minion rules.
I believe that means that if a minion fails their save they take the worst possible portion of that affliction. So, yes, the cop would have a small chance to avoid being mind controlled, but if he fails at all he is completely controlled.

I don't believe minions get to make saving rolls afterwards to break out of it (unless the GM thinks it's thematically correct).

And, if the GM needs NPCs to be mind controlled for a story then they just are. Kind of a dodge, but it's still a viable option for making an intersting story.

I ran into the same kind of issue when doing a build for another psychic character. I noticed that he often used his power to wipe the minds of thugs, or to read their minds but he almost never does these things against super villains. I realized it was partially because it just became too powerful if he could mindwipe or mind control anybody he ran into.
So against the normal villains he's an unstoppable monster thanks to these powers, but against super villains he's forced to switch to different tactics, or to wait until he has restrained the badguys to try those tricks.
He still has those tricks, and in certain situations they're quite powerful, but they're not so powerful as to be show stopping.

[Sid]

Oops, forgot about the minion rules. I actually just had Grodd automagically control a bunch of PL 6 guards and didn't even roll for it, but when he was fighting some lvl 10 players, his Mind Control is useless so he basically becomes a melee fighter with some minions at that point which is a bit disappointing.