How do you balance your Player characters?

[gaby]

How do you balance your Player characters so ther not Overpowered?

To me a part of Horror is to be in a semi-No-Win Scenario,it,s Possible to Win but the powers the character have das not guaranteed sucess.

So how do you Balance it the Psychic characters?

I known how to do it for a Archanist I use Sorcerous Proficiecies and linitations from Nightbane book3,Through the Glass Darkly and Rifter 27.
So my PC,s Archanist das not have access to his full power all ther time.

[mrloucifer]

I don't understand where your going with this to be honest.

The very nature of BTS keeps the characters from being overpowered. A psychic's powers are inept when not in presence of the supernatural, and even when they are, the creatures they face can still tear the P.C.'s apart easily.

Whats so overpowering about psychics in this game?

[gaby]

Ok,sorry,made a mistake.

[Hendrik]

Ok,sorry,made a mistake.

I would not say so. Your question was quite legitimate. While I would share MrLoucifer's sentiment that a further balancing is not necessary, YOU may still want it. How to do that, though, if you continued to feel it neccessary, would depend on which imbalancing elements you feel are there.

That said, you can change the game by either allowing only certain "class" types or choosing the game accordingly.

You could have the players only play "Ordinary Persons" that stacks the cards for the monsters even further.

Or, make the campaign villain(s) correspondingly power boosted. or play a type of "Nightmare on Elmstreet", "College Frag"-party (10 little Indians) or Couchaloothooloohu type game.

Cheers
Hendrik

[mrloucifer]

Oy, reading my earlier comment I sounded kinda harsh. Completely unintentional, I blame the lack of sleep during all these finals as of late.

That being said, I still do not see any issues of overpowering in the BTS system. A horror game CANNOT function properly if the players feel they have an advantage in a given situation. The players ALWAYS have to feel things like isolation, being the underdog, uncertainty, and outright fear of their situation. In fact, one of the sobering thoughts I like to throw at my players is the realization that if it wasn't for the secretive nature of the supernatural (and their lack of being organized as a whole), the humans would have been overrun and probably shuffled out ages ago. That's a damn scary thought and should bring home the notion that overpowering is an impossibility in the BTS world.

Playing gungho characters should unnerve the hell out of the group as a whole as a brazen, guns blazing attitude is more likely to get you killed in a horror game than anything else. In scenes where the characters have to combat the monsters (and I think you doing it right if your players try to avoid them) the combat should get gritty, brutal and ugly when you can. A character who comes out of a fight injury free should count their blessing as the general design of BTS monsters (and I've created plenty of them to know) isn't about outright killing the players, they are more prone of disabling, mauling, maiming and degrading.

There's an old saying that you can only kill a man once, but you can break him over and over again. To me, THAT'S EXACTLY how BTS monsters operate. If this game created characters that were overpowering, this kind of atmosphere wouldn't be possible, and BTS would lose its bite (pun intended).

[Lord Z]

Hmm, I have long thought that what set BtS apart from earlier horror games like Call of Cthulhu is that the PCs *did* stand a chance against the bad guys and monsters. It is often not a good chance, but there is a wide range of dangerous and powerful monsters in the game -- from a feeble gremlin to an ominous dark god, from a harmless poltergeist to an incredibly dangerous possessing entity. If you really want to scale down the PCs, you might want to run a Victims Campaign as described by Eric Wujick in 1st edition.

I would be more concerned with making certain that the PCs are well balanced with each other. It can be very annoying for a player to sit around for an entire session because one or two PCs can travel to the astral realm where the entire adventure is happening. Every character has appropriate skills or abilities, and it is up to the GM to make sure that everyone at least has a chance to be useful.

[Hendrik]

Hmm, I have long thought that what set BtS apart from earlier horror games like Call of Cthulhu is that the PCs *did* stand a chance against the bad guys and monsters. It is often not a good chance, but there is a wide range of dangerous and powerful monsters in the game -- from a feeble gremlin to an ominous dark god, from a harmless poltergeist to an incredibly dangerous possessing entity. If you really want to scale down the PCs, you might want to run a Victims Campaign as described by Eric Wujick in 1st edition.

I would be more concerned with making certain that the PCs are well balanced with each other. It can be very annoying for a player to sit around for an entire session because one or two PCs can travel to the astral realm where the entire adventure is happening. Every character has appropriate skills or abilities, and it is up to the GM to make sure that everyone at least has a chance to be useful.

I agree with all of this, good LZ.

I suggested an "Ordinary Person" campaign, meaning what Erick called a Victim OCC in 1st (because the Ordinary Person is the new name for the Victim OCC, isn't it?).