High Level Characters, Hit Points, & DEF

[samwise7]

For my Midnight Campaign I wanted to stat up some important NPCs that the player characters will interact with a lot, and I made several of them:

20th Level Human Cleric (Legate)
16th Level Orc Fighter (I sort of used the Half-Orc and added in some of the bonuses and details that the Orcs have in the monster section).
Three 6th Level Human Clerics (Legates that bully around the new recruits aka PCs)
Two 4th Level Human Clerics (Legates at the same power level and status level as the PCs)

What I noticed was that the Human Cleric had a good many hit points, and his DEF was really high.  The Orc Fighter with a Con of 19 took the Combat Training II Talent early on, and his hit points were through the roof.  His DEF was also really high, but the penalty from wearing plate and metal armor brought it down some with the Speed Penalty.

Another thing that got me thinking, was that if a very high level PC or NPC was fighting an opponent that was severely lower in level that it would be really hard for the lower level person to hit the higher level person.  Not that this is a bad thing, but it was something that I noticed.  Getting that +1 DEF every 2 levels is really powerful at higher levels.

Has anyone else tried making a high level character?  What did you think?

It was also interesting to realize that because the skill ranks get so expensive as you pay for higher ranks, that gaining a higher level doesn't really give you much of a boost.  For instance, when a rank costs 4 CPs, and you get 15 CPs to spend, if you sink 3 ranks in that skill, you only have 3 CPs left to blow on something else.  Again, this isn't a bad thing, but it was interesting.  The learning curve idea is really visible when you are trying to increase your skills to a high rank.  Sure, you can spend ranks on skills that you have lower ranks in to round out your character, but there are certain things that just seem worthwhile to put ranks in.  That 16th Level Orc Fighter spend a lot of CPs on raising up his Combat skills to high ranks for instance. 

The 20th Level Cleric character, while he did have a lot of spells, and a good total skill total in Spellcasting, the spells didn't feel... "high level."  I think I am just used to high level spell users dealing out a lot more damage because they are X Level.  I'm thinking D&D/D20 Fireball for instance.  Having a higher skill rank does let you get spellcasting Boon Points easier (because you can really get above the CTN), but in the spell descriptions there didn't seem to be any real level dependent damage.  So it seems the main difference between low level and high level mages, really is the rank they have in the skill, and not much more when it concerns casting spells.  Does this make sense?

Again, I'm not trying to stir up trouble or anything, it was just some stuff I noticed.  The stuff I noticed I don't think it anything "bad" but just the sort of flavor of the mechanics that I tasted while making up some NPCs.   

[imported_Rasyr]

Can you give some examples of what the DEF was and the Attack/Spell Bonuses involved? Same with hits...

[samwise7]

Yeah I can try to break it all down tomorrow (Sat).

[samwise7]

20th Level Human Cleric (Legate)
Background Urban Upper

DEF 28 (-3 Speed Penalty from Armor figured into it)
Hit Points 60
AR 13 (He is wearing Chain armor and uses a shield with a nasty magical Mace in the other hand).
Spell Points 61

Chr 19, Con 16, Dex 13, Int 19, Spd 12, Str 14, Will 22 (magic item), Wis 22 (magic item & stat increase talents)

Skills (with ranks)
Athletics 14, Combat Maces 24, Crafting Scribe 3, First Aid 16, Influence 20, Lore Religion 20, Magecraft Base 21, Perception 21, Riding 3, Spellcasting Divine 24, Spellcasting Wizardry 20, Streetwise 6

He bought an assortment of Talents that fit his character, including some Combat Moves, Extra Spell Points, etc.
 

[samwise7]

16th Level Orc Fighter
Background Barbarian

I sort of reversed engineered the 5th level Orc in the back of the book and added onto it, to come up with a 16th level orc.

Def 21 (with the -5 Speed Penalty figured in from Plate & metal armors)
Hit Points 193
AR 13

Chr 7, Con 19, Dex 13, Int 10, Spd 19 (bought this up with Talents), Str 19, Willpower 10, Wis 10

Skills (with ranks)

Athletics 14, Combat Gr. Blades 32 (he paid through the nose for this one), Combat Bows 10, Lore Local 2, Navigation3, Perception 11, Riding 2, Stealth 8, Survival 3, Tracking 11


So with Hit Points, he has a 19 Con (+3 bonus), the 3 Hit Points per level from Combat Training II, plus the 3 per level he gets for being a fighter.  So that is a Base of 39 (19 +20), and the 3 + 3 + 3 per level.

39 + 144 = 183 +10 (orc) = 193

[samwise7]

I actually realized that I messed up the Hit Points when I was going through and breaking down the Orc character for the above post.  I think originally I tacked on the 67 Hit Points that were listed in the Orc description, so the hit points are now accurate.