How does the powerlevel change, when the charaktes arrive at 100 oder 200 oder 300 XPs?

SYL

the players arent too high on the experience yet, but they are very clear that they want to buy stuff

One of the things that have kept us from ramping up _severely_ has been a mistake that my co-GM and I made early on...Feng Shui sites, we believed only gave one extra XP per session (the rulebook says three). As we continued to tell the story, we decided that this was the best thing for all concerned and would allow the Dragons to get a _little_ bit of a foothold in the Secret War without having to constantly worry about their FS sites.

However, we still have two characters from our original eight; Gabrielle Summers, super spy and Chon La, Drunken Master. Along with the others (who are pretty badass in and of themselves), we are beginning to see characters with AVs around 18 or (very soon) 19. They have maxed out paths, added to Primary Traits, and taken Auxiliary schticks like Instant Dry-Cleaning and the Super Costume (from _Friends of the Dragon_.) The best way to max characters out is almost always by upping their Primaries, and so we've seen a lot of Ref and Bod and Chi ups.

The power level of the characters have neccessitated a few flicks as GM:
1) Unnamed Characters have become more and more unnatural. With high AVs, it's difficult and kind of a waste of time to send basic thuggy-mooks after the PCs. If you have Level 1-5 mooks (what I lump mooks as, with AVs of 8-12), they have to hit a Positive 6 to even have a chance to hit them. With situations, the mook needs _two_. And that's just kind of dull, and it takes a lot of time. So to make them work in the game, you must either artificially raise their AV to 13 (which basically makes them starting Secret Warriors) or come up with Ultimate Unnatural Killing Machines.

I took this second path, and it's actually been a lot of fun. I created the arcanotech 'Ovoid' (kind of like a weeble with arms and legs) for my current campaign - a Darkness/Arcanotech creature with unfortunate origins (made with the head and hands of a child), and some other specialties (three subtypes - one an infantryman with an ability to create and use with many, many different gun weapons, one a improved Bouncing Benji, and one a child-attracter - kids must beat a Will of 5 or must follow their directives). I think I'm going to continue to get a lot of use from those critters.

2) The Secret War knows who they are. It has come to the point that everyone knows who Chon La and Gabrielle are; they both have groupies amidst the DPs, but this also means that everyone knows their methods and will try to go after them first in combat. Everyone 'knows' to pile on to old Chon La before he enters the Drunken Stance (particularly if he's already had a few, as his Dodge AV goes down). Everyone 'knows' that Gabrielle Summers needs to be double-teamed or she will slowly rip through the competition like a rock through a wet sack. So I build battles around concepts like this when they are facing off against other teams.

FS is also not a bad game in which to use the idea of 'retiring' characters. If they survive long enough, the characters may take a back-seat role and become NPCs. That way, you have ready-made NPCs that the players _really_ care about because they've played alongside them for so long. We have several such NPcs right now...

Lars Croft, the two-fisted archaeologist hung up his whip and hat to become husband and father as part of a melodramatic hook.

Aelffric Gutierrez, Abomination, has become an information source in regard to the Architects for the Dragons and occasional fun color character.

Camille Boniface, Killer, joined the other side and shaved her head to become a Jammer. I look forward to using her as a villain at some point.

Advanced characters are great...you just have to know how to work around them. Remember that any operative in the Secret War that has lasted more than a year or two is going to start getting a rep, particlarly if they don't keep to themselves (ie: they ever interact with the DPs or go the Genocide Lounge.) In our version of FS, the GL's bartender keeps book on how long Innerwalkers survive after they've entered the War.

Oh, and one new little addition to our game...we now have a shared Ars Magica-style Grogs...Johann the Patriot Soldier will grow as he is passed from player to player and will either have an exciting death or will grow into the next generation of Dragons.

Neat.

ive got a killer in my game whos guns av is like 20...

edit, lemme rephrase, did i misread the sill "=" and Max again?... i didnt see any where where it said the killers AV was limited, so

did i do something wrong, or is your group uising slightly modified stuff?

SYL

Normally you cant start with AVs von 18. Only 16 for the OM and 17 for the wolf-as-sheep-trick for the supernatural creature.

My most advanced character had about 200XP ploughed into him, and his highest AV was only 15.

I do find that AV differentials can make the game tricky to run, which is why I've brewed a couple of house rules to make high AVs require dedication to get. It's nice in Fegn Shui that there's always something useful to spend XP on. You're never in a situation where none of the feats available are paritcularly useful or appropriate.

How the XP get spent can have a big effect on the tone of the game. High AVs give a clean feeling of quiet power. Many schticks give a wacky sense of fun.

And since she's hung up her character's guns to be an NPC, there are far fewer mooks around. I'm of the belief that the GM is there in part to entertain his players, and mook-battles are far less interesting when there is no Mook-Soaker (although Snorri the Viking and his _crazy_ BOD of 14 is fast becoming a new one), so I concentrate on other aspects of the game.

The Dragons were there to listen into a conversation between the Heavies of the nascent Three Queens faction that would give them information about an attack on the Empire State Building - and there was this slow dawning on them...

"Drew, so there's this SACQ thing in most every office of Freedom City's rotunda, right?"

"Yes..."

"What about in Monique D'Aubainne's office where the meeting is happening?"

If I had thought about things a moment or two more, I would have said 'Yes' and followed protocol on SACQ (kill anything not-Monique D'Aubainne, and figure that the Darkness Queen and the newly-hyped Desdemona Deathangel would have fallen under some sort of 'not affected by such simple treachery' thingie). I took the chicken's way out and explained that such a device was not active in Monique's office.

But the thought that they might have killed five nasty enemies with the flip of a switch, I hope, will make them think about what they _could_ do.

If an attribute or a skill has an "=", it can't be modified, period.

If an attribute or skill has a "Max", then it can't go above that value.

In the case of skills, these maximums apply even if increasing the relevant attribute would cause the skill to increase.

e.g. Some character or other has Magic 5,

... and Sorcery 8 [Max 10]. If they add 3 points to their Magic, making it an 8, they now have Magic 8, Sorcery 10), not 11, because Sorcery cannot go above 10.

... and Sorcery = 8. If they add 3 points to their Magic, making it an 8, they now have Magic 8, Sorcery 8, because Sorcery cannot go above 8.

Should a 2nd Edition ever be made for FS, I'd say the bit about 'Max' and '=' should be made a bit more clear. I don't know precisely how you'd do it, but scarcely a month goes by, it seems, without this coming up on the mailing list or the forum.

but yes, there does need to be something saying explicitly what they mean

where'd you say it was a max of 8?...

In the short term, it's probably better to have a high Speed early on, but starting out with such a high Ref makes it expensive to increase your primary and secondary stats.

In the long term, it's easier to boost Body (can't help strength, but higher Tough and Con help with damage and death checks) or Mind ("TREMBLE at my Info/Calligraphy, weakling!")... given how nigh impossible the OM is to hit at MA 16, GMs are much more likely to use Sorcery/Influence or Creature Powers that prey on low Willpower or Perception to neutralize the OM. And it's cheaper in the long run to build up an insane MA AV by starting with Agility at 5 rather than 9. Increasing Agility or Speed from 9 to 10 is 20 XP, but 5 to 6 is only 12 XP. By the time it's cheaper to increase the skill rather than Agility, the OM has an AV in the 20's.

well now that i have noticed my error on the killer in my game, things should go a little easier on them..

i had two named characters come after them last game, in 1850... basically gargoyles... but with the killer having such a higher guns value, i put the gargoyles defense at 21, and their toughness at 10.. had i known that i had messed up on the killers AV, there only would have been 1 gargoyle, or at least their defense would have been a little lower

From the Change the Numbers section of Chapter 2 of the main book:

"If an attribute or skill appears after an '=' sign, you can't increase that number at all during character creation."

So if "Sorcery = 8" is listed for an archetype, it starts at 8 and its maximum during character creation is 8!!