To me? I think you can handle IEs a number of ways:

a) That person you THINK is the IE is actually just his double.

b) Well, you think he's dead, but before you have time to put the bullet into his brain pan to make sure, the building starts to collapse, or security bust in, or any number of things that make the PCs have to get out of there in a hurry.

c) Sure, he can die...but, there is someone with a dragon-like memory crystal off-stage who will just take over for him after his death. Harlequin and Ehran the Scribe, and even Leonardo, might not be the original Harlequin, Ehran the Scribe, or Leonardo...(I got the impression from Worlds without End that their memories of the 4th Age were fragmented, and nothing was ever said for how they became immortal, or how they maintained that during the 5th Age.)

That's not entirely correct, Fuchs. Magic is the game winner in SR, the IE in question just summons up some insanely powerful spirit or uses a spell he still knows from the ED period, and your tech is worthless.

If the GM is being a dick and pulls the "no matter what you do, you won't succeed" card, he can use tech as an excuse as well, since it's all handwaved away anyway.

But not everyone is a dick.

How are you accounting for Detect (Explosives)?

I can theoretically crank the range on that up to over 100 klicks and your going to need IE/GD level counterspelling or wards to defeat it.

Or Divining?

Or Detect (Mortal Idiot that is actually seriously trying to off me)?

Have you considered airial delivery of the payload? Or simply drop a plane on them. If they freak out whenever a plane flies by in 100K distance...

Also, if said individuals would have such spells active on that scale pretty much everyone would notice them as very powerful, and that might be more detrimental to their health than a bomb in the long run.

uh what?

It hardly makes sense.

If I was immortal, and if I planned to control many things, I would:

-Get some people have debts to me.
-Be effective. If what you do, you do it well, then you gather trust.
-Have money. Carefully plan you course of actions. Once you know persons, it get everything easy.
-Work on agents. You need to know everything? No you don't, you need someone to do it for you.

I don't see where stuff changing changes something for you.


He head leader of the CIA has immense knowledges. And that the worls change doesn't change something for him. Difference with an immortal? He's the same boss for a lonnnggg time.

Only if you can penetrate the Masking, which if I recall does not scale with Force of Aura being Masked, doesn't matter if it's Force 1 or Force 48 it's just as difficult to penetrate.

It still doesn't protect them from getting a remote-controlled transport plane full of fuel and a detonator dropped on their head.

Personally, someone who stats up an IE with 5,000 Karma is only demonstrating that the Karma system breaks down outside of its narrow scope of emulating hard-edged professionals who are constantly trying to improve themselves. And that hard caps for everything else and unlimited advancement for Magic is a stupid and irrational rule even though most campaigns won't reach that point, Karma-wise.

I would make IE's significantly tougher than the runners, and give them a few unique abilities of their own, on top of their extensive resources, but I would still make them plausible in comparison with Great Dragons, free spirits, cyberzombies, and other powerful threats in the Shadowrun world. But a level 500 initiate with quickened Force: 100 spells simply doesn't seem plausible to me - might as well keep them statless as give them ludicrous ones.

No DM can think of all plans of the players in advance, not to the degree of having perfect counter plans in place before the players even create the plan, so the GMs usually pull the "this NPC is so smart he thought of a counter I didn't think of, which is why this defense is now in place even if it wasn't before" card. It's a narrative tool, nothing else.

And it begets the question why it is never used in favor of the players, as in "some other IE foe of this IE planned ahead, and so the IE's super-plans are not working as they should, allowing this player plan to have a chance".

Is that not what I already said?

This is getting old. Nothing stops you from doing just that, otherwise immortal beings have died due to failed plans (Nachtmeister was not a baby-dragon).

Yes, a GM can´t think of everything in advance. Yes, the "immortal wins" thing is a narrative tool.

As many groups will never ever try, writing a book about Golden Snouts personal defenses would be a terrible waste of effort and money. Especially in the interests of those who don´t like the ED metaplot. That single info "superior. keep alive." just saved you reading 20 pages on "Lofwyr. Just this good."

This all matters much less when the immortal is reacting rather than acting, so the trick is to keep the intensity high enough that they can't muster those resources because once they have their moment to do so, they get much harder to deal with.

That's not the argument you were making earlier. If the player's plans against one immortal fit the machinations of a second immortal, then those plans may work for a variety of reasons.

I also do not recall anyone saying that the players actions could not derail the plans of an immortal. But you do not needs the stats of the immortals for any of this.

If you are facing a grade X initiate (X being whatever someone with thousands of karma would achieve) than no PC played by the SR rules is going to get through the characters reasonable defenses. (short of calling in tac nukes, thor shots, another immortal, or some other unstated solution)

Immortals going at it in SR is like Superpowers going at it in the 50s and 60s, with the players in the role of Vietnam or Korea. Vietnam certainly derailed the plans of the US, but they never had a chance of really defeating the US (in the sense of killing the US). A big reason that Vietnam could stand up to the US, is that the US was not willing to use a number of options in its arsenal either for moral reasons, or more likely to avoid open warfare with other superpowers. I.E. if the US really wanted Vietnam gone, they could have turned the country into a glass sheet, and there is nothing Vietnam could do to stop that. But that level of escalation probably would have started open warfare with another superpower.

Even if you want to use a more modern version of the scenario, where the small country has its own nukes, say North Korea did launch its arsenal and even hit a few US cities, North Korea would no longer exist in any practical sense after our retaliation, and a few damaged cities does not kill the US.

It seems to me that IEs really bother some here for the same reasons that the US bothers some other countries. The simple fact that the US could wipe them out instantly is offensive to them regardless of the likelihood of that actually happening.
----
For those that want stats, would stats so developed that no player could defeat them (unaided) give you what you want (they would be stats), or would only stats low enough that high level players could take them on satisfy you?

When (and if, it's not like it's the daily scenario) I have to deal between a genius plan vs PC, I go this way:
-I am not a genius but I know the PC. Hence, I have a good idea about their style. Hence I preparre counter plans on what they may be trying to do
-Then I preparre counter plans about what could be done.

If the PC found a way that I haven't thought about, then, well done guys, if you do this well you win.


The rest is pure crap, yes.


Makes me think about some card games I play sometimes, like Wanted or french Citadelle. For Wanted, I was finding out that player X was against me and with the sheriff as he was just stealing my item instead of another one...and bla bla bla... unless I just found out he was clueless about the game.

For IE it's the same, IMO:

"Nah Dunkie" said Harlequin, "your infos are bad, the runners which I worked with aren't planning on dropping a ton of bombs on my head. I gave them hints about the Lance of Lug, and gave them a 1 000 000 by hidden means, but it's pretty obvious it comes from me. Plus I half admitted I would need their help, if they think I am planning something bad against them, they're totally stupid. If my calculation are correct, according to whom pull which strings, those bombs are for".... kaboooooooommmmmmmm


In the Plane: "Guys, you think he's dead?"
"Yes that bastardlish pointy eared is done, he wanted to trick us, he got what he deserved."
"Let's phone Ehran"


"Hi, job done"
"Who are you"
"The Shadowrunners you engaged"
"What?"
"Yes to kill Harlequin"
"I never did that. The feud is over, since I lost"
"huh? But the million? Comming from FineTech"
"Belongs to Dunkelzahn. Harlequin use it to reward his best allies"
"So??? so??? The location he gave us wasn't a trap. noooo"

"Now that I think about it, Harlequin would have been pretty stupid to try to ambush us... It makes sense now. argl"
Hey Gamemaster, it was written in a sourcebook that Harlequin can't die. He's not dead is he?


Poor GM

I see and acknowledge your point. To fully disclose: the adventure I was referring to was On The Run. It was an introductory adventure with new characters. There was no way Mr. Hacker was going to bust it open with his limited dice pools and within the parameters of the mission. Yes, I could have mocked up some stats for the disk but it would have been pointless. Mr. Hacker has now advanced to the point where, feasibly he could bust it open. So now if I have a plot point hinging on a current adventure, I'm going to make sure it doesn't involve Mr. Hacker being able to hack apart the code in a disk because, yes, he would pretty easily figure out I was railroading him.

I agree that actions, failures and successes should allow for the story to change. But I'm also running a group of multiple players. It's not feasible for me to run a game where, say, Player 1 on a whim flies to Istanbul and demands to have his own adventures, Player 2 stays in Seattle and does his thing, etc. Charting that kind of thing out bogs the game down horribly and leads to boredom from the other players. "While Mr. Hacker in Istanbul I'm going to grab a burger. Call my cell phone when it's my turn to roll." It's all well and good when you're a player and you demand infinite freedom. Which, theoretically, you should have. But within the limits of what any sane GM can handle in an evening 4-hour game session...? If there are techniques to handle this kind of thing I am absolutely, TOTALLY open to suggestion. Please.


That's not what I was inferring: The argument I'm seeing is, "I don't like the idea of SR having a metaplot and continuing story because I can't change anything in it". My response: an epic power-game isn't going to fit into the current SR metaplot framework. And that's not me posing an opinion, that's what the products produced by FASA, FanPro and Catalyst do. The writers say, "these are the big-wigs in the Shadowrun universe. If, in your game, you assassinate Damien Knight you will have a discontinuity occur when he appears again in a module down the road." Yes, the actions of the characters should affect the world around them. But that world may be small or else you're going to conflict with SR canon. As for my game being boring? Well, that's a matter of opinion. My game style may not fit with what you and many others would be looking for. That's just reality. I'm bored by dungeon crawls and adventures that can be completed by simply shooting the target.

Fair argument and I agree with a few points here but the BBB doesn't offer rules as to how far an NPCs influence would work on an PC. Without some clear directions from the developers (or agreed upon house rules [I'm not a fan of house rules]) I can foresee too many instances of that pissing off players with NPC semi-pornomancing. "Okay, the ugly bar slag wants you to give her all of your money, the codes to your Cayman Islands account and then go down on her so you do it." "What? No I don't." "You have to. You critical glitched." Exaggeration? Maybe, maybe not. My interpretation is that the dice support PCs with their role-playing, not give the NPC the opportunity to flat out steal hard earned loot from the players (or convince them to walk themselves off a cliff) just because they got some lucky sixes.


The GM's lack of personal involvement with the character is what differentiates Harlequin from a Mary Sue. Harlequin, though a character in that he had personality and motivation, was a plot device to move the story. Definitions can vary but to me he isn't what I would consider a true NPC other than the GM puts the words in his mouth. Harlequin was a character in a FASA module and part of the bigger SR metaplot. Let's say that Harlequin was given stats and the PCs, for whatever reason, decided to attack him and killed him. What then? The Shadowrun universe for that particular group or campaign falls apart when Catalyst theoretically reintroduces him in a future module. There's too much metaplot and backstory in SR to allow players to accomplish everything they want and yet maintain a cohesive fictional universe. If you want to maintain that universe, the PC victories, by necessity, need to be small. If PCs and GMs want uber-power campaigns, the metaplot needs to be dropped or the GM needs to create a new one for his group outside of "official" canon.

Pet NPCs are an irritation and I agree with you completely there.


I've been quite clear and rational and I'm always open to civil disagreement but I also detest forum bullies of which Dr. F most certainly is. Despite what our moms told us, ignoring bullies doesn't work. I apologize if it seemed like I was "hitting back" but I'm not keen on walking away when I've been personally insulted. And I think you'll notice that I simply pointed out bad behavior and where points and definitions that have been made in opposition have been flat out ignored rather than calling someone an "idiot" or what-have-you.

No, it doesn't. You simply need to adapt the story to your players and game. Here are a number of examples of how to deal with a 'dead Harlequin' since that's the running theme.

1) Have another IE (or a GD in human form) take up Harle's facepaint and fulfil his role.
2) Have Harle's (now Free) Ally spirit duplicate his appearance and role.
3) Have an agent of Harle - perhaps one of the runners he loves to use - carry on the mission in his name without ever being seen.
4) Just substitute another power player for Harle - it's not like there are not enough of them.

Under Game Concepts? I see the basics on tests be they opposed or whatever but nothing on NPC Charisma skills affecting PC. I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound difficult I'm just trying to figure out from where your guidelines are being pulled.


I don't think it is as I think mechanical differences between PCs and NPCs are important but I'm going to file this under "agree to disagree" and leave it at that.

Or simply don't play the module. The world won't notice.

I personnally find no problem in telling the PC it will be hard. If I don't want it to be open this early, then I tell that it will take time. A few years.

So what isn't that impossible?


Let's say a PC plays Cthulu and has maths 10% and says: I will solve Fermat's theorem.

"Uh? I took 200 years of failures before someone managed to solve it, you dream"
"I try it nonetheless"
"Roll to see if you actually understand it the problem. The problem is that hard. Refering to the rulebook, make a Math test at +20"
"22, I succeed"
"The solving is too hard for you, roll at -80"
"01, critic, I know the rules, it works"
"That's just plain stupid"


-Rules are no reality simulation, they can't handle everything
-Railroading is common in every scenario and rare are the real frre ones, the biggest thing is that the railroads aren't obvious.

There are no stats you can't defeat. Once something is statted it can be defeated.

Always the same song.

The only thing you can't answer to, is why you don't make them for your game by yourself.

While I agree with the sentiment I think that realistically you can specify stat's that are effectively insurmountable.

Why exactly can't said player have a sudden revelation that allows him to solve the problem?

Why shouldn't a few SR-PCs be able to kill an immortal if they plan very well and have some luck?

Not really. There's always the tac nuke solution (or Thor shot, or FAE "Daisy Cutter", or similarly large amount of destructive power).

If we're talking relatively long term, an optimised pornomancer character could very well sleaze his/her way into the heart of someone with access to such things, allowing a hacker to use those.

After all, Winternight managed to get ahold of half a dozen nukes. Getting ahold of one thor shot, or nuke, or just large amount of explosives and a delivery method shouldn't be impossible.

I don't use IEs, which should be clear. What I don't get is why people don't want stats, they can always go and say "in my campaign, IEs are invincible!".

Goose, gander, etc. etc.

It's why I once again prefer a vague, rumored entry for IEs, not some hard coded "They are gods!" lines.

The complaint, now lost, was that the game actively and specifically told you not to.

But wait! It was really his... TWIN BROTHER! *Dah-dah-dahhhhhhhhhh!!!*

I don't really get why people are so adamant in writing godlike IEs into the setting, instead of more flexible IEs that people can use as they see fit.

Take it up with the developers: http://catalystgamelabs.com/contact/. I just play here.

1- because it's a years long work. it's like saying "I rolled a critic in building a house, I do it in a hour or so". If nobody made it in 200 years, it certainly means that it's no simple task.

2-they can. I never said they can't.

What I say is that I don't need stats written in a gamebook if I probably won't need them and if this happens, they I will fill them by myself.

But do you need "they are invincible" written in a game book, or would a "make them as powerful as you feel suits them" line work as well?

Not Godlike, more demi-godlike, because, practically, the char-gen rules of SR generate demi-gods under such circumstances.

The stat's thing is to prevent probationary-role-players from making fools of themselves until the DnD training wheels come off.

I'm happy with providing stat's for IE's so long as I'm certain the players have legitimate reasons for wanting to take one on and that they will not be too upset when all that is left of their characters is their fillings.

Complain I agree to, but their style a margin between filling a book with stats of immortal PC stats that you won't fight anyway and writting you can't kill them.

Fuchs wrote:
What I don't get is why people don't want stats, they can always go and say "in my campaign, IEs are invincible!".


I don't want stats for a NPC if he's:
-going to fill a role into canon events (I do not like going too much off-canon setting, unless when I do campaigns with a clear end). So no need for stats for Lofwyr, PC are going to face him through his pawns, not himself.
-Not going to face the PC: I don't need statpages on the mayor of seattle, and so on.
-I don't mind if stats does exist. I just think there's better to do than fullying books of those when they are not that usefull.
-If an NPC (immortal or whatever) is supposed to scheme against PC and be their final opponent, then I want stats.


i think about Imago. The invincible elf decker was kind of stupid, avoid the lines were they wrote that he could do everything would have been better but, as he didn't have an impact on the actual scenario, stats are not necessary.

The second is the best thing, IMO.

Invincible is stupid.
Stats are useless

The last option you give is perfect

Like:

Harlequin is the probably the current best spellcaster from metahumanity and a proficient swordmaster too. (then describe his personnality)

That's enough for me to know that he is very strong. Have the PC really wanting to take him out, then I will fill a sheet depending on my idea of what is very strong (everyone has a different idea about what the top may look like. For exemple, a general, in DnD, may be a 10th level warrior for one GM, a 20th level for someone else.)

I wouldn't try to cheapen what the group has accomplished, but I'd allow options for continuing the plot sans the original actor if I felt it necessary. For example, most of what Harle is up to could be carried on by Ehran or his daughter if Harle were to die. This could even fall to a team of shadowrunners so that you have them fulfilling the role of the IE in the next story, possibly using the Harle name and/or Laughing Man matrix persona to maintain the illusion that he still lives if they wish to do so.

So let me get this strait. A game printed in the 90's did something that virtualy all games printed in the 90s did. And now, a decade later people are complaining about it when talking about a tangentialy related subject. Only they are talking about it so much and with such conviction that it has derailed the thread for the past 14 pages? What does it matter either way? It was over a decade ago. The people who wrote all those books don't even write Shadowrun material any more. Cant we all just agree that people have different, mutualy exclusive play styles and get over it?

Read the thead. You'll see the complaints, the hopes, and the wishes. It's people like you who keep skewing them and making mountains out of molehills while trying to act like paragons of virtue and sanity.

Looking at the various posts, and thinking on the various fiction I have read and watched, I see two kinds of immortals in fiction in general.

1. The first cannot die period. They can drift through life, not worrying about certain things, and often live many different lives, even forgetting past ones.
2. The second can be killed, they just do not age. If this type does not plan with truly meticulous care, and keep up a wide variety of useful skills to a high level, they will not survive.

The complaint seems to be that "Shadowrun has the first type and it sucks big time that they are so skilled." Whereas the other take is that Shadowrun has the second type, and that stats are not worth creating or listing because the game was not designed for players at the same level of experience. I always took the lines that implied "unkillable" as "unkillable by the players". (not the same thing)

It seems to me that for-better-or-for-worse Shadowrun has the second type, and wishing that away will not change the canon.

Having said that, a book (or e-book) on playing characters of such caliber could be fun (and would probably be very popular), but their stats are still not needed in the standard game books which are not intended for head-to-head confrontation between such characters.

I know the analogy irks some posters, but didn't Vampire have such a book?

I find oWoD is a much more interesting place if you ignore Vampire and pay attention to all the other game lines instead. >.>



Actually, you seem to have missed his point completely.



And that's not what I said. I said 'he's a jerk, don't be one too.' I never said it was OK for him to be a jerk.



I don't find it outside the realm of possibility for a beginning hacker to have 16-20 dice, and a high edge, so even then (I've played the scenario) there's a chance to notice the rails (we pretty much did, though our techno isn't that good)



Actually, you're blowing things slightly out of proportion. If one player decides he's leaving for istanbul and the other players don't follow him, tell him to roll up a new character. His last one is perfectly free to go to istanbul and do whatever it is he's looking to do, but it's outside the scope of the campaign. While within the scope of the campaign, however, player freedom should be paramount.



*Sigh.* I can't help but feel slightly dissapointed that came to the conclusion that I only go in for dungeon crawls. The point I was trying to make was the difference between semi-freeform roleplaying and railroaded storytelling. If anything a dungeon crawl tends to fit into the latter more readily.



It doesn't really need a house-rule. You could just ask your players to come up with whatever code your character lives by (be it ethics, morals, honour, whatever) so that they'll have one or two clearly defined things that they won't be talked into over drinks (though extended wheedling, torture or persuasion might be a different matter). Social scenarios in a roleplaying game are naturally more loosely defined, and just as you are free to say that some things are impossible in combat (along the lines of common sense) you are also free to do so in social circumstances. That said, if the PC has not taken a vow of chastity, or doesn't have strict rules about mixing bisuness and pleasure, it's entirely possible they'll get seduced while on a run.



Got to side with HappyDaze on this one. You could run the published sequel, and have the players go 'didn't we kill this guy?' until they find out (or are perhaps left in the dark) that it's actually someone else carrying on his name. You get to keep running the published modules, and the players feel like they actually changed the world a little. Win-win.



Actually, my complaint is that it not only has the second type, but they're hyped way out of proportion. Also, the 'will not survive' comment doesn't seem right to me - all they have to do to survive is stay the hell out of the corporate world. Some smart investments and a mansion somewhere and IEs could be living the high life without any of the secrecy needed.

I'd much prefer a mix of the two, with a much more human feel. It makes sense to me that a corporation would have globe-spanning agendas and constantly changing plots and plans, because that's what corporations are for, it's how they're organised. I just don't really see individuals working that way.

So, aside from creating a new character for a parallel campaign (which I don't have the energy or time for), the player only has freedom within the scope of the campaign setting. Freedom within a campaign setting is still limited freedom, yes? The argument against non-NPC characters (ie: Harlequin) is that because the module is set up so that the Player Characters cannot directly influence Harlequin, their freedoms have been limited. It really seems like lines are being very arbitrarily drawn as to what characters can and can't affect with their actions.


Please don't go digging for non-existent insults in my posts. I wasn't saying you in particular liked dungeon crawls, I was tossing out examples of game-styles I didn't care for.


That's a solution. Not one that I would particularly care for as it feels a bit soap-opera-y to me but others might like it.


That might work but I would see my players who are the play-by-the-RAW types having a problem with that. Especially if the results of an encounter was to the detriment of their PC. Players will do anything and quote any rule to protect their character's interests. And frankly I wouldn't know how to handle players who say, "My character could never be talked into doing anything he doesn't want to do."

On a slightly different note, I'm having a hard time fathoming why anyone who plays a game with machine-gun toting elves, magic spells, insect spirit aliens and Chthulu-esque Enemies from beyond the space-time continuum would have an issue with an immortal creature who is unbeatable. An IE isn't just a metahuman who can't die (of natural causes, anyway). He's an alien being completely detached from what the rest of metahumanity understands as existence. We're putting our own value judgments against a creature that we could never truly understand as we, as humans, don't really understand what it means to be infinite. This may be a weak and overly nerdy example but I'm thinking in terms of Star Trek's Q vs. Captain Picard.

That may very well be, but it was hardly my point. As I noted earlier, some people in this thread have stated that they think Shadowrun is worse than Vampire when it comes to historical revision and the attribution of human achievements and endeavors to 'immortals', and I was questioning that specific point of view.

One more attempt here.

I appreciate what Fortune is doing by bringing up a valid point that was within the original parameters of the thread's discussion and trying to run with it. Likewise, I'm going to ask again, why do people have a problem with the ED/Horror/GD/IE backdrop of Shadowrun? Was it really that much in 2ed? I am really only seeing a few adventures (Imago, Harlequin, Super Tuesday), a few Sourcebooks (Dunkelzahn, the Tir books) and some novels (haven't read them and don't know for sure, but obviously the one with the Leonardo plot). That doesn't seem like it was the majority of 2ed material. Maybe people just had a way better time with all of the other source material and adventures and are blowing this a bit out of proportion...

Thank you for that clarification *bows*

Dunkelzahn's Will was one of the better received and selling supplements. IIRC Harlequin was also. If I do recall correctly, that implies that this thread is a vocal minority, not that makes their concerns any less important.

The ED/Horror/GD/IE backdrop hasn't inspired that much debate because, frankly, it's not really that contentious of an issue. The ED/Horror thing is a bunch of cutesy little in-jokes that can easily be ignored. The GD/IE thing doesn't offend people so much by its existence, as by its implementation.


I guess my main beef with statless IEs is not so much them being unbeatable - a properly played IE will either decimate the PCs or, even more likely, never get into that kind of confrontational situation to begin with. But in a world where everything else has stats, they should, too, and stats that are scalable with the rest of the game world. In other words, maybe somewhere between a "generic" great dragon and a "named" great dragon in power. IEs shouldn't be utterly invincible - things like their power base being disrupted should send them running, as indeed seems to be what happened with the latest shakeups in Tir Tairngire. And that's how I would rather have them played - as people smart enough to run, rather than people who never need to run, because they can wiggle their pinky finger and make all of those fighter jets explode.

The world of Shadowrun gets mighty one-dimensional if one theme of it starts to dominate the entirety of it. That was the case in 2E. "IEs fighting horrors in a clandestine war": one theme. Add "IEs politically fighting each other and other states" and that's two. Add "IE being a key player in the tech race between two or more megacorps" and you have three. "IEs involved in Dunkelzahn's will" makes four. Then there's the "IEs vs. Dragons" suplot/theme.

That's just too much "IE flavor" in my opinion. Shadowrun needs a more balanced appraoch, which we have had thankfully in 4E so far. Everyone can pick and focus on what theme they prefer - if there's equal coverage for them.

You seem to forget that we aren't all against, don't you.

And if I sum up what the other part said, their arguments were:

1-They were unreallistic cause they pulled the strings to too many events in the ongoing story.
2-They were Mary Sues characters.
3-They were designed in a style that they were unkillable

(that's the main things I've read so far).

Point 1 is debatable: Did they effectively pulled too many strings and is it really unreallistic
Point 2 is a matter of interpretation
Point 3 is a matterof taste (you care about it or not)

I agree to that! (and to Glyph)

Hey finally, we are all agreeing in the end if we forget the stats necessity debate.