In your opinions, how much karma/karma pool do these famous characters have...

a) John McLane (Die Hard movies)
b) Achilles (Troy)
c) James Bond (Shaken, not stirred)
d) Cleric John Preston (Equilibrium)
e) Batman (I'm Batman!)

a) at least 10.
b) didn't see Troy
c) 3 or 4
d) 2
e) 2

a) 50, at least. At least he had that many. He must have burned 40 getting through those movies alive... his basic strategy was to beat himself up until the bad guys fell down.

b) Didn't see it. But he's dead now, so he has none!

c) Endless supply. That guy has all the luck!

d) Never heard of him...

e) 1-3. He doesn't exactly seem lucky... just bad ass. I think he must have burned all his karma earlier.

JaronK

are you people insane? batman is pure, unaugmented human. the only way an unaugmented human could be that badass is to have a truly massive karma pool.

200/15 - John McLane
300/30 - Achilles
200/10 - James Bond
100/10 - Cleric John Preston
500/35 - Batman

Batman: Minimal. He doesn't rely on luck. He relies on his unbelieveable skill levels, intellect, and toys. I can even see him having the Bad Karma or even Cursed Karma flaws with the "luck" he has in his relationships and constantly running into/creating new villains. The same goes for Cleric Preston.

McLain and Bond both have insane amounts of luck, and thus Karma Pool. Not sure about Achilles, but considering some wench dipped him in a river, I'd say he's an insane-level adept with a peculiar "don't get hit in the frelling ankle" geas or something, and thus doesn't need luck.

karma, in SR, is as much a skill as Firearms or Electronics. it's a product of experience--something Batman has loads and loads of. 'luck' is only one explanation for the mechanic. in Batman's case, the mechanic could be explained as 'Batman is just that damned good'.

though, of course, even with a bat-moon to ride, he couldn't take Van Helsing.

He obviously has a ton of Karma, representing his extensive experience, which he's spent to get those unbelievable skills. Whatever Karma Pool he acquired along the way was burned almost as soon as it was acquired, again pointing at the Cursed Karma flaw and the reprecussions thereof. He might have a pool of 1 to 3 at any given time, giving him enough to avoid any botches he might somehow acquire despite skill levels in the 8+ range, but that's about it.

why would he need to burn that much karma? the only thing you can burn karma on is buying successes for tests, which equals extra of whatever explanation you're looking at for karma pool in the first place.

When you have to match an opponent's Opposed Test TN that's been augmented by superhuman abilities, you'll probably buy as many successes as you can anytime you do manage to get one success in.

Considering who (or what) he hangs out with, I imagine Batman using the Hooper Nelson rule a lot.

How about Jake and Elwood Blues?

i don't really see that as incredibly different from having a large karma pool, ROUS. i mean, in your case, he's burning it; in my case, he's spending it as needed. either way, he's still making heavy use of his karma pool.

100/20 Jake
100/20 Elwood

They both have the Blessed Karma Edge.

Achilles has jack. Aside from being born invincible, he's nothing. He's a damn pussy. He's invincible, yet he brags like a rapper when he kills Hector. Then his dumb ass gets killed by the second-biggest pussy in the story, Paris, the guy who started it all. All he had to do was guard his damn heel, but noooo, Achilles couldn't acheive anything that wasn't handed to him on a silver platter.

If you want someone with a really huge karma pool, I recommend the crazed monk Rasputin. He wasn't much of a fighter, and he still survived some insane punishment. To me, that's karma right there.

But about the guys in question...

1) Cop, many years of service, single-handedly takes out a group of terrorists wearing nothing but a flimsy muscle shirt and no shoes. You'd need lots of karma to pull that off. I'd say 30.

2) Greek hero, blessed by a god, almost invulnerable. Badass fighter. Too arrogant to protect his weak spot. Hard to tell how much karma pool he has, since he doesn't need to rely on it.

3) Secret agent, always gets the coolest toys. Has a tendency to wreck said toys. If you look at what he's been through, and how many times he saved the world, I imagine he's got a huge karmapool simply due to his work experience: 40.

4) Cleric of the Tetragrammaton, father of two, long time prozium junkie (now clean). The template from which every gun-adept was wrought, impossible to best in either ranged or melee combat, master of the gun kata. Likes: Rainbows, classical music, dogs, backstabbing his olleagues. Dislikes: Guys taking his guns from him, and mean people. Preston doesn't need a karma pool, he's got the mighty mighty PLOT supporting him. ("Our orders only say to take his sword, I guess we can let him keep his guns...")

5) Depends... Comic book Batman: Astronomical. Movie Batman: 0 - he has fake nipples. He Has Fake Nipples!!! What the hell is wrong with these people?!?

he does not have fake nipples. i saw no fake nipples in batman, and no fake nipples in batman returns. as there were no other batman movies made after the first two, your fake nipples must be hallucinatory.

there. were. no. more. batman. movies. after. the. first. two.

Actually, there were at least two more movies, called "Batman: The Musical" and "Batman and Robin: Joel Schumacher Shits In Your Eyes"

The Illiad stops at Hector burial. That story of Achilles' heel is nothing more than fan fiction (he got wounded in the Illiad IIRC). I don't even want to see that movie, surely crap. He has high Quickness, athletic, combat, political and medical skills, and couldn't start with them at CharGen since he had to pay a lot of points to pick demigod as a race. I'd say divine interventions whould require burning karma, so even if Achilles has the best stats, Ajax would have the biggest Karma Pool (he matches the other heroes but unlike them no god ever help him).

Wow, I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing that out, Nath - and here's a link that sums up the evolution of Achilles' Heel. I guess you learn something new every day...

Don't bother with Troy if you have any experience what so ever with Greek History or literature--hell, even mythology. I've heard of dramatic lisecene, but c'mon!!

Back on track: I think out of that group, James Bond would have to have the highest KP. The man's NEVER BEEN SHOT!! 'Course that be the result of his being an IE spike baby.

How else could foil evil plans and get into ladies' pants for, like, 40 years and still look 35?

Doesn't the Oddessey pick up where the Illiad left off? I thought both were written by Homer, which would preclude the second being Fanfiction.

Anyway my 2 nuyen on the topic at hand:

a) Definetly in the double digits. Can you imagine the TN for an Athletics (Jumping off the side of a building and using a Fire Hose to swing in the window) test?

b) Haven't seen Troy. Given that Achilles is part god I'd call his abilities that I know of racial modifications and edges, and probably a Quickened invisible armor spell that for some reason doesn't work on the ankle.

c) Three Digit Karma pool. On the other hand, we never see Bond learn anything new, so he has a variant of Cursed Karma that causes all his Good Karma to go straight into his pool. Oh yes, and he has a sort of possession Metamagic that lets him change to a new body whenever his gets old.

d) I have no idea who this is.

e) I detest Batman. He is an idiotic idea for a character who is simply handed supreme luck by the writers because he has rabid fanboys. I've considered Batman's abilities to be nothing more than the hand of god on every effort ever since the Crossover with Spawn where Batman, naturally, managed to fight Spawn hand-to-hand and bring him to a stalemate.

I frankly don't buy the skills notion at all, anybody who can actually use Judo to throw Superman around should not be in danger from the Joker. Therefore Batman has the homeruled edge "Infinite Karma Pool" but is played by a person so stupid he frequently forgets to use Karma Pool.

Also, McClane has Witty Sarcasm(Asshole) at like 6/10 by now.

1) Sgt John McLane. Pretty respectable, well into the double digits, 30s mabey. This guy is really just what someone with pretty avg skills and atts can do with 300 karma in edges.

2) Achilles. Plot NPC, dies when the GM says so.

3) Bond, James Bond. Yeah, loads of karma pool here. That plus skills through the roof. Helps to have the toys too. But he gets screwed every once in a while, read some of the books that arnt movies, he gets the crap kicked out of him a number of times.

4) Cleric John Preston. This isnt karma pool, this is just raw volume of combat pool added to a wickedly skilled adept. When hes not kicking ass, hes pretty lame. Just dont give him the oppertunity to kick ass. This man invented gun-kata, not to be confused with Chow young Fat, who invented gun-foo.

5) Bruce Wayne (batman) Karma pool: see 'yes'. triple digits easly, but rember, you need to get a sucess before you can buy sucesses. He gets his hoop kicked multiple times, especally the comic version (who is far superior to the movie Batman)

I think that some of McClane's powers come from some sort of Samson-like need to not shave, possibly not bathe. It seems as though he just gets more baddass the scruffier and dirtier he gets. Maybe that would be a cool geas...

Also I second everything Moonstone Spider said about Batman. Any karma he has I'm sure was just purchased with his vast fortune.

BB, I like your attempt to ballpark some standards for karma pool for NPCs. But I dont think this is the way to do it, for a few reasons.

First off, all these characters were storyline driven. Simply put, the fact that theyre in a movie or comic means theres an ending based on the story. So the hero will have exactly enough karma as the story dictates.

Players dont have that cushion. They could very well fail and wind up dead. Bond never dies, whatever the writers come up with is how much karma he has. The story, not the character, determine the karma pool in these cases. A more suitable benchmark would be one based on people that arent scripted to win.

Secondly, while theres a broad range of characters to pick from, theyre also open to a wide array of opinions. Something less opinion oriented would be more suitable as a benchmark figure.

Id suggest looking to RL rather than fiction to try to determine this, taking into consideration the game world. Like for example, if players karma pool caps at 10 (example in BBB), and dragons have 50+ (from dotsw), thats a good framework.

Dragons are unbeatable level NPCs, hence 50. Players presumable can win against the adventure if theyre smart, so 10 is enough to do it with a little wiggle room, but not enough that they have karma to burn. So benchmark numbers for a bad guy should fall on that scale too.

Run of the mill gangers and such probably only have 1 karma pool, enough to save them if they make 1 small mistake but thats it. Typical mobsters might have 3, enough to get by rackettering, and enough to make the somewhat dangerous in the single encounter theyll have with the pcs (before they die or something). Highly trained people like vetern sec teams might have 5, more than theyll probably need in their encounter with the runners but not enough to spend on everything. Crack teams like Tir Ghosts and Renraku Red Sams etc will probably bank in at 8, which coupled with matching skill levels (like pistols 7 or whatever) is enough to be a serious, perhaps deadly threat to the players, but still gives the players a little bit of an edge in the event both sides use it all in a single encounter.

Thats just a rough example of karma pool that, to me, seems more realistically applicable to setting a scale. As far as good karma, that largley depends on training and experience, which is a very broad range. The Milspec teams will have more obviously, but such things arent as important because its not used for any in-game operation, its just a method of advancing players. NPCs can be advanced to whatever the plot realistically requires. If you need some standard of NPC good karma to make sure bad guys are 'equivalent' just use a 50 or 100 points per threat rating scale or something. 0-50 is low threat, scaling up with 400+ being extreme threat. Since the exact skills and npc in question will change how much or little of this is needed, thats proably good enough.

Er, Nice post White Dwarf and thanks for the reply, but I wasn't trying to benchmark anything, this thread was largely for the fun of it.

I was merely interested in the opinions of others, as I find these things interesting.

Incidentally some GM's DO run their games that way, where its all about the story and the rolls are a formality, the players will accomplish things if, and when he feels it appropriate. I don't.

That's absurd. Odysseus is one of the least heroic of the characters. Hector, Priam, and Ajax, IIRC, are the only three I'd consider giving the title to.

~J

The reason I said Achilles from Troy, as in the movie is that in the move he is NOT a demigod, no mention is made of his invulnerability, he is just a really, really good warrior... and an ass. He's a man.

That's also absurd. Did they decide to put in strong female roles as well, and maybe make Paris a noble character? Ooh, or why not have Hector win instead, or have aliens invade the battleground?

~J

Note: I'm not against strong female roles in and of themselves. I love them, my writing is full of them. I'm against adding them where they shouldn't have been (*cough*Arwen*cough*).

i think we all know what would have made the movie better.

No argument there!

Odyseus is a hero. He thought of the horse, and he fought his way home in the Odesey. The best warrior of the group would have to be Archimedes. King Nestor is pretty cool too, simply cause he was like 90 years old.

Archimedes? If you don't mean Agamenmnon or somebody similar that Movie's even worse than I thought, given that Archimedes was a Mathematician and Philosopher.

Basically nobody in all of Greek Mythology is what I'd call a hero, the Gods were abusive scum with no morals and less common sense, the 'Heroes' were, actually a lot like Shadowrunners which is a far cry from heroes. Rob, Rape, Pillage, yeah that's their tune.

Archimedes did invent the variable-range catapult, but yeah, he's not supposed to be in there.

Odysseus was most emphatically not a hero. He tried to duck out of an oath that he'd gotten himself into, and then proceeded to do nothing remotely heroic until, potentially, Polyphemus' cave.

~J

Did he figure out Displacement, too? Or was that some other dude?

Same guy. The catapult is just his more notable military invention, as far as I remember.

~J

So, uh, how much karmapool dice do you think Archimedes had?

Pffft....not as much as Copernicus. That guy kicked ass!

I dunno man, Phythagoras had to live on the lamb from the man. Outlaw mathematicians

Did anyone else just get a crazy idea for a new character?

rofl... The Pythagorans would make a great Hermetic Initiation Group, but they gotta have a Vatican based Enemy

Spiderman is a modern example. He wasn't a hero until after his uncle got killed.