High powered party? Nooo problem.

[Talen]

Or, how to make the biggest, baddest bunch of adventurers in your LARP facepalm.

This weekend my LARPing addiction of choice (LAIRE) had a 3-day event. Saturday night, a module hook comes in- a new Big Bad Guy is being given his powers by a demon, and only a small party of the best will be fast enough and quiet enough to get there before it's over. Nobles, powerful warriors and warlocks, quietly go through the night and dispatch the outer guards and cross the swaying bridge to the ritual chamber.

All the NPC's are ready, including the champion, looking scary as hell with a metal skull-helm and a great hammer of black, red, and gold for when the PC's make it there....

...until they hit The Door.

A simple mithril door, with a lock. And nobody brought lockpicks. Improvising with pins and the like just doesn't do it.

40 or so minutes later, the new demonic champion is happily celebrating his powers and the heroes are back at the local inn, cursing.

In your LARPs, what's been the simplest thing to stop your local uber-characters?

[Ecchi_Kitty]

Chasm. 20 feet across.

"Okay, so the archer can shoot an arrow across with a rope trailing, then the theif can crawl across the rope, secure the end, and then we'll all cross."
"Sounds good, who has the rope?"
"........."

No rope, no long poles, nadda. Nor and teleportation, levitation, flying spells, nuthin.

[Ecchi_Kitty]

Diffrent time, diffrent group.
Time, and damage.

Lot of gamers in the area, one of the Dms desided to have a big sorta linked game. Everybody makes a high level charecter, we get randomly assigned to groups, we all head off in groups to find an important artifact.

Lots of blade masters, high power wizards, master theives, and the like. I idly listen to the various charecter ideas, notice their aren't any clerics. So okay, I'll make a cleric to help balance whatever group I'm in.

Turns out that of thirty some charecters, I'm the ONLY cleric. There is ONE individual who took a specialist class that could also heal, with 'Lay on Hands' three times a day. He was in my group.

We'd go out on an adventure, get beaten up. I'd cast healing spells, sleep for the night, and we'd move on.
Other groups would get beaten up, then head to a temple to heal, buy lots of healing potions, or just lay down and rest, burning thru their time and funds.

In the end, our group had a few too many bad rolls in a row, ending up dying just before we got the artifact.
However, we were the ONLY group who got into the place the artifact was hidden. There was ONE other group that found out where said hiding place was, two week after we did, in game terms, but was unable to reach the place before the in game time limit was up.

[sableagle]

I've had a problem with The Door before in a MMORPG. THere's a quest that involves killing a door. It's down a long corridor and there are Rolling Balls Of Death, so no melee attacking, and if you ID it or hit it with any kind of spell it goes back to full health, so when we arrive we tuck out of the way of the Balls Of Death and anyone carrying spare starter bows and Greater Broadhead Arrows passes them out to the non-archers and we all start on the door ... erm ... anyone carrying a spare no-wield bow? Any actual archers in the party at all? Anyone with any kind of physical ranged attack? Ah ...

Half an hour later one lone high-level archer finally got through the preceding stages solo and joined us just to take out that one door.

There's a newer quest with a line of doors blocking a causeway, with lots of mages shooting at you while you batter them down ... but it's a very high ceiling and some of us can jump pretty high ...

[idleknight]

In my local linea branch we had two or three knights that were pretty unstoppable, experienced players and fighters with fantastic kit and stats to match.

It looked like they were going on another adventure where nothing could stop them, when in the second encounter a bandit hedge mage threw a couple of minor spells at the senior knight then "Obey me and dispatch your allies with beserker fury". He did and managed to take down the other two knights and the rest of the party fled.

It's a poorly written game system where character become too unbalanced

[sableagle]

The biggest LARP "balance" issue I've encountered was the guy playing a high-level warrior and holding an eight-foot broadsword out like a rapier.

We need a LARP system with realistically heavy weaponry. It'd persuade people to go for really good physrep armour too. :)

[idleknight]

most of the UK systems state the max length on weapons and the number of hands which should be used to carry them. I have seen refs tell players who abused the rules that they have dislocated their arm, which was a injury which could only be healed with rest eg not that event.

As for armour phys-reps many systems also state that the in game protection of the armour can be reduced at the discretion of the refs is a poor phys-rep is used.

I'm all for minimum costume and armour standards as the better it gets the better the imersion in the system and the more effort people put in.

[xX-ALTAIR-Xx]

Usually when i play RP on Garrys Mod, i will stage a small uprising (IE: me killing all player combine in sight as a City 17 resident) and everything goes fine until one little detail comes in:

Combine Sniper XD

[Talen]

The biggest LARP "balance" issue I've encountered was the guy playing a high-level warrior and holding an eight-foot broadsword out like a rapier.

We need a LARP system with realistically heavy weaponry. It'd persuade people to go for really good physrep armour too. :)

Plenty of live steel re-enactor types out there. :)

Most LARPs of the type I play in have weapon length restrictions on them. The weapon you describe would be illegal beyond illegal in every one I've done...after around 5-6 feet, the type of boffer weapon used simply becomes unsafe, if for no other reason but whippyness/weight.

Likewise, they reward more realistic armor with better protection.

But annnnyhow, going back to the subject...it goes to show you that the most effective challenges are ones that demand a balanced party. Or at least a wisely-equipped one. :)

[Kamn]

So... a shoulder height double axe is out of the question? What about a pike, or a longspear?

[Talen]

Same difference. Pikes and longspears were designed for armies, not the tangled mess most LARPing melee combat becomes. Safety first, and a whippy PVC-core 8-foot monster generates quite enough energy (and can only be directed with inaccuracy, strike two) to club someone senseless, even as a padded chunk of PVC. You wanna reach out and touch someone further than that, pick up a thrown weapon, bow, or crossbow. :)

Max length for weapons at the game I play at = six feet. Anything longer gets into the aforementioned whippy and poor control issues...I get bopped by random missed swings enough with greatswords/bastard swords as it is! Our LARP is NOT armor-required in any way shape or form- it's useful and it looks cool, but the game is designed so you don't have to wear it to play without massive bruises or a concussion.

A shoulder-height double axe or spear is likely under six feet though- so no worries there- however, the head has to be within reason. The "edged" section can't exceed two feet (a 2-foot long axe head is quite effective!) of the weapon.