Wading In: Power Levels for DFRPG Campaigns

Posted by Rick Neal in Dresden Files RPG, What's he playing?, tags: campaign, Dresden Files
RPG, power level

I’m still waiting for June to start actually building a DFRPG campaign, but I’m
starting to do some thinking about what sorts of decisions will need to be made. I
want a lot of these decisions to be made jointly between me and the players,
through discussion and consensus, which means I need to understand the
ramifications of the different options available.

And that means I’m doing some thinking about things.

One of the first decisions that needs to be made in running a DFRPG campaign
is the power level of the campaign. There are four different levels, each of which
dictates the Refresh level, number of skill points available, and the highest level
of skill you can take. There’s a good explanation of the different levels in the
book, talking about what sorts of characters are available at that level, and what
sort of abilities they’ll have.

This is a pretty far-reaching decision, with a sort of domino effect that cascades
through the entire game. The power level will affect the types of characters
created, which will influence the types of foes they face, which will shape the
stories you tell and the themes you choose and even the nature of the setting.

So, what are we talking about, here? Here are my thoughts. Note that the
conclusions I come up with are not the only ones supported by the game, but
they show some of the ramifications of the power level decision.

Feet in the Water

6 refresh, 20 skill points, skill cap at Great.

At this level, you’re looking pretty much at playing mortals with (maybe) a
supernatural trick or two. This means templates like Focused Practitioner, Red
Court Infected, and True Believer. You can get a little more oomph by taking the
basics of things like Champion of God or Changeling, but you’re not going to
have much in the way of refresh to customize your character or buy extra stunts.
At most, you’re going to have two skills at Great, which would leave you with only
four other skills above Mediocre.
This is the game of the clued-in mortal, the small fish in the pond, and folks who
are just starting out in their career of becoming big, bad monsters. Sample
characters from the books are people like the Special Investigations Unit, the
Carpenter family (excluding Molly and Michael, but including Charity), the Ordo
Lebes, the Changeling kids from Summer Knight, and most of the members of
ParaNet. The foes they’d be able to face on an equal footing (-6 refresh or
thereabouts) are either mortal or very low-powered supernatural; things like the
Chlorofiend, the chimp or baboon sized shen demons, some common fey like
pixies and elves, spectres, and minor spirits.

This sort of power level really lends itself to horror stories, as opposed to action
stories. In most cases, your characters are going to be significantly overmatched
by the opposition, and they’re going to need to outrun and outthink them. Horror
stories also tend to happen on a very personal scale – it’s you and a couple of
friends up against the monster that’s going to eat you. You’re not necessarily
trying to save the world. You’re just trying to save yourself.

The idea of personal scale and the limited array of foes also suggests that a
game at this level would fit nicely into a limited-geography setting – maybe a
college campus, or a small town, or a single precinct in a city. Of course, as the
early seasons of Supernatural show so very well, it also works fairly well as a
road-trip game.

Of course, you don’t have to go the horror route. If you truncate the power scale
of the bad guys, eliminating most of the serious occult threats, you could run a
strong action game, where the little bit of an edge that the characters have over
mundane characters is enough to turn them into the last, best hope for keeping
the evil under wraps. It changes the feel more to that of a Submerged level
game, as noted below, because the range of power is narrowed so significantly.

Up to Your Waist

7 refresh, 25 skill points, skill cap at Great.

This is where the supernatural templates begin to be more viable as characters.

Yeah, that one refresh point does make that much of a difference – it opens up
things like the Sorcerer template, as well as giving you the buffer you need to
customize and tweak the lower-level templates into something with a little more
style. The skill points don’t give you an extra Great (or even Good) skill, but it
does round out your range of skills with at least four more skills at Average or
above.

Characters like Murphy, Hendricks, or Father Forthill are good examples of the
kinds of characters that start being playable at this level, and more powerful foes
(ghouls and sorcerers, for example, maybe even an actual vampire) start being
viable to send up against the characters.

I can see going one of two ways at this power level: either ramp up from the Feet
in the Water level, creeping from horror into more heroic horror, or else setting it
as a starting point for action stories, with the characters being young,
inexperienced, and just starting out. Think later-season Supernatural (where
Sam and Dean have mastered fighting all the easy monsters) versus early-
season Buffy (where Willow is just starting to dabble in magic, and Buffy’s only
died once).

Setting can go either way, depending on whether you want your characters to be
the big fish or the small fish. Keep it at the same small scale as in the previous
level, and you’ve got some serious dedicated guardians in control of their little
patch of ground. Ramp it up to full city size, and you’ve got some up-and-comers
ready to be pawns for the other power blocs squabbling over territory.

You can even do both: consider the Alphas, who pretty much own their little
section of the city, but are still very much a local phenomenon, and at risk from
the bigger power players in the rest of Chicago. In fact, that would make a pretty
cool campaign, but you’d have to adjust the Alphas’ listed powers from their stat
blocks to get them playable at 7 refresh.

Chest Deep

8 refresh, 30 skill points, skill cap at Superb.

Here’s where we start approaching the default power level of the novels. You can
play a Wizard at this point, though not a terribly experienced one, and even a
White Court Vampire. In fact, at this point, all the character types are available. If
you play a less-costly character type, you’ve had the opportunity to upgrade and
customize it a fair bit. You can start out with two skills at Superb, and have eight
other skills at Average and above. You are starting at a level that the rest of the
occult world has to start noticing.
This is where you’d start if you wanted to play the Alphas as statted, or a band of
Apprentice Wizards like Molly Carpenter, or a group of experienced Minor
Practitioners like Mortimer Lindquist. The FBI Hexenwolves start becoming viable
opposition, along with things like the gorilla-sized shen demon, Bucky the Murder
Doll, hunter goblins and the lesser gruffs, Black Court Renfields, werewolves,
and the like.

The stories are moving strongly toward the idea of action, now, though not
necessarily as pulpy as things get next level. Characters have the options and
power to go toe-to-toe with a broad range of antagonists in whatever sense they
choose, and can be extremely competent in a narrow range of abilities. They can
be trapped in that middle-management hell of having to look after those weaker
than themselves (many), and still obey those more powerful than themselves
(still many). And they’re tough enough now that those above them are much
more inclined to notice them and give them orders or demand favours.

Scale-wise for the setting, the world is really starting to open up. At this point,
things are ripe for globe-trotting troubleshooters working for Monoc Security, or
Strike Force Summer Lightning, keeping the Nevernever safe for their ladyships.
If they keep to a smaller geographic area, they start to be real movers and
shakers in their city, or the undisputed top of the food chain within their own small
town/neighbourhood/precinct/college campus/shopping mall.

Submerged

10 refresh, 35 skill points, skill cap at Superb.

The five extra skill points don’t add a whole lot, but the two extra refresh are
huge. It doesn’t open up any new character types, but it gives you the flexibility
to customize and combine different types. Here’s the quote from the book – I
can’t say it any cooler than this:

[I]t becomes possible at this stage to be a Champion of God with a Sword of the
Cross, or a Werewolf who can do earth evocations, or a Red Court Infected who
becomes the Emissary of the Buddha as a way of taming his impulse control.

This is the default power level of the main characters at the start of Storm Front.
With this, you could build Harry Dresden, or a very talented Karrin Murphy, or
Michael Carpenter.
This is also the point at which all the antagonists really become viable as
opposition, though there are still some that will crush characters of this level if
you meet them head-on. But characters at this level have a broad range of
different options to help them pick their battles and choose their weapons.

Action here can creep easily into the pulp ideal, and doing horror is really tough.
Stories, which started to really expand scope at the last level, now deal with even
larger issues than the personal stories of the earlier levels. Not to say that things
don’t have a personal aspect – you need to make things personal enough for the
characters to get involved, after all, and abstract concepts like saving the world
just aren’t as immediate. I’m just saying that there will be world-saving going on.

If characters aren’t the biggest fish in their pond at this power level, then they are
still pretty significant players, as opposed to pawns. If someone tries to push
them around, even someone much more powerful, there will be repercussions.
Political stories start being far more interesting at higher power levels, as the
characters will be able to bring some leverage of their own to bear on the course
of events set by the mighty.

Setting scale-wise, you pretty much have to open things up here to allow for
enough opposition to generate interesting stories. If you’ve got four Wizards in a
little farming town, for example, putting enough supernatural excitement in the
town to keep the characters busy is really going to strain credulity. Expanding it
to the five towns in the area and the wild spaces in between, though, and you’ve
got yourself a ballgame. Or at least a roleplaying game.

So, there you have it. That’s the rundown on the four different power levels, and
the way they can affect the game you build. It’s an important decision right at the
start of the campaign, and I encourage groups to think about what the stories are
going to be like with the different levels. Talk it over, and find what works for you.

At least, that’s what I’m planning.