double 8s: who ya got?

[breadmaster]

one of the evils discussions got me thinking about the elusive double 8-stat character (excluding galactus).  I only looked at marvel/dc

I went through the characters and came up with quite a few I thought warranted it.  I won't list them, so other people can post their ideas first.  here were the 'tiers'

tier A: these characters were shoe-ins (to me).  I came up with 5

tier B: most of these have an 8 that is obvious.  a second 8 is a stretch.  I came up with 7

tier C: these guys have sliding power levels.  one 8 is pushing it, 2 is nuts!  I came up with 5

[gameplan.exe]

are you looking for people who already exist in OP? or comic characters in general?

I honestly can't really think of any in OP that warrant it... I've heard a lot of people throw out some names (mostly in DC, as it were), but I'm never really convinced...

[breadmaster]

existing characters

none that warrant it?  what about thor?  martian manhunter?

[Palatinus]

Batman! 2-8-4-8

[gameplan.exe]

existing characters

none that warrant it?  what about thor?  martian manhunter?

I don't think Thor's E warrants an 8 (unless a slew of other 7E characters got bumped).

I don't know enough about Martian Manhunter to say he should have dual 8s. I think he and Superman should both have 8S, but i'm not sold on the 8E...

Batman! 2-8-4-8

This is another that I see suggested a lot, but again, I'm skeptical. Maybe I just haven't read enough Batman, but I don't see him with an 8I... not while Beast, Professor, and many others have 7s.

Again, maybe I just don't know DC enough 

[TGW]

I've just about completed my re-ratings of all the OP characters. I printed out all of the character cards Bios created, with numerous grid revisions of my own, along with a couple dozen custom characters I created (with Jack's assistance) leaving me with a total of over 300 unique characters (this number doesn't include team cards, which I do not use in my game).

What I've found while creating grids is a lot of characters could easily qualify for ratings of 8 in one or more categories. After all, these are 'super' heroes and villains; characters with a wide range of powers and abilities, with dozens upon dozens of them having the ability to qualify for an 8 rating. The key is balance; too many 8 rated characters, let along multi-8 and you'll find the character pool will shrink when it comes time to compete on a tournament level (or even a 'friendly' game that isn't theme related).

I'm not at home at the moment, so I don't have my spreadsheets and data on hand, but in my revision, I have about 60 characters that have an 8 in their grid, ranging from one character in each skill having a single 8, 17 point character (Energy: X-Man, Fighting: Elektra, Strength: Abomination, Intellect: Oracle) to higher cost characters (23-25 point totals). I always felt that Energy had an unfair advantage in Overpower, at least from a grid standpoint, so I made sure to offer alternatives to the 17 point X-Man so each skill set could have a 17 point 8 skill to choose from.

Having gone through all the characters I came across maybe a dozen that I could truly see having multi-8 grids, and from there I whittled the list down. Galactus and Anti-Monitor are my two all 8 characters, and I had Thanos and Darkseid at multi-8, but I changed Darkseid to 7-3-8-7 and Thanos to a 7-5-8-6. From there it was easier, as Darkseid and Thanos are two of the strongest characters in all of comic books. In the end, I settled on only two characters possessing multi-8 grids; Superman and Batman.

I always envisioned Superman as a dual 8 character. In fact, when I played with a group all those years ago when OverPower was alive and pumping out new sets, we had Superman modified to have an 8 in Energy and Strength. He's Superman for goodness sake, if any character merits dual 8's, it's him. I have Superman's grid at 8-4-8-5, basically a hybrid Superman that takes into consideration all of his eras, which is how I determined the 5 Intellect. Pre-Crisis Superman was basically a genius and was written as a near unstoppable force that could do anything and everything. Various versions of post-Crisis Superman varied slightly in terms of intellect; in more modern continuity, Superman has never been written as a buffoon, and while he's not a genius, he is intelligent and leads a team that also has Batman as a vital member, so a 5 is more than fair without pushing Superman beyond a 25 point cost.

As for Batman, I went back and forth on this one. My original group had Batman re-rated to 2-8-4-7, a very strong grid at a more than fair cost. Bios had Batman rated 4-8-4-7, and while I'm not sold on Batman having a 4 Energy rating, I could make sense of it to increase his cost as one of the premier superheroes; at least in terms of comics, certainly not in terms of original OverPower, where Batman got the shaft in regards to special cards for the most part. I decided to retain the 4 Energy for my Batman grid and increased the Intellect to 8 based on the amazing seven year run of Batman comics that Grant Morrison is concluding this summer, where Batman basically had an 'answer' or a 'counter' to just about everything placed in his path. I also wanted Batman to be one point less in terms of grid cost compared to Superman, based on the fact that Batman is a regular (albeit highly trained and skilled) human and Superman is a powerful alien. Bios originally had both characters at 23 points, and my revisions have Batman at 24 points and Superman at 25 points.

I'm satisfied with my revisions; they work for me and what I'm setting out to accomplish with my revision of OverPower. I think multi-8 skill characters should be very rare, the absolute best of the best.
For reference, the final list of characters I considered for the dual 8 rating are listed below. This list excludes the all-8 Galactus and Anti-Monitor:

Superman: explained above, gave an 8 in Energy and Strength.

Batman: explained above, gave an 8 in Fighting and Intellect.

Darkseid: explained above, gave an 8 in Strength and two 7's (Energy and Intellect).

Thanos: explained above, gave an 8 in Strength and one 7 (Energy).

Malebolgia: I could see Malebolgia with an 8 in Energy and Intellect, but from my research, I'm not sure he's supposed to be Satan in the Image comic books. It appears he may not be the complete 'master' of the underworld but a character that is only below the Devil himself in regards to authority and power.

Mephisto: See Malebolgia. I kept the PowerBalance grid of 7-2-7-7, making Mephisto one of three or four characters with Triple-7 grids (Iron Man and Master Mold are two others).

Thor: One of the closer calls, but I ultimately rated Thor, 7-5-8-3. I considered Thor's energy rating to be equal to Darkseid and Thanos.

Spectre: I considered giving an 8 for Intellect but decided to rate Spectre, 8-4-6-6. This was one of the characters where the intellect rating might be more accurately represented as a 7, but for the sake of variety I wanted to make Spectre a higher cost character with some great specials but only a single 8 and no 7's in his grid. 

Silver Surfer: A herald of Galactus, he's probably on par with Superman in regards to Energy and Strength but I ultimately went with a grid of 8-4-7-4, which I think is the same grid Bios had for the Surfer.

Care to delve into a little more detail regarding your tiers and characters, breadmaster? I'd be interested to see your tiers and how you determined them.

[breadmaster]

absolutely i'll elaborate, TGW.  just wanted to get some other thoughts out there before mine

my 5 shoe-ins are more or less jla + thor

batman
wonder woman
superman
martian manhunter
thor

batman is always around top 3 intellect in dc (luthor/wayne/mr terrific). 
wonder woman is easily an 8 strength.  her fighting fluctuates between top 5 and 'just really good'
superman 8s is a lock.  8e seems to be more debated, but it's a no-doubter in my mind.  having him in a tier with iceman/Cyclops/storm etc isn't right.  either they have to be dropped to 6, or he has to go to 8.
j'onn's strength is often overlooked.  he's right there with superman/wonder woman etc.  his telepathy/martian vision puts him equal with prof x
thor's 8s is obvious.  again, no way his energy should be on a tier with storm.  he outclasses her in every way, and then has way more energy powers on top (teleportation/speed) not to mention the godblast

the next tier are characters that have an 8 (or should) and could possibly get a 2nd

brainiac
darkseid
neron
captain atom
orion
cyborg
mr fantastic...what!?!

brainiac: should have been given an 8i.  8e?  he has lots of powers...maybe?
darkseid: 8s is easy.  his intellect is high, but doesn't seem 8 worthy.  his energy feats however, but him in the conversation
neron: the mephisto conundrum.  could be given 8e/I, and possibly strength too
captain atom: his strength has often been shown superman-tier.  his energy powers have been shown off the chart.  he suffers from lots of interpretations (btw, this is a good time to mention that for dc characters, I use the post-crisis to new 52 era.  these are the versions i'm most familiar with, as well as the era overpower was kicking)
orion: 8s is a given.  his fighting is sometimes portrayed to be second to none, and other times he's a mindless brawler (same as thor)
cyborg: weird one.  tech abilities could make him 8e (it might be high), and his strength fluctuates as well
mr fantastic: this one's purely me.  no one would argue with 8i, but he always gets shortchanged on fighting.  there's few 8f characters he can't hold his own with (or outright beat)

the last tier would be characters like TGW had.  possibles, but not really.

apocalypse-possibly 8s and 8e. (high intellect and fighting too) most appearances are lower
beta ray bill-same as thor.  great fighting/strength/energy stats
captain marvel-8s easily.  energy doesn't seem to get him quite there.  he probably could earn a 7 for speed and lightning, but they shouldn't stack
eradicator-high energy and strength.  probably safest at the dual 7
silver surfer-8e easy.  can pump his strength to 8, but it's not really 'natural'

thanos is a tough one.  he has the feats to get the 8 in int/en/str.  oh, and he's also described as an outstanding hand-to-hand fighter...geez

[Palatinus]

The biggest problem with these types of ratings versus the kind you might find in comics or on trading cards is the idea of balance.  It's one thing to rate a god and a human on the same scale when you're not worried about them coming into direct combat in a theoretically balanced game.  You have characters in OverPower who are simply exceptional humans with no special powers along with exceptional humans who also have special powers up to gods who are exceptional for gods.

So, to the point, characters with multiple 8 ratings in their stats aren't a big deal in universe.  They are, however, very problematic in an actual game.  This may be because of the second major problem with the system which is fitting all the above mentioned into a scale of 1-8.  This is problematic because even if you just judge the top tier of any given stat, you're looking at people who can blow up buildings with a energy blast up to people who can blow up a star.  You do that not within a 1-8 scale but really now you're just looking at the 6-8 scale.  So, Jubilee is relative to Silver Surfer on a 6 versus 8 ratio.  On top of that you're looking at characters that can not just blow things up with energy blast, but people who can smash entire planets with their fists.  And then you have ones that can do both.  So, lets say you've got Iron Man with 7S and 7E.  Now you've go Superman.  How much more powerful is Superman than Iron Man?  1 point.  That's the most it could be.  That is a huge shift over the course of 1 point.  So, the temptation becomes to give a bunch of characters an 8 for every powerful stat and just make the 8 be a huge range from blowing up a city block to blowing up a planet.  The problem is that you've now got a bottom weak and top heavy scale.

The third major problem I see is the idea of capturing everyone's abilities into four stats of Energy, Fighting, Strength, and Intellect.  These groups overlap and also don't fully cover certain abilities.  Does a fighting genius get high fighting, high intellect, or both?  Then speed.  What is speed?  Is it energy because that's the only really metaphysical stat, or is it strength because it lets you hit hard and really don't you have to be strong to be fast?  Or is it both because it has aspects of both?  On top of that, wouldn't the fastest fighter be the best fighter?  And really, if you are doing everything at super-speed, doesn't your mind have to keep up with all the data and muscular control?

In the end, the reality of it all is that if you want a balanced game that makes sense within the mechanics of the game you are going to wind up with a lot of under-power and over-powered characters as well as a lot of arbitrary grids.  The way OverPower should and sometimes does compensate for this is with specials.  Really, too, because stats are only used to play cards and aren't used directly against each other, e.g. Superman doesn't avoid a strength attack form Prof. X just because there's no way the Prof could hit Supes in a way that would hurt with just strength alone, stats become less important in game than they do in universe.  If you want a game where the stats accurately match the comic characters to a T, you need a game where those characters can all co-exist and compete.  In OverPower you have four characters versus four characters.  You could easily make a team of four normal humans that competes against four gods and still have a balanced game.

It seems to me that you would have to change too many fundamental things to really fix the stats the way that is being discussed because 1.  The range of powers and abilities is too great given the limited fighting conditions, 2.  The scale simply isn't big enough to accurately cover all the ranges of power, and 3. The given stats don't allow for a perfect translation of powers and abilities into numbers.

[TGW]

I agree with a lot of what Palatinus posted above. For me, I've reassessed just about every character as well as several dozen created characters for my variation of OverPower. It would be fair to say that over the last ten months of brainstorming and idea development, I've moved away from a lot of what makes OverPower the great (but sometimes flawed) game that it is. This was somewhat intentional on a variety of levels; what started off as a way to incorporate a different spin on OP that allowed for challenging solo play ended up morphing into a different game altogether; a game that only features three characters as a default game option, modifies venture and radically restructures special cards for each character. In time, I plan on posting my alternate game option on the forum for feedback, but for now I'm still working and testing some new ideas.

One thing I can say is the grid changes were essential for me, but even with my modifying of the character grids I still took a lot of what Palatinus ended up posting into consideration. Even with my revision and development of a different game that incorporates certain OP game techniques, I still needed to maintain a balance, which can be difficult when you involve 'super' powered characters of different origin; mortal man, powerful alien, omnipotent god, etc. all had to be balanced within an eight point grid. Originally I only wanted four characters to have dual 8 grids, but ultimately I settled on two dual 8's and two all 8's. It's been working for me, but I can easily see how and why the grids are how they are in the actual game of OverPower, and modifying them too much can shrink the pool of viable characters and cause significant balance issues.

Having said all that; Superman deserved at least one 8 in his original grid if not dual 8's, while Batman deserved an 8 in fighting. Those two characters are way too iconic to get shafted with 7's, even if they get two of them in each of their grids. Superman not receiving an 8 is the biggest goof of any official grid, I'm curious too see if anyone else agrees with me on that or if the biggest goof belongs to a different character. Perhaps that's worth staring a new thread...maybe tomorrow as I gotta get some sleep.

[gameplan.exe]

a few things to point out:

all stats are relative to the writer of a given book. after Dark Phoenix Saga, there was concern that Storm might follow the same path. i.e., she actually had more potential in her than anyone knew, by she was able to reign herself in better than Jean (this was pre-retcon).

also, I did think of a character who might warrant dual-8s, depending on when you capture his powers: Cable. like Batman, I always thought his Fighting was CLEARLY an 8, but also his energy has easily been an 8 before

[steve2275]

are we counting mjolnir in thor's 8e?
i agree on cable having 8e considering x-man does
http://marvel.wikia.com/Nathan_Summers_(Earth-616)
http://marvel.wikia.com/Nathan_Summers_(Earth-616)#Powers_and_AbilitiesEdit

[Palatinus]

To clarify the context of what I was saying in my previous post, I think that there is certainly room for characters to have new stats.  Lots of grids are really bad.  I was speaking specifically to the idea of handing out too many 8's and why that is problematic.  I also definitely agree that the flagship characters of DC and to some extent Marvel were not handled very well stat or special-wise.  There is a lot I would do differently with Superman and Batman as far as stats and specials.  This also holds true for Spider-Man and a few other major Marvel characters.  I think all around the B/S set was bad with just a few characters who did alright.  In that same regard the stats of the initial three Marvel sets are odd-balls now due to the changing of the grid.

One other thing TGW mentioned was that he doesn't use team cards.  I can see good and bad about teams as far as stats and specials.  Largely I think that OverPower fit the teams into the game fairly well given the fact that you now had entire groups fighting along-side individual people.  Looking at the team grids one could easily find teams that would have multiple 8's in theory.  Let's say you take a team that has individuals that warrant various 8's.  Now you add them all together and you wind up with a team with two or three 8's.  In actual fact, though, just throwing all those people on a team doesn't mean the team fights utilizing all of the individuals' abilities to their maximum.  Team members work together by making allowances for each other and compensating for weaknesses.  So, when Wolverine goes into a fight alone he might fight completely differently than when he is fighting along side the X-Men.  But even if he didn't, you might have a team with some pretty strong personalities and each individual does their own thing.  So now you might have some pretty powerful specials for each character, but your grid will suffer because as a team you are functioning to the highest possible potential.  So, I think teams are still a viable option in Overpower and you don't have to overpower their grids at the same time.  I think, though, that you have to be careful about which teams you would make.  For instance, despite what I said above, I don't think that "The X-Men" makes sense as a team.  For one thing, any grid is going to look silly on such a group and secondly, you wind up with way too many rosters to choose from.  In that way, I think the idea of having a card for each X-Man and then building a team of four makes so much sense.

[breadmaster]

i'm not actually suggesting someone prints up new character cards.  I was just trying to start a discussion on some goofed stats.

I agree, superman is THE biggest goof in the game (though it is 'only' 1 point).  there are some other really bad one's like steel's intellect or flash's energy.  there's also a few that are way higher than should be (morlocks 8s!?!)

I do not agree that this would fundamentally change the game. if all 17 characters I suggested WERE in fact chaged to dual 8s without changing specials, the only character that would benefit would be mr fantastic (and I doubt many would agree with me that he deserves an 8 in fighting regardless)

the majority are unused dc characters.  surfer/thor/wonder woman would probably see more play, but keep in mind, their sum-deck also goes up, compromising the team

[TGW]

So on the money with Steel's intellect being a joke. I changed Steel to a 6 intellect to keep him at a max-6, but his standard 4 is ridiculously low. Bios has a great Flash character card; everything from the grid to the artwork is perfect, so that one I use. Quicksilver should be a max-6 character, staying on the topic of speedsters.

I'd have Mr.Fantastic at a 6 fighting at most...in fact I think I might have Fantastic at a 1-6-3-8, but I'd have to check to be sure.

[gameplan.exe]

also, breadmaster, you mentioned two things that caught my eye...

Martian Manhunter's telepathy is on par with Prof's? because he's the strongest telepath in the Marvel U... is that how MM is in dc?

also, I do not think you realize how powerful Storm really is... she pretty easily could have been an 8... at least according to this Claremont I'm reading right now...