Trying to adjust to high powered play...

[HWalsh]

This is going to sound... Whiny... And for that I apologize in advance.

So... When I run Rifts, I tend to keep it to the low and mid range. If its in RUE you can do it, more or less.

Recently I have been playing with a group of... I'm not going to say Power Gamers... But a group that is used to extremely high powered play.

We don't have fights, they are exceptionally rare, as the group is large enough and powerful enough that nothing is a significant threat. We don't deal with technology often, almost everything is magic. We practically have gods on speed dial.

I'm... Not used to it... More importantly... I'm not having fun.

I was looking for some tips. I want to contribute but... I made a Power Armor Pilot for it and... It's meh. Even giving me free reign for super powerful suits isn't really a big deal because... Well... I mean... We don't fight things. In 10 sessions, we haven't even had 1 round of combat. I'm leaning towards leaving the group, but if someone can give me some suggestions... I feel torn because I love the players, I like hanging out, but... Its not fun to sit there while literally being the only SDC being who doesn't have ridiculous magic powers...

[Natasha]

If they are not missing anything, then it can be difficult to contribute anything. If there is nothing you can add or even shore up, you probably have to focus relationship development and interactions not based on skill or ability.

[glitterboy2098]

I have noticed a similar trend in lower power and mid-power games as well. combat in PB's games, especially combat involving a whole player group vs a suitable threat level, is involved enough that it is often avoided by GM's for long periods. in most games this means lots more RP.

[IGNG]

It sounds more like a problem of mixed play styles than mixed power levels. If the GM isn't forcing fights it is much more likely that its because its something your party wouldn't enjoy rather than because he can't threaten the party. The easiest thing to do is to tell the GM that you were expecting something different out of the campaign when you rolled up the character and ask to roll up an entirely new character. If not you may be able to do a partial reroll. Look into the following.

*) There are a number of recon/construction/utility power armours scattered throughout the books. Some of them may be worth looking into.
*) You can fake a decent healer with skills, and a handful of different medkits. pick up 3-5 with slightly different uses and be a roving hospital.
*) In combination with the above medkit idea picking up some of the social skills and having a decent MA makes people like you. A lot.
*) Being able to repair tech can make a lot of friends. Sure the mage can cast mend the broken, but you can teach the farmer how to fix it the next time it breaks. which means that a month or two after the party leaves YOU are the person having the biggest impact on their lives.
*) There are a bunch of random items in the books that don't really have analogous spell equivalents. Picking one to be your hammer and treating the world like a nail can be amusing.
*) Picking 1-2 lore or history skills no one else in the party has can make you useful.

[DhAkael]

Another thing you may need keep in mind; combat, even for power gamers, is smeggin' SLOW. Canonical 'round-robin' style is painfully glacial in pace. Even doing house ruled methods of speeding up play will still have a single 15 second game-time round take up nearly 45 minutes REAL time.
This sadly leads to players going to "power PC's" to one shot enemies, which leads to GM's scaling up or saying "To hack with this!" and just making combat so rare the players are forced to do character development.

I get what the OP is saying; I've encountered it myself a few times. Only advice I have is ADAPT... or find a crew who will suit your power scale / play style.

[HWalsh]

Another thing you may need keep in mind; combat, even for power gamers, is smeggin' SLOW. Canonical 'round-robin' style is painfully glacial in pace. Even doing house ruled methods of speeding up play will still have a single 15 second game-time round take up nearly 45 minutes REAL time.
This sadly leads to players going to "power PC's" to one shot enemies, which leads to GM's scaling up or saying "To hack with this!" and just making combat so rare the players are forced to do character development.

I get what the OP is saying; I've encountered it myself a few times. Only advice I have is ADAPT... or find a crew who will suit your power scale / play style.

I dunno... My combat in my game that I run is lightning fast.

[Glistam]

Why is your power armor/tech-based character hanging around such powerful beings? Don't answer that from a plot standpoint, but from a personal/character standpoint. Here are some of my thoughts on how that question could be answered:

• The character believes strongly in the inherent power of tech over the magical/supernatural and he adventures with them to prove that. There's a lot of things tech can do that magic either can't do or doesn't do well. There's all the different types of visions and sensors (remember that borg/cybernetic stuff can be installed into body and power armor). There's cool alien/Naruni stuff available. Take advantage of power armor and robot vehicle radar. Travel and live comfortably in a giant robot while everyone else is camping and traipsing outdoors in the rain. Take advantage of the perks which power armor and giant robots provide rather than just focusing on the combat applications.
• He can secretly be a magic/supernatural hater who's only with them to collect information on all the magic and supernatural things the group encounters. Is he CS or just a general hater? His tech is faithfully recording everything that happens around them for future threat evaluation. He may come to like this group of people but it won't stop him from using them to find larger threats to Humanity and discovering all their weaknesses.
• He's a human proving that he can keep pace with these powerful beings. That should be able to command him some respect from similar beings. They know how powerful everyone else is - just how powerful, brave, or foolish is this Human who keeps their company? RP the heck out of that.
• He's field testing some fun stuff. Take the right engineering skills, or the jury-rigging skill, and modify the heck out of your suits for fun. Maybe disguise them (or buy/create holographic disguise stuff) to look like various larger than human races. Or modify them for stealth that doesn't rely on magic (Naruni has some good examples for that, and there was a cool experimental 'bot in Rifts: Japan too). Why is he doing this? Because he can.
• Someone he cares about deeply is with this group, and he's doing everything he can to prove to them that he's not a liability to them.

If all the tech from all the books is available to you then this game should be your oyster. And not because of combat. There's plenty of sneaking/infiltration options (with naruni, Japan, Juicer Uprising and Merc Ops). Purchase a power armor/giant robot with a basic robot intelligence and program it with a bunch of skills you don't have. Make sure you've got some of the better 'borg/cybernetics upgrades in your suit (all the vision and hearing upgrades). Get the character some cybernetics even - you're probably the only one who can have them, and there's a lot of cool ones for just RP or interaction. Combine all the cool features of all the best robots and power armors you can find and claim that you "know a guy" who's an operator or psi-tech who helped you get all that working together. Use the Sourcebook 1 Robot R.C.C. section and the Bionics Sourcebook to find all sorts of cool ways to customize your stuff.

[dreicunan]

This is what tends to happen when you have an extremely high level of power in a game. I once was playing a super-hero who after a couple of years was literally (not the just the power) invulnerable to everything as a deity whose portfolio included inviolability and self-sufficiency (so no "violating" the character in any way and no need to rely on followers for power). It became kind of a running joke as would-be god-killers tried to take him out only to watch their plans fail yet again (and their gear became a very profitable source of income).

As an aside, I also experienced more failure with that character than with any other because those he cared about were NOT invulnerable, and he wasn't omni-present.

I'd suggest that you role up a character that would allow you to contribute more. That doesn't need to mean super-powerful wizard. Make a rogue scientist (or scholar, or body fixer) with super-powers using the conversion book. I'd suggest taking the 2 major 3 minor option.

Given the amount of magical power in the group, you might want to take Invulnerability and Immune to magic (I'm guessing that most of their opponents use a fair amount of magic as well, and this combo would give you a good niche in the group).

I remember a pretty cool concept made by taking a Vagabond (to have 2 major and four minor powers and two pro-level domestic skills) and for three of the minor powers taking the Un-Trackable, Unnoteworthy-Forgettable, and Linguistics powers to help create someone who could infiltrate just about anywhere as one of the staff. Use the rest of the powers as you please or to help reinforce that concept.

[RockJock]

So what goes on in a standard session? I agree that your issue seems less power level, and more game type. A Cosmo Knight is high on the power level, but would be fairly boring in a game with no combat.

[Eagle]

It sounds as though the other characters are at the point where they can just narrate their actions and always be successful. Maybe they don't like playing out combats, perhaps the GM just enjoys letting them dictate what happens in the game world, whatever the reason the PCs aren't being challenged in whatever they want to do. If that works for them, then great, but I've always found that sort of play gets boring fast.

It's one thing to say "we take 3 months off, we're going to build a cool fortress that we use as a base, and here's all the stuff we're going to put in it". It's another to say "I cast the following spells, teleport into Atlantis, destroy Lord Splynncryth, and take his place as King of Atlantis". And the GM looks over your spells and says "okay, yeah, it looks like that all checks out..."

Now I've had characters who were powerful enough to do something like that. And it doesn't make sense to make them roll out every single combat blow for blow. A group of 1 hit die goblins should not challenge the 20th level Fighter. You can just declare that he kills them. But eventually they need to face opposition relative to their power level.

The problem you seem to be having is that you built a character who is powerful on a tactical level. He can fight and blow stuff up, and I'm sure he does a lot of mega damage. But the other characters are operating on a strategic level, where they are able to take large steps towards their overall goals without opposition. You need something on a similar scale if you're going to continue to play with that group.

I'd suggest either creating a new character, or redefine your original character's goals. Don't be a power armor pilot, be a guy who was once a power armor pilot, who is now an international arms dealer. Maybe while putting together your awesome suit of "best of everything" armor, you developed trade contacts all over the world. Become the head of a vast organization. You need to be able to say things like "I send my army of troops here, and order them to do this". Have access to all the weird technology in the books. Have a 'borg strike team with Phase World tech built in. You need to be able to engage in a similar level of roleplaying as the rest of the group.

[guardiandashi]

a character I played for years, started out as a special forces type character and the last time I played her she was literally a (minor) deity who can "pull out" a small to medium army, a small fleet, (of starships), is an inter-dimensional arms merchant (if she chooses to be) and can literally sterilize and or destroy PLANETS if she so chooses. and yet she still gets down in the mud and blood on occasion because she chooses to.

That's the thing about many RPG systems, its mostly just a framework to tell a story and have fun.

Heck I have a character I made (a Dog boy mutant) that ended up falling through a rift with some "salvaged gear" that the coalition likely would NEVER!! issue to dog boys, and ended up, on Naboo during the droid invasion where she proceeded to do a bunch of "star wars" adventures.

or she had another adventure where she ended up rifted somewhere else and was picked up as a "truant" because she was honest and told the law enforcement people that she was 5 years old, and a serving sergeant in the military... they immediately packed her off to a local school while muttering about child abuse, and similar.

the point is, it's all about the story (or should be)

[Mech-Viper Prime]

This is going to sound... Whiny... And for that I apologize in advance.

So... When I run Rifts, I tend to keep it to the low and mid range. If its in RUE you can do it, more or less.

Recently I have been playing with a group of... I'm not going to say Power Gamers... But a group that is used to extremely high powered play.

We don't have fights, they are exceptionally rare, as the group is large enough and powerful enough that nothing is a significant threat. We don't deal with technology often, almost everything is magic. We practically have gods on speed dial.

I'm... Not used to it... More importantly... I'm not having fun.

I was looking for some tips. I want to contribute but... I made a Power Armor Pilot for it and... It's meh. Even giving me free reign for super powerful suits isn't really a big deal because... Well... I mean... We don't fight things. In 10 sessions, we haven't even had 1 round of combat. I'm leaning towards leaving the group, but if someone can give me some suggestions... I feel torn because I love the players, I like hanging out, but... Its not fun to sit there while literally being the only SDC being who doesn't have ridiculous magic powers...

well you could be the ordinary guy who hangs with the powerful folks , or make some insane powerful hero type.