I’m confused regarding defensive powers.
Where the confusion comes in is on a “what’s the point” level.
If a player wants to create a character who’s sole power is being super tough, and then have some skills to round out what they can do, I feel like they would not be happy with how that works out in play because, to my understanding, player defensive powers can’t modify/ignore incoming damage the way villains can.
Meaning: mechanically, there seems to be little point in mentioning it at all. (I understand the fiction behind it changes that, but I have mechanical minded players and that would be a tough sale.)
Any insight into what I’m missing?
Heck yeah they can modify. You always follow the fiction in this game, and that means defensive powers are super useful.
Example: Immunity to Bullets, next time a bunch of guys with guns shows up and you say ‘take the condition: riddled with bullets’ the player with the power writes down nothing. They are not effected.
One of my players has ‘proof against edged weapons’ as per Norse legend. Any bladed weapon forged of man cannot cut him and it comes more often then you would think.
Another is basically Wolverine without claws and with the proviso that acid and fire are things he cannot regenerate from while he’s immersed in them.
How does that work mechanically? I still give him moderate conditions relating to physical wounds, but if he takes a turn of saying ‘I pop my shoulder back in,’ it’s removed. He’s not immune to emotional trauma or mental or spiritual conditions however and Critical physical ones hang around until the end of the scene.
Defensive powers inform and change the fiction, they can downgrade conditions, negate them entirely or provided justification for removing them without use of the ‘fit in’ move.
They are mechanically very useful and make the game interesting especially if one power negates a certain common method of damage or trauma.
Also, you can structure ‘powers as advantages’ including defensive powers. Ergo they can be limited or taken away such as an immunity to bullets no longer applying when Ironman is out of his battle suit (a Power as Advantage..)
How do you handle varying degrees of toughness without a force spectrum?
If someone is listed as, say, Invulnerable in their power summary, how do you determine what attacks will and will not affect them, and to what degree?
You ask them while remembering and keeping in mind what kind of game your want to play and at what power level.
If your all X-Men and one guy wants to be Superman, have a chat with him about where you want to have your powers at.
Don’t let something like invulnerability shake you though. In a game of superheroes you can easily deal with people and impose conditions without ‘killing’ them.
Freezing them in ice or psychically controlling them, or just throwing them so far they can’t do anything to get back in time to fight are all ways of making things difficult for invulnerable powers…
And there’s always plenty of bystanders who aren’t invulnerable and need protecting…
I get that. What I mean is when a player is Colossus and a character shoots him with a sci-fi weapon of unspecified power levels, how is that resolved? Colossus isn’t invulnerable to everything…and how powerful is that weapon?
This spectrum of force is something that most superhero games deal with, and so it’s easy to look at the ratings and make a determination, but without ratings, how do you handle that?
I’m not putting the system down, I love the idea, I’m just trying to honestly grasp this for those Champions and Mutants and Masterminds players at my table who like to know how tough they are compared to incoming attacks, or how much they can lift, etc.
If your real question is ‘how do I stop my players from being power gamers/munchkins/etc ?’ The answer is you talk and discuss things with them about what they want to do as super powered characters and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
Ask them to define their powers in specifics and ask them to define a clause for each Difficult to Possible power that allows them to use it.
Difficult power should be fairly easy, you need the sun to be shinning, you need a turn of aiming or prep or you need something very common like equipment, or you take an appropriate moderate condition.
Borderline needs more specific conditions, time or resources. Only at noon can you use a power, only if you destroy one of your teeth or other limited or dangerous resource, you take a critical condition as a price or can only do it once per session.
Possible are even higher then this. More taxing and dangerous or specific then borderline. Get creative with these. They take a lot of effort and prep.
That’s a guideline, but mostly just be straight with and talk to your players. This isn’t a mechanical game as much as it is a narrative one.
You decide what spectrum of force hits him with the eye beams.
He isn’t invulnerable to everything, yes, so is he invulnerable to this? Maybe?
Ask yourself, what’s the coolest possible thing that could come from this? Is Colossus wiping the floor with folks and it’s time to make things difficult for him? If so, it’s going to hurt! Does he need a moment of awesome because everyone else is getting clobbered by eye beam thing? He’s immune! And ready for pay back.
Important note. Once you establish something don’t change it. If it’s established it hurts him, it hurts him till some other factor or reason changes that (second mutation, force field device etc.)
Your spectrum of force is dynamic unlike those games you mentioned. It will change and grow much like a comic book and certain things will trump others. Write them down and keep track. It’s very useful and let’s you basically make your own power scale and game.
If you want comparisons for your players tell them before you even start that you’ll show them how powerful your antagonists are.
When Super Jug throws a car, Magnet Fan blows an entire block down, and cackles like a maniac they’ll know.
Show don’t tell and let them know if they’re use to being able to look up and crunch numbers that this is not how this game works. They’re going to have to experiment and set up narrative ways to take these guys down put them into classic comic troupes and force them to give up, escape or see the error of their ways.
And if they like to know how strong they are, have them write it down but in broad terms.
I can shoot across an entire block without issue, I can lift a car or truck not a building, etc.
You can get more specific if you like and borrow from those other games for a more concrete chart of weight, distance and other physics, but they’re more important as narrative tools for quantifying what you can and can’t do rather then precise measures.
Alright. I think I’ll write up a few examples to try to show them how to do it.
Are there any online examples of power profiles for a bunch of different characters? I’m having a hard time within anything not an archer. 🙂
Should be quite a few on this Google+ group!
So like David touched on here, just having it in your Powers Summary just means that it is possible – it doesn’t mean you can do it at will, and, if you can, how difficult it is to do.
So if Colossus is invulnerable, he starts out not knowing what he’s invulnerable to, right? No mutant powers come with an instruction booklet. It’s basically trial and error for him until he establishes some boundaries and such. These boundaries are already semi-drawn up by his character though (maybe the player is thinking that he’s invulnerable to bullets). But even the player may not even account for stuff right? And a power isn’t just about it happening.
So let’s say Colossus has invulnerable down in his Powers Summary, but nothing about it down in his Powers Profile. A sentinel is getting ready to blast him with a beam of plasma. Since the player hasn’t written anything down in his Powers Profile yet, nothing has been determined about this power yet. So the conversation might go like so:
EIC: the sentinel’s reaches out towards you with a pulsing palm, prepared to envelop you completely, what do you do?
Colossus: Well, I’m invulnerable, so I’ll just let him embrace me so that when it does, I’ll rip apart its hand!
EIC: Ok cool, so hard is that for you to do? Have you withstood a blast from a sentinel before?
Colossus: Well no, but it’s on my Powers Summary, so I know I can, I guess I’ve just never tried before.
EIC: So who knows, right? The heat of the plasma might hurt you, you might have to concentrate real hard to make your steel plating thicker, who knows what could happen, right? So hard is it for you to withstand such a blast?
Colossus: Well, bullets are nothing, right. But I guess plasma blasts from Sentinel’s are a different matter. I guess I’ll go with Difficult?
EIC: Sure, it’s your character. Alright, so looks like you’re going to want to Push, and it’s going to be difficult.
The conversation would probably go something like that. If it helps, look at the Powers Summary as all the potential a character has, and their Powers Profile as everything the character knows they can do with the powers they have (as defined by their Powers Summary).