How much of a tank is your Legacy ?
Hi, I got a wonder woman style Legacy in my sessions, with the move Never give up, never surrender. Basically, with Savior+3, and frequently defending, she can clear Condition quickly without making hard choices to clear them, and you can’t really get her out of fight with Never give up, never surrender.
Even on a 6- , you get some advantage, and I find this move too powerful and positive for the moment when you should suffer and fear the dice result. Basically, if she defends a teammate from a powerful blow, she gets 4 advantages, 2 from Defending and 2 from getting hit…
Maybe having only one option at 10+, staying in the fight with a vulnerable opponent at 7-9 and simply going down at 6-. Or reverting to the normal powerful blow move, but deducing your Savior value from the roll, as this move is full of opportunity that the Legacy doesn’t have access to when he selects Never give up
“> □ Never give up, never surrender: When you
take a powerful blow, use this move instead of
the base move. Roll + Savior. On a hit, you stand
strong and choose one. On a 10+, choose another.
– You get an opportunity or opening against your
attacker.
– You rally from the hit, and it inspires the team.
Add a team to the pool.
– You don’t have to mark a condition.
On a miss, you go down hard but leave your
opponent off balance and vulnerable.
Opinions ? Experiences ? 🙂
I’ve yet to play the game (soon!), so I don’t have any table experience with Masks and I could be way off-base with absolutely everything, so take all this with a grain of salt, but I can see where you’re coming from (never give up seems a strong move, no doubt) and my take on the situation is:
1. A +3 Savior Legacy with never give up is about as classically superheroic as a character is gonna get, and following your principles you’re a fan of the PCs, so in circumstances where it seems appropriate, I’d totally let them be the enduring, stalwart hero, protector of the weak. Because that’s what they’re all about, and it’s glorious, so let them show it off, ’cause it’s why they picked that move and that label in the first place.
But there’s the old thing where you don’t punch Superman in the face, you punch him in the Lois Lane. ’cause apart from reinforcing what an invulnerable badass he is, punching Supes doesn’t do much for the story (and story is the whole point!), while going after Ms. Lane makes drama and villainy and excitement happen. And sure, he’ll probably wind up saving her without taking a scratch, but you can tell cool stories about him & everyone else on the team along the way, so that’s fine. 🙂
Plus, not all complications can be solved by being bulletproof. So to save those sweet Savior rolls saving the day 24/7, you can make other aspects of the story important (or necessary) to the Legacy. Kidnap their Lois off-screen while they’re off being invincible and flawless someplace else. Use Influence, and all their pain-in-the-ass legacy members. Use their fame, since they’re part of a club that’s been important to the city for a while and everyone knows them, and it’s the age of social media & 16-megapixel pocket cameras. Even looking at it mechanically, with +3 Savior some other labels must be average-to-poor; make those kinda situations happen. And even when things do come down to some heroic adventure violence: attack two of their friends at once and make them choose who to defend; they’ll do a great job of protecting one of them, but then the other friend gets hurt/captured/screwed, and delicious drama, regret and resentment arises, which is solid gold. 🙂
2. On the more mechanical side of things, I don’t think the defend move necessarily hands off its consequence to take a powerful blow, which saves that double-dipping situation. It’s an option if you feel like it, sure, but when they roll defend the move says that — no matter the result — you’re within your right to just straight-up hand them a steamin’ plate of danger or situation escalation, right now. Also, if the defending character is (let’s say) bulletproof, stepping in front of the incoming bullet they’re defending someone from would not be “exposing themselves to danger” in that circumstance, because that’d be like another character “exposing themselves to a gentle poke”. 😛 So make sure it’s actually dangerous, and if you’re really stuck for a way to provide the defender with some danger, that’s exactly what the escalate option seems to provide. And everyone loves explosions.
3. In the same vein as the previous point, it seems like rolling take a powerful blow in the first place means there has to be a chance the blow can powerfully impact you (possibly just emotionally), whether you have the never give up move or not. If the character is established as bulletproof and regularly takes bullets to the chest without breaking a sweat, and they get shot, there’s no roll, because it wouldn’t be powerful. Which’d mean by the time you’ve decided a roll is necessary you’ve already figured out why the situation poses a real threat, and then when that 6- “you go down hard” shows up for the Legacy, you and they are both already armed and ready for the consequence that’s about to get dropped on their head — so do it, and make it hard, like it says. And hey, they get to leave the opponent vulnerable and mark experience for missing the roll anyway, so in my eyes they’ve had plenty of leniency. 😛
This got way longer than intended, partly ’cause I’m trying to work through the concepts myself to get a better grasp on the game. Hopefully it’s helped! I’d love to hear from the Magpie Games folks as to whether I’m on the right track at all, though. 😛
Oh I think you are, and I agree/already thought about things you mention 🙂
Team has 4 heroes, with 3 super strength and 2-3 super resistance. Between learning the system and learning to be an efficient team, after 3 sessions we finally had a big fight but we’re still at “basic combat” level, without too much subtle things like poisoned gases, hostages, possession, invisibility, etc… So if I wan’t to hit them a bit, I need, for the moment, vilains able to damage them.
So Legacy defends the other because they could be hurt (powerful blow), and when she defends she will choose to be exposed to danger (not escalation), which frequently means powerful blow (but you’re right I should try to propose other dangers). Easily, doing this, she will get 1 Team, clear a Condition. And if it reach powerful blow/never give up, she will also get opportunity and no Condition.
Haven’t seen the legacy in play yet, but I definitely think that you’re on to something. Collapsing both Defend and Take A Powerful Blow into one already-hot Label is questionable.
The only strat I would potentially add to the mix is that the adults in the world should be tearing down that Savior trait as hard as they can. “The new Superman sucks. He is just a dummy/goofball, he can’t save any1 lol” they say on twitter and, oof, it hits hard. Savior drops to +2. Or whatever.
I have a Legacy in my game with that and, like with Wonder Woman or Superman, I gave them a McGuffin weakness, such as kryptonite or fire to get around invulnerability. For this move I made it that, if you get a 6 or fewer, your enemy suddenly has your one (or more) weaknesses and is using it against you, thus making you have a Hard Decision or mark a Condition (usually Afraid or Insecure). I don’t let the 6 or fewer take down the bad guy. If you fail, you fail.
Lots of good stuff from Matt Morton! Never give up, never surrender is definitely flagged in my head as a move I want to take a closer look at, alongside Defend—even just a simple adjustment of making Never give up have a more specific trigger might help.
That said, Jason Corley hit on exactly what I’d do. My immediate feeling is that, with a +3 Savior, this is what the hero is all about! They want to do this, and be awesome at it—excellent! But that doesn’t save them one lick from adults trying to shift their labels. And when a +3 label would be shifted up again, it actually doesn’t shift at all and instead inflicts a condition. So if they’re so amazing at being a hero, and people keep telling them that, it’s going to become a weight on them—giving them insecurities and guilt and fear about whether or not they can do the job.
Thanks for flagging this, though! As I said, I had my eye on this move for a little bit, and I’ll be thinking about how to fix up Never give up.