Downscaling powers in the Powers Profile and understanding when you have to Push
It’s something that happened to me and my group a few times in the last sessions: we have heroes who have a general power in the Power Summary (note: here I’m talking about the Power Summary, not of the Power Profile) and a declination of that power in the Power Profile.
For example, I’m playing Mighty Max (not that Mighty Max from the line of toys from the Nineties) and I have dumb and simple powers in my Power Summary: I’m super strong and super resistant. Nothing more, nothing less.
I have this power at Difficult in my Power Profile, “Tear down a wall made of bricks”, whereas my other powers at Simple level concern my super resistance, and not my super strenght.
During the game, I come across a wooden door, which has been blocked by the criminal I was following. I go straight for it and I say: “I punch it down with my super strenght!”
Then, the EIC asks me: “Have you that power in your Power Profile?”
And I answer: “No, actually not, but I can ‘Tear down a wall made of bricks’ at Simple.”
EIC: “Well, this is for sure a Simple power, compared to what you have written at the Difficult level, but you haven’t this power in you Power Profile, so you have to push, in order to do it.”
The EIC was I and his answer is what I’ve answered to my players every time they asked me to do something that was not written in their Power Profile, even if they can do that for sure, having a far more difficult power at a higher level in their Power Profile.
The question of my players is: “Why cannot we simply assume that we can do that action and write the power at Simple in our Power Profile, instead of pushing?”
Therefore, my first question is: is my understanding correct? The second one is: what would you answer to them?
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Are you saying that you can Tear Down a Brick Wall at difficult, but not knock down a wooden door at simple? That seems strange. Doesn’t your summary say you have super strength? I would say it follows from the fiction that you can knock down the wooden door without pushing if you can already knock down a brick wall…
Have to say if it was me you would have just gone through,. I would only call for a push if it was in some way tougher than brick. Then the push would probably have you upgrade the word brick to a new material
The thing is that you’re assuming that heroes are used to their powers. By this way of thinking, if a hero can rip a building out of the ground at difficult, they should be able to do everything easier as well, but figuring out, learning to control powers is a staple of comic books. Sometimes dialling down or controlling powers is just as hard, if not harder than opening up and doing everything you can do.
So yes, it’s correct, and I’d tell them to get the mindset of someone who just discovered their powers. That or play veterans and add more to the powers profile (if you don’t want to do any hacking).
In the example given, control isn’t an issue just getting past a barrier, I might agree if a level of delicacy was needed.
Seems a pretty arbitrary determination without knowing anything about the character or setting they’re playing in, but sure.
A big part of any game is determining what to spend time on and when to roll. If there isn’t anything at stake they’d be through the door in my game too maybe. As written though, that’s the reasoning behind the profile, summary, and push.
Ok, thanks to Kyle Simons and the others who intervened in this discussion. Here below I’m going to clear a little bit my ideas with some reflections. Feel free to comment them.
Let’s just say I reason in a pretty simple way: I read the rulebook, I try to understand it, and I apply it as I understood it. When the game impacts with my understanding, and it comes out I didn’t undestand as well I thought, I try to reach out to the authors and ask them how to do it right. Because I like to play the games in the way their authors thought them to be played.
In this case, the ruleboook seemed quite clear to me:
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“The Push move is all about doing something that is not on your Powers Profile yet — if it is already on there, then there is no need to make the move. You just do it, as long as you have the fictional justification to do so. If it is not on your Powers Profile yet then you will first need to determine if you can do it at all (does it fit with your Powers Summary? Does it make sense given what’s happening in the fiction right now?). If you can do it, then you need to figure out if it’s Simple, Difficult or Borderline to do, using your existing actions in your Powers Profile, along with your concept of what your hero can do and how powerful they are, to say that it’s either a) something they can do easily and without much effort, they have just never done it before, b) they can do it with some difficulty — maybe it requires some time, or a lot of effort, or c) it’s pushing the boundaries of what they can do, it’s going to be really hard and theywill be feeling it for days to come, but they can do it” (p. 48).
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Here my understanding was Mighty Max could certainly “Punch down a blocked wooden door”, and it is a Simple power for him, compared to the other powers in his Power Profile, but this “new power” is not yet on his Power Profile, and so he has to push.
Here he has to push not to see if he can do it. Hell, he has “Tear down a wall made of bricks” at Difficult: of course he can “Punch down a blocked wooden door” at Simple.
But, since when rolling a 6- on a move does mean you cannot do something? Let’s see what the move says:
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“On a 6-, what happens is up to the EIC. They will tell you what happens as a result and your character will take a Condition as per the difficulty established. Whether you actually succeed and do something with your powers or go out of control or backfire, or whatever else might happen is up to the EIC” (p. 49).
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In this case (my example in the originale post), I would judge saying “Ok, first: you cannot do it […]” a poor interpretation on behalf of the EIC. And I would judge it a poor interpretation because we know the hero can “Tear down a wall made of bricks” at Difficult; even more so he can “Punch down a blocked wooden door” at Simple. And this goes in the right direction, the one of the principle which says make a move that follows from and makes sense for the fiction.
And so, why does he have to roll push if it is clear he could do it? Because, as Kyle Simons said, you have to remember:
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“For the purposes of character creation and just starting out, Worlds in Peril assumes that the heroes are new heroes. They do not know much about their powers and what they can do with them. Their relationship with the city, law enforcement and the other players are still uncertain. They have a lot to figure out and a lot to work towards. That means that a lot of these will remain blank until they are filled in during play as necessary” (p. 78).
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Therefore, it’s not really about being able to do it, and it’s more about to do it without consequences, backfire, narrative consequences, etc. This part is the one which responds to the agendas which say fill the characters’ lives with action and adventure and play to find out what happens.
For example, let’s go back to Mighty Max punching down that door. Mighty Max’s player rolls push and gets a 6-. I am the EIC and I don’t want Mighty Max to not be able to use his power: it would not be making a move that follows from and makes sense for the fiction and being a fan of the character.
But I have to think like a villain, to think off-screen, too, and to give the characters hard choices to make. Therefore, that’s what I’m going to say as a hard move:
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“Ok, Max, punching down that door is not so difficult, after all. The wood cracks in little pieces and the door shuts open, slamming against the wall of the building. The building is poorly lit, but you can see that the criminal is holding a gun against a person: he clearly has taken a middle-aged man as a hostage. The man is very shaken and he’s trembling (put someone in a spot).
I think inflicting you the Minor Condition ‘Under pressure’ could fit the situation.What do you say?
Oh, and of course: what do you do?”
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That’s what I would do.
Yeah, that sounds great. I think a lot of players get hung up on rolls being tied to character ability and performance for obvious reasons, when, in fact, most often in AW it’s about whether there are consequences for actions or if the story takes a turn for the worse. If you get push back from players reminding them of that might shift them out of that headspace, too!
That’s a great help, actually–I’ve been wrapping my head around the “Push” concept too. So basically on a bad roll it isn’t necessarily “you can’t do it,” it can be “you can do it, but you aren’t good enough to do it reliably, so X happens” or “you can do it, but in the process X happens.” In the example given, might is also have been appropriate to say that Max smashes the door open but he uses too much strength because he’s not good at control, and damages the building’s wall/foundation/such?
Absolutely yes, IMHO.
Robert Mohr, well, since our Mighty Max can “Tear down a wall made of bricks”, that’s another hard move I could do, as the EIC. This time, it would be show a downside to their character, appearance, equipment or power. 😉
Thank you. 🙂
But if Mighty Max has at Difficult in his Power Profile “Lift a 18 wheels truck” and he wants to lift a SUV, does he roll for the Push move? Every time until he rolls for a 10?
Wouldn’t it be an increase in the number of dice rolls at the expense of the gameplay?
It largely depends on the EIC to keep the pace of the game and to keep everyone engaged. If it’s within the same scene, I probably wouldn’t call for it again if they’re trying to Push yet again to do the same thing yet again, but it really depends on the fiction. If it wasn’t a dramatic or tense moment in the fiction, I probably wouldn’t call for it at all, or I’d set some stakes to make sure the scene was compelling. By the book though, until they get a 10+ they can’t add it to their Profile, no. So if it’s important to them, they’re probably Burning a Bond in an appropriately-dramatic scene attempting something cool and interesting – not Pushing to throw a car every time they get spotlighted.
Seibei, I would apply this simple rule of thumb: if Mighty Max already has a power in his Power Profile, at the same level of the task he’s trying to attempt, which logically allows it, I don’t make the player roll to push. On the other hand, If the level of the power of the task he’s trying to do would be on a different level of his Power Profile, then he has to push. No exception allowed.
I think I may have missed the point of that question, not remembering anything about Mighty Max, but Daniele nails it if you were asking about slight distinctions within the same level on a character’s Power Profile.
No, Kyle Simons, I just exchanged the powers of Daniele Di Rubbo ‘s example. For it was clear for me to Push your Power in that case, where the hero (Mighty Max) needs to control his super strength to knock down a wooden door without major consequences.
But I don’t see so clear in another cases like the one I mentioned above. Because you don’t need such control over your super strength in order to lift a lighter weight, IMHO. Or maybe you do and I am wrong.
Yeah, so it depends on the fiction as well as the mechanics of their Profile. Are they used to controlling their powers? Is it a dramatic moment? Could something go wrong (moves don’t have to have anything to do with whether the character themselves fails at their attempted action). You can see from some of the comments above about the rules intentions and can decide for yourself as an EIC what call you’d make and what best suits you, your players, and the fiction.