If a Bull can do 1 condition on a successful engage, a Beacon can do 1 condition on a success, and a Nova can do 1 condition..
What makes Nova’s so powerful? They do the same amount to ‘defeat’ an enemy, but inflict the same amount of ‘damage’ at a greater risk than the other players. The book describes them as being able to take down enemies the others can’t – that they can take down practically anything they put their minds to (as long as they accept the risks).
I’m not seeing it mechanically. Could someone help me understand? 🙁 How do you guys represent the Nova’s superior ‘fightiness’?
With the Fiction. The Bull can lift a bus, and that’s how she hurts a 20 story mech. The Beacon isn’t going to put a scratch in that mech unless they can find some weak point vulnerable to their puny abilities, and do whatever craziness it takes to access that weak point. Similarly, the Nova can transform entire battlefields with its abilities: gravity, the elements, life control, cosmic power, any of these can justify sweeping changes to the way the party is fighting their enemies or what the arena looks like. The Fiction is infinitely more important than the mechanics.
The fiction aspect is definitely something I need to get use to.
How do you guys handle the book suggestion to give them ‘enemies only they can deal with’?
Big tough scary guys who can only be affected by their power set, big scary dangerous crises that can best be handled by their power set, thing like that. They have biokinesis? Cool, “this is Vector the Human Plague and everyone in this building starts vomiting blood and convulsing simultaneously. We’re talking hundreds of infected. What do you do?” They have gravity control? Cool, “the entire stadium starts collapsing under the Deathatron’s missile fire, and folks are still evacuating. What do you do?” They have cosmic energy? Cool, “Astrotem, The Void-Hawk, is wearing armor forged in the heart of a dark star, and its seemingly impenetrable to even the the mightiest blows, and he starts howling about how only the fires of creation could carve him free of his defenses. What do you do?”
You’re making me realize I lack imagination, lol. Awesome post. Thanks.
Remember that it only counts as directly engaging if you could reasonably hurt your opponent, and because of that, a Nova’s power might let them directly engage foes more easily than other playbooks. To go with Alfred Rudzki’s example, the Beacon would probably need to make some other moves first, like assess the situation to locate the mech’s weak point and unleash your powers to get to it, and if they succeed at those, then they get a chance to directly engage. Meanwhile the Nova poses a threat to the mech with raw power alone, so they can go straight to directly engaging without needing to make an opening first.
I hadn’t thought of that at all. Very clean fix to my confusion!
It’s all about the story, and as gm I will change a beacon assaulting a god from actually engaging to something more like distracting like a provoke, as a beacon cannot actually harm a god in any way without a proper god killing weapon. So yeah as Sebastian said, it’s all about the fiction, the mechanics are there to help us put actions into dice rolls, but I don’t think they are equal among the playbooks. An engaging bull and an engaging delinquent are two very different things… same goes for all other moves. A nova assessing the situation will have his telepathy or energy feels around allowing the gm to give him details that aren’t before his eyes (maybe making him roll an unleash first too), a beacon would probably only use eyes and ears. It has to make sense in the story I think for a move to be used.