I have a question about the Nova that seems to keep coming up.
Can the Nova precisely control their powers or not? The description heavily implies they have the equivalent to a fire hose of power. You can turn it on and vaguely aim it, but you’re not doing precision work with it. And there are consequences. You can use it to put out a house fire, but you’ll soak everything inside the building. Precision with a fire hose is…problematic. Sure, you could give someone a drink of water with it, but you’re going to blow them across the room.
Also, what about replicating the flares without actually using a flare? Say using telekinesis to fly…which is already covered by Move. Allowing this seems to undercut the mechanics of the playbook.
Any of the writers / designers willing to chime in?
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Derrick Kapchinsky is on-point about every Masks character being pretty crap at controlling their powers. The key difference with Novas isn’t necessarily that they’re completely out of control (though a player is free to play them that way), but that their dials go up to 11. Their power scope is far greater than any other playbook, partly in fiction and partly enforced with the Burn mechanic.
Which means they might not necessarily be any more at risk of crazy collateral than anyone else when trying to levitate a pencil, for example, but unlike everyone else they can regularly kick that power up to “levitate a house” levels. Which ramps up their uncontrolled risky nature in turn: when it all goes wrong, the same put innocents in danger GM move changes flavour entirely when it’s a trash can launched into the sky vs a city bus. And it’ll go wrong for a Nova more often than others due to them wanting conditions and the associated -2.
For basic moves vs Burn, Burn is generally for doing crazy shit that other people can’t. Move lets the Nova instantly destroy their handcuffs, burst through a forcefield and launch themselves through eight feet of concrete in a single action, without even rolling. If they spend 2 Burn on it, they can do all that and get back to their hideout on the other side of the world in an instant while they’re at it. Burn use is the stuff that makes people go “woah”; revel in it. 🙂
Huh. I guess I just disagree with most of that. Your description of how the Nova should work just makes it the right answer to all questions. It’s capable of doing everything every other character can do, plus a whole lot more with a downside.
Having Thor on the same team as Captain America only works if there’s some kind of balance. You’re basically saying there’s no balance.
The balance is supposed to be the described uncontrollability of their power, as represented mechanically by the Burn move. Without that, they’re a large circle in a Venn diagram that encompasses all the other playbooks. So every game will just devolve into a fight to see who gets the Nova first and the rest of the group is relegated to being their sidekicks.
That’s got to be wrong. They’ve got to be limited by their need to use Burn instead of doing anything and everything all the time.
I understand the concern, ’cause at first glance things are all out of whack — having a Beacon with “acrobatics” and a Nova with “do-whatever-you-want cosmic power” in the same team seems absurd. But the notion of playbook balance in Masks really revolves around the nature of storytelling and fictional positioning, much like it does for Captain America and Thor. The Avengers actually have no balance at all: when it comes to raw ability, Thor is straight-up better than Cap at everything Cap can do. Thor is faster, much stronger, can fly, has a better throwing weapon and can take a hit from Hulk without needing a shield. Thor’s even meant to be a better tactician than Cap, as the ever-trained God of Warfare. And then he gets all his crazy-powerful lightning business on top of that.
But in the big picture, the screentime and character interest balance out because raw power is only one facet of the story being told: the Avengers writers are tasked with presenting a story in which different characters can shine and be interesting and cool, much like a Masks GM is, and if having a Nova on-board makes the rest of your team feel like sidekicks — and that isn’t a desired dynamic — then you should be talking to your GM about shining a spotlight on what makes the rest of you awesome. Because you are, so that shouldn’t be hard.
Though, it has to be said, believing raw power to be the solution to all the team’s problems makes for a spot-on Nova view of the world, fraught with future peril. ;D
Mario Bolzoni Fabio Succi Cimentini Stefano Cuoghi Nicola Urbinati could be interested (read the first of Matt’s reply, the bit about doing cray things with Burn).
So the thing to remember is that, in terms of the game mechanics, the Nova isn’t any more powerful than the rest of the playbooks. Sure, her “directly engage” might be overwhelming them with the fires of creation and the beacon’s might just be shooting a guy with a boxing-glove arrow, but they’re both just rolling their danger and choosing options.
If a Nova is doing something of any importance without burn, then it’s going to be covered by other basic moves? Is she halting a rain of bullets in midair and letting them fall to the floor? That’s just “Defend”. Is she battering down psychic walls to rip secrets from a villain’s mind? Well that’s just “Pierce the Mask”. It’s only when the Nova is trying to do something that’s both powerful and not covered by a move or flares that the MC should be imposing limitations.
The nova’s powers are grander in terms of story space, yes, but that also means that the chance for things to go wrong is grander, too. Don’t forget, the MC can make the nova’s powers flare out of control whenever they get to make a move–and that the nova player has plenty of options to make their own powers go out of control as a result of the tough choices they need to make with partial successes or in order to remove conditions.
The Nova is also going to be pulling a lot of conditions to get burn and every condition makes them more likely to screw up and have their powers go out of control.