Allan Dotson – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Another question.

Another question. The Takedown move lets PCs deal Minor, Moderate, or Critical conditions to villains. But the villains’ Condition Threshold refers to the number of Conditions they can take, not the severity of conditions they can take. Is there a mechanical difference to dealing a Minor, Moderate, or Critical Condition to a villain, or is that difference purely in the fiction?

If a villain has a Condition Threshold of 3, and you give a Critical Condition (say, “slashed”), does that count as 3 Conditions for his Condition Threshold, so he goes down? Or is that just one Condition, mechanically the same as giving him a Minor Condition (say “bruised”)?

If there is no mechanical difference, why should a player want to spend their Takedown choices on giving more severe Conditions?

In a response to my question about Achievement costs for new powers, Kyle had mentioned that “In general, the…

In a response to my question about Achievement costs for new powers, Kyle had mentioned that “In general, the higher in difficulty you go, the bigger and more powerful the fictional positioning becomes.” But I find the fact that this isn’t actually stated in the game rules one of the really interesting aspects of this game. Something I really like about this game is that you could easily build a character with easy access to great power, who has a hard time controlling it, like so:

Power Summary: Telekinesis

Simple: level a city

Difficult: lift a battleship or skyscraper

Borderline: lift a car

Possible: manipulate a small object

Impossible: manipulate energy

What I like about this is that this character might be more powerful than other heroes on their team, but they are not necessarily any more useful. They might be great at stopping natural disasters and repelling alien invasions, but they will still struggle to deal with street-level crime.

Has anyone else built / played a character like this, who had easy access to great power, but struggled with fine control?

Hello, I’m starting up a WiP campaign, and there’s one part of the rules that confuses me.

Hello, I’m starting up a WiP campaign, and there’s one part of the rules that confuses me. You can add new powers to your Powers Profile by spending Achievements. 2 Achievements for a new simple power, 5 Achievements for a new Possible power (and a range in between). Why would a player make their new power Possible, when they could make it Simple for only 2 Achievements?

I have a feeling the answer is going to be something like “follow the fiction”, but have your players, or you as a player, actually bought a new power for 5 points instead of 2?

There seems to be an assumption here that Borderline and Possible powers are going to be bigger, more effective, but I don’t find any rule that says so.

If I decide to reverse the Achievement cost for new powers for my game (5 Achievements for a new Simple power, and 2 for a new Possible power), what problems will that cause? What is the intention behind this rule being written as is?