Specialties

[Majestic]

Great example, konate, and I completely agree!

Doc_Nova, using Rookie is an excellent idea as well.

Again, thanks for the fantastic (no pun intended) ideas, everyone!

[Gingerkid88]

ironman was trained to fight by cap... i wouldn't even a little bit try and jump tony stark... the specialties are just another adjective to be used in describing what you want your character to do. its not a stretch (totally intended the pun)for mister fantastic to use tech master against a Doom Bot. It is fair for him to use cosmic against a Skrull. Menace isn't just emotional damage... seriously if i were to fight Luke Cage id be overly cautious (and mostly beaten to a pulp)thus giving him an advantage. i agree that if they are including any dice; distinction, powers, affiliation, specialties, assets, stress or complications they should explain how those words help their case. if they cant then no dice. even if its combat in a fist fight they should hav to explain.
If your Cap i want to know that your leading your team by example as you give Green Goblin a right hook with super strength and your shield rebounds at his head, taking advantage of how distracted by the emotional stress of his anger. In the same respect Mr. Fantastic could be a family man trying to get to his family alone and use his tech mastery and stretching to bring down a Doom Bot by analyzing it and seeing its self destruct button. This system doesnt seem like it wants to punish creative thinking, in fact im pretty sure it wants to promote it. dont let your players just use combat as a base attack bonus, and menace isn't just an intimidate against dc 15+cha mod...

[Supplanter]

So now the thread has me thinking of a general question for yinz. Not infrequently on this board, we talk about not letting the player do this or that "without a good narrative explanation." And I'm all about good narrative explanations, cause they're fun. But in the real world, we don't have such a tidy division between proposing and disposing, do we? I mean, in the groups I'm with, when a player wants to use a specialty or dish out a counter-reaction or whatever and their first description doesn't grab people, the Watcher doesn't sneer "FAIL!" and move briskly on to the next bit of business. We're more likely to throw it open to the table for ideas, whether from the Watcher or other hero-players. "Here are a couple things you could do instead to get that die" type discussions.

Do some of your groups not work that way?


Jim

[Cam]

As a rough guide, look at the Fighting Skills entry for the Marvel.com or Official Handbook power grids. A character with 4 or 5 Fighting Skills usually gets a Combat Expert Specialty. 6 or 7 gets a Combat Master. Tony Stark has a 3, so no Combat Specialty for him.

If you're feeling the pain of missing Specialties, consider an optional rule that says every super hero can justify being a Rookie in something, and default to a d6 if no other Specialty applies. You can't make stunts or resources with it, but a d6 is better than nothing.

Cheers,
Cam

[Gingerkid88]

this system has a lot more freedom than systems me and my group have played in the past. sometimes its hard for us to understand how vague (for the sake of awesomeness) the game is and we have trouble with the lack of set in stone rules we're accustomed to. i love that my biggest complaint is that i don't always understand how to use this new found freedom mind you. so yes sometimes or watcher just says "i don't think so" but we are getting better at the give and take, just have fun mentality the system seems to be written with.

[Duncan]

I agree the game system has great flexibility, if you don't like something make a change for you group. You can make a small change and if the characters what it better then, the player can spend exp to make it better.

[konate]

As a rough guide, look at the Fighting Skills entry for the Marvel.com or Official Handbook power grids. A character with 4 or 5 Fighting Skills usually gets a Combat Expert Specialty. 6 or 7 gets a Combat Master. Tony Stark has a 3, so no Combat Specialty for him.

*Sigh* I hope this is a VERY rough guide...Those power grids often do not gauge power levels, but rather, power identifiers; and are poor at quantifying powers and skills.

For example, fighting ability, according to the Power Grid, does not gauge how good a fighter someone is, but how many styles a fighter knows. So, according to this power grid, Royce Gracie, a 3 time UFC champion (UFC 1,2, and 4) would rank at a level 5 (d8) for mastering only one form of combat. That level 5 does not state how good a fighter he is.

Durability is a mixture of recuperative ability and resistance to damage. Level 4 is regenerative, but says nothing about how resistant to damage a hero is. Maybe 'enhanced', at level 3, actually is more resistant to damage than a 4 (since level 4 doesn't gauge damage resistance). Nor does it say anything about those that have a high resistance to damage and high recuperative abilities (Namor).

Energy projection doesn't list power at all, but rather type of energy projected, range, and duration - all mixed together.

Intelligence, strength, and speed are really the ONLY attributes that give any indication of a true quantification of these literary characters' abilities.

I understand that this is an easy way to transform these abstract characters into quantifiable "Datafiles", but I guess I'm disappointed that this is the way its done; partly because I find they are inaccurate, disappointedly often. The hand-to-hand battles between Daredevil and Punisher are a perfect example of this. But, if you look at the power grids, Daredevil is level 5 (mastery of 1 form of combat) and the Punisher is level 6 (mastery of several), and DD often makes him seem like he has very little ability, if any at all...But, Frank will have a d10 Combat Mastery for sure.

That's just one example...

[Cam]

It isn't the only way we decide this, just to be clear. but look at the definitions of Expert and Master in the OM for further insight.

Cheers,
Cam

[Gingerkid88]

theres gotta be some sorta balancing formula u guys use so that people who play black widow arent out show by people who play the human torch... otherwise i cant defend the Sentry's stat line without saying "well um... hes not insane yet... so um... comic book logic beats science..."

[Supplanter]

theres gotta be some sorta balancing formula u guys use so that people who play black widow arent out show by people who play the human torch... otherwise i cant defend the Sentry's stat line without saying "well um... hes not insane yet... so um... comic book logic beats science..."

I'm given to understand that there will be a more powerful version of the Sentry in the Civil War book. In the meantime, I did an alternate datafile after my initial experience of playing the one in Breakout. You won't get to roll a specialty die in combat very often with my version either, but I don't think you'll feel underpowered . . .


Jim