New Specialties

[Eviltoon]

So, in reading the comments on Things You Don't Like, I see several mentioning a desire for more Specialties.

In the book, there are some offhanded mentions of new specialties; what specialties might people have in mind?

Here's some I've culled from that topic:

Entertainment
Leadership
Survivalist

I could recommend adding a thing or two else. Things along the line of Mechanical/Repair, Manipulation (or at least Seduction - Tigra's player was very sad last game!)

Feel free to toss out what you see as some oversights. Maybe we could put together a list of good thoughts.

[pksullivan]

Wouldn't manipulation, leadership, and seduction fall under Psych? It's about getting in someone's head and guiding them along a particular path. Manipulation and seduction, depending on the circumstances, could also fall under Covert while some aspects of Leadership would easily be described under Crime.

Mechanical/Repair falls under Tech and Vehicles, I would say. Again, depends on the circumstances.

Entertainment could possibly be under Psych but that's a stretch to me. Survival could be under Covert, if you reference such training when describing your dice pool.

[Clayton Wick]

Leadership is a distinction, seduction is more than covered by Tigra's Covert Expert. Mechanics/repair is tech, and manipulation can be either Psych or Covert, depending on the character.

My problem with adding new specialties is that the existing ones already cover all the ground you need with a little imagination, and if you add something like a Leadership specialty, then there's that nagging feeling that you've got to go back and modify old datafiles that really should have it (Captain America, Cyclops, etc.).

[Clayton Wick]

Wouldn't manipulation, leadership, and seduction fall under Psych? It's about getting in someone's head and guiding them along a particular path. Manipulation and seduction, depending on the circumstances, could also fall under Covert while some aspects of Leadership would easily be described under Crime.

Mechanical/Repair falls under Tech and Vehicles, I would say. Again, depends on the circumstances.

Entertainment could possibly be under Psych but that's a stretch to me. Survival could be under Covert, if you reference such training when describing your dice pool.

Entertainment just comes across as completely unnecessary to me, in the same way that the "Aunt May has a statistically significant chance to beat Thanos in an arm-wrestling match!" argument I saw around release demonstrates an ignorance of when the game requires dice rolls. The situations in which your ability to sing, play a guitar, or recite Hamlet will have some sort of impact over the plot are so corner-case that it just doesn't justify a spot on a datafile as anything other than a distinction. Dazzler is probably going to have a distinction for her musical talent, but if Wolverine wants to break out into a harmonica solo, that's the reason the developers gave us plot points.

[Spatula]

I suppose this is another minor issue that I have with the game, where character-defining traits are spread out over distinctions, specialties, and power sets. And what goes where? It defies my nerdy need to categorize everything into boxes.

With seduction, I would probably say that's covered by Psych or Covert, and can get a boost from distinctions if it's important to the character (and I'm surprised Tigra doesn't have some kind of flirty distinction). Leadership I think is covered adequately by Psych.

I think it's a bad idea to add too many new specialties, because every new one that intrudes onto the territory of an existing specialty makes the existing one "smaller", and would necessitate fixing existing datafiles. For example, who with Tech specialty wouldn't also have a Mecanical/Repair specialty? And given that, why have the Mech/Repair one at all? So the challenge, I think, is to find genuine holes in the current coverage.

I also don't think there needs to be a specialty to everything under the sun. As I mentioned earlier, it seems like the design puts some concepts into distinctions instead, although where the line is drawn I'm not sure. I can see a need for a Naturalist/Savage/Survival/Hunting specialty (not sure what to call it) for characters like Kraven or Ka-Zar, but maybe they would just have an appropriate distinction.

[blaster219]

One character in my group as the a speciality called Animal Handling to cover horse riding and caring for animals.

Another has a speciality called Mischief. Which is basically a kid version of Covert I suppose.

I see nothing wrong with a player having custom specialities if they feel the existing ones don't quite cover what they want them to. As long as none of their specs overlap, I can't see a problem with it.

[Eviltoon]

Fair on the specialties that are "precise" and could "kinda fit" into others, alright.

But I do disagree with the idea that some specialties should be considered Distinctions.

If She-Hulk, as a great lawyer, has to make an action to argue a legal case, she has her Distinction for it... AND she has her Criminal Expert for it.

On the other hand, if your argument is Leadership is just a Distinction... it seems strange. Where some specialty rolls would just end up being Affiliation + Distinction + Oh well versus Affiliation + Distinction + Specialty?

I don't know. Seems inconsistent. I like consistent. But I will give you Repair/whatever with Tech. Sure. I did not have the book in front of me and was making the list I did off of some comments others have made. And I don't see a reason why Entertainment Expert has less viable function than Business or Cosmic.

They all could come up, in precise corner examples, with about the same consistency depending on the character's focus.

So my question, then, let's rephrase:

"Are there any specialties you feel are not represented by existing ones? If so, which?"

[Cam]

Psych covers seduction, leadership, getting under someone's skin, witty quips, all manner of non-threatening psychological approaches.

Menace is scaring people. It gets its own Specialty because it's not the same as Psych.

If you're going to add a Specialty, make sure it includes:
* Knowledge of that thing
* Applied use of that thing
* Contacts and networks of people who use or are connected to that thing

Specialties aren't just skills, they're your hero's window into a whole segment of the Marvel Universe.

Cheers,
Cam

[Supplanter]

Cyclops has your Leadership right here.

[Duck Call Lass]

This is the point in the thread where I jump in and say, "New specialty? Just use a distinction, done."