I actually have a suggestion I wanted to run by you (of course totally cool if you don't want to, this is your game, I just like tinkering
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ABILITIES
What about pairing up abilities?
By that I mean, allowing each PC to choose between one or an other ability when performing an action to represent how they do it.
Some examples of what I mean:
Coordination or Focus
either of these as you describe them would work well for shooting a gun or doing something at range.
- You either have laser focus and ignore everything to concentrate on your target, or
- Your hand-eye coordination is such that you barely had to think about it.
Coordination or Endurance
In a fight, how you defend yourself is very important, but defining defending yourself in melee or ranged combat seems like more of story thing to me.
- Someone like the Hulk relies on being indestructible, it doesn't matter if someone is 1 or 100 feet away.
- Or someone like the flash, who maybe isn't so tough, but he moves quick enough to avoid damage, again, this works either up close or at range.
Reason or Focus
some people are crazy brilliant and instantly pick up on the logic of how things work,
other people have to brute force a problem and take time to figure things out.
Force or Fighting
Hulk doesn't really use fighting techniques, but what he lacks in skill is more than made up for in strength and damage output.
But, Someone like Black Widow doesn't have that kind of strength, but she has years of experience and training allowing her to gain leverage and strike precisely, which balances out her lack of brute strength.
Endurance/Appeal
some people have the personality to sweet talk their way through anything,
others have to depend on looking scary to get their way.
And we could literally come up with a pair for any situation.
So, my idea is to give people the option (chosen at character creation, and maybe changed with xp between issues) of choosing which stat their character uses for something.
Hulk would obviously be:
Force for offense
Endurance for defense
Black Widow would probably have:
Fighting for offense
Coordination for defense
and either coordination or focus for using guns and other spy stuff
POWERS
What if powers didn't add a + to your roll?
What if they changed how you rolled instead, by that I mean using the Advantage rules from D&D 5E.
instead of 2d6 +ability like normal, you roll 3d6 +ability.
If you have advantage, you take the highest 2
If you have a disadvantage, you take the lowest 2
You are usually disadvantaged when using your powers would be dangerous or risky (or whenever the GM says it would be).
You cannot have both advantage and disadvantage on the same roll at the same time, they cancel each other out and you would just roll 2d6 as normal.
So, "If these changes were put in what would be the point to levelling up powers?" you ask. Here's how:
Just like you have certain actions that you consider automatic based on TN, I think every power should have a number of specific things that you can do with that power equal to that power's level+1 that are "auto-success"
A person with telepathy 0 shouldn't have any trouble reading someone's surface thoughts,
or someone with empathy 0 doing the same with emotions.
Someone with teleporting 0 shouldn't ever have to roll just to teleport somewhere nearby (same room, or line of sight out to a few dozen feet for example)
A person with teleporting 2 should probably also be able to easily:
- teleport somewhere nearby, or line of sight
- teleport somewhere "familiar" (somewhere you spend lots of time; like home, or a base, or a friend's house)
- teleport someone you can see anywhere else nearby or in line of sight.
So that gives everyone a reason to want their powers raised, instead of just pumping points into their abilities.
KNACKS
I wouldn't really change how they work, but would also add this:
once per issue you may "spend" one of your knacks to do something story-changing related to that Knack (player and gm should decide exactly what that is.) and then you cannot use that knack for the rest of the issue.
So using your previous example of Reed Richards' Scientific Research, instead of using it as a simple +1 whenever he needs to roll for knowing something, Reed declares that he's going to invent a device that will do whatever to help solve that issue's problem. The device is made, but Reed is now too pre-occupied with it to be able to concentrate on much else.
So, yeah, hope I didn't cross a line or anything.
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