The Classified Section (OOC)

[roxolid]

Bullet stopper... Heh, I think the phrase was coined when Hero 5e came out. Ridiculous sized book. Hero 4e was getting on the hefty size but for me Champions 3e was the sweet spot. There's a video on youtube somewhere of someone putting the book to the test with actual bullets. They don't (stop bullets) by the way. Maybe if you packed half a dozen of them on top of each other but that starts to get pricey and heavy...

I still shake my head in wonder at the size and cost of new game books. The Silver Age Sentinels 2nd edition game is two hefty tomes (one for system, one for game world) and weigh in at £55 each. Even the PDFs are pricey at £24 each. No thanks! Normally supers games are an auto buy for me but when I saw it in the FLGS last week my eyes nearly popped out with the cost...

One day I'll make good on my threat to come up with a personal 2nd edition of MURPG, but it will have to include a random element of some kind. That book would come in (like the original MURPG) at under 100 hundred pages. I tend to lose interest anyway after writing the first 40 pages or so...

[Hoots Rowlet]

Well Cap did fight in World War 2, probably spent a fair amount of time in France. It stands to reason he could have picked up a few words or phrases.

[andyman]

Apr 23, 2023 21:21:34 GMT -5 Hoots Rowlet said:

Well Cap did fight in World War 2, probably spent a fair amount of time in France. It stands to reason he could have picked up a few words or phrases.

Hoots Rowlet is correct. I found a reference on the internet (which never lies) that In Amazing X-Men Vol 2 #11 it was revealed that Captain America, thanks to his enhanced memory from the Super-Soldier Serum, can speak English, German, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, French, and Italian. There might be even more that he is fluent in. He picked up most of the languages fighting in World War II.

Reference: marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Glossary:Linguistics#:~:text=Captain%20America

[Hoots Rowlet]

Finally! A good roll, and after someone else has already restrained him too.

[crisiscomics]

Weird to think that out of all the villains we faced so far (Mimic, Super-Skrull, Drax the Destroyer), it's the Grey Gargoyle who's given us the most trouble.

[andyman]

Jun 3, 2023 10:48:05 GMT -5 crisiscomics said:

Weird to think that out of all the villains we faced so far (Mimic, Super-Skrull, Drax the Destroyer), it's the Grey Gargoyle who's given us the most trouble.

I think that Body Armor is the rule I dislike the most in the MSHRPG. I think a D&D solution like higher Armor Class and Damage Resistances might do a better job of making a foe difficult to hurt, but still allowing someone like Captain America to help do some damage. In MSHRPG Starfox's Incredible (40) punches do 0 damage to Incredible (40) Body Armor. I'd prefer a system that if Starfox got a good punch in (high roll) then maybe he could do half his usual damage (20) but only on a high roll, not any hit. (Like what the Ultimate Players Book did for Damage Resistance.)

Maybe a house rule that allows the player a choices when they get a yellow or red result.

Yellow = Use listed effect or inflict an extra 25% damage.
Red = Use listed effect or inflict an extra 50% damage.

So if Starfox were to get a RED result he could do 60 damage and against Incredible (40) Body Armor that would inflict 20 damage. He would not get the Stun result though.

Or for faster battles, that we seem to need, always do 25% more damage on a YELLOW and 50% more damage on a RED. (And also allow YELLOW and RED to do the slams or stuns listed for those colors.

I'd give the villains the same changes though.

Thoughts?

[roxolid]

I was literally reading something about this yesterday, probably on the Facebook Marvel group and one of the things they churn out (PDFs). I think it suggested that a Green result was damage, Yellow -1CS to Armour and Red -2CS (as opposed to the effect of Stun/Kill, players choice). Has to be some way for the Wasp to target Hulks eyes or ears (or brain inside his head, eeeeew) as she does it all the time in the comics. Literally in game terms Wasp can't hurt Hulk but in the comics, she does. Blasting his skin won't make a difference but his eyeballs get him every time.

So using the -1/-2CS Starfox would inflict zero/10/20 damage to Grey Gargoyle. Still not huge but better than nothing. With the game rules as written Spider-man could punch Thing all day long and Benjy could carry on reading his paper, not feeling it.

[roxolid]

Tunnels and Trolls (another game I'v GM'd) has the spite rule. With armoured opponents chances are no one does any damage to the other guy but rolls of 1 (which are normally terrible) inflict 1 point of damage to the target in spite of armour, whether you win or lose the round.

Example:

A warrior attacks with a sword (4D6) + Combat Adds 5

Roll is 3,1,2,6 +5 Combat Adds total 17

An Orc attacks with a spear (3D6) + 2 Combat Adds

1,2,1 +2 total 6

The Warrior clearly wins the Combat round and inflicts 17-6=11 damage on the Orc.

The orc scored two 1s though and that gets through the Warriors armour so they take 2 points of damage in spite of winning the round.

That's for a fantasy game of course and T&T is pretty quirky but I much prefer it vs the swing/miss/repeat/eventually hit of D&D or Runequest or whatever. The problem of Combat Inertia in RPGs is a tricky question to answer as not one solution fits all.

Likewise Spider-Man. No armour. He must get pounded into the floor by strong opponents (and in the run by John Romita JR he looks like he's beaten up on a daily basis. Horrible art) right? Well Spideys agility counts for a lot in the comics but not so much in the game. Marvel counters this by having Agility add to health so I guess we could consider his Endurance as his Health and the rest of the stats as fending off/avoiding attacks. Sorta.

[roxolid]

I think you saw in the facebook group Andy but I finally finished the last of the rules books for the Marvel game. Phew! A few problems along the way and it's a steep learning curve. I seem to make little mistakes with every one and the latest was issues with glue either not sticking or not drying. Anyway, got there in the end. I much prefer a physical book to read rather than on screen so may be able to reference the Revised game rules (which we are using) a little better now.

[andyman]

I'm considering getting the new Marvel Multiverse RPG to try it out here. Maybe convert Vision, Starfox and Captain Marvel before the end of this adventure. What do y'all think? I'll only change things is you're interested.

[roxolid]

Heard mixed opinions on it. Shoehorning characters into certain ranks, daredevil is rank 2 (world class M Artist with super senses? Clearly someone hasn't read his own book where he punches above his weight) etc. Interested to get your take on it. I have it on pre-order but it keeps slipping (in the UK now 11/9/23 release...) and picking up discount as it goes. The discount is nice (assuming I pay the even lower price) but its an odd rollout for what marvel/Disney figure/hope should sell in the D&D numbers.

It won't, but I guess they are the only ones who don't know that.

So yeah, interested with the caveat that I don't have the book yet/know the rules/not sure if the rules are any good. I'd be interested if you could put some kind of review/quick and easy how to play/read characters sheets up...

[crisiscomics]

I'd be interested in trying Marvel Multiverse out, but not so much doing a total conversion of this adventure (I've converted DC Heroes modules to DC Adventures rules before, and even with a proper guide it's a tough undertaking), especially given how much is missing from the Corebook.

And I agree with Roxolid. Daredevil and Phil Coulson should not be equal in fighting prowess. That's like saying Mr. Bones can beat Batman in Hand-to-Hand combat.

[roxolid]

There is what I consider to be a problem with the system. The game is based on ranks which define various things. As we all know some heroes are good at everything, some ok at things but good at one thing. It's there where the system breaks down. You get magic users like Doctor Strange who are rank 6 and can cast magic and all that... who punch harder than Spider-Man and Luke Cage and a whole bunch of others because their Melee damage modifier is based on their rank! the Fantastic Four (less the Thing) can almost do as much damage as Spider-man with their fists as they are rank 4. His damage is x5, theirs is x4. The list goes on of characters who are great at one thing (normally) now suddenly good at most things because of the rank.

Put it this way - Scarlet Witch is no pushover in a fist fight (she's rank 5 and punches as hard as Spidey/Cage/Others) and then there is the magic/hex stuff on top. Magneto is rank 6, so x6 damage...

Does this matter? No unless you are playing a character who's schtick is being a brawler/fighter/brick. Then you are completely underwhelming because these characters who are a rank or two higher can do all you do (and more) as a side effect of being a higher rank.

The system is fine, roll 3D6 with the middle/different coloured one rolling a 6 instead of 1 for a fantastic success (the 616 mechanic) against target numbers with ability modifiers. Target number is 10 + rank for a challenging task and modified for extra difficulty/ease. So far so fine. Then the rank thing comes up and you get Mr Fantastic/Johnny Storm/Sue Storm beating Daredevil in a fistfight without using their powers because they are Rank 4 and he's only Rank 2. On RPGnet a bunch of players ran the included scenario with Rank 2/3 heroes against a single Rank 4 guy and got a pasting apparently (I didn't read all the thread but it suggests that something is amiss with the way ranks work).

Maybe a work around is one of your multipliers is your rank, next is rank -1, then rank -2 and Rank -3 with a minimum of rank x1. I'd have to do the math.

Only two of the rosters for our current line up (Cap Marvel is Photon these days as Danvers is now Cap Marvel)

[roxolid]

Lol don't get into a fist fight with Photon. She punches as hard as Ben Grimm (x8)

[crisiscomics]

"By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!" (punches through a brick wall)

I think that was a result of them compressing the ranks from 15 (the level Captain Marvel was at in the Playtesters Book) to 6. Suddenly where there was a lot of space for nuance you've got all these characters being shoved into the same spaces and stepping over each other's lines.

I didn't know there was an included scenario. I thought that was one of the main complaints of the book.

Also, this was an interesting thing they recently added.