Character Datafile: Saber

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NOTE: Due to the content of this character sheet, spoilers for the Fate franchise follow.

One of the charms of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying is its way of dealing with varying power levels. Its leveling of the playing field translates decently enough to other settings and character; not every story has evenly matched characters, making it otherwise hard to fit them into a RPG. A game can evolve into a massive crossover with various characters from all sorts of media and yet keep its balance.

It’s also tremendously fun to write up datafiles for non-Marvel characters.

Under the cut is a MHRP character datafile for Saber from the Fate franchise, part of Type-Moon‘s Nasuverse. I’ve based her on the version of the character that appears in the Fate storyline in Fate/Stay Night. Her stats should be compatible with normal MHRP parties if your Watcher allows fan-built characters from other media sources and her backstory makes her easy to dump into a party of heroes. I’ve always enjoyed the Matter of Britain from a storytelling perspective and while the idea of a female King Arthur is really silly, it also tickles me.

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Rolled by on June 2, 2013 under Marvel Heroic Roleplaying 0 Comments Tagged: , , ,

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying with Limited Power Sets

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My gaming group recently played through the beginning of the new Annihilation event book. I wanted to change up the character I was playing and, having both read Nextwave and received 50 State Initiative recently, decided on Tabitha Smith. A snarky, impulsive young hero who could be translated to space easily enough. Seemed like the perfect answer to me.

Her Datafile, however, is an exercise in “Marvel Heroic Roleplaying in Miniature”. She has a one power set with one power and a tiny amount of specialties at Expert. Tabitha’s Datafile is not completely unique in the system. There are a handful of characters with a similar build; Cyclops, Amadeus Cho and Elixir are also limited to one dice in a single power set. All of their Datafiles look uncomfortably empty compared to the majority of Datafiles in the system. It’s almost like they’re designed to be overlooked by players.

This lead to me considering what place is there in the system for these characters, both in a narrative and gameplay sense, and what’s the best way to get the most out of the characters. It’s easy to write these off as sets for people new to the system since not much thought needs to be put into building a dice pool. On further reflection, they aren’t quite beginner or advanced Datafiles but need to be approached with a slightly different mindset.

I’ll be looking specifically at Tabitha Smith’s Datafile, but many of these ideas apply to the rest of this peculiar group with some adjustments for varying SFXs and limits.

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Rolled by on April 8, 2013 under Marvel Heroic Roleplaying 0 Comments Tagged: , ,

On Intellect in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

There was an interesting topic of discussion over on Margaret Weis’ forums regarding the designer’s decision not to include a trait to represent Intelligence in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.

To quote Cam Banks, the Design Lead for MHRP, on why Intellect was not included in the game:

I admit to being biased toward the physical in creating power traits.

Almost every power trait is a physical expression of powers, and if not physical, it’s a psychic or magical or energy-based kind of thing. There’s no super powered charisma, either, although there is Mind Control. I went for power traits that covered expressions or effects, and in almost every case Intelligence falls outside of that. Using Senses [for Amadeus Cho’s QUANTUM PROBABILITY AWARENESS power set] may seem like a cheap dodge, but it wasn’t – it’s a way to represent the expression of that kind of hyper-intelligence, much as Strength or Stamina are expressions of a powerful musculature or endocrine system…

He continues later on in the thread:

…I do want to underscore that I don’t consider Senses to be the universal power trait for super smarts. We didn’t give it to Reed, we gave it to Amadeus Cho. I believe it definitely belongs in a Hyper-Intelligence Power Set, but then I believe we should be talking about Power Sets anyway, not power traits. The game wasn’t designed to be about the power traits as standalone elements.

You can do a lot to represent certain uses of intelligence with the Senses power, or the Mimic power with a limit built around technology. Check out Forge in Civil War: X-men, or Amadeus Cho in Civil War: Young Avengers / Runaways for great examples of that.  There is a special place in my heart for the sort of raw brainpower intelligence that an Intellect trait might represent, and in my MHRP games, it would feel totally appropriate.

Luckily for me, Margaret Weis forums user Doc Hydrogen, who also writes for the blog overgeeked came up with a write up for an Intellect power trait that I think is spot on.

Intellect

Intellect may be used in action or reaction dice pools.

Intellect covers reasoning ability and learning. A character with a high Intellect rank tends to be knowledgeable and well-educated.

Enhanced Intellect d8 represents two to three times the normal human intelligence, meaning you’re highly gifted or one of the smartest people in a nation.

Superhuman Intellect d10 indicates as much as ten times the intelligence of a normal human, meaning you’re one of the smartest people in the world or clearly beyond the normal range of human intelligence.

Godlike Intellect d12 indicates your intelligence surpasses even the smartest people in history, possibly bordering on the cosmic.

This is a common superpower, representing everything from mutation-enhanced intelligence to natural born smarts. As with many power traits, it’s often assumed to just work if there’s nothing challenging the hero, or if using Intellect is part of the description of an action (like figuring out the proper trajectory for a flight to take to minimize flight time).

Just as some other traits (Strength, Stamina, Reflexes) represent the raw ability but not necessarily the knowledge to use it, Intellect represents sheer brainpower while Specialties such as Cosmic, Medical, Science, and Tech represent the actual education, knowledge, and contacts represented by diligently studying those subjects.

So, how would I use these new intellect powers for good?  Below I present to you my datafile for Mr. Fantastic / Reed Richards, circa Fantastic Four #570 when he joins the Council of Reeds.

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Rolled by on March 23, 2013 under Marvel Heroic Roleplaying 0 Comments Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,