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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9378650" data-attributes="member: 7044704">There's no such thing as a difficulty level in Sentinels, and the closest a GM gets to setting one would be applying a situational mod to a roll - and even that would normally be the result of an environmental twist or possibly an ongoing challenge.  Just pulling a mod out of nowhere would require some serious narrative justification for me, although YMMV.  The GM definitely doesn't get to redefine effect dice on the fly, at least not by RAW.  They're always either the default Mid die, or defined by the ability in use when they aren't.  There are also many abilities that read the same die for different things, eg the villain ability that uses Max+Mid+Min dice to Attack and then Hinders the user with Max and costs them Mid+Min dice Health, or the heroic Red ability that lets you use your Mid die to take a basic action anytime you use an action ability.  There are even a few oddball abilities that do something funky like rolling, using the effect to Hinder and then dealing damage to the Hinder target equal to the value (1-4, usually) of the penalty created.They found quite a bit design space for abilities despite only having three dice to work with, although Cortex's potentially larger pools still feel more versatile to me.Overcome is the system's catch-all action for everything that isn't one of the other basic actions, from singing karaoke to disarming a nuke to trying to talk a minion into surrendering.  They come up most often in actions scenes when dealing with challenges (although they also see a fair bit of use as a hiding/spotting mechanic with some groups), and they're not uncommon in social scenes either (although many of those don't call for any rolls at all).  The fact that they're also weighted to create twists frequently is the game's main "succeed at a cost" mechanic, and gives a creative GM a lot of narrative leeway.  Overcomes using your Green Principles are an easy way to rack up hero points to give an edge to the team next session, so keeping an eye out for opportunities to take them is important.I'd also contend that minor twists are the game's primary metacurrency, since you can pay for many things by taking one.  <a href="https://villainyunpublished.blogspot.com/2022/06/twists-in-sentinel-comics-rpg.html" target="_blank">Lots more on that here. </a>It's considerably abridged, and they have access to all their abilities regardless of GYRO zone.  Most villains only have 4-5 abilities (compared to a PC's average of 7-8) but their abilities are (usually) stronger than most hero Yellow abilities and even some Reds.  Their status die is situational based on archetype, with only two (Bruisers and Fragile) of fourteen varying based on their Health.  There's also wild variation in how powerful a given villain actually is even when using the same Approach/Archetype pairing but with different ability choices.The fact that they're built using quite different rules than PCs (even though they play on the table very similarly) is a major difference between Cortex and the SCRPG.  You can easily design a Cortex villain that a single PC can solo if desired.  It's harder in SCRPG, where many villain builds are more than a match for any single hero.  That's partly an outgrowth of the encounter design system, which (like the card game that started everything) is built around the assumption that you have 3-5 players and really kind of falls apart with 1 or 2.  The system does team books well, not so much for solo title or even the old Marvel Two-In-One style duo books.  Makes splitting the party a bit of an issue if combat's likely to happen.  Nope.  To one-shot a lieutenant your total damage needs to be double their current die size, not whatever they rolled for a save.  It's a major effort to scrape up 20 or 24 damage to drop a big lieutenant, and you usually wind up having to force a few failed saves to push them down to d8 or d6 where a 16 or 12 damage finisher is more attainable. Bonuses and penalties.  Boost and Hinders are the actions you take to create them.  The choice to go with fixed numerical values rather than Cortex's asset dice is an interesting divergence that goes back to that always-three-dice (barring single-die reactions) decision at the start of things.True, but many environments are partially or wholly neutral, spitting out twists and targets that might be helpful for one side or the other, or just plain hostile to all.  They're a great way to loosely script a scene's action, especially if you have twists that play off one another, like a "sparking wires" Green challenge that makes a "fire starts" Yellow challenge worse if not solved in time - and that leads to a Red "explosion!" twist that hits harder if either of the previous challenges is still around.</blockquote>

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