Blood and Vigilance

[Kheti sa-Menik]

Anyone here play "Blood and Vigilance" by Charles Rice?

 

[C. Baize]

Why yes... yes I do.

 

[Roudi]

Im not currently using it, but I have also played Blood & Vigilance. It's a great game, in my opinion.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

Cool. I'm just starting to GM a supers game on alternate Monday evenings.
I was impressed by the PDF when I bought it, but things can appear differently during read throughs than they do at the Table.

I am rather disappointed by the support from RPGobjects. They boast "heavy support," yet I can find little to no support for the game on their website. I emailed them/posted in their forum for questions I had about the game and have not recieved any answers thus far. It doesn't bode well for any future purchases from these people if they won't support their product. I am highly peeved at these folks.

BUT,
Anyway, maybe you fine folks who have a little more playing time with the game can answer some questions:
B&V indicates that subpowers that have essentially the same name as the parent power are considered part of the power and don't require an Action Point or a Power Stunt to use.

Does this mean that the "Invisibility" subpower is free, i.e. it doesn't require expenditure of an AP or taking it as a Power Stunt to use since its parent power is called "Invisibility?"

I would think this is over powered but am I missing something?

There also seem to be some powers wherein the Power Points you put into it don't matter.
Super Leap seems to be one of these.
All you need to do is put one Power Point into it and you get the Power with all its advantages. Nothing in the power seems to be affected by the number of Power Points you spend on it.

Is this correct or is there an errata on this?

The "Freak Accident" origin advises that any power selected at First or Second level is added to your permenant class powers list.
Is that any power the PC chooses to put Power Points into or only those on the PC's class list that points are spent on?

And more generally, how did super powered characters fare during actual play? Were they way over powered? Were the powers easy to drop into the D20 rule set?

Thanks for your input!

 

[Vigilance]

I am rather disappointed by the support from RPGobjects. They boast "heavy support," yet I can find little to no support for the game on their website. I emailed them/posted in their forum for questions I had about the game and have not recieved any answers thus far. It doesn't bode well for any future purchases from these people if they won't support their product. I am highly peeved at these folks.

Hi there, this is Chuck (aka Charles Rice) author of Blood and Vigilance.

As soon as I finish posting here I will go look at our forums for your questions. I'm usually pretty good at noticing questions but occasionally some fall through the cracks.

As for support, B&V has seen some support, including the following products:

Blood and Circuits: a 60 page PDF focusing on gadgeteers
Blood and Fists II: Hong Kong Knights which has a sample super-powered martial artists campaign included.
Modern Dispatch #18 Superhero Arcana for mystical PCs

BUT,
Anyway, maybe you fine folks who have a little more playing time with the game can answer some questions:
B&V indicates that subpowers that have essentially the same name as the parent power are considered part of the power and don't require an Action Point or a Power Stunt to use.

Does this mean that the "Invisibility" subpower is free, i.e. it doesn't require expenditure of an AP or taking it as a Power Stunt to use since its parent power is called "Invisibility?"

I would think this is over powered but am I missing something?

Correct, using Invisibility is free, but using Improved Invisibility would require you to spend an AP.

This isnt really as powerful as it sounds since there will always be people able to detect you through other powers (the list of powers that can detect invisible includes a fairly broad range of sensory and mental abilities).

There also seem to be some powers wherein the Power Points you put into it don't matter.
Super Leap seems to be one of these.
All you need to do is put one Power Point into it and you get the Power with all its advantages. Nothing in the power seems to be affected by the number of Power Points you spend on it.

Superleap is 20' per round per power point. In reading the power description this isnt made very clear.

Is this correct or is there an errata on this?

The "Freak Accident" origin advises that any power selected at First or Second level is added to your permenant class powers list.
Is that any power the PC chooses to put Power Points into or only those on the PC's class list that points are spent on?

Any powers the PC spends power points on at 1st or 2nd level is added to his permanent class power list.

And more generally, how did super powered characters fare during actual play? Were they way over powered? Were the powers easy to drop into the D20 rule set?

Thanks for your input!

I'll leave this one for others to answer.

Again sorry for any miscommunication. I try to be very accessible in answering message board posts and emails, but I am human and occasionally things get missed.

Hope this helps.

Chuck

 

[C. Baize]

Cool. I'm just starting to GM a supers game on alternate Monday evenings.
I was impressed by the PDF when I bought it, but things can appear differently during read throughs than they do at the Table.

Got that right... I can't count the number of things I've read through that looked good on paper but didn't go well at all in play.
Luckily... Blood and Vigilance isn't one of those.

I am rather disappointed by the support from RPGobjects. They boast "heavy support," yet I can find little to no support for the game on their website. I emailed them/posted in their forum for questions I had about the game and have not recieved any answers thus far. It doesn't bode well for any future purchases from these people if they won't support their product. I am highly peeved at these folks.

Funny you should mention that... I just finished a Modern Dispatch article, and submitted it to RPGO. If it gets accepted, there will be three more organizations, more than a dozen new powers, several new feats, some more origins, new equipment... Well... I think it's a good article.

BUT,
Anyway, maybe you fine folks who have a little more playing time with the game can answer some questions:
B&V indicates that subpowers that have essentially the same name as the parent power are considered part of the power and don't require an Action Point or a Power Stunt to use.

Does this mean that the "Invisibility" subpower is free, i.e. it doesn't require expenditure of an AP or taking it as a Power Stunt to use since its parent power is called "Invisibility?"

I would think this is over powered but am I missing something?

Chuck got this one.

There also seem to be some powers wherein the Power Points you put into it don't matter.
Super Leap seems to be one of these.
All you need to do is put one Power Point into it and you get the Power with all its advantages. Nothing in the power seems to be affected by the number of Power Points you spend on it.

Is this correct or is there an errata on this?

Chuck got this one, too.

The "Freak Accident" origin advises that any power selected at First or Second level is added to your permenant class powers list.
Is that any power the PC chooses to put Power Points into or only those on the PC's class list that points are spent on?

Chuck touched on this one, but it's any powers the PC puts power points in at those levels. Class or cross class.

And more generally, how did super powered characters fare during actual play? Were they way over powered? Were the powers easy to drop into the D20 rule set?

Thanks for your input!

They did okay. Of course, I pitted them against super powered opponents, armored opponents (the Azure Knights from my Dispatch submission), a team of super powered mercenaries.... When put up against regular folks, the supers are going to just whomp 'em down. But they're not meant to go up against regular folks, really... They're meant to go up against supers, and Advanced Training characters.
I suggest a few things.
1: Get and use D20 Future in your campaign.... if for nothing else, then the gear/gadget system. Advanced tech is a supers staple.
2: Get and use Blood and Circuits. Same reason, but it just makes everything much much cooler. Plus... it includes rules for headquarters.
3: Blood and Fists. Get it. Use it. Love it. An Advanced Training character using Blood and Fists (or Urban Arcana for spell casting classes) will keep up with the supers, and then some.
Other than that... just have lots and lots of fun with it.

 

[Roudi]

My first attempt at the game failed miserably, but that wasn't any fault of the system. Most of my players were tired and grumpy our first session, and one particular player took many ranks in Argue With GM. I decided not to continue the game after the first time through.

In retrospect, I would recommend sticking to the Class Powers system, instead of letting players pick their powers willy-nilly. Class Powers is a DEFINITE point of balance for the system, and my game suffered a bit through lack of it.

 

[ledded]

Hi there, this is Chuck (aka Charles Rice) author of Blood and Vigilance. I'll leave this one for others to answer.

See, this is what many of us mean when we mean good support.

Chuck is generally pretty darn good about answering questions and whatnot on pretty much any product he's worked on.

He's much, much faster than FEMA, at least

And more generally, how did super powered characters fare during actual play? Were they way over powered? Were the powers easy to drop into the D20 rule set?

Well, I'm a huge fan of BnV myself, because it let me convince our group to do supers without learning a whole new system. The powers and whatnot overlay modern pretty seamlessly. All in all, we rarely had issues that were problematic (it can get hard to deal with a super-runner or leaper when they get a LOT of PP, but since it's a supers game we hand-waved any sticky bits).

At low levels, they fared ok vs. normal opponents when there were enough of them to challenge them, and pretty well against other supers. At higher levels normal opponents can go down quick (like they do in the comics) unless you supplement them with lots of gear. For instance, I did a WWII-themed game with supers, so we had an early situation where the 5 heroes had to fend off a Nazi advance through a city while searching for a specific item the Nazis were also after. So I put five 7th level supers up against an armored platoon of Nazis . THAT was fun. They expected to kick the crap out of most anything normal I threw at them, but when you have 3 Panzer/Tiger tanks, 2 flammenwerfer halftracks, 3 MG42 positions with experienced operators and 18 Nazis all crawling through a rat's nest of destroyed buildings, alleys, and streets it can get nasty. Darn near killed them all (I got to shoot a superhero with a Tiger tank, and he survived it! wahoo!), and they barely escaped with their objective and their lives (two were actually carried out, and if not for fast healing would have died). If you want an example of how we played it, read the "We were like gods once..." story hour that I wrote up to chronicle our game. There is also BnV advice and whatnot buried in the posts also.

It is a bit difficult to gauge challenge ratings for setting up an encounter sometimes, because since there are more abilities available and you may not know how the combination of those abilities in combat can increase their effectiveness, so you need to be a bit agile in designing encounters. You get used to that very quickly though, especially if you've played other supers games.

All in all, I'm a huge BnV fan; it mixes with modern very well and is easily homebrewed for different power levels, additions, and changes. We did a lower-powered pulp-ish version set in the early 1900's with it and it was a ton of fun also.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

Wow. Great responses. Thanks...keep'em coming.
Any more experiences with Blood and Vigilance?

Charles....thanks for answering my questions. Sorry if I was harsh.
I was simply frustrated at the lack of avenues for the support of the product. I suppose I should have explained that by support, I meant errata/rules clarifications and not follow on products..although these are certainly appreciated.

Anyway, thanks for the answers.

The reason I ask is that during PC creation the other evening, the PCs came out more powerful than I thought for second level characters.

For example, one character created a Freak Accident that has:
Teleport (2 PPs)
Superhuman Str (5 PPs), Superhuman Dex (2 PPs), and Superhuman Wis (1 PP)
Invisibility (5 PPs)
Flight (1 PP)

Total of 16 PPs (he took 4d6 instead of 12 and rolled 13 plus 3 for second level)

Now, as I understand it, since Teleport and Invisibility both as subpowers have the same name as their respective parent powers, they are free and do not require Action Points to burn. Which means at second level, this hero can teleport 20'within line of sight as many times per day as he wants. And with invisibility, he can turn invisible for as long as he concentrates also at no Action Point cost and only ends when his concentration is broken or he attacks.
Moreover, he gets a power stunt at 1st level, so he took the Improved Invisibility subpower. I assumed this means he can remain invisible and fight for 5 rounds (since he has 5 PPs in invisibility). Then after it drops, he can spend an attack action to go invisible again for another 5 rounds.
Am I interprettng this correctly?
Does this seem a little powerful for 2nd level characters or am I thinking of this in the wrong terms/wrong frame of reference. I admit my experience with super hero RPGs is limited to the old Marvel RPG (which my players adamantly refuse to play) and Heroes Unlimited (which I refuse to run).

 

[C. Baize]

That all looks pretty much right.
I don't see a power problem there, myself. But most of the characters in the games I've run have taken a few powers, and maxed them out, and keep them maxed... We were all Marvel Super Heroes players in the '80s and '90s, so it just makes sense that way.