Blood and Vigilance

[Psycho5150]

I come to day to probe the minds of any whom may be at all familiar with Blood and Vigilance. Whilst I do realize that this is a bit on the old side, the only system that my group and I can all come together and enjoy is D20 Modern. Having used Blood and Fist as well as Blood and Guts I wondered how it was that Blood and Vigilance had passed me by, but then I looked in my archived pdfs and found I had a previous edition of Vigilance. The main quandary that came up was rather which version of Advanced Training should be used. Of the two available one grants power points and the other eschews them in favor of a grand number of skills and feats. Which leads me to a second question, the version of Advanced Training that allows a grand amount of feats it refers to a feat every fourth level and I am wondering if that would included the feats every third level as well? Though I doubt that it is both I am unsure due to the fact that the super powered wonders roaming around leads me to be unsure.

Any help would be appreciative, as well as obtaining the knowledge of where the search function lay hidden.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The person to ask would be [MENTION=4275]Vigilance[/MENTION]

Let's see if that alerts him!

 

[Psycho5150]

I hadn't a clue that the author of the very book roamed around here. Hopefully this will indeed alert him.

 

[Walking Dad]

I'm not the author, but here are my 2 cents:

It is a nice book, but you cannot freely combine it with your other d20 modern stuff. You have to use 'origins' and although there is one for non powered characters, it provides you with additional skill, feat and ability increases.

That said, your mileage of the book may vary by what you are expecting. Rules for street vigilantes? X-Men level mutants? ...

One think I personally dislike (but that is just me), is spending a resource (in this case 'Power Points') to activate your powers. But others like this mechanic.

I hope this is a little help until the author jumps in.

 

[Psycho5150]

On a personal level I am more of Marvel fan and prefer the street level gritty style of game play, whilst my group is made of Anime fans who prefer a lighter mode of play. With that being said both genres involve superpowers. Though being my personal favorite hero is Punisher, (not that Franken-Castle crap), the idea of no powers and pure training appeals to me. I have come to realize that originally the book focused on advanced training to be no power points and a cap of 23 on abilities, but in version 1.1 the switch was made for advanced training to included power point, but those where begotten through training. My curiosity wonders why the change.

I was under the impression that power points where like skill points used to purchase powers and until you had the appropiate power stunt that you had to use and action point to pull of the use of power? Am I wrong in thinking that?

 

[Vigilance]

Hiya Psycho, this is Chuck Rice, author of Blood and Vigilance.

I'm a bit unclear what you mean by "advanced training", you mean the bonus feats granted by Blood and Guts classes?

If you wanted to know how to integrate power points with other books, there's a list of class powers for other classes on page 6, covering both the core classes and the "blood and..." classes.

Hope this helps, and if not, just clarify your question and I'll try to help you out.

Chuck

 

[Psycho5150]

Thank you for the response Mr. Rice. When I speak of advanced training I was speaking of the origin of the same name. I saw the differences between the original incarnation of Blood and Vigilance and Version 1.1. The original stated
"Advanced Training
Bonus Feats: You gain a bonus feat at first level (for three total plus starting feats for class and occupation), and every fourth level thereafter.
Bonus Skill Points: You gain 4 bonus skill points at first level, and 1 bonus skill point each level thereafter.
Honed Abilities: As you rise in level, you get to add a point to the ability of your choice every 2 levels, rather than the usual point every 4 levels.
Power Points: None. Despite your extensive training and skills, which allow you to function as a hero, you are not a superhuman.
Point of Origin: You may select any two skills and add them to your permanent class skill list."

Whilst the one from Version 1.1 states
"Advanced Training
Bonus Feat: You gain a bonus feat at first level (for three total plus starting feats for class and occupation).
Enhanced Abilities: +2 to an ability of your choice. Since you are not superhuman, no ability score may be raised higher than 23 through any method or combination of methods (23 is the absolute maximum a non super-powered or magically enhanced individual can raise an ability score.
Power Points: You begin with 12 power points at first level and gain 3 power points each level thereafter. Unlike most heroes however, you are not truly superhuman. Your powers come from equipment and years of training. This limits the ways in which you can spend your power points.
You cannot raise an ability score above 23 through any superhuman ability power.
You may only spend power points on the following powers: Superhuman Ability scores (any- but remember that no ability may exceed 23 for any reason including from ability increases from level gain), Super Skill, Unique Item. The Super Skill and Unique Item powers are always class powers for characters of this origin regardless of class. Advanced Training characters gain Superhuman Ability powers as class powers by class as every other character.
Characters with this origin gain power stunts at level 1, 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 rather than the usual progression. They are limited to the following power stunts only: Superhuman Constitution, +2 Fortitude Saves; Superhuman Dexterity, +1 to all Dexterity-based skills and Swinging; Superhuman Intelligence, +1 skill point per level, Super Genius and Total Recall; Superhuman Strength, +1 to all Strength-based skill checks; Superhuman Wisdom, +1 to all Wisdom-based skill checks and +2 Will Saves.
Although Advanced Training characters have power points, their abilities come from extremely rigorous training. As a result they cannot be affected by anti-power fields, power theft or power nullification.
Point of Origin: You may select any two skills and add them to your permanent class skill list."

I personally have a preference toward the original because the person whom could stand against the supers with nothing more then himself and his know-how really appeals to me,(I state this whilst pointing toward "Punisher kills the Marvel Universe" comic book). To have no power points and still be a threat, that sounds awesome, and perhaps is why I favor it. At the same time I see the revised Advanced Training origin in v1.1 and reading through it I have more of a feeling towards the anime hero or heroine, for example Sailor Moon and her wand.

So my questions are these...
1) For the original version I wondered if the feats every fourth level were in addition to the normal feats every third level?

2) Why was there a change?

3) As this is my first foray into Blood and Vigilance are there any hints and suggestion any can give as to potential issues and fun experiences that they came across?

 

[Vigilance]

Ah, I understand now, for some reason I saw advanced training and my brain locked on my use of that term in Blood and Guts.

1. The bonus feats don't replace your regular feats. So you'd get feats at 3rd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 2 at 12th, etc.

2. The reason for the change mostly has to do with the evolution of the game, especially once Blood and Circuits was added to the mix, with its far more robust gadget creation rules.

Designing a superhero system, as well as full gadget rules, proved too daunting a task to do all at once.

So, I ended up designing B&V, then taking several months to work on other projects and recharge, while I tackled the daunting task of adding a robust gadget creation system that would work not only for supers, but also for other modern games.

Now, if your character is brilliant and wealthy, you could probably just use the rules in Blood and Circuits and build items from scratch. But what about other types of characters, who have some advanced hardware as an integral part of their character without any super science abilities or high wealth score?

Here you can look at characters like Hawkeye? Or Captain America?

There was also some inconcistencies in the approach of having powered and non-powered characters interact. For example, swinging was listed a power. Plenty of characters in comics I'd consider advanced training, like Batman, have this power.

So either it needed to become a feat, or Batman has powers.

And really, if you think about it, *of course* Batman has powers. No legit character would have the scores to be Batman otherwise. He's a peak human in terms of Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Con and Charisma.

That's not a character starting with normal ability scores and raising them as he rises in level, even with a more generous level bump to ability scores. He's too good.

And just deciding that Batman's player cheated, or rolled straight 18's at 1st level, weren't answers to that question I was willing to live with. If your advanced training character can't aspire to be Batman, or Captain America, or Hawkeye, then the game is fundamentally flawed.

There were also a lot of balance issues between Advanced Training and other origins.

They got feats, ability increases and skills, just like the Advanced Training guy.

Sure, they got a little less of those things, but enough to make up for having powers?

It turned out, no.

We toyed with a lot of different methods, but nothing compared to giving the advanced training character power points over the long haul for maintaining balance.

Again, no matter HOW MANY feats and skill points he got, it wasn't enough. At some point, having more feats doesn't make you much better, it just lets you be better at more stuff.

By 10th level or so any non-advanced training character can be deep into any feat tree he really cares about.

And skill points don't help enough, and of course with superhuman intelligence, there are ways for powered characters to amass a generous helping of skill points.

Basically, in the 1.0 version of the rules, characters with power points slowly pulled away from the Advanced Training character.

 

[jonesy]

...obtaining the knowledge of where the search function lay hidden.

Search is for community supporters only. You can see the subscriber benefits here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/payments.php

If you can't afford it, you can always use google advanced search. Just place 'www.enworld.org' in the 'Search within a site or domain' field to limit your query here.

 

[Psycho5150]

Thank you Mr. Rice for explaining that to me. It really makes more sense to me when I read your wanting to be able to build Batman. Hopefully I can gather this up with my beloved group and see where the Supers ship takes us this time. As long as i don't mention "stones" or bring up anything else up from the Marvel RPG it should hopefully be smooth sailing ahead. I personally have really been longing to play a superhero campaign on a table top so hopefully it comes out good.

One more question though and this is merely a Captain America fan question, Would the Super Solider Serum count as Advanced Training origin, or Scientific Experiment origin? The serum is what gave Steve Rogers the tools to be Captain America so I am left at a loss.