Blood and Vigilance

[Vigilance]

First- a little gift from me to you.

Mystic Encounter
You have had a brush with the supernatural. Perhaps that touch of the mystical transformed you into an avatar of a god no longer worshipped, or perhaps long hours of study have turned you into a master of the mystic arts. Either way, magic courses through your veins and is the source of your power, whether represented as brains or brawn.
Enhanced Abilities: +2 to one ability of your choice
Power Points: 12 at 1st level, 3 per level thereafter.
Magical Nature: You gain +2 saving throws against magical attacks due to your innately magical nature.

 

[Vigilance]

First let me say thanks for the questions/interest

OK, now that I have your attention , I've got a few more questions.

- Can Absorption (Physical, Ranged) or Deflection (Physical) negate damage from gunfire/explosions/other mundane sources or are these powers simply meant to counteract Blast(Physical), Aura, etc?

Yes, a punch, or a sword, are physical attacks. And energy absorption would help protect from a fire as well.

- From reading over the power stunts section (p 25), I get the feeling that you may use one sub-ability of every power you buy for free (no AP/stunt). Basically, there are three scenarios:
1) Sub-ability has same name as power - no AP/stunt needed (e.g. Danger Sense, Desolidification)
2) Sub-abilities are exclusive and have essentially the same name as the power (Blast, Deflection)
3) Sub-abilities are general and one has essentially the same name (Enhanced Senses)
What of those powers which don't neatly fit into any of these situations? For example, Regeneration contains Fast Healing, Regrowth and Slow Aging. Is Fast Healing essentially the same thing? Can the character make use of it with out the expenditure of an AP or stunt?

No. Some powers specifically don't get a free stunt.

- The Regeneration example brings me to another question. Each of the sub-abilities under Regen are Permanent duration. Does this mean that simply at some point in the character's career he needs to spend one AP and activate Regrowth (for instance) and that forever after he can make use of the sub-ability?

No, expending an action point on a permanent power allows the character to manifest that power for 1 rd/level.

- A question about those sub-abilities which grant powers at a rate of 1/4 PPs (again, Regen is a good example). I've got a character taking his 5th level as Soldier. He has never had Regen before - he's manifesting it now (since it's now a class power). Since he only has 3 PPs to spend, he puts 2 into Regen and 1 into something else. Now, can he Regen one HP per 2 rounds as opposed to the 1 HP/round per 4 PP listed? What about those powers which aren't so easily handled - Telepathy's Mind Link sub-ability is a good example. If I only have 1 or 2 PPs in Telepathy, can I still Mind Link at all (Link 1 willing subject per 4 PPs)?

In cases where partial results are possible, like Regen, yes. In cases where they are not, like Mind Link, no.

Sorry about the Flurry of Questions (it's a class ability). We're finally playing a BnV scenario tonight (fun fun!) and I've been poring over the rules making characters.

Not a problem

Chuck

 

[Pierce]

No, expending an action point on a permanent power allows the character to manifest that power for 1 rd/level.

Hmmm. So really to make any use of Regrowth or Slow Aging you'd have to spend a stunt, since neither of these have any effect for that small of a duration?

 

[Pierce]

First- a little gift from me to you.

Mystic Encounter
You have had a brush with the supernatural. Perhaps that touch of the mystical transformed you into an avatar of a god no longer worshipped, or perhaps long hours of study have turned you into a master of the mystic arts. Either way, magic courses through your veins and is the source of your power, whether represented as brains or brawn.
Enhanced Abilities: +2 to one ability of your choice
Power Points: 12 at 1st level, 3 per level thereafter.
Magical Nature: You gain +2 saving throws against magical attacks due to your innately magical nature.

I like. I imagine we may alter this a little to fit in with our magic system - I'll definitely suggest it to the group.

Thanks!

 

[Vigilance]

Right- but those are both extremely rare instances, so I don't think it's a huge fly in the ointment

Chuck

PS Glad you like the origin. That was the version cut from the game at 0 hour.

 

[Pierce]

OK, so I assume that Regen's Fast Healing ability is NOT "free" and that to use it I'd need to spend an AP or stunt.

Is there a comprehensive list of those powers which do not have free abilities? The first two scenarios (general+same name and exclusive+essentially same name) are easy to pick out. The last scenario seems a bit more subjective - Enhanced Senses is the only example I could easily find (since it's used as THE example ).

 

[ledded]

I like. I imagine we may alter this a little to fit in with our magic system - I'll definitely suggest it to the group.

Thanks!

Thanks for the answers Chuck! I had similar answers for P when he posed the email to me (I'm running our WWII Supers game tonight).

As far as the magic system, P, *if* you wanted to do this then in order to take this nice cool (and free!) origin then for our campaigns you would add a Medallions magic feat as a prerequisite to this origin. You could then use power points to bump up your Int/Con/etc and get other powers, while using skill points to gain access to that oh-so-expensive magical ability just like in Medallions.

For our purposes, a super with Superhuman Int and Superhuman Con, with Fast Healing maxed would be a perfect spellcaster

(sorry for the hijack Chuck)

 

[ledded]

Rock on! And if your writing style is anywhere in the neighborhood of being as good as Old Drew Id's... PLEASE post Story Hours.
Msnip

Oh, BTW, I *am* going to try to do a short Story Hour based on our game tonight, if Pierce can remember to bring the tape recorder and then let me borrow it for transcribing purposes (hint hint if you're reading this P), and the game is interesting enough to write up.

I'm *nowhere* as good as OldDrewId, though, so dont get your hopes up too high. I've only 'published' one piece of a SH on the boards so far (a scene in the Medallions Story Hour between episode I and II), and I was not very happy with it (if OldDrewId had not pushed me to let him post it up, and then helped me fix a few minor things in it, I probably would never have posted). I'll most likely do an intro and run it by OldDrewId for proof-reading (who is good at fixing stupid writing mistakes without crushing my rather fragile writing psyche); expect an initial post within a week or two.

I honestly dont know how he (and some of the other good ones on here) do it so well.

And thanks again Vigilance for writing up such a fun Supers system that we can easily tack onto a d20 Modern game. When deciding what to do for a one-nighter, we were stuck on either doing a d20 Modern WWII game (using a few slight genre-specific mod's but 99% Modern) or a Supers game. Since we had BaV, someone said "Hey, why not a WWII Supers game". It tacks on so easy to any modern game in pretty much any genre that I immediately got excited about it. Now everyone else is pumped, and it should be a good time with lots and lots of property damage. And I finally get to break out my secret-stash of WWII miniatures, vehicles, and special terrain.

 

[Pierce]

We played last night - wow, lots and lots of fun. The only slow points were when we had to look up stuff in BnV - just like any other new system, you don't memorize it right off .

Question which arose last night regarding spending an AP for a sub-ability you've not mastered with a stunt:

You already said that when a character uses an AP to manifest a sub-ability with a Permanent duration, the character has use of it for 1 round/level. What about other durations? We assumed that they were as listed. Here's the scenario: one of the characters has Control Magnetism. He wants to fly, but hadn't mastered Magnetic Flight (duration: Instantaneous). He spends an AP and flies to another area of the battlefield. The next round he wants to fly to yet another area of the battlefield. Since the duration is instantaneous, we assumed that his flight was only active that round, so the next round he has to spend another point. Is this correct?

 

[ledded]

We played last night - wow, lots and lots of fun. The only slow points were when we had to look up stuff in BnV - just like any other new system, you don't memorize it right off .

Question which arose last night regarding spending an AP for a sub-ability you've not mastered with a stunt:

You already said that when a character uses an AP to manifest a sub-ability with a Permanent duration, the character has use of it for 1 round/level. What about other durations? We assumed that they were as listed. Here's the scenario: one of the characters has Control Magnetism. He wants to fly, but hadn't mastered Magnetic Flight (duration: Instantaneous). He spends an AP and flies to another area of the battlefield. The next round he wants to fly to yet another area of the battlefield. Since the duration is instantaneous, we assumed that his flight was only active that round, so the next round he has to spend another point. Is this correct?

Yes, it was fun, very fun. Thanks for the good work guys, and for the extra help that you've dished out here. We actually started with a scenario that helped 'awaken' the powers in our would-be supers; they got to experience the fury of an organized German counter-attack. TPK in 7 rounds, baby .

Later, after they 'awakened' with their new powers, my Brick was actually hit with a Tiger shell... the smoke cleared, he sat up, spit out a few shell fragments, and *then* started getting mad Now *that* was a defining moment in Supers for me.

We did have a few other situations that weren't totally clear that I wanted to post up today but I left my notes at home, so I'll bug ya'll with them later.