Four-Color to Fantasy: Superhero Toolkit

[HellHound]

Note: this is the original edition of FCTF. An expanded and revised edition will be available very soon (est. November 14th).

Formerly an Natural 20 Press Product
A d20 supplement designed to allow you to play superheroes in your favourite d20 game. Rules for superpowers, new prestige classes and templates and a flexible way to create any type of superhero, this book is a toolkit to help you run the superhero game you want to run.

Four-Colors to Fantasy contains different options for character advancement - from the traditonal fantasy-style rise from 1st-20th level to the more comic-book style approaches where powers change little but skill increases over time. Whether you want to play a low-powered vampire slayer or a veritable god, this book is designed to let you choose the genre and power level of your choice.

 

[Halifax]

Oh my goodness!

I have bought a few of the new superhero games from RPGNow - Deeds Not Words, Comic Book Superheroes and Vigilance, and I also have a copy of The Foundation (which was TRULY awful!). I was sent a not-quite-complete preview copy of Four-Color to Fantasy (because I nagged Morrus for a copy and promised to review it) (it was missing the contents page and a couple of extra pages which I was sent separately as .DOC files, but which will be incorporated into the final version).

First of all, I have to say that - even incomplete - this PDF is beautiful! And, even better, it manages to be beautiful without big splashes of color or margines which use up expensive ink in your printer. The color used is just enough to look good without overly impacting on the printout cost.

The other PDF supers games were good. But, in all honesty, I have to say that this one is the best by far. It manages to be the most modular, the most flexible and yet the most d20 all at the same time. It's not quite as epic-sized as Deeds Not Words, but it doesn't need to be (plus it's going to be supported with a line of products, such as a big superpowers book). It is also the most professional looking by a long, long way, and some of the others really had the feel of fan-created stuff about them.

I don't quite know how to start with this review. I'll try and describe how flexible it is.

First - the modularity of it means that you can use it with any d20 game (although it does assume standard AC rules, but Morrus tells me there will be a d20 Modern appendix available free once d20 Modern is released). This means that there is no default setting or genre attached to the game - you can set it in the pulp 30's or the near future, or even in medieval times (as in standard D&D). It's designed to cover a whole power range. So you completely choose the genre and power level of your game.

But it's more flexible than that. Just character generation is flexible, with different toolkit style options. You can use the Hero class for a D&D style level based approach or you can use templates (weak blaster, medium flyer etc). You can design your own templates to a certain point value. Or you can just buy powers with experience points. Some of these options use the ECL concept (since they aren't using character classes/levels) so that you still have a total character level for game balance reasons.

There are rules for handling powerful abilities which avoid the problem of massively high modifiers in a game designed for a 1-20 die roll range (as the authors say, what's the point of the d20 in a die roll of 1d20+112 or whatever?). These still maintain what I'd like to call "d20 integrity" though, and make sure the die rolls still matter however powerful you are (basically, you get more d20 die rolls instead of massive modifiers).

There's a whole section on handling various uses of powers - using a bus as a melee weapon, or navigating at the speed of sound. This section isn't so much about the rules (although it contains rules), but rather about how to use the rules.

I'm still at a loss here. There's too much I want to say. Little things like cool Reputation rules (much better than the Star Wars rules) [I think the table for this was messed up in my preview copy, though] or rules for Backgrounds (which I'm told are from the Spycraft game) which ensure that your character's background becomes part of the game (you buy the backgound then get XP every time it comes up in game - the GM is required to bring it up with a certain frequency or else you can cash it in for a big XP bonus). There's a whole bunch of super-feats, which are basically tricks and modifications that you have learned and apply to your superpowers (they're basically like meta-feats in D&D except a bit more colorful).

There are 4 prestige classes, the Detective, the Mentor, the Vigilante and the Gadgeteer. They all seem pretty cool. Superpowers don't really play a part in these prestige classes, and even a non-superpowered character can qualify for then.

The most important part of the book is the superpowers sectoin. There are about 60 powers in here, I think. They pretty much cover all the bases (I can think of a few that are missing, though). Each power is scaled with ranks, sort of like skills in D&D, so the more ranks you buy the more powerful it is. You also buy enhancements and improvements to the powers with those ranks. I admit, I would have liked to see some more exotic powers, but they do point out that this is pretty much the basic set (they cover all the common ones) and that there will be another book just full of superpowers and stuff.

The powers are all very effect-based, whch means that you describe them how you want. For examlpe, the entangle power might be Spiderman style webbing, or Druid style plants, or telekineticallycausing wires and pipes to entangle the target. Any power can also be gadget based, too (there is a cost reduction for this, and rules on damagng and repairing gadgets, as well as tweaking them in the feld).

There's a sort of introductory setting near the back of the book (just a few pages) which seems to me to be very Buffy-like. I don't like Buffy, so this kind of washed over me, but I can see how it would appeal to some people. It's a pretty low-powered setting, but I guess it does show how you can handle a low-power game (like a post-apocalyptic game with mutants with minor powers) as well as the epic stuff.

One thing I'm not so sure about is the lack of magic or psionics. Some of the powers are, of course, duplicated in the D&D spell list (Invisibility, for example) and there are a few telepathic/telekinetic powers but this is very skimmed over. The book says that magic and psionics are not the same as superpowers, and aren't in the scope of this book - you're supposed to use a separate magic or psionic system, depending on the game you attach this too. Actually, I can see the Sovereign Stone magic system working well with this. This goes along with the idea in the book that regular classes should be used to round out a character.

I think the big deal here is that you need a d20 game in order to play this (unless you want to use it with D&D), which means that on its own it might not be much use to you. There is a short "Modern Day Primer", which is a couple of pages of modern firearms and skills which you can get by with if you want to run a modern day supers game using the D&D rules, but to get the most out of it you probably want a full modern day game with driving rules, equipment and stuff. They recommend a couple in the book. I'll be using it with Spycraft, which I think is the best modern day d20 rulebook out there so far, although I haven't seen d20 Modern yet.

So, in summary - this is the best d20 treatment of the superhero genre so far. Of course, there are some hardcover books coming out soon, and I'll have to check them out too. But I'm very impressed with this one. I think Natural d20 Press print their books a few months after the PDF, so I'm looking forward to seeing that. This is the only superhero supplement (the rest are complete games), so it is unique in a way.

That's two great strikes from Natural 20. I didn't buy the Taverns, Fairs and Tourney book, but I think I'm going to have to now I've seen Wild Spellcraft and Four-Colors to Fantasy. Natural 20 introduced me to the PDF market a while ago with Wild Spellcraft and I'd say that only Monte Cook rivals them for quality (and I have bought quite a few PDFs since picking up Wild Spellcraft!)

 

[Halifax]

By the way, why does the picture show a different title?

 

[Halifax]

One thing - the reputation rules don't seem to work too well. I think some of the numbers are off (like the table is shfted down a column or something). Just thought I'd point that out before you release the final version! I spotted a few typos, but I guess you'll be clearing them up before you go "live".

 

[Morrus]

That's what you get for being impatient!

Different title is because it was renamed a few days ago - I'll need to replace that image when I get chance.

The reputation table somehow got altered between when I wrote it and when it appeared in the boook. It's fixed now though!

 

[Horacio]

Four Color To Fantasy

Four Color To Fantasy is a new take on d20 superheros. Intead of creating a fully new d20 game, Four Color To Fantasy (let's call it FCTF in this review, o.k.?) is a toolkit that can add supers flavour to any d20 game, from classic D&D to Spycraft or Dragonstar. The book also comes with Dark Decade, an example setting by Osvaldo Oyola (a.k.a. Nemmerle), that is a tribute to two New York City and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A First Look

FCTF is a 99 pages PDF priced at $6.95 (I think this is a release promotion price, and final price will be $9).


The cover of the book is composed of two different scenes. On top, a four colored title (no pun intended, each word has a color). On the right side, a group of heroes and villains, from the steampunk mad scientist to the pulp detective. They are the iconics of the book. On the left side, there is a drawing of some skyscrapers and a girl with a stake, it's the Dark Decade setting. The interior art black and white, all with a similar style. Overall the art is good, maybe a little anime for some people's taste, but I like anime...

The layout is good, the texte isn't very dense, and easy to read. A good color schema with colored makes the reading easy. My only personal nitpick is just the color... In my b/w printer the cover doesn't look very well and the color schema is a dull b/w/grey... :-(

A Deeper Look

FCTF has an introduction, eight chapters and an appendix. The introductions explains the toolkit philosophy of FCTF, introduce the new terminology used and does an overview of the book

The first chapter (Superpowered-rules and Mechanics) deals with some concepts common to most of comics: Backgrounds and Reputation. Backgrounds are meant to make the character's origins and backsttories relevant to the game. Using a rule mechanism similar to Spycraft backgrounds (you buy them with skill points, the GM can introduce them in the adventure, making your character life a bit harder but rewarding with XPs, or forget them, but rewarding the character with XPs for not using them), they cover things like Secret Identity, Nemesis or Debts. Reputation is divised in groups (Authorities, Criminals and General Public) and each group is tracked separately (yes, you can have a bad reputation with both criminals and authorities, think X-Men) and it modifies all Charisma checks.

The second chapter (Creating a Character) presents two new character classes, four prestige clases and a handful of templates. The new character classes are the Hero and the Specialist. The Specialist is a kind of Expert, the class is used to represent those people who haven't an adventurers training, from the computer programmer to the nurse, a class for normal people on a normal world. It has many skill points, because normal people can do lots of different things fairly proficiently. The Hero class is the class that gives super powers. In fact, it gives Hero Points, used to buy the powers. So, why wouldn't you take all your levels in the Hero class? Because it gives no skill points, low BAB, low saves, no special feats and a d4 hit dice... It represents your raw power level, without beign tied to training. A PC with lots of Hero levels and no 'normal' class level would be a baby with superpowers, all raw power.

The four prestige classes represent some of the most popular archetypes in comic books: the Detective, the Gadgeteer, the Menacing Vigilant and the Mentor. None of this classes gives Hero Points (i.e. more superpowers), but rather help developping the PCs abilities. In fact, they don't require superpowers to be taken. The templates are one of the most useful features of this book, it gives some generic super powered packages, from the superpowered alien (think Superman) or the arachnid warried (think Spiderman) to the generic blaster (think Cyclops) or brick (think the Thing), with its ECL. This templates can be dropped over any normal NPC or monster (a Spiderkobold! an orc Cyclops!), or can be used to create PCs in some minutes. The chapter finishes with a section about creating characters above first level (in the spirit of classic superheroes), managing character advancement and creating NPCs.

Chapter three (Hero Points & Super-powered Characters) explains how to use the Hero Points to buy superpowers, and how to include things like power origin or power enhancements or restrictions (an optical blast that is always on and requieres a special visor...). Then it has rules for Gadgets (all that powers that aren't natural but come from this power armor or that hypertechnology gun), and an interesting section for the GM on creating new super powers, balancing new powers or using Hero Points as a reward instead of magic items or gold.

Chapter four (Super feats and heroic tactics) introduces 21 new feats to inprove the use of some powers (like the Instant Phase to Phase out fastly when a blow is coming). They are like the power stunts of old Marvel RPG game, new uses for a power. The Heroic Tactics section deals with thing like breaking things, using lamposts or cars as weapons or travelling at superspeed. The new rules are simple, well done and very useful.

Chapter five (Creating a Supers Game) is a chapter for the GM, dealing with all the possibilities for a campaing: the genre (historical, fantastical, modern, sci-fi...), the tone (bleak, four color, silver age, post-apocalyptic...), the power level, character development, etc. Chapter six (Dark Decade) is an introduction to a setting for FCTF that will be released this winter. It's a campaing set in the 1980s New York where vampires and other demons secretly predate in the shadows of the Big Apple and the only thing between them and the innocent is a girl with mystical powers, 'The Huntress'. Very 80s. Very New York. Very Buffy. Very cool. Very short too.

Chapter seven (Sample Characters) lists the stats for the iconics of the book, with special detail in the powers, so it can help you if you're a bit stuck on the character creation. It offers characters from different settings, a 1930 detective with shadowy powers, a near future cat burglar, a druidess and her nemesis, a Gnome steampunk mad engineer, and a fantasy super strong halfling girl.

Chapter eight (Super Powers) lists 60+ powers, with a lot of customizable options. Some of them I would have done in another way, and I'd have added some others, but that's an armchair game designer's critic. The powers are well described, welll develoved, and very playable. The Appendix (called Appendix A, but I haven't found an Appendix B) show fast rules for weapons and skills in a modern world, but only as a patch, becaus eit recommends using the (great but poor edited) Forbidden Kingdoms rules for 1800-1950 campaigns and Dark Future's Cyberstyle (I love it!) for present day-near future ones.

Flaws

Has it flaws? Yes, some minor ones. One, it hasn't as many powers as I would have wanted, and some powers aren't as customizable and I would like, but I hope all this will be solved with the new PDF they are preparing, the Big Book of Powers... But in all, it's not a deep flaw, because with the 60+ powers of FCTF you can define almost every comic book hero you can think of.

Another flaw, the editing. Some minor editing problems, like calling a power Heroic Strengh here and Heightened Strengh there, or pointing to chapter three's feats while feats are on chaper four... None too bad.

Conclusion

A very useful resource for a GM interested in adding superheroes to his campaign or in beginning a superheroes campaign using d20 rules and without changing too much from the core rules. Well done, modular, simple yet solid, FCTF is by the moment, and IMHO, the best appoach to supers in d20.

-Horacio Gonzalez

 

[javadragon]

I have been looking for a good supers system for quite sometime now. I have looked at Vigilance, Deeds Not Words, 4 Color To Fantasy, Hero, Mayhem, Paragon, and Godlike. My search isn’t over yet.

The Good

Natural 20 Press set out to create a toolkit for super heroes that could be "bolted" on to any existing D20 game. I think that they have succeeded. If you are looking for a way to add superheroes to your games look no further this is your dream product. Moreover, I think that this product will become immensely more useful with the release of D20 modern.

They have also provided some very good guidelines for creating and running a superhero game. In fact Chapter 5 of this book would be on my recommended list of reading materials for any new GM’s looking at running a supers game for the first time.

The background system is interesting and innovative. I think it is a very nice way of getting new GM’s to use a PC’s background in their stories, which is something that many new GM’s have problems with.

Over all production quality is very nice. It has a finished and polished feel of a print product with only a few minor errors here and there. Artwork and layout are both well done. My only problem is the small margins. If you plan on printing this thing out and binding it you should be okay. If you want to hole punch it or clip it you will have a harder time but this is just a minor nitpick.

So why hasn’t my search ended you ask? Well Read on….

The Bad

As I stated before this system is a generic toolkit that is designed to be added to any existing D20 game system. However, like most things generic it works well for most things but is not great at anyone thing. In my opinion 4 Color To Fantasy fails to capture the feel of the comic genre.

The first thing that contributes to this problem is the lack of an "energy" concept. This means that a character can maintain his force field or shot energy blasts all day long with no adverse side effects. I know that a lot of people don’t like the concept of “I only have 5 eye blasts left in me!” but in the comics quite often characters are pushed to their limits (i.e. “I can’t maintain my force field much longer!”). In all honesty I was really hoping for a system that made endurance checks for prolonged power use just like prolonged physical activity does.

This book also seems to ignore many of the common comic hero types. One stated reason for this is that they didn’t want to recover stuff that already exists in D20. The idea being why create a magic system when many already exist. I have no problem with this line of thinking at all. However, what if you want to do something like the punisher? Your existing D20 might have great firearm rules for "Joe Six Pack" but many systems will lack the rules for the John Woo style gun toting warrior. It would also be nice to see some guidelines for creating an armored hero. You can do it with the rules but it is not immediately obvious how to go about it. Even just an “Armored” template would have been nice.

The Ugly

My big complaint here is simply that many common powers/concepts from the genre are missing. Now hold on you say, they are releasing a big book of powers (might not be the real name). They didn’t want to release a pdf that went into triple digits. They say that people don’t like large pdf’s. Now I can only see three lines of thinking behind this:

1) Some people don’t like reading more than a hundred pages on a computer screen. I don’t see how this problem is solved. If you buy the supplement you will have read just as many pages on the screen in the end.
2) Some people don’t want to print out that many pages. See my reasoning in point one. How does this change? If you print both you products what’s the difference?
3) They would have to charge more than people want to spend. Once again see above.

Now for missing concepts:

1) Duplicating your self! Common this is pretty common.
2) Usable against others. I honestly cannot believe that this wasn’t included. Just about every other (if not every other) generic toolkit has this.
3) “Dynamic Powers”. For example if you have telekinesis you may want it to use it as a force field. But if you divert power to your force field you can no longer lift as much right?

Conclusion

If you want to add some powers to an existing D20 product it’s great and deserves a 5/5. However, if you wanted to run a comic genre game it doesn’t quite seem to capture the "Feel". For a straight superhero game it’s only a 3/5.

 

[Halifax]

That's not very fair - you're measuring its success at doing something it's not trying to do. That's a bit like saying "D&D is a 5/5 if you want a fantasy game, but a 3/5 if you want a futuristic game". Well, duh! Except that, in this case, you give D&D a 3/5 overall.

You've given it two scores, 5/5 for a d20 supplement and 3/5 for a d20 game. Since it's a d20 supplment, why have you given it an overall rating as though it were a d20 game? You yourself say that it scores 5/5 for the very purpose it's designed!

Plus - "We're releasing a basic set of super powers and will have a full super power book later". And then you judge the book on the superpowers contained within?

Basically - you were looking for a big, full d20 game with hundreds of superpowers. Then you picked up something that wasn't that (and never claimed to be) and criticised it for not being what you wanted it to be (as opposed to judging it for what it was).

This, for those that didn't get it, is a SUPPLEMENT which lays the groundwork for future books, including THE SUPERPOWER BOOK.

--I just thought of the example! You just criticised the PLayer's Handbook for not having monsters in it!

 

[Morrus]

Halifax - while the sentiment is appreciated and the logic (as I see it) impeccable, your tone is a little hostile there. Please calm it down.

 

[RangerWickett]

Good points. Though, as one of the writers I am a little protective. A few brief suggestions/comments.

* If you want people to be able to push their limits, you might want to give every Hero the Super-charge Power feat, which lets you deal damage to yourself in order to increase the power of your abilities. Usually heroes in comics only run out of power when they're pitted against incredible odds, but with everyday challenges they can use their powers as often as they want. With this, Storm could create a few supremely powerful blasts of lightning, but would begin to wear herself out, or Spiderman could dodge a hail of gunfire (increasing his Super Agility) but become winded from the extreme exertion. Usually, though, Storm can shoot small bolts of lightning willy-nilly, and Spidey can dodge pretty much any single thing without having to worry.

* I'm actually not familiar with that many people who can duplicate themselves in comics. I know . . . argh, what was his name, Blue guy in Watchmen. He could, but then again, he has near-cosmic powers. I can't really think of anyone else, though. Maybe clayface, if he split in two.

* I'm not quite sure what you mean by saying that the powers aren't usable against others. Could you give me an example of what you mean?

* As for dynamic powers, that is quite true; we don't have that per se. There is the telekinetic deflection super feat, though, that could be interpreted as creating a shield around you, and the shield power would let you create a shield out of telekinetic force, but if you want to be able to redirect power from the tractor beam to the sheilds, as it were, then no, we don't really have that. In my opinion, though, the rules for it wouldn't be too hard to come up with (there's already something similar in the gadgeteer ability Combine, so we might put a more general version it in the expansion), but I personally wouldn't use them, since they might put too much emphasis on trying to beat the system, leading to powergaming instead of having fun.
As of now, the powers rules are stable enough to handle most archetypes and common heroes, and our concern was mainly to let people make characters out of comics, to provide rules for common occurences with super powers, and then to leave the specifics of storytelling to the game master.

* By armored hero, do you mean someone like Colossus, who has armor-like skin, or someone like Iron Man, who has gadet-based armor, or someone like Regdar, who wears D&D-style armor? We can handle the first and second easily, and the third should be fairly simple. If you're playing super-Spycraft and you want your character to have full plate, then maybe it'd be a small problem, but nothing major.

* Again, I'd like it if you could clarify what you mean by 'Joe Six-pack' as opposed to a John Woo-esque hero. The only real difference I see between Rambo and, say, Trinity in the Matrix, is a matter of level. Rambo would be a 6th level Fighter (or maybe Barbarian, or a Soldier in Spycraft, etc.) while Trinity would be the same, plus a few levels of Hero for her super speed and agility. If you could clarify what your problem is, it would provide clearer feedback and make it easier for me to either fix it in the revisions, or to help you understand something you might have missed.