Body Powers

I did a little preview of how powers will be formatted the other day and then discussed one of the ways that the Scope of powers is defined (Breadth).  Today I want to focus on another way to define powers: Category.  

A power's Category is a sort of genus for powers.  Categories are thematic and there are seven Categories: Body Powers, Energy Powers, Matter Powers, Mental Powers, Movement Powers, Sensory Powers, and Super-Qualities.  Categories have little direct mechanical impact on play, but they provide a great deal of the flavour of the power.  And that can have mechanical impacts when deciding what does and doesn't fall under the scope of a power.  

For example, Air Blast and Power Blast are both...well, blasty.  The principle mechanical use is to damage something at range (this is the Effect; I haven't discussed that yet, but the idea should be familiar from Champions and all the effects-based games depending therefrom).  However, Power Blast is from the Energy Powers category and Air Blast is from the Matter Powers Category.  In a game, there may be something that functions as an Energy Deflection Shield.  That would probably be effective against Power Blast, but not Air Blast.

Categories are also the foundation of the Random Roll Method for powers (the last version is here, although I have made changes in the interim).  Let's look at the Body Powers Table:

You'll notice that several of the powers require you to make a further roll on a sub-table.  Sub-tables!  How often do we see those anymore in these anti-wargame days?  Well, take that you haters of sub-tables.  I got sub-tables out the wazoo here.  OK: I have four for Body Powers which may not be out the wazoo, but it's some way along the wazoo.  Here's the sub-tables:

The dice mechanic here goes from a variety of simplified D66 to a straight 2d6.  Why?  It's all about the numbers, baby.  The main Tables have a lot of entries so that 2d6 just doesn't work, not without making really odd probabilities such that every other hero would have Invisibility.  I wanted the odds on this table to be pretty equal with the notable exception of Resistance (which is what I'm calling the generic Armour/Damage Resistance/Invulnerability power) since pretty much every other hero does have some form of super-protection. 

But the sub-tables have too few entries to make D66 practicable.  Plus, I wanted to have less balanced probabilities on the sub-tables.  Alert, imaginary readers will note that I have put rough odds out to the right on the sub-tables.

Some of these powers may be Focused or Meta-Powers.  Sub-tables 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 make that determination, as does Table 9 which is the generic Power Breadth table discussed last time).  One Power (Inhuman) is automatically a Meta-Power.  The player who rolls this is free to choose the exact nature of his inhumanity (Alien, Robot, God, Hard-Light Hologram, Golem,  Living Planet, whatever) and he and the GM then work out appropriate sub-powers.  Consider it my homage to Villains & Vigilantes' Body Power (speaking of which, that venerable game has finally passed back into the control of creators Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, who have released a cleaned-up version as edition 2.1).

Some of these powers, such as Animal Powers and New/Extra Body Parts are similarly open to interpretation, while others, such as Size-Change and Stretching are fairly straight-forward.  This is something I agonized about a great deal: how specific should the powers be?  Make them too general and you lose the point of even having a random roll method; make them too specific and you end up with characters who look more like Gamma World mutants than super-heroes.  I again took a leaf from V&V and mixed it up a bit, producing what I think is a nice balance.

Grief & Trouble: A Hero's Constant Companions

At it’s heart, conflict in HoI is a relatively abstract affair resolved by having both sides roll 2d6, add the MOD of whatever Qualities apply, and see who got the higher result. The difference between the two is the amount of Grief which the winner inflicts upon the loser.

Grief is my reworking of the Damage Ranks and Failure Ranks in core PDQ.  Grief is an abstract measure of damage.  The most common conflict to occur in super-hero stories is the combat: two super-guys punching the living daylights out of each other.  Therefore, combat is usually the easiest way to explain how conflicts are dealt with in HoI.  However, that doesn’t mean that combat is the only kind of conflict. Other kinds of conflicts include navigating some kind of environmental effect (trying to rush through a burning building to save a child), a contest of wills (trying to scare the hood so badly that he tells you what he knows), or a puzzle (trying to work out how the alien Spatial Field Generator works before the asteroid crashes into the city).

This is why combat isn’t about inflicting wounds or injury.  Besides, most combats in Bronze Age comics are fairly bloodless affairs: super-fists crash into faces without knocking out teeth or flattening noses; radiation blasts pick people up and throw them far away, breathless, but essentially unharmed (and certainly free of radiation-poisoning); and nobody ever seems to wake up the next day with whip-lash or lower back injury. Therefore, in this game, super-combatants give each other Grief.

The exact nature of the Grief given in any conflict will depend upon the nature of the conflict. Players and GM’s should feel free to narrate the nature of Grief. Most of the time, Grief vanishes as soon as the conflict is over. The heroes and villains pick themselves up, dust themselves off, maybe make a wise-crack or two, and are fine and ready for more in the next scene.  Occasionally, however characters can pick up Trouble, which is a sort of Grief that lingers (discussed more below).

Mechanically, Grief acts as a downshift on the victim’s Qualities.  Each point of Grief represents one downshift.  Whenever someone takes Grief, he decides which Qualities take the downshifts and how many.  For example, The Nemesis of Crime has a pile of packing crates dumped on him by the gang he is pursuing.   The gangsters and hero both make their rolls and the Nemesis' roll is 10, while the crooks roll is 13, leaving a difference of 3. That means the Dark Guardian takes 3 Grief.  The hero’s player decides to spread out the Grief and take 1 downshift to 3 different Qualities. If he wanted to, he could taken all three to the same Quality or give two to one Quality and the last to another. It’s the player’s choice.

There is a notable exception to the abstractness discussed above. Whatever Quality takes the first downshift in a conflict generates Trouble.  Trouble is a special kind of attribute that partakes of both a Quality and Grief.  The exact nature of the Trouble is determined by the Quality that took the first hit. If The Presence, the mental projection of a man who no longer exist, takes the first downshift in a conflict to his “Inhuman Aura” Quality, then the Trouble has to be concerned with that. The player is allowed to create the Trouble, subject to GM approval. The exact nature of the Trouble needn’t be decided during the conflict and can be worked out after the end of the current adventure. In this case, the player of the Presence decides that his character is feeling depressed at his inhuman state, which reduces his effectiveness in conflict. He gives himself the Trouble “Depressed at Inhuman State”.

Like any other Quality, Trouble has a rank. When first generated, Trouble is Good +1 rank. But Trouble can never be used to help the character. Trouble acts as a constant negative modifier equal to it’s rank. Constant meaning that it applies to every single dice roll. Why? Well, that’s why the player and GM have to agree on the exact nature of the Trouble. A good choice is that the Trouble is causing the hero anxiety or worry or some other emotional problem that distracts him from performing at peak efficiency. Such as in the example above. Another option is some lingering physical problem.

Even worse, if the same Quality takes the first hit in a subsequent conflict, then instead of generating a new Trouble, the existing Trouble goes up one rank. So, in a later battle, the Presence loses a roll and elects to take the first hit to “Inhuman Aura” again. Now his Good +1 “Depressed at Inhuman State” becomes “Excellent +2 Depressed at Inhuman State”.

Which is a bummer, so most heroes will be anxious to rid themselves of Trouble. They can do so by playing out a reasonable way of assuaging the situation and paying out Hero Points equal to the Trouble’s rank. This can only be done in a later adventure than the one in which the Trouble was generated or increased. Doing this gets rid of the Trouble, but it also means that hero is down that number of Hero Points when he has his next conflict. There’s a trade-off, which is why some players might elect to let Trouble rise for awhile.

Using our example, the player of the Presence doesn’t want to let his Trouble get worse than Excellent +2, so he decides to deal with it at the next opportunity. At the beginning of the next adventure, he decides that the Presence disappears from a meeting with his super-pals and reappears atop a mountain in the Himalayas. There he sits, oblivious to the howling winds and ponders the meaning of “humanity”. The GM likes this and continues it, having a mysterious monk appear and lead the hero to a hidden monastery. Seeing the existence of men in such circumstances and feeling their goodwill, the Presence feels restored. He pays out 2 Hero Points, removes the Trouble, and waves goodbye to his new friends as he returns to Industry City. The game has now had a nice little soap-opera moment plus a mysterious new element has been added to the game. Just who are these hidden monks? Any GM worth his salt will have them show up again, in perhaps a surprising manner. Also, of course, the Presence returns to his duties to find himself in confrontation with the noble anti-hero Raptor and lacking two vital Hero Points. He’s really going to need those to defeat his foe. Oh well, such is the lot of the hero.

Far Beyond Mortal Men: Powers in Heroes of Industry

Although not all super-heroes have super-powers, the presence of powers is one of the defining elements of the genre. Plus, super-powers are just cool. Although Powers are a type of Quality, they require some special treatment as they are so various and yet so essential to the game.

Scope is the same for Powers as for any other Quality: it defines the Power, describing what it does and when it is applicable. Some powers have fairly simple Scopes: Fire Blast means you can shoot out a blast of fire.  But other powers are more complex: what do Air Powers do really?  

This is something that I have really grappled with for a while.  When you have a Random Power method of character generation, you need a little more definition than might be required otherwise.  Of course some of the answers can be discovered through play when a player suggests that his power ought to let him do such-and-such. But it is useful to have some starting understanding of the power shared by the player and GM. This game uses three different “viewpoints” to discuss the Scope of powers: Breadth, Category, and Effect. Put them all together and you have a specific Power.

I'll discuss Categories and Effects in another post.  Right now, I'll focus on Breadth.

Power Breadth

Breadth is how widely-applicable a power can be.  Look at the two powers mentioned above. Fire Blast is a pretty narrow power: you basically use it to burn things.  Sure, a smart hero can think of cleverer things to do, but that is the province of Stunts. At it’s root, it’s a hurty-thing.  Compare that with Air Powers. That would seem to allow for a great variety of applications: moving things with wind (as telekinesis), attacking people with focused blasts of wind (as an attack), blocking missiles (as defense), and so forth.  It seems that Air Powers would be much broader in scope than Fire Blast.

The basic distinction is between Focused Powers and Meta-Powers. A Focused Power is the usual sort of straight-forward power, like Fire Blast. A Meta-Power is more complex.

A Meta-Power can perform various functions all at the same time and it represents an extremely broad type of power. Each specific function is termed a sub-power. These sub-powers may be so diverse as to lack any obvious thematic link. Sorcery, for example, can do almost anything, while the inborn powers of certain aliens may be quite a varied lot.

The possessor should make a list of the typical sub-powers. These can all be used at Rank-3. Should the possessor wish to use a sub-power to use a normal-scale Quality, he will get Rank-3x2, just as if he was buying Intense Training. The GM is free to limit the number of sub-powers readily available, as additional powers can always be accessed as a Spin-off Stunt. Most Meta-Powers should come with a Vulnerability and/or Limitation. In addition, the player should expect there to be at least one other being out there with the same Meta-Power.

Possessors of Meta-Powers can respond to almost any situation and the Meta-Power is generally their only power. On the flip side, once they start taking Grief to the Meta-Power, they quickly lose competency. 

Examples of common Meta-Powers include Sorcery, Power Cosmic, Kryptonian Powers, or a Power Ring.

Some powers are inherently Focused or Meta-Power; others come in both types. In that case, the player is free to choose the power’s Breadth at creation if using the Modeling Method; if using the Random Rolling Method, the player must roll on Table 9: Power Breadth to determine this.

So, let's take a look at an example to see how this works:



Exotic Energy Powers (Focused/Meta, Energy Power, Various Effects) – A catch-all category for less common forms of energy. The most common appearance of this power are the multifarious Energy Blasts that come in pretty colors with optional Kirby-dots. The other common variation is Cosmic Power, which seems to be some sort of meta-energy or vaguely scientific sounding form of magic.

If using the Random Roll Method of character generation, the player must roll on Ta-ble 9, Power Breadth to determine whether the power is Focused or a Meta-Power. If using the Modeling Method, then player is free to choose.

The most common Focused versions of this power are:
• Energy Blast – Generate a bolt or beam of energy to attack.
• Energy Field – Create a bubble of energy that functions as a force field.
• Energy Flight – Emits a thrust of energy to allow for flight.
• Energy Construct – Create pseudo-matter or tangible energy forms, such as scoops, bonds, etc. as Create Matter.

The Meta-Power version of this power would likely include at least all of the above as sub-powers. Other sub-powers could well include Adaptation (for travel through space), Resistance (exotic energy suffuses the body to resist harm), Lightning Speed (to span the galaxies), Cosmic Awareness (cosmic power puts one in touch with the cosmos funnily enough), and almost any Super-Quality (energy permeating the being makes them far more than human).

There aren’t many common Limitations associated with Exotic Energy Meta-Power. Depending upon the game, the Meta-Power might be granted by some more powerful being who places certain restrictions upon the hero. Similarly, in certain games, an Exotic Energy Meta-Power might be opposed by Sorcery with the power limited against magic or even suffering a Vulnerability. A common Quality for those with the Meta-Power is something representing the alien nature of the possessor, such as “Not From Around this Planet”.