1 hour ago, Forgottenlore said:

The thing about Batman is that he can be written at any power level. Doing street level gang wars, he’s a competent normal with lots of gadgets that actually exist. Doing Justice League, he has super human intelligence, unlimited funding for ultra-tech, and trained with mystic ninjas as a teenager.

Batman is infinitely scaleable.

But in terms of raw ability, he can't wield a semi-truck like a billy club or move at supersonic speeds, things Genesys/SW usually reserves for ship combat (which is an idea already proposed, giving certain qualities to supers as if they were vehicles instead).

In a number of ways, depiction of superhero violence against mere-humes often gets passed through a dynamic-range compressor; superheroes always knock mortals out instead of killing them, and skilled/talented mortals manage to exploit weaknesses that allow them to play on the same level.

From my own experience, Dr. Manhattan was the only hero that seemed to not pull punches. He just SPLORTCHED people left and right. But that's sort of the point of the Watchmen story.

Back in the 90's, there was a supers RPG called Brave New World by Pinnacle that was done using the Deadlands Classic system. It actually worked pretty well, but then the PCs' powers were tied within a pretty specific theme, and the level of power was closer to street-level or lower-tier X-Men as opposed to Justice League or mainstream Avengers. Savage Worlds largely uses their magic system to replicate the lower-end of superpowers, which again allows it to work without too much issue.

So something like that, I think Genesys could handle without too much trouble. Where it's going to fall apart is when you start getting into the really powerful heroes, your Supermans, your Thors, your Iron Mans, your Flashs, your Hulks, your Godmode!Batman. Even Spider-Man is probably pushing the limits of what it can handle; yes he's a 'street-level' hero in that he pays attention to street crime, but he's definitely Avengers-tier in terms of powers and capabilities (his debut in Captain America: Civil War demonstrates his raw power, with only his lack of experience and maturity really doing him in).

1 hour ago, Big Head Zach said:

But in terms of raw ability, he can't wield a semi-truck like a billy club or move at supersonic speeds, things Genesys/SW usually reserves for ship combat (which is an idea already proposed, giving certain qualities to supers as if they were vehicles instead).

Except that having unlimited money as a superpower means that he fights with the Batjet, Batsub, or BatPower Armor as needed. Much like Tony Stark hangs in with the Avengers. Remote control armor, Hulkbuster suit, etc.

11 hours ago, Big Head Zach said:

But in terms of raw ability, he can't wield a semi-truck like a billy club or move at supersonic speeds, things Genesys/SW usually reserves for ship combat (which is an idea already proposed, giving certain qualities to supers as if they were vehicles instead).

Which I find is a very elegant method. There is in fact only one single "scaling-table" needed, which could even already be included in a creature creation guideline in the Genesys CRB. I mean in a fantasy setting, a 100 yards long dragon can be barely realisticly depicted with standard stats.

Regarding high-powered heroes, you could either have some propper scaling or you give them "standard" ranged stats but rule that mere mortals ar flatly taken out by one hit without the need to roll any dice for damage.

Shouldn't some scaling be included in Genesys, Darth Holly will hopefully get some insights from the FFG Developers in his podcast. As @DarthGM mentioned, d20 radio has a good standing with FFG

15 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Back in the 90's, there was a supers RPG called Brave New World by Pinnacle that was done using the Deadlands Classic system. It actually worked pretty well, but then the PCs' powers were tied within a pretty specific theme, and the level of power was closer to street-level or lower-tier X-Men as opposed to Justice League or mainstream Avengers. Savage Worlds largely uses their magic system to replicate the lower-end of superpowers, which again allows it to work without too much issue.

So something like that, I think Genesys could handle without too much trouble. Where it's going to fall apart is when you start getting into the really powerful heroes, your Supermans, your Thors, your Iron Mans, your Flashs, your Hulks, your Godmode!Batman. Even Spider-Man is probably pushing the limits of what it can handle; yes he's a 'street-level' hero in that he pays attention to street crime, but he's definitely Avengers-tier in terms of powers and capabilities (his debut in Captain America: Civil War demonstrates his raw power, with only his lack of experience and maturity really doing him in).

This is all speculation at this point of course, but if the system is built correctly, the power level really shouldn't affect how fun and easy the game is to play. I am unsure what you mean by saying that Genesys won't handle the galaxy level powers well? That street level can hang with galaxy level, of course not. You want galaxy level heroes, here's 500 XP to spend. Will it be harder to build than beginning level characters, of course. Nothing compared to Champions complexity however. If magic in this system is how it appears from the previews, it should be fairly modular and scale easily. That is how it should be in a system that is built generic from the ground up.

Savage Worlds had the disadvantage that it didn't start as a generic system rather it came from Deadlands, it has evolved. Will Genesys have the same issue, time will tell. Savage Worlds Supers plays fairly well. My mage is a little OP however.

When we start designing Genesys Supers we need to start with one of the harder powers, say super speed, a la Flash, and work our way down.

If supers can be done with D20, it shouldn't be that hard with Genesys.

1 hour ago, TrainedMunkey said:

If supers can be done with D20, it shouldn't be that hard with Genesys.

The only viable d20 supers game I've seen has been Mutants & Masterminds, and the reason that works is they threw out the bulk of the d20 rules (such as automatic level-scaling and revising how much of the math in the system works) and deliberately redesigned things between editions to make it work for supers. 1st edition was a bit of a mess, while 2nd edition ironed out much of the kinks and 3rd edition refined some of those alterations to make it ultimately more flexible in terms of building characters.

In MnM (any edition), it's entirely possible to have PCs that never increase from their starting Power Level, and things don't go off the rails because the PCs still have numerous ways to spend their experience to broaden what their characters can do or to shore up weak points or obtain things they couldn't do at character creation simply due to not having enough points to go around.

2 hours ago, TrainedMunkey said:

When we start designing Genesys Supers we need to start with one of the harder powers, say super speed, a la Flash, and work our way down.

The overall problem still seems to be one of scaling. If all the PCs are the same power level such as a Superman level, Flash Level, Batman Level, or Punisher level then, based on what little we know, then a lot of abilities can be described narratively or with talents. The problem is when dealing with individuals or situations that well above or below these levels. In a Superman level game, a Brawn of 1 can lift a Volkswagon beetle, a brawn of 6 can lift a mountain. In this level of game, Batman would have to be equivalent to Superman and yet his effective Brawn would be less then 1 in comparison. What would be the equivalent average persons brawn in this example? Having exceptional abilities as a Talent doesn't directly make sense since Superman is super all the time. Having a talent that allows for a super feat twice per session or spending 2 strain be super doesn't make much sense either.

One could argue that, even narratively, superhero rules would need to have attributes scale higher, perhaps to 10 or more. This idea doesn't work because a Brawn (or agility) of 10 would mean that character would almost never miss his target. Obviously, this won't work either.

The only way I could see as making this work is to avoid high power level campaigns. Treat powers as basically reskinned magic and, for those individual capable of drawing on tremendous natural abilities, such as lifting a Battleship, then spending strain to tap those reserves. The rest of the time, heroes are "street level" heroes or slightly better except for the occasional exceptional power manifestation.

It also occurs to me that some kind of Destiny point mechanic that represents the ebb and flow of battle or "seizing the opportunity" can be used to power exceptional uses of ability, perhaps in addition to strain.

I dont see a way of making this work smoothly before scaling of any kind starts to fail. I am interested to see FFGs take on relatively exceptional super powers.

I would think that perhaps something akin to the Force power trees would be good to do for powers. Even for super-strength. I mean there is more to Strength than just lifting. There is also bending things. You could even have the thunderclap as a talent. You can have being able to cause a shockwave by hitting the ground. Or, has been noted, throwing things. So forth and so on.

The idea for lowering difficulties could be folded into the tree as well. You just need to remove the whole "Spend pips to do this" and perhaps replace it with "Spend Adv to do this" or something similar.

Batman was handled quite well in the DC Heroes system by Mayfair. They had a thing called Omnigadget that was given X amount of points. From there, you would then configure the gadget to be able to do that thing you need it to do. The downside is that it would then be that way for the rest of the story. In terms of the NDS that FFG is doing, you could spend storypoints to have the right tool for the job. This is not inherently breaking the system but you could need to make a roll to have it do more than negate penalties. For example, spend Destiny points plus mak a Gangetry roll of X difficulty to give it a quality from a list and then make the difficulty higher for qualities from a second list or to give it more levels in a quality from the first list.

1 hour ago, thedonnie said:

I would think that perhaps something akin to the Force power trees would be good to do for powers.

The main problem with this approach is the amount of power trees that might be necessary. If you have one primary ability such as "omni-gadget", then a tree can make sense to track control, magnitude, and the like. However when a character has several powers, that can be a lot of trees. Lets say you are building a character inspired by Superman. Consider the following powers:

Flight
Super Strength
Super Hearing
Super Breath (Cold, Blow, Suck)
Super Vision (x-ray, heat)
Invulnerability (Damage, Environmental)

Each of these could have its own tree. That's at least 6 different trees even if you can afford to buy all theese powers at minimum level (assuming I haven't forgotten any of his abilities). This is in addition to any other sheets such as a secret base, vehicle, etc that compose the character portfolio. In order to minimize "character sheet creep", having a single line to describe a power is more efficient and power stunts can be either treated narratively or as an attached comment.

Example: Say there is a generic ranged attack power called "Bolt" with 4 damage, and a range of Short . It would be recorded on the character sheet as

Quote

Heat Vision (Bolt): 4 Damage, [AA] Crit. Modifiers: Ranged (+1 band), Sunder, Magnitude 1 (+1 Damage)
Stunts: spend [AA] to bounce heat vision off a metal surface, adds [SB].

This takes a lot less space then a whole power tree. Additionally, the Omni-gadget can also be tracked in this way.

Having Superman have multiple trees would make sense as someone like Flash would have less as his powers are more specialized.

However, I do see the simplicity in what you are suggesting. I think that, until Genesys branches out into super hero settings, this is all speculation. Until that time, then I would suggest keeping any superhero games in a comfort zone of no more powerful than Spiderman. His powers are limited enough that an un-powered but highly skilled person can fight on an even keel with him but he is still able to do things like toss a prius.

All I know is that I will stray away from super heroes until ffg or some one else has a write up for it. Just not something that I'm that interested in

1 hour ago, thecowley said:

All I know is that I will stray away from super heroes until ffg or some one else has a write up for it. Just not something that I'm that interested in

If I was not already a fan of FFG's narrative dice system, I too would be holding off on Genesys. For me, the true measure of a universal rule system is in how well it does in handling the superheroes genre. If a whole new batch of rules or powers need to be created just to effectively make super powers viable then, for me, that system is a bust. Also systems like Fate or Other Worlds, which have a "just wing it" approach to everything aren't really universal rule sets but more of just, at best, a dice mechanic. Fortunately, it appears that even if FFG (or who ever via OGL) drops the ball on decent super powers, what is hinted at as a magic system appears to easily used to create skinable super powers.

It seems like a strange benchmark to me to judge a universal rpg based on whether it can do one specific genre right as opposed to how many it can get right. By that metric, most universal systems are a bust, as I don't think there is one that can do every genre successfully. Either way I'm not convinced that Genesys won't be able to do a super hero game. It may take another book to go over some more genres but I think that's quite likely to happen. They couldn't fit every genre in the core rule book, and I'm quite happy with the six we're getting.

As a side note, since Genesys was announced I've been doing a lot of tinkering and homebrewing with the narrative dice system. It's quite rewarding and fun to create content for, even without Genesys. That said I know I could create fun super hero rules within the scope of the narrative dice system if I wanted to, as could many others.

5 hours ago, -Loki- said:

It seems like a strange benchmark to me to judge a universal rpg based on whether it can do one specific genre right as opposed to how many it can get right. By that metric, most universal systems are a bust, as I don't think there is one that can do every genre successfully. Either way I'm not convinced that Genesys won't be able to do a super hero game. It may take another book to go over some more genres but I think that's quite likely to happen. They couldn't fit every genre in the core rule book, and I'm quite happy with the six we're getting.

As a side note, since Genesys was announced I've been doing a lot of tinkering and homebrewing with the narrative dice system. It's quite rewarding and fun to create content for, even without Genesys. That said I know I could create fun super hero rules within the scope of the narrative dice system if I wanted to, as could many others.

5

Superheroes can be done, but my problem is when you start letting people from captain America levels of strength to Superman run around together. If I ever do it, the highest raw strength I would allow is something like spider man at tops. And that's still quite a bit. Even superspeeds in excess of 100-150 mph make you a being of immense power to any mortal. Even at that speed, his melee attacks would have the autofire capability. which I think is an interesting way to handle punching that quickly anyway.

4 hours ago, thecowley said:

Superheroes can be done, but my problem is when you start letting people from captain America levels of strength to Superman run around together. If I ever do it, the highest raw strength I would allow is something like spider man at tops. And that's still quite a bit. Even superspeeds in excess of 100-150 mph make you a being of immense power to any mortal. Even at that speed, his melee attacks would have the autofire capability. which I think is an interesting way to handle punching that quickly anyway.

Having auto fire on a melee attack shouldnt be considered unusual if your hero's concept allows for it. I did that with a speedster I was playing in Hero System/Champions. The Hero System has rules for momentum adding to damage but any thing that was a "special effect" of speed was either a specific skinned power or power modifier. Since most of his powers were based on kinetic energy, he had extra hand attack damage with the autofire advantage (quality) to represent the special effect of his running around the target in tight circle and hitting him repeatedly. Furthermore, most of his powers, including defenses, had the minor limitation "only when moving" (maintaining the kinetic energy). If he got knocked off his feet or rooted in place, his offensive and defensive abilities went to almost zero. His actual movement speed only directly affected combat damage when he was trying to close line or body slam someone at full speed. A close line gave him penalties to be hit and he easier to be hit (they saw it coming) and the body slam had similar penalties but did so much damage that it would usually knock him, and hopefully the opponent, out.

He accidentally killed a normal human bank-robber and was sent to court ordered power-management classes which really cut into his protecting the innocent. So Sad.

10 hours ago, -Loki- said:

It seems like a strange benchmark to me to judge a universal rpg based on whether it can do one specific genre right as opposed to how many it can get right. By that metric, most universal systems are a bust, as I don't think there is one that can do every genre successfully. Either way I'm not convinced that Genesys won't be able to do a super hero game. It may take another book to go over some more genres but I think that's quite likely to happen. They couldn't fit every genre in the core rule book, and I'm quite happy with the six we're getting.

As a side note, since Genesys was announced I've been doing a lot of tinkering and homebrewing with the narrative dice system. It's quite rewarding and fun to create content for, even without Genesys. That said I know I could create fun super hero rules within the scope of the narrative dice system if I wanted to, as could many others.

If a universal system can handle superhero's well then it can handle everything asked of it for any genre or concept with the only limits being set by the GM. A fully capable skinable, modular, effects based power system requires a minimum of re-adjustment to have it do what you want it to do to represent any spell, power, or special ability. That is why I use the superhero metric.

5 hours ago, thecowley said:

Superheroes can be done, but my problem is when you start letting people from captain America levels of strength to Superman run around together. If I ever do it, the highest raw strength I would allow is something like spider man at tops. And that's still quite a bit. Even superspeeds in excess of 100-150 mph make you a being of immense power to any mortal. Even at that speed, his melee attacks would have the autofire capability. which I think is an interesting way to handle punching that quickly anyway.

So, what we've established is that Genesys should be able to handle power differentials comparable to that of Jedi versus mundanes.

28 minutes ago, Big Head Zach said:

So, what we've established is that Genesys should be able to handle power differentials comparable to that of Jedi versus mundanes.

Yes because any system that doesnt allow you be a space wizard while dueling a pew-pew gun and a glowy sword, all while riding on the back of a giant wild space slug straight in to battle against a armada of space dragons is worthless. cuz, you know, scaling matters

9 minutes ago, Big Head Zach said:

So, what we've established is that Genesys should be able to handle power differentials comparable to that of Jedi versus mundanes.

I was actually thinking something similar to this as well. I think the setup that force powers use would be the best kind setup for super powers.

52 minutes ago, lyinggod said:

If a universal system can handle superhero's well then it can handle everything asked of it for any genre or concept with the only limits being set by the GM. A fully capable skinable, modular, effects based power system requires a minimum of re-adjustment to have it do what you want it to do to represent any spell, power, or special ability. That is why I use the superhero metric.

Yeah that is fair. It's all a matter of opinion too I suppose. For me, I don't mind if the system doesn't do super heroes well if it does most other things well, which I know it can do science fiction, space opera, fantasy, and modern horror very well as I've already tried all of these genres with the narrative dice system. Not saying that I don't think it can do them well, because I really do.

13 minutes ago, -Loki- said:

Yeah that is fair. It's all a matter of opinion too I suppose. For me, I don't mind if the system doesn't do super heroes well if it does most other things well, which I know it can do science fiction, space opera, fantasy, and modern horror very well as I've already tried all of these genres with the narrative dice system. Not saying that I don't think it can do them well, because I really do.

I generally agree with you in your assessment of the other genres and the narrative system as it relates to a homebrew approach. But what I am talking about is the flexibility of the native mechanics. From the little we know so far, Genesys appears (via a lot of assumptions) to be to handle all the other genres quite well. A fully scalable superhero compatible power system would make it truly universal. Even if the superhero genre fell short, I would still fully embrace the game.

9 minutes ago, lyinggod said:

I generally agree with you in your assessment of the other genres and the narrative system as it relates to a homebrew approach. But what I am talking about is the flexibility of the native mechanics. From the little we know so far, Genesys appears (via a lot of assumptions) to be to handle all the other genres quite well. A fully scalable superhero compatible power system would make it truly universal. Even if the superhero genre fell short, I would still fully embrace the game.

Well I'm glad to hear that you wouldn't discount the game if it couldn't do the genre. But I do think it will be able to based on what has been said about it so far. But everyone has made a lot of assumptions and the only way to really know is to wait and see when it comes out.

Thinking on it, I do actually really hope it can do the super hero genre as well, because the more it can do, and more varied genres it can cover, the better. And the super hero genre does have an incredible variance so it would be a good sign. That and just because I'm not currently interested in a super hero game (likely thanks to the current over saturation in the media) doesn't mean that I won't want to try it eventually

23 hours ago, -Loki- said:

Well I'm glad to hear that you wouldn't discount the game if it couldn't do the genre. But I do think it will be able to based on what has been said about it so far. But everyone has made a lot of assumptions and the only way to really know is to wait and see when it comes out.

Thinking on it, I do actually really hope it can do the super hero genre as well, because the more it can do, and more varied genres it can cover, the better. And the super hero genre does have an incredible variance so it would be a good sign. That and just because I'm not currently interested in a super hero game (likely thanks to the current over saturation in the media) doesn't mean that I won't want to try it eventually

I have played a few generic RPGs. The benchmark is always Supers for me. Classless is the ideal for Supers, i.e. Champions, Mutants and masterminds, Savage Worlds, GURPs. These systems do have templates you can buy into but don't limit what you can buy. I find classes in Supers a little annoying, i.e Heroes Unlimited, Cypher. I hate being limited and having to multi-class to pick up other skills/talents.

From what I can tell from the couple previews, we will get classes, or Careers as they call them.

"We provide two types of careers in Genesys . The first are general, role-based careers that are suitable for any setting. The second type are some examples of setting-based careers that only fit into a few different settings. After all, you’d seldom see a Starship Captain in a steampunk setting, any more than you’d see a Wizard in a modern or futuristic setting (unless you’re running an urban fantasy game, of course)."

I am hoping that we will be able to build our own careers, "setting based careers." That would be acceptable and has been done well in Mutants and Masterminds. And would be excellent, so long as you can purchase skills and talents out of career without having to multi-career, even at an increased cost. If they go the Star Wars route with having to be in a particular career to access a talent tree, that would make it much more challenging to do a Supers game. Since they have setting based careers, I am guessing there will be some "bank" of talents that you can use to design careers.

I can easily see power sets being included as career trees, and acts involving "supered" stats requiring the equivalent of Force points.

I don't think anyone would argue that, just that trying to balance a game that features both supered and nonsupered characters will inevitably have moments where the mundanes can't hang. #BlackWidow #Hawkeye

2 hours ago, Big Head Zach said:

I don't think anyone would argue that, just that trying to balance a game that features both supered and nonsupered characters will inevitably have moments where the mundanes can't hang. #BlackWidow #Hawkeye

In a comic book or movie, relative power levels are irrelevant. Hawkeye and Black Widow (and to a large extent, Cap) fight against Chtauri warriors, not against the leviathans or against Loki (with a few assists against the latter). These set piece scenes happen because the writers give each character room to breathe and to shine. The story is on a rail that the writers have devised and we are an audience passively watching it play out. Neither movies nor comic books are RPG's where the players are doing their best to outfox the GM. I think the superhero genres really only work when the GM tries to maintain a sense of scale for each party member. It's up to the players to steer fragile PC's out of the way of the huge threats, but it's up to the GM not to throw cars at characters who will simply die if they can't dodge, or at least make sure the PC has plenty of opportunity to get themselves out of harm's way (at a certain point the only cure for stupid is getting hit by a flying car).

Frankly, a mix of power levels works best in a system like Fate that has fewer rules to quantify what's happening in the story (i.e. it's not simulationist AT ALL).

34 minutes ago, Dragonshadow said:

In a comic book or movie, relative power levels are irrelevant. Hawkeye and Black Widow (and to a large extent, Cap) fight against Chtauri warriors, not against the leviathans or against Loki (with a few assists against the latter). These set piece scenes happen because the writers give each character room to breathe and to shine. The story is on a rail that the writers have devised and we are an audience passively watching it play out. Neither movies nor comic books are RPG's where the players are doing their best to outfox the GM. I think the superhero genres really only work when the GM tries to maintain a sense of scale for each party member. It's up to the players to steer fragile PC's out of the way of the huge threats, but it's up to the GM not to throw cars at characters who will simply die if they can't dodge, or at least make sure the PC has plenty of opportunity to get themselves out of harm's way (at a certain point the only cure for stupid is getting hit by a flying car).

Frankly, a mix of power levels works best in a system like Fate that has fewer rules to quantify what's happening in the story (i.e. it's not simulationist AT ALL).

Easy enough to do and totally up to the game master to implement, not the players. The objective of any RGP is to have fun. It's the game master's job to provide the encounter that challenges each player individually yet make the experience fun. Even a glorious death can be fun if done correctly.