What do superheroes look like?

By CMink, in Genesys

Posted at

Statwise, mostly.

I'm particularly interested in how an archetype's base characteristics interact with the super-characteristics rule. Given an archetype and a pair of super-characteristics, how does one build a starting character?

What do you expect a typical archetype to look like, given a specific pair of super-characteristics? What do you expect the completed starting character's characteristic array to look like after spending starting XP?

Posted at

Because of the additional 50xp most characters will start creation with 140-150xp and a spread of 3/2/2/2/2/1, I would give them all Heroic Abilities with one Ability Point to spend as well.

so with 140xp your able to get:

5/3/2/2/2/1 +20 spare

4/4/3/2/2/1

4/3/3/3/2/1

4/4/2/2/2/1 +30 spare

I think for the 140xp character the 4/4/2/2/2/1 with 30 more xp to spend will be really popular. It gives really strong characteristics for your Super’s and heaps of xp for talents and skills.

with 150 you can have:

5/3/3/2/2/1

4/4/3/2/2/1 +10 spare

4/4/2/2/2/1 + 40 spare

I think the 4/4/3/2/2/1 spread will be very popular, but 40xp to spend on skills and talents is really tempting, the first is great for a min/max build though.

Humans with 160 to spend will look like:

5/3/2/2/2/2 +10 spare

4/4/2/2/2/2 +20 spare

4/3/3/3/2/2

3/3/3/3/3/2 +10 spare

4/3/3/2/2/2 +30 spare

I have no idea what people would choose here, the last one is neat, min/max players may choose the first though.

Personally the actual species is important for me, I would probably play a Super Agility, Super Cunning Character with a 4 in each. Heroic Ability would perhaps be Signature Weapon with a Melee Light Weapon and the finesse talent.

Posted at

If I was going to do supers with Genesys I would create a number of archetypes to represent different common types of super like brick, speedster, gadgeteer and so on. I would give them a thematic ability from the races section to synergies with that and possibly even create a specific heroic power based on what we see in RoT, also designed to maximise genre tropes.

One of the challenges I see for Genesys in general is that the spread of stats is quite small, so it would be relatively easy to be strong as the hulk, an elephant, a dragon (at least in terms of Brawn). By fixing the super stat, archetype ability and heroic power for a given super-concept this should help differentiate. So Captain America and the Hulk may both be Brawn 5 but Cap would be a ‘super soldier’ whilst the Hulk would be a ‘brick’ or some such.

Posted at

I'm working on a 'street level' supers game; that is the players are tougher then the average human, but still pretty powerful (that is, the average Genesys protagonist versus all the mooks). But there are more powerful types out there such as Hulk or Superman levels of power. And I think the easiest way to show that is put their Brawn on the vehicle scale. Their Soak becomes straight-up Armor, and their Wound Threshold is on par with Hull scores. Yeah, you need massive anti-armor cannons to hope to hurt them 'cause your assault rifle is just going to tickle. And since the Brawn score itself isn't modified, the dice rolled won't change for skill checks.

To represent super strength on the vehicle scale each rank of Brawn gives you the equivalent lifting ability of that Silhouette rank. So Brawn 2 allows you to chuck cars, Brawn 4 is is small ships, for example. To go higher than 5, just toss in a ranked talent that allows the affected Silhouette to increase by 1 for each rank. So using the above, Superman would have Brawn 5, Silhouette bonus 3 (or 5, depending on the writer). Also, at this level there isn't much of a reason to use skill checks to pick most things up. And using said things as improved weapons might add half the Silhouette in bonus damage. So if Superman smacks you with a car it is 5 base for his Brawn, +1 for the car's Silhouette, for 6 base before successes are added in. This also means most melee weapons designed for the average person aren't going to be worth using.

You can have other powers bump up to vehicle scale as well. Super speed or most flight powers would be good choices for this.