So I did one of the real early playtests at GenCon a few years ago and even did the character creation session. I went into the latest Chapter 3 to recreate the character and I have a few questions. I had previously used the Athlete background which appears to not be there any more, does anyone know what it got replaced with? Specifically I was envisioning the character as having been an Olympic level athlete before becoming a superhero and I am looking for something to represent that. The closed I could kind of see was the Adventurer background assuming you choose appropriate abilities. Next, I had picked up the Close Weaponry as a power somewhere and again that appears to not be present anymore, do we know what it became if anything? One final question that isn't really related to this question but I thought of it during the creation steps and couldn't figure out an answer. If you wanted to create a character that could summon a blade of energy (say fire or psychic), what powers would you use?
As an alternative to Adventurer, I could also see Performer for an olympic level athlete. As far as making a blade out of energy, I would take Transmutation, an appropriate energy or material power, or just the Signature Weaponry power.
I've been playing around with a character called Scabbard, who's main weapon is just a chunk of metal that he can manipulate slightly. It's only representation on his sheet is Transmutation at a d6.
Edit: Almost missed your second question. I believe that the Close Weaponry power might have been absorbed into the Close Combat Quality and Signature Weaponry power.
To be honest, Athletes can come from many walks of life, so depending on what sort of Athlete you want, and what they choose to use that athletic ability for can lead to a variety of Backgrounds. Basically any background that offers any Physical Quality choices could be an Athlete. The more freely they can choose Physical Qualities, the more kinds of Athletes can fit within that background. As for them being Olympic-level Athletes, that would likely mean that their Physical Quality will be a D10 or D12, so that would further limit which backgrounds you might want (though a case for a D8 character might be made (they made it to the Olympics but didn't place or something of the sort).
As for the Close Weaponry Power, that would seem to have been absorbed into the Signature Weapon power which allows for a character to possess a weapon of any sort.
Now finally, the energy weapon creation/summoning really only needs an appropriate Energy/Element or Material Power (for those who can create weapons out of more substantial substances). While Transmutation can theoretically do this too, it is intended more for changing one substance into another, such as gold into lead or bricks into rubber and such. However, the nature of powers in the game is that they are quite flexible in what they can do in many cases. Fire may allow you to shoot balls of fire or just suround your fists in flames or even turn your entire body into flames. Given that you only get a few powers (3 to 6), this flexibility in how one interprets their powers is important to making the character you envision.
The Thing (from the Fantastic 4) may have the Stone Material power, but it is mostly just used to represent his incredible durability rather than any actual control over Stone. Meanwhile Terra (from the Teen Titians before the Judas Contract concluded) would also have the Stone Material Power to represent her Geokinetic powers. Which powers you choose gives you options which you then decide how they manifest. Firefist and Flameblade may both use the Fire power in conjunction with the Close Combat ability, but use it in very different ways (with different selected abilities) to represent those differences. One might focus entirely on single target combat, while the other might focus on taking on multiple targets or even hindering their targets they are fighting (to represent the heat exhaustion or other dilibating effects of fire).
Simply put, the flexibility one has in defining exactly how their powers work for their character is one of the strengths of SCRPG.
I wouldn't give The Thing Stone. He doesn't do anything with Stone that isn't part of his body. It's just his "excuse" for strength and toughness.
And thus is a good enough reason for him to have it. That he uses it more in his own defense (his incredible resilience and durability) doesn't make it any less relevant to him. The Hulk also has incredible strength and toughness without looking like a walking pile of rocks.
It is a matter of interpreting the power in sepcific ways consistent with the concept. True, Ben Grimm can't "control" stone in the same way that Terra does, but he could justify a "rock-slide" type distance attack with Stone by describing it as stomping or hitting the ground with such strength to cause the ground to fracture and throw up chunks of rock... and thus using Stone to make a ranged attack is possible.
The game doesn't define how one uses their powers (or doesn't use them) only the broad uses of that power. I see the Thing as an Armored Archtype with his durability coming from his Stone-like Skin, thus I would see him having the Stone Material power to reflect that. That this means his Stone power is used more defensively rather than offensively doesn't mean he doesn't deserve it... just that he uses it in a very different way than Terra does as a geokinetic (can't really seem to fit an archtype for her at the moment). Even if you see the Thing fitting better as a Physical Powerhouse with Stregnth and Vitality better representing his strength and durability, that doesn't make my interpretation of his powers wrong... just different. That SCRPG allows both to be valid uses is one of the strengths of the game.
In short, it is more of what a creative mind can think of for how a given character uses their powers than what those powers actually are. Earth Control could be the Stone Material power or it could be the Telekinetic Psychic power. Drability wise, Vitality can be just as durable as stone, though it does suggest this is more from recovering from damage fater (regeneration) than actually resisting damage (with bullets bouncing off), but bullet-proof skin (Superman style) isn't off the table.
I don't agree at all. The fact that the word "stone" can be used to describe The Thing doesn't change the fact that he doesn't use Stone as a Materials power ("You can shape stone and use it to build as well as destroy"). The Hulk doesn't have "muscles and green skin" as a Power. Heck, he doesn't even have "gamma radiation" as a Power. He just has strength, toughness, and things like Jumping that are a consequence of having those.
Now, could you take Vitality and rename it "Stone Skin"? Absolutely. That would accurately make use of it as a physical trait.
The thing is, I would give the Hulk the Radiation power because he is a walking Gama Reactor... he even emits higher levels of Gama Radiation the angrier and stronger he gets. True, Red Hulk is the one that seems to radiate radioactive heat more, but there have been times when Hulk has used abilities that are fueld more from the radiation his body generates than raw muscle alone can provide.
This really shows how limited you think these powers are in their aplication. Sure, Hulk isn't throwing around bolts of radiation like Radioactive Man, but his punches are as much charged with gamma radiation as they are with raw strength... as shown with his surprising effectiveness against the alien invaders in the Ultimate Avengers animated movies (their ships were made out of Vibranium which should have made them immune to raw physical force, yet the Hulk tore through them because in this version of the Marvel Universe, Gamma radiation weakens the molecular bonds of Vibranium).
Just because it doesn't fit your limited imagination of what the power can be, it doesn't mean that it isn't a viable and valid use of the power. The Iron Man Armor Tony Stark uses in Avengers: Infinity War could be said to have the Metal Material power due to how it can reshape itself (due to its nano-bot construction). It is still being used mostly defensively to protect Tony (something that Vitality doesn't make sense with since the Armor isn't a natural part of Tony Stark). So why can't Stone be used for the Thing?
Just because it isn't how you would use the power doesn't make it an invalid use of the power.
Let's watch the personal attacks, please. It's not that my imagination is "limited," it's that that's not how Powers work.
Can Hulk choose to emit Gamma Radiation as an attack, or to mess with machinery, or something? If so, it's an Element/Energy power (not a Material). I'll admit, I didn't know about the Vibranium thing, but that seems more like a convenient MacGuffin than an application of his powers.
And no, the Iron Man suit being made of metal doesn't give Iron Man the Metal Material power. Shapechanging, maybe. And yes, I'd say Vitality makes a lot of sense, because he fights in the armor and the armor absorbs damage (and can even repair itself). But if there's a piece of metal lying on the ground, Iron Man has no special power over it.
Look at the themes, the categories, and the descriptions. They're there for a reason. It's not just a list of power names, it's about how they work.
Interpretation is half the fun of powers, but it also reflects another thing mentioned when making heroes: There is no one true build of a hero. You are both proposing different builds for a given hero, and while they might not be mergable, that doesn't mean that either one is wrong. They simply reflect different, though possibly overlapping, aspects of that hero's story.
I don't know much about The Hulk.
I would probably give Hulk "Principal of Energy/Element (radiation)" over an "Energy/Element (radiation)" power. The writers have used techno-bable to solve problems before- "Hulk sucks the radiation out of a reactor leaving it empty" but that would be a hand wave-y use of Vitality (possible Absrption) more than Radiation
Some comics Hulk can see ghosts because his "primative insticts" are more in tune with "things civilized people ignore" and Hulk can always home-in back to the desert where the bomb test happened but i would not give him Awarness power
Thanks for the input everyone. I don't know that I have quite internalized just how much flexibility was inbuilt into the system but I can see it now. Thanks.
The game designers admit they were inspired by FATE game system, Cortex game system, and possible Dungeon World game system. all very flexible and fluid and interprative ( honstly i prefer more crunch in games but i am still going to suport Sentinels* no matter what )
if you have friends that know those system they might be able to really help get you in the mind set
Also if you are LordBritish 2 dose that mean that you are not the one killed by a fireball?
*and 7Sea
Something else I thought of to add (which is addressed in FATE as well as SCRPG's rules): Make sure the powers/skills/whatever don't supercede each other.
A few problems with letting someone take "Stone" and apply it to The Thing:
- It lets you take one Power and use it as if it were two other Powers (Strength and Vitality), giving you a free pick. Two free picks, if you also let it represent control of stone materials the way it's written.
- It lets you select your highest die for all included effects, rather than probably having to use a higher die for one than the other.
- It lets you effectively take Athletic Powers even if Athletic Powers aren't on the list for your Power Source/Archetype. Mystical, for instance.
To make an extreme example, say your character concept was Living Lightning. A "creative" player could talk their GM into letting their "Electricity" power die be used to represent being able to move and think quickly, fly, and reshape their body. This would effectively give them 4 free powers (Speed, Lightning Calculator, Flight, and Elasticity), and of course you'd put a d12 into it because why wouldn't you?
That's a big part of why, when running character creation, I encourage my players to define the LIMITS of their powers and what they represent. It's more than once averted a 'Living Lightning' scenario, though never to that extreme.
Regarding the whole issue of the "Stone" power, consider Rockstar from Daybreak. She's rocking (sorry, couldn't help myself) a mighty d12 in Stone, yet has absolutely no geo-kinetic abilities to reshape, control or move earth and stone whatsoever. She can form a crystalline outer covering surrounding her skin to protect her against incoming damage and increase the force of her own attacks (and, with a once-per-scene yellow ability, explode her outer covering in response to an attack, dealing damage to nearby enemies).
So.... did Christopher goof when he gave Megan the Stone power (and at a d12 at that)? :)
Uh, actually she does. :-\
Shard Shatter is the power that shows she can kinetically hurl shards she generates. And we've had a variety of games played at cons -- including those run by folks who designed the game, including Christopher -- in which folks have played her and manipulated stone. Those actions are often not directly represented by specific abilities, but as basic actions. Other times they're descriptive forms of an ability. For example, using Power Chord but describing it as shaping a stone guitar and slamming someone with it, then exploding it on impact so the target is also hit by shrapnel.
But it's also up to the player and GM to come up with ideas and interpret situations. :-)
Ah, fair enough, I was just going by what was explained about the character on her sheet and in the letters page (which, to the best of my recall, didn't mention anything about stone-shaping and earth control either, aside from the "turning crystalline and shattering" trick) :)