Taunts

Games Sentinel Comics RPG
#1

I GMed my first session of Sentinels last night with my normal game group and one of the players wanted to do something I wasn’t quite sure how to handle. They were in a group of about 4 minions and 3 villains and they wanted to taunt or provoke all of the minions to get them to focus on him rather than anyone else, kind of akin to taunts or marks in D&D.

Was that considered an attack? An overcome? A hinder to the minions? Do we just roleplay the taunt? We all kind of collectively hemmed and hawed about it and eventually settled on it being an overcome, but we could have made an argument for any of those things.

How would you have handled it?

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#2

I would agree with you making it an overcome, with a successful result meaning they all concentrate fire on him, minor twist maybe he takes extra damage, major twist damaged and hindered?

#3

I would say an Overcome is probably a good way to handle it in that case. However, that doesn’t mean that taunts in the narration should always represented that way.
With a character using

Indiscriminate Fabrication: Boost using [Power], assigning your Min, Mid, and Max dice to 3 different bonuses, one of which must be given to an enemy.

The bonus to an enemy could represent them getting enraged by the taunt against the one using the Ability, with the bonuses to allies coming from them not being targeted as heavily. In general, if they want to do it without an ability who’s theming makes sense, an Overcome or Hinder is probably a good way to handle it.

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#4

There also are abilities that some Archetypes give that try to force an opponent to hit you like Frontline Fighting does under the Physical Powerhouse.

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#5

Another idea would be to make it a Risky Action. “Defend using X Power, but all enemies choose to attack you until your next turn. Take a minor twist.”

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#6

I feel like I’m just joining the chorus, but I would agree that taunts to draw fire would qualify as an Overcome, whereas taunts to rattle people and get them off-balance would be a Hinder. Twists could be reduced effectiveness (the minions come after you, but the main villain ignores you), do defending (as a “difficult choice”, you can’t take reactions against their attacks this round because you’re overwhelmed) or they get a free hit in.

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#7

Unless there’s an Ability or something we tend to make this an RP thing. Being the focus of a bunch of minions is generally a really good way to eat a bunch of damage. Minions in this game are no joke. When four relatively minor d6 minions chip away 14 health (on average) that’s a big thing.

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