The Iron Five — Villain Sheets

[fjur]

@Chief_Lackey_Rich

@fjur

What’s your reasoning behind this? I can’t seem to find anything in the rules to support it. As far as I can determine, the rules simply say that mods apply only to effect dice. And they say that effect dice are Powers, Qualities, and Status dice.

Look at the definition of effect die on page 21. “The effect die is the die that produces the result. This is the Mid die unless you have an ability or there is an effect in play that says otherwise.” It’s kind of unfortunate that they used the singular “die” there, since they go on to mention that you could have multiple effect dice like Max+Min, but I think it’s pretty clear that when an ability tells you to use some die or combination of dice to determine an effect, that die or dice are effect dice.

I suppose that your reasoning is pretty solid.

@Chief_Lackey_Rich

There are some weirdo abilities that do things like discarding a mod to Defend with the value of that mod, and there I’m not clear if you could apply another mod to that value. It’s not a die as such, but it is filling in for an effect die, so ??? The RAI there eludes me, but RAW is probably “can’t modify that effect” to me.

I’m almost certain that you can only apply mods to dice, not static numbers like that.

But what about abilities like Untouchable (Shadow Archetype, page #74) or Heroic Interruption (Mobility Red Ability, page #108) that just tell you to “roll a ” or some other non-Power, non-Quality, non-Status die? Can that die be modified?

@Chief_Lackey_Rich

@fjur

Alternatively, if one wanted to get that big bonus real fast, TachAeon could make a squad of minion, then have some or all of those minions Boost her before she uses Whispers of ObilvAeon.

Boosting is one of the best things minions can do IME, although Mindless Constructs makes it really likely that each given minion will only add a +1 bonus instead of having a decent chance to produce a +2 bonus like non-legion d6 minions would have. Still works, just not quite as efficient.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Mindless Constructs. Well, still, ≈5 minions making a +1 bonus each still adds up to +5, which is pretty good.

@Chief_Lackey_Rich

@fjur

She has Unlimited Power, which lets her reroll an Attacker’s dice pool. Or do you consider that to not be strong? I really haven’t had enough experience with this system to judge so myself.

Not a huge fan of the “take 1 irreducible damage, reroll a dice pool” tricks personally, although they’re useful insurance against rolling fluke results. Unless the Attacker rolled really well Unlimited Power has a fair chance of not changing things much, or worse, watching the reroll produce a better result (well, worse for TachAeon, better for the hero). Might be more effective against Hinders, where seeing a 12+ come up makes rerolling almost always a good idea, and even 8+ isn’t bad odds of the reroll dropping the effect die to 7 or less. For stopping damage, rolling a single die (even a d8) to Defend is probably going to be more reliable in the end.

Yeah, I can definitely see what you mean.

@Chief_Lackey_Rich

Don’t think I’ve seen anyone keep health status entirely secret.

When I used to GM another RPG (Dungeons & Dragons), I basically kept enemies’ health secret. If players asked about it, I’d say vague things like “It has less than half its maximum health” or “He looks very wounded,” but sometimes I actually gave them pretty accurate percentages. I think next time I might try adopting SCRPG’s Green-Yellow-Red zones.

@Chief_Lackey_Rich

@fjur

Clinically Dead (R): Defend against an Attack against only you by rolling your single Vitality die. Boost yourself by the damage reduced.

That may be the best ability name ever.

Thanks. Yeah, I really like that one too. : )

@Chief_Lackey_Rich

The real tragedy of his situation is that without Creativity (or maybe Banter, or even Cool Under Pressure) this version of Ryan probably isn’t a very good beat poet.

True, I suppose. I’d imagine that, what with being treated like a superpowered asset rather than a human being, he’s not in much of a mood for poetry. Then again, maybe that anguish is the perfect inspiration for poetry. I could see him using Cold-Hearted for that, however. He channels his suffering into poetry.

Also, I don’t think regular Absolute Zero has any Power that could work well with a poetry roll.