Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game Part Two: Cap vs Spidey -- Fight!

Fresh off my review of the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game I'm testing the combat rules with a fight between Captain America and Spider-Man, both Rank:4 heroes. I will document it here, blow by blow...

But first, here's a nice little tribute from the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game title page...

And something else the OSR might appreciate, a healthy warning against rail-roading (because if any genre is easy to rail-road, it's super-heroes.)

"If you want to just tell the players a story, you can write it down and read it to them."

"It's not your job to put the plot on rails and run the characters through it."

POST NOTE: The core rules state that the TN for escaping webs is 20. Fans of the game have been complaining that this number is too high and it's disrupting their game. As you will see below, it is in fact, too high. The MARVEL website has a document called Tony's Workshop where they share new ideas, rule fixes/experiments, and other changes. The new TN for escaping webs is 18. This certainly would have helped the star-spangled avenger in the fight that follows!

Now, to the action!

For the sake of this fight the two heroes will start 10 spaces apart. Cap's run speed is 5, Spidey's swingline speed is 18. They both have +3E initiative, the E means they have an edge on initiative rolls (meaning you can re-roll the lowest die.) Initiative is 3D6 with a potential surprise happening on a fantastic success. The rolls...

• Cap: 16
• Spidey: 16

A tie. The re-rolls...

• Cap: 10F (F stands for fantastic success meaning MARVEL came up on the MARVEL die)
• Spidey: 11

Cap gains a bonus surprise action. Once the surprise round ends, Spidey will go first. Both Cap and Spidey have 1 standard action, 1 move, and 2 reactions (due to both of them having the combat reflexes trait.) Cap can't reach Spidey in 1 move, but no doubt Spidey will come to him, so Cap decides to throw his shield using Hurled Shield Bash. Cap can throw his shield 10 spaces x his rank (4), that's 40 spaces(!)... no prob. This ranged attack costs Cap 5 of his 120 Focus.

• Now here in lies the first controversy. The rules say melee covers punching and throwing and that agility covers blasting at range. Looking at the villain Bullseye's stats, he has a 1 melee and 4 agility and his agility damage multiplier is x4, double his melee damage multiplier of x2. Bullseye throws things -- it's what he does, he is clearly meant to use agility for attacks and damage even though melee covers throwing. Cap's damage multiplier is the same for melee and agility, but he has a 2 point advantage if attacking with melee and because the rules say punching and throwing, I'm going to let him use melee. (Realistically, you'd have to be strong to throw a shield, your chances of success should perhaps be the average of the two stats.)

Cap rolls a 9 (+6 from melee) for a total of 15, not enough to hit Spidey's amazing agility defense of 19 (both Spidey's melee and agility defense are 19 ((thanks to evasion and spider-sense)) -- he is very hard to hit!) Cap's shield automatically returns to him. Spidey has reaction powers, but I'm ruling he can't use them during this bonus round.

Now the first round begins...

Spidey won't do anything fancy this round, he'll simply swing to Cap and kick him. He rolls a total of 14, not enough to hit Cap's melee defense of 16. Now it's Cap's turn and he'll do a standard Shield-Bash. Roll: 17, missing Spidey.

After the first round...

• Cap -- Health: 90  Focus: 115 (down from 120)  Karma: 4
• Spidey -- Health: 90  Focus: 90  Karma: 4

Spidey's gonna try to web Cap's feet to the ground with his webcasting power. This is an agility vs agility check. He rolls a 19, beating Cap's agility defense of 14. Cap is now paralyzed and can't take any melee or agility actions, his agility defense is reduced to 10 and close attacks automatically hit. To escape he needs to make a melee roll of 20! Cap is going to use one of his reactions to try to escape. His melee roll is a 17, not enough, so he spends a point of karma to reroll a 2 (he and Spidey both have 4 karma points.) He rolls a 3 for an 18 -- still a failure. He has another reaction so he'll use that one too. Roll: 16, looking at the dice it's clear that spending karma again won't save him. Cap is stuck!

Spidey is going to use his wisecracker power (which is optionally triggered by a successful attack) as a reaction (reactions can be used as interruptions anytime) -- this is an ego vs ego attack that will do Focus damage. Roll: 10, not enough to meet Cap's ego defense of 12 (I find this number low for Cap, BTW, a hero, who to me, should be unflappable.)

It's Cap's turn and he needs to escape. If he does escape, he can take his actions normally. Cap should have spent a point of karma to give Spidey trouble on his successful webcasting roll, meaning Spidey would have had to re-roll his highest die, maybe turning that success into a failure. (Hind sight!) He's already used both reactions trying to escape so now he'll use his standard action. He fails miserably! Spending karma won't get him to 20, but... he rolled a fantastic failure (the MARVEL die came up! Note: the MARVEL die is equal to a 6, so on that die you can only roll, 2,3,4,5,6,6, this action was still a miss, regardless.) Now the rules say that something beneficial should happen regardless of the failure, but in my last post, I argued for something negative, so here's what I'm going to do: Cap jumps right out of his boots (which remain stuck) and he will have trouble on his next action, a Shield Bash which after the trouble re-roll is only a 10, a clear miss.

• Cap -- Health: 90  Focus: 115 (120)  Karma: 3
• Spidey -- Health: 90  Focus: 90  Karma: 4

And so round three begins...

Smart-ass Spidey is going to try to web Cap's boot-less feet back to the ground. Cap is going to use his Shield Wall power that requires concentration so long as Cap doesn't take a move action (a lot of automatic powers require concentration to keep up, you can concentrate on a number of powers equal to your rank, I should have paid attention to shield wall earlier!) to give Spidey trouble on the roll. No dice! Cap is webbed again! Cap might have to spend both reactions again trying to escape. He succeeds on his second try before going for a Shield Bash on the pesky wall-crawler -- missing again, failing by 3, and is not going to spend karma for the re-roll (spending karma on a re-roll is a judgement call, if you missed by a lot, the chances of a re-roll helping you might be slim.)

This has probably been a page or two of comic book action. They would no doubt be bantering back and forth about why they're fighting... some misunderstanding or one is mind-controlled. So far, the environment has not factored in (you can throw cars and stuff) but I assumed an empty street or alley. Neither one has taken damage yet, but Spider-Man is winning. Let's have them fight for a couple more pages...

The star-spangled avenger has managed to escape the webs twice, annoying the web-slinger, so Spidey's gonna go old-fashioned slugfest (after-all, he once beat Firelord -- one of the all-time classic issues!) Cap is using his Shield Wall to give Spidey trouble, but Spidey spends 1 karma to remove the trouble... and scores a hit! Now, Spidey's melee damage multiplier is 5, but Cap has -4 damage reduction! (super-serum + shield) -- at a cost of 15 Focus, so Spidey's multiplier is now only 1. So he rolls 1D6x1, +5 (melee stat) for a total of 6 points of damage. Cap's shield makes him very hard to hurt, but a prolonged use of it will weaken his Focus. Spidey has no damage reduction, but he's super hard to hit, even for Cap. Mental powers would be a threat to both.

Cap's turn. He rolls and misses, then spends karma for and edge getting a hit, then Spidey spends karma for trouble cancelling out the hit.

After this round we are at...

• Cap -- Health: 84 (90)  Focus: 100 (120)   Karma: 2
• Spidey -- Health: 90  Focus: 90   Karma: 2

One more round and then Spidey will most likely swing away... But first, he knows he can't really hurt Cap while the avenger has his shield, so he's going to try to take it. First this will require a webgrabbing attempt (5 Focus) and then a melee on melee tug of war. Cap is concentrating on his shield wall (ironically) giving Peter trouble, who in turn spends karma to cancel that out, but he only rolls a 12 so he misses. Then Cap strikes and turns a miss into a hit by spending karma, but Spidey spends karma of his own and the re-roll becomes a miss again. And that is the end of round four. After wards Spidey swings away. At least that's how this fight would end in the comics. Cap could throw his shield at him, but he won't.

• Cap -- Health: 84 (90)  Focus: 100 (120)   Karma: 1
• Spidey -- Health: 90  Focus: 85 (90)   Karma: 0

If I continued this fight things would deteriorate quickly due to the lack of karma. Spider-Man clearly has to keep using his webs against Cap, and Cap needs to hope for a lucky blow. You might be wondering why Cap isn't using more of his listed powers -- most of them are either baked into his numbers or designed to help team-mates and/or to mow down goons. I saw no mention in the rules about Spidey's web fluid running out, but if he rolls a fantastic failure while using a web power, that's exactly what I would rule, then it would be serious advantage Cap.

A team of heroes fighting a team of villains could take up and entire evening of play and tracking every characters powers (reactions, concentration, etc.) would be a challenge. There was a lot of page flipping during this exercise to make sure I got it right. Some powers and conditions are remarkably similar, like web-casting/web-grabbing and paralyzed/pinned.

Karma. I don't mind an occasional re-roll, but that whole fight was driven by spending karma. I prefer the dice tell the story. However... there's a catch -- these are both heroes -- they have the heroic tag. Villains don't start with karma, they can earn it, but that's not likely to happen. So, spending karma won't be as annoying in-game. Karma can also be spent to regain some health or focus. Wondering how they'll handle The Punisher...

I love theater-of-the-mind and this game can be played either way, but it would really shine on a grid and seeing as super-hero games are mostly fights... Knockback rules are present and can send a character flying many spaces away, through walls and everything. This will change battlefield tactics -- movement speed will matter. If you used to play Heroclix (like I did) you already have all the minis you'll ever need. Squares or hexes would both work fine. Get some toy cars and stuff and off you go!

Edge and trouble. These are 1 die re-rolls -- for better and for worse. But they alter reality after the fact. "I hit you!" "No you didn't!" I'm thinking, an alternate way to roll them would be closer to advantage/disadvantage, meaning, you simply roll an extra die with your attempt, but that extra die can not be a MARVEL die. Double edge and double trouble would be two extra dice.

Anyway, that's it for the moment, go away now.

Wait, what?

Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game... What Have We Here?

Strange how things happen...

A couple of weeks ago I dreamed of a comic shop. This one was tucked away, hidden like an adult video store, in the back of gas station, doorway complete with hanging beads, located in a more run down, but not necessarily seedy part of town. I don't often dream of comic shops, haven't in years, but when I do, they are always somewhat hidden. Two days later, another comic shop dream, another vaguely odd place, though I don't recall exactly where...

Why am I dreaming of comics?

These are hidden treasure dreams. Occasionally, in my youth, I would dream of amazing toy stores -- toy stores you could only dream about. Stores that had everything and then some -- awesome toys that didn't exist.

Then I stumbled across the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game, written by Matt Forbeck, published by Marvel. I had actually heard about it some time ago (months, a year?) and scanned a preview of how it works then promptly dismissed it. Marvel is long overdue for a good role-playing system, because over the years there have been nothing but duds. 

I can't remember what recently brought this game back to my attention (dreams aside) but I bought it on Amazon for about $30, which is approximately 45% off. So why not? Because, apparently, super-heroes are on my brain.

I've eternally searched for the perfect super-hero system. My two favorites, and I've stated this plenty of times, are the Marvel Super Heroes game (FASERIP system) from the 80's and Palladium's Heroes Unlimited, two utterly and completely different games.

Anyhow...

Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game is 320 pages, has a high quality binding, and is jammed full of quality, Marvel Comics art (of course I would've preferred art from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but, that ain't gonna happen.) The layout is good, but the pages have this subtle background hex-mesh (kind of like the stuff hero uniforms are made of in the movies) that threatens to annoy your eyes. A plain white background would've been better, then again, this might not bother younger eyes. Overall, it's a very nice book.

There is branding all over this thing. You have six abilities that spell MARVEL...

• Melee -- hand-to-hand combat, including throwing
• Agility -- acrobatics and most ranged attacks
• Resilience -- your health
• Vigilance -- your focus and initiative
• Ego -- magic, leadership, psychic powers
• Logic -- reasoning and telepathic powers

Notice that there is some blurring between melee and agility, and between ego and logic. Are telepathic powers not psychic powers? This will certainly lead to arguments. Each power states what ability to use and some powers don't require a roll.

Also notice, there is no strength stat. In this game strength is a super power, or rather, a set of super powers (they could have added strength at the bottom and had the stats spell MARVELS.) Stats are ranked from -3 to 9. Average citizens have all 0s. Nowhere is this book are there metrics given for how much your character can lift in actual lbs./tons. I've never seen this before in a super-hero game. Super strength here is kept vague. 

Characters are ranked in power level from 1-6; average citizens, Hand Ninjas*, and Hydra Agents* are rank 1, Hela and Magneto are rank 6. Spiderman(Peter Parker) and Captain America are both rank 4. If you're a fan, Miles Morales is rank 3. Daredevil and Elektra are both rank 2. 

*Hydra Agents are actually tougher (more health) than Hand Ninjas (same health as Aunt May!) -- something I find unbelievably bizarre. I'm sure the author is trying to set up scenes of Daredevil or Wolverine plowing through ninja-hordes, but in my mind, one Hand Ninja would slaughter several Hydra Agents... easily. Debates on the accuracy of character stats can be found on various forums -- this is inevitable for such a game. (Since when does Sam Wilson have super-strength?)

You have two hit point scores, Health and Focus, obviously physical and mental, which equal 30 times your Resilience and Vigilance, respectively (though Focus functions as a combo of physical and mental endurance.) A Resilience of 3 gives you 90 Health and a Vigilance of 5 gives you 150 Focus. Using some powers requires you to spend Focus. 0 Health equals unconscious while negative Health equals dead (thankfully they didn't shy away from death in this game, but then again, comic book death...) 0 Focus equals demoralized which means you can't use certain powers and you have the equivalent of disadvantage (here it is called trouble) on all rolls. Negative Focus equals shattered, meaning your will is completely broken, so not dead, but definitely taking a hiatus (perhaps your title got cancelled...)

Characters are built with a sort-of point buy system (yuck). Decide what rank your game will be and build heroes accordingly. Rank mainly decides how many powers/traits/ability-points you have and how much damage you do. Gaining ranks is handled vaguely, basically you rank-up whenever the Narrator (FASERIP's Judge was a better GM title, Narrator sends the wrong message to my ears) feels is reasonable, perhaps every 4-6 sessions (a graphic novel) but this would be far too fast. How do you explain a rank 1 rookie becoming a cosmic power in a matter of months? This isn't D&D. To the game's credit, it states that the official Marvel characters can't go any higher than they are and does sort-of warn against advancing your own too quickly. I would probably come up with some sort of system reminiscent of FASERIPs karma advancement. It would be very slow with plenty of limitations. Comic characters take years to change just a little bit. It is a curious genre that way. Almost all others RPG genres expect a fairly regular pace of improvement. Fighting crime is truly for the love of the game.

Your hero will be made up of the above mentioned stats plus an origin, occupation, tags, traits, and a multitude of powers. And by multitude, I mean multitude. Powers are built like feat trees, meaning certain powers have prerequisites, and those prerequisites have prerequisites. For example, in the super-speed category of powers, you can't take catch bullets until you take speed run 2 and your hero must be at least rank 3. Captain America's ability to punch someone with his shield is a power called shield-bash, so if you want to build a shield-bearer (this is a power set) you might want to start with shield-bash!

Power trees.

(Of note: Specific powers like penance stare exist in the game, but Daredevil's radar sense does not. Instead, his powers are summed up under the moniker of heightened senses. Nowhere on Daredevil's character sheet is radar sense even mentioned. Likewise, Psylocke's famous psi-blade is not mentioned either (not even in parenthesis.) This power uses the generic term of mental punch, a melee attack that damages Focus instead of Health and stuns on a fantastic success. I've never seen her psi-blade not stun someone, of course, I only recall ever seeing her stab targets through their skull, perhaps a psi-blade to the arm merely hurts.)

Origins nicely cover the usual tropes: Various Aliens, High Techs, Mutants, Monsters, etc. These give you certain tags, traits, and even powers (with some limitations) these are powers you must take before choosing any others, and sometimes, as with vampires and werewolves, these are the only powers you get.

Occupations offer more tags and traits, e.g., lawyer, entertainer, journalist, outsider, spy.

Tags are mere fluff descriptors like: mysterious, streetwise, rich, secret I.D., young, etc. These offer no mechanical benefits. 

• But, they could... What if the hounded, hunted, and enemy tags meant that if you roll a fantastic failure (see below) or a new dice combo like triple 1s (1M1) members of an enemy organization or an arch-nemesis shows up to complicate your current situation? Or if you had the dependent tag, in the middle of the fight you find out a loved one is in danger somewhere else? Tags could have positive effects too if you roll a 6M6, such as allies arriving to help turn the tide (there is a backup tag.) This is what I would absolutely do.

Traits are like the old FASERIP talents which offer a slight edge to this or that roll. They sound just like tags though: iron will, loner, pundit, small, sneaky, etc.

Sample characters and sheets...

This is what Spiderman would look like if you created him yourself (on the right.) There would be a back page with the rest of his powers listed. See what I mean by a multitude of powers? BTW, there is a power-group of spider powers for people who love the spider-verse and wish to create their own spiderman (spider-verse book due out around the end of the year.)

Also, I would add an Action section to this character sheet. Everyone gets 1 standard action, 1 movement action, and 1 reaction. The trait combat reflexes gives you 1 additional reaction. It would be nice to see this at a glance. All powers fit into one of these action categories.

Most likely I'll be designing my own sheet.

Game Mechanics... Make or brake time. The stat block below is really the core of your character:

Of your 6 standard abilities, you can attack and do damage with 4 of them --melee, agility, ego, and logic. As already stated, resilience and vigilance set your health and focus. All 6 are important. All 6 also have a defense score, an armor class if you will, your score +10 + power bonuses. In melee combat, you roll against your targets melee defense. When shooting, you roll vs. their agility. Now, I love opposed rolls, but this is certainly the next best thing. For non combat rolls, you simply add your score (which may have a power bonus) to the 3D6 roll. And there in lies the mechanic... 3D6.

3D6

One die needs to be a different color from the other two. This die is called the MARVEL die. Official dice are sold in packs of 12, so 4 sets, for $16 -- not bad. The MARVEL die reads MARVEL in place of the 1.

The basic mechanic is: Roll 3D6 (referred to as D616, more branding, the Marvel earth is earth 616.) Anyway, if you're trying to punch someone, roll 3D6 + your melee score and meet or beat your target's melee defense. That's it, those are the basics. The same applies to agility, ego, and logic.

If you hit, the MARVEL die represents damage. Take that number and multiply it by your damage multiplier (limited by your Rank, e.g., rank 4 = x4 damage multiplier, some powers expand this) then add your melee score on top of that. 

If the MARVEL die comes up, MARVEL, it's called a fantastic success and you do double damage. 6MARVEL6 (6M6) is an ultimate fantastic success for triple damage. Powers and weapons will trigger other effects too, like stunning and knockback.

You can have a fantastic failure as well -- you fail but something strange happens that benefits you, sort of like failing forward. That's OK, but a missed opportunity for classic tropes like spiderman running out of web-fluid (if using a web power.) 

Some powers, traits, situations, give you edge or trouble, meaning you reroll the best or worst die. You can have double edge and double trouble too.

There is also Karma (a nice throwback to FASERIP.) You get a number of karma equal to your rank and can spend it to give yourself an edge or an opponent trouble, and to recover some health. BTW, edge and trouble are mentioned throughout the book without being in italics or bold print, I find this odd as they are terms that should always stand out.

The mechanics are simple and elegant. I actually like them. Lucky rolls can quickly knock people out of combat and also allow you to survive against powerful foes. There is however, one philosophical flaw in this game: Setting target numbers for non-combat challenges...

Target numbers are set based on your hero's rank. So, jumping from one roof-top to another (if set at challenging) will be TN:12 if you're rank 2, but for a rank 4 hero it's TN:14. What if they were jumping at the same time? Shouldn't it be easier for the rank 4 hero? This is an all-things-equal storytelling mechanic... not a fan. I think this assumes all heroes playing are the same rank, something else I'm not a fan of. I would set one TN regardless of who's attempting the feat. Easy fix, not a game-breaker.

Another thing, your damage multiplier is based on your rank. So rank 1 has a x1 multiplier and rank 6 has a x6 multiplier (remember this multiplier is applied to the results of the MARVEL die.) This applies to all 4 attack types, melee, agility, ego, and logic. Jean Grey is rank 6 so her melee damage multiplier is x6. Her melee score is 1, so not a great fighter, but if she did hit you she would do more damage than Daredevil and maybe even Captain America or Wolverine! Her mental powers do more damage than her fists, so she shouldn't bother trying to punch you, but if she did... This is a weird byproduct of this system. Obviously you could just say there was a little telekinesis in that punch (even though she has a separate telekinetic punch power, which is a logic vs. melee roll, just so you know.)

All in all, as it stands right now, I call this is a good game. So I'll say: Well done MARVEL (not a company I've praised in a long time -- the movies are terrible and it looks like they'll continue to be.) Time will tell though, as this RPG is still very new. The more people that play it, the more optimum power-builds will be revealed and then every created hero will look the same. Every one is going to take the equivalent of "super-strength" in their preferred damage mode and they will also take damage reduction in both Health and Focus -- you'd be dumb not to. And you'll have one attack that targets Health and one that targets Focus enabling you to zero in on a foe's weak spot. Also, EVERYONE will take the trait combat reflexes. Everyone will have flight. And these will only be half of your powers. This is why random character creation will always be superior to builds. 

Two books are out, the core rules and the Cataclysm of Kang Adventure which stats out a bunch more heroes/villains (the adventure part, I could care less about -- published super-hero adventures are always rail-roads of the highest degree.) An X-Men book is due out in August and a Spider-Verse book after that. These books are slated to have tons of hero stats and new powers and new rules. Eventually, I imagine, there will and should be, a Powers book. They should call it Ultimate Power (FASERIP had the Ultimate Powers Book.)

What I would love to see, and will most likely end up doing myself, is a random character generation system, not concerned with or limited by balance and rank. The actual X-Men aren't balanced nor are the Avengers and nor should your game be, well, my game anyway.

Now go clobber something!