Any Supers Game that feels Super?

The game Stalwart came to my attention the other day, and (at a whopping one dollar and 16 pages of reading time) is probably worth a look. The standout element for me is their mechanic for being reduced to zero health, which they call being Felled. Instead of being down or dying for the rest of the scene, you have a 50-50 chance at the start of each later round to get back up at 50% of your max health. If you fail to get up three times in a row or someone manages to attack you or after you've gotten back up a certain number of times (I think the max is 5, but normal range is probably 1-3) you become Defeated, and testing to get up takes much longer (not in combat, basically) and your Health cap is reduced until you have some downtime to heal. All that is in the DTRPG preview, so I don't see an issue with reiterating it here.

The whole mechanic is intended to reflect the common comic trope of a super seemingly being taken out and ignored, only to recover and throw themselves back into the action later. I think it does a decent job of it within its parent system (which is very light - 16 pages, remember?) and could serve as a seed for homebrewed rules to do something similar in other systems. The obvious concerns would be making the combat drag, reducing actual risk too much, and the swing factor in terms of how long recoveries can take, but that's something for playtesting to resolve. Health systems vary a lot between systems too, so adjusting what your maximum and recovery caps are would probably be needed - the system is essentially giving you multiple "health bars" in a 2X/X/X...etc. pattern, with the possibility of being taken out at the end of any one of them.

If I see a major flaw in the Stalwart version, it may be that it's too easy to get a "finisher' attack in while someone is Felled, making the whole block of mechanics little more than a de facto action tax. Hard to be sure if that's the case - the mechanics for preventing a finisher aren't too defined and it might be harder than it looks - but it's something to consider if porting the concept elsewhere.

It's a more interesting "Out" mechanic than Sentinel Comics uses (which is more of a consolation prize so you have something to do if you drop early and involves very little decision making), or the way regeneration frequently works in other systems.

TheHand said:

I played in a short-lived Aberrant game. The feeling we got was that it worked OK for doing low-powered 'barely super' type games, ala something like the old Heroes TV show, and that the old White Wolf engine broke down with higher dice pools and powers. I think there's probably lots better engines out there these days for doing low-powered paranormals, but the lore & background information is certainly valid (if not fairly universe-specific).

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I would honestly use Adventure for something like that. Or maybe GURPS Supers.

Has anyone played Silver Age Sentinels, or it's modern version, Absolute Power? When I soured on Champions, with 5e, I found SAS and liked it but before I ever played it, I discovered M&M and got into the playtest for 2e.

corwyn77 said:

Has anyone played Silver Age Sentinels, or it's modern version, Absolute Power? When I soured on Champions, with 5e, I found SAS and liked it but before I ever played it, I discovered M&M and got into the playtest for 2e.

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We did SAS for a bit back in the day. We were not impressed (not helped by some things that happened during the playtest for it--when you have one power, albeit not a super-common one, that has literally no explanation of how what it does is handled mechanically, you've lost me and even the less gamist people I've played with).

corwyn77 said:

Has anyone played Silver Age Sentinels, or it's modern version, Absolute Power? When I soured on Champions, with 5e, I found SAS and liked it but before I ever played it, I discovered M&M and got into the playtest for 2e.

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Since you ask:

Yes to the former, no to the latter but to my considerable regret I own the latter and have put time into a thorough reading of it. Even worked with character gen a bit. They're both BESM-related of course, and have all the strengths and weaknesses of that system along with the balance pitfalls point-buy systems experience in supers games. I'd rate SAS as mechanically inferior to 4th ed Champions (which is where I stopped as well - I think I own about three post-4th Hero books), with poor balance and rather swingy dice mechanics. It's still quite versatile but the results of any given build don't inspire confidence in how they compare to others in play. The setting was deep enough that I wondered how it had changed when they updated the timeline for Absolute Power - which is the only reason why I own that game.

See, I made the mistake of doing that wondering at the FLGS, and the owner took it as a request to special order a copy for me. He'd gotten it in before I heard about it, and (owing to too many years behind other counters and knowing he's been having a rough time lately) I couldn't bring myself to leave him stuck with it. So I spent $120 on AP, and after a good deep read I can only say that in twenty years they managed to make SAS's problems worse, if anything. Balance is even more out the window. The benchmark system produces some weirdness as you approach the boundaries between campaign power levels while still doing a dubious job of dealing with the "how are Green Arrow and Superman on the same team?" issue. Even the art is weirdly off-putting, which I think is partly the color choices involved. I'll never play this game, and I don't recommend anyone else do so either.

The only remotely positive thing I have to say about AP is that it is reasonably well-divided into a crunch volume and a setting/character stat/GM advice/history of comics volume. If you just want the engine with minimal fluff you can buy Volume One and ignore the setting. If you just want the setting with minimal crunch, or for some reason need a rather basic history of real-world comics or a bunch of adequate but uninspired GM tips for supers roleplaying, volume two does the job without too much wasted space on stat blocks. So you can spend "just" $60 MSRP and have one or the other - and realistically you can find it for much less, both in print or pdf. I still wouldn't recommend it no matter the price, but YMMV.

The physical copies do come with nice bound-in ribbon bookmarks. I guess that's a consolation prize, at least.

Thanks for the excuse to do some mild ranting. I sincerely hope you don't make the mistake of buying AP.

corwyn77 said:

Has anyone played Silver Age Sentinels, or it's modern version, Absolute Power? When I soured on Champions, with 5e, I found SAS and liked it but before I ever played it, I discovered M&M and got into the playtest for 2e.

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I wanted to like SAS and I even picked up The Authority but the Tri-Stat system didn't work for me.

I might revisit ICONS: Assembled edition. It did a lot of what supers are about. Thoughts?

Theory of Games said:

I wanted to like SAS and I even picked up The Authority but the Tri-Stat system didn't work for me.

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At least the Authority book was a decent read/sourcebook when it was new. GOO books were usually good as basic reference material, much like GURPS books often are.

Theory of Games said:

I might revisit ICONS: Assembled edition. It did a lot of what supers are about. Thoughts?

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It's solid, and seems pretty popular. Definitely gets recommended a lot when people ask for supers games on the medium-light end of the crunch spectrum. Think the main alternatives these days would be Supers RED (which felt a bit lighter to me) or Prowlers & Paragons (which seemed little crunchier). Hard to say which is best, it's pretty much subjective preference.

Play high level 5E. It's practically a supers game according to some people...