Super Hero Items, Effects, Lore & Defense

[Lonewolf]

Welcome agent. Let’s get started.

Savage Worlds does supers very well. It is however harder to learn that other settings. Every single character will be using powers. There are lots of powers. There are lots of Setting Rules to do comic book combat.

Every so often someone asks a question about creating a superhero campaign on Discord. Then I will get pinged at some point to answer it.
Then a few months later another question will appear. So, I decided to create a single thread in which to dump all the questions in one place. This hopefully gives a single place to put all ideas. That can just be easily linked to in the future.

Fantasy Grounds is constantly getting updates. The rule set code is getting better all the time thanks to Ikeal and Mike.
This also means that answers, so some questions change over time. For example, the setting rules for death was done by GMs manually figuring out the altered rules. This is about to change, and automation is coming. So, as answers change this thread can be used to add new stuff.

Anyone can answer a question. You are all Agents learning about superpowers together. So here is the super thread.

[Lonewolf]

Supers is hard to run. You must be very experienced with SWADE to attempt it. First of know that everyone has powers in use all the time and that will slow things down at first. They don't even roll to activate powers usually. Out of the gate I would cap the power limit and not allow power stuns. Until the group gets comfortable. Then later we have a campaign montage. Every Rocky film had a montage! At that point up the power level to where you want it and start introducing the power stunts one at a time.

Two things that you need to be prepared for are "Established character baseline". This will determine the personal effect that power neutralizers will have on that character. The second is at some point you have PCs suddenly using bennies to bring in any power in the whole book. So, you need a passing familiarity with them all. I tend to work with players between games to work out power stuns to keep playing faster. I mainly do this because I like natural progression in power uses and don't like completely random jumps in the narrative. Although that is a very well-established trope in the source material.

Established character baseline is to ask what a character’s attributes are whilst they are sleeping. Superman is always Superman. Therefore, Super Strength is permanent. When exposed to neutralizer the personal effect you make for him puts his strength down for the duration. Bruce Banner does not have Super Strength when sleeping. When activated he gains Hulks strength. That is an effect that puts strength up whilst it is activated. When exposed to a neutralizer it turns off and can't be activated. There is no other negative effect. So, the same neutralizer will need to be applied differently depending on the target. Part of the reason why we ended up here is it was a neat way of playing the game with the minimum number of effects on the CT. Which was important before it was optimized. These days it is a lot quicker.

As a general rule of thumb.

-- Super Attributes are normally in play and require no effect.
-- Super Skills are normally in play as well.
-- Super Edges are applied already.
-- Heightened Senses are normally included as a special ability on NPCs so that get the right token vision on map placement.
-- Some powers like Undead also get added as a special ability to enable code like +2 to remove Shaken condition automatically

Everything else tends to be an effect that must be applied to the CT.

[Lonewolf]

There is lots of questions about how to enter information on character sheets for super powers. Start with the Archetypes books.

SPC Archtypes (https://affiliates.fantasygrounds.com/389836/15958/url_33008)

Necessary Evil Archetypes (https://affiliates.fantasygrounds.com/389836/15958/url_33009)

[Lonewolf]

So many books how did we get here?

Ok this is comic book history - so be prepared for a very convoluted history explanation, true believers. The original 2004 edition of Necessary Evil is not compatible with SWADE or SWD rules sets. It is not even compatible with the older SWEX rules either. The first section of the book contained the first superhero rules and now useless to everyone but RPG historians. The rules got replaced by First edition SPC. This was then replaced by SPC 2nd Edition. The second NE campaign used this set of rules and people were supposed to manually collect information from various additional update PDFs and fix things themselves.

Eventually PEG just published a new SPC for SWADE. This one is Awesome!

Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion (SWADE) (https://affiliates.fantasygrounds.com/389836/15958/url_33256)

Then rebooted the whole NE product line with SPC for SWADE. This has everything all fixed up and adds a whole lot more content.

Necessary Evil: Invasion (Revised Edition) (https://affiliates.fantasygrounds.com/389836/15958/url_33257)

That contains the original campaign for medium powered Supers. Overlapping in the timeline is Escape from New York erm. Sorry that name is taken. Breakout which deals with lower-level super escape from New York prison.

Necessary Evil: Breakout (Revised Edition) (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store/product.php?id=S2P11802)

Most GM find it fun to run Breakout (Revised Edition) as the first Campaign story before moving on to the events in Invasion.

Once the battle for the Earth is resolved. Return of Dr Destruction adventure is set in the aftermath of Invasion and foreshadows the next campaign.

The Return of Dr. Destruction Adventure (https://affiliates.fantasygrounds.com/389836/15958/url_33259)

The third campaign - Cosmic Crisis. The high-level supers decide to take on the space god Outsider that started the whole thing up. It’s basically Avengers: Endgame where all these stores merge.

Necessary Evil: Cosmic Crisis (https://affiliates.fantasygrounds.com/389836/15958/url_33260)

If you just want a bunch of one-shot adventures. I recommend Tales of the Doom Guard. This gives an adventure at every power level and is mostly set after Invasion but before Cosmic Crisis.
Super Powers Companion: Tales of the Doom Guard (https://affiliates.fantasygrounds.com/389836/15958/url_33261)