Siberian (Over Unity Characters)

I'm back from a posting hiatus to take a look at another Worm-verse character. In the unlikely event you have no idea what I'm talking about, look here. Worm is a supervillain web-serial that, aside from being very well written and engaging, has absolutely fantastic characters. No one has a simple power-set (I'll extend the compliment to the way the characters are realized and portrayed--but that's a little outside the scope of this blog).

As such they make an excellent lens for us to look at the JAGS Archetypes rules through: they pose questions we have simply been unable to come up with on our own. The goal is to take a character and then try to simulate them to whatever degree the game-system allows (or that we want to--I'm not interested in literally being able to simulate every event in the fiction ... which might be an interesting post in and of itself).

In this case: one of the most powerful and troubling characters in the series--the savage Siberian.

Siberian
I thought the name might apply to the Siberian Tiger--as the character is "stripped" in appearance--but the character is black and white--and Siberian tigers are normal tiger color. I'm not sure where the name comes from. Siberian is pure-villain: lethal, mega-powerful, and doesn't talk much at all. She is part of a group of 'monsters' (the Slaughterhouse Nine) who go around the country causing terror and misery as, more or less, performance art.

Siberian appears as a naked woman with black and white striped skin. She is semi-feral.

Siberian's powers--at least in non-spoiler mode--are as follows:

1. Completely indestructible. She can lend her indestructibility to others through touch.
2. Unbelievable strong--even for super strength types--and her attacks ignore, well, everything. She can hurt other "indestructible" characters.
3. Super fast--both runs really fast and strikes super quickly.
4. Doesn't need to breathe, eat, etc.

NOTE: As the story develops you learn more about her--I'm doing the "basic version" here as there is no need to spoil things (and the game system does handle the spoiler version pretty elegantly).

First Things First: Siberian is a Bazillion Archetype Points

JAGS Revised allows characters to be built on zero AP's (mundane humans) or 32 APs (talented agents--maybe Jason Borune like?)--or 128 APs (super heroes)--or a million APs or whatever (Optimus Prime?). For one of the "most powerful characters in a superhero verse" Siberian would clearly be a lot of points.

She's even way more expensive than most of the Slaughterhouse Nine--her teammates--if you want to think of it that way (and you don't have to go too far into game mechanics mode to think of it that way: if you could have any set of their powers for yourself, her's would probably cost the most money of all of them.

But ... there is a problem: under the current system, no amount of money will buy you Indestructible and Super Speed: both cost a percentage of your points and that goes over 1--meaning no matter how many APs you got--those two alone ... cost more than you have.

We have been looking at ways to address this.

The Easy Part: Part 1 (Basic Powers)

Being super strong and having your punches ignore armor--we got. That's Super Strength with the Ignores Armor modifier. No problemo.

Secondly, Doesn't Eat, Breathe, Sleep? Easy: 2 AP's for No Biological Weaknesses (okay, maybe she sleeps ... I don't know).

Thirdly? Super fast running? She's not like "the flash" where she can go from New York to LA in seconds--but she can outrun most cars, I think. That's still like 3 APs.

The Easy Part: Part 2 (Scale Number)

Siberian can, say ... I don't know ... chuck a car across a football field? Pick up a rock that weighs a few tons? Whatever--she's really strong. Exactly how strong is less interesting to me specifically than that she is just super-duper-strong.

We have a way to deal with this with some degree of elegance: Scale Number. You pick a number for your game (usually all PCs are the same Scale Number) and you multiply all relevant values by that number. So if she starts life with the normal 10 Damage Points and is Scale Number 10, she now has 100 Damage Points.

Easy enough? Siberian is some high Scale Number character. Exactly how strong depends on what exactly you want her to play like.

Done-and-done.

The Hard Part, Part 1: Punches Effect OTHER Indestructible Characters

In the story she doesn't just tear up really tough things--she can tear up just about anything--including other indestructible characters. Now: the system already handles this to a degree. If we assume that most characters who are "immune" to things buy a version of immunity which gives you TONS OF ARMOR (there is one--it's slightly cheaper than 'pure' indestructibility) then she's set: she punches Alexandria who has the TONS-OF-ARMOR version and ignores all of it.

But what if other people in the game buy Indestructible too--the pure form--can she take an enhancement that will hurt them?

In theory: yes. In practice: How much would it cost?

This is interesting. Firstly, pure invulnerability is probably really rare. It costs 94% of your APs--this means:

1. To have anything left you better be over 100 APs
2. You can't have any other TAP (percent of your Total Archetype Point) abilities unless they are .06 or less.

But ... come on--someone's going to have it. In the Worm-verse ... maybe a lot of people (Crawler is said to be "immune" to things after he survives them--is this literal or does he just get a lot of extra defense? If he survives high-heat--can he survive falling into the sun? Probably not).

So let's say there's an enhancement: Hurts INV characters. We will propose it is either Small, Medium, or Large in cost (don't worry about what that means right now).

Enhancements are evaluated based on (a) how often they come into play and (b) how good they are when they do. I would say that this is relevant 'very rarely' (one time in 10 play sessions) but that it is extremely good (in fact: it wins the battle) when it is in play. Does this cancel? Kinda--which would tend to make the enhancement small.

But there's another issue: for characters with Invulnerability (of any sort) this enhancement being out there is a BIG DEAL. If I spend 94% of my points on not being able to be hurt--and you can spend, say 4% of your points to hurt me ... I'm screwed. Even if it's pretty rare that someone does do that--when they do, my whole character is wasted.

So I think that this is actually Medium or Large. I'm going to go with Large on the Game of Risk rule: Tie Goes To The Defender. That's always felt fair to me.

The Hard Part Part 2: Loaning INV to Other Characters

If Siberian is touching you she can shield you--from anything. In one battle this giant steel-melting 'sun' passes over her and her allies and she saves them. This thing presumably uses all the oxygen--so it saves you from asphyxiation too? This is a really good power (note: in JAGS we don't track asphyxiation from fire attacks--although at one point some optional rules did and it was considered too fiddly even for me ... which is saying something ... and that something isn't good).

So how much does that cost?

Well, we assume that groups have about 3-5 people in them on average. If you buy a super-sense that you can just "give to all your allies" we think that's 5x the cost (so if you have 10 people in your group--yay you!).

The requirement that you touch the people, though, limits it. I am estimating to around 2x the cost since it seems a bit unlikely that this will be in play all that often if the battle is at all dynamic. Maybe 3x?

The Really Hard Part: Over Unity

So now we get to the hard part--the really hard part--how do we handle Super Speed and invulnerability combined? We looked at one option a few post ago (we called it 'Stack' for bad reasons--but we're ditching that). What's our current thinking?

Our current thinking is something called BaseLine. Remember that these TAP (Total AP Cost) Powers are based on a percentage of your total points. If you are a 100 AP character, invulnerability cost you 94 AP.

We think that there is a way to "exceed" your Total AP cost with higher Scale Number characters: specifically to say "if you are Scale Number 10 and 100 AP, you can buy TAP abilities as though you were 50 AP--but then you're Scale Number 5."

You can do this again (and again, and so on)--if you want to be Scale Number 2.5 your TAP powers are treated as though you were only 25 AP (so Invulnerability now costs 25 AP. Super Speed costs around 13).

This leaves plenty of APs for her Super Strength, Running, No Biological Weaknesses, and so on.

Exactly what Scale she starts at (I'd start her at 400 as a test-case) and how much she cuts down (I'd cut her Scale in half twice--so she's SN 100 and buys TAP abilities as though her Total AP cost was 32 AP).

Conclusions

If we decide we like this BaseLine approach--and we already like what we've tested of it--it provides a good mechanism for doing extreme characters like Batman or Captain America who also have more TAP stuff than is generally allowed. Just build them at Scale Number 2 or 4 and they come out "human scale" but can load up on TAP abilities.

This does raise a few harder questions:

When Do You Do This?

The answer is that most PCs are expected to be the same AP cost and Scale Number. If I am playing in the Super Friends game and wish to play Batman, my buddies may be Scale Number 100--but I can cut down to Scale Number, say 2 or something and buy TAP stuff for next to nothing.

Of course I'll be utterly irrelevant when it comes to dealing damage or, for that matter, unless I buy Invulnerability of some sort, taking it. I'll have to rely on large SP point pools so as not to be hit.

Is It Fair?

What we like about using Scale Number reductions to allow more TAP is that our tests seem to indicate that, if you choose the numbers with some care, the results are good. The problem, if there is one, is that you quickly run out of roles for characters who are 1/2 or 1/4th as powerful as the "power houses." 

That is kinda how the fiction works--but I'm not sure most gaming I've seen simulates power-imbalance in a fun fashion.

That said, this build does Siberian pretty well: she's a holy terror and her Scale Number might be equal to, say, Crawler, when all is said and done (if Siberian and Crawler were the two even-scale PCs ... that'd be one strange game).

Night and Fog Part 1

I'm going to take a look at a duo from the Worm-verse (an excellent super-hero web-serial you should be reading): Night and Fog.

Night and Fog are a supervillian team who are psychotics who sort of "play" at being husband and wife but are really ... something something (I'm not sure--they seemed personable enough if not exactly functional during their interlude). They compliment each other:

Let's see:

Fog
Fog is the "simpler" of the two. He can turn his body into a dark gas. If you inhale it, he can re-form and kill you. He can float around as a dark cloud choking or bloodily exploding the life out of you. Apparently his clothes turn too (I don't recall him being naked after transformation).

Night
When she is not being watched--with human sight--she turns into a super fast, super hard, multi-legged spider-like thing which is, uh, super strong--and COVERED WITH BLADES. When she transforms from human to nightmare-form she heals all damage. Her change is automatic: if she is unconscious and you take your eyes off her? Poof--she's fine.

Questions About The Characters
Here are some things we're not sure of. I've put my answers in here--but they can easily be corrected if the Worm author, Wildbow steps in.

Fog Questions

1. How susceptible is Fog to fire or other energy attacks? Will the fog "burn"? Would plasma bolts or radiation hurt him? My Answer: Somewhat--I would expect him to flee a really hot area--something hot enough to start breaking down other gases. I wouldn't expect "lasers" or something like the X-Men's Cyclops' blast to do much.
2. How big does Fog's radius get. My Answer: Big enough to fill a livingroom. 
3. Can wind-blasts disrupt him--can he re-form if he is being actively dispersed? My Answer: Yes--but they don't harm him. If he was caught in something that truly scattered him (a nuclear explosion) I would expect him to die, even if in gas form.
4. What can he do if you don't inhale him? My Answer: Not much.
5. Can he kill several people at once--or must he pick one to reconstruct inside? My Answer: One at a time--it's him reforming and I wouldn't think he could do that in "several places."

Night Questions

1. If her night-form was badly hurt and and she was then seen, would she appear unhurt--or bloody. Clearly going the other way regenerates her. My Answer: I ... don't know. I think it is more interesting if her night-form's damage remained. I think the rule would be she always wants to be in night-form rather than going back and forth constantly.
2. Just how hard is she to hurt? My Answer: Pretty tough--but not indestructible. Enough to stand up to an assault rifle but not a heavy machine gun (this is a pure guess--she might be nearly invincible for all I know).
3. Would Night transform if she was dead? My Answer: No. If you shot and killed her 

Notes

Fog is straight-forward to a degree--although our examination of the rules found some holes that needed fixing. Night is much harder because of the absolute regeneration on transformation. We're still talking about that. If her night-form maintains damage it's much easier. If she insta-heals several times a fight ... much harder.

These are not characters you would want PCs to generally play--they make a very fearsome team for the right group but they are both incredibly one-sided when their approach works ... and very vulnerable when it does not. This is hardly idea for a PC Group. This doesn't mean their illegitimate -it just means playing them would have some ... challenges.

What is "Only when not being watched worth?" In JAGS terms it is probably either a LARGE (-30% cost) or VERY LARGE (-90% Cost). Right now those are the two big-league defect-levels and there's nothing in between (but you can have more than one LARGE).

Clearly for a ranged attack, VERY LARGE is too much: snipers always attack from parts unseen. But for hand-to-hand combatants it's a lot harder to get close without being seen. We are talking about the "totality of the circumstance" as a factor (i.e. she is teamed up with someone who makes it hard to see!)--but we don't really like that for most 'circumstances.' 

At 90% Cost Break, a "D&D Thief Back-Stab" (which, presumably, has the same defect) would turn 10 APs into 100 APs. That's ... a lot. By any measure it is enough to end a single target of any reasonable point-scale. So we have to think carefully about that. Perhaps VERY LARGE should be more like 60% or 70% instead of 90%.

After some more consideration, I'll post the stats.

The Batman-Like Object

One of the things we learned when making Worm characters (which I intend to continue with--we're learning a lot) is that we really want to mix Fast Company packages with a bunch of TAP abilities like extra speed, weapons precision, and Success Point Pools.

The problem is: You Can't (really). Most meaningful combinations are "over unity."

Let me explain all that nonsense.

1. Fast Company: Fast Company packages are one of 4 (level 1 to level 4) groups of powers that you can buy a character which makes them "an action hero." Namely they tend to be quick, acrobatic, and they hit pretty hard (for a normal guy). They also take less damage than most when shot at or hit. They're resilient. So if Jason Bourne is FC Level 1--and Ozymandias from Watchmen is like Level 4 or something (and we could argue all day) you pick the bad-ass level of your character and "pay the points" and go "Now I'm Fast Co Level 3" or whatever.
2. TAP Abilities: Some abilities just cost 4 points or 8 points or even "8 points per level of the ability you buy" but SOME cost like 41% of your points. Those are TAP (Cost is based on Total Archetype Points). Things like super-speed and being hard to hit are TAP based. Things like doing a lot of damage are normal cost. Fast Company is TAP (with some normal cost as well).
3. Over Unity Characters. If you add up a lot of TAP powers whose costs are expressed as, like .41 and .18 and so on, if you get a number that is 1 or higher the character costs 100% or more of the points you have to spend. Such a character is illegal.

So what was happening? Take The Jedi.

The Jedi

For purposes of this discussion The Jedi is a character with a light saber who expects to fight other characters with light sabers. He is a Fast Company Level 2 bad-ass who has a weapon that, if it hits by 0-3 (a glancing blow) does, well, "pretty darn good" damage. If he hits by 4 or more (a vital hit) he does ... YOUR MOMMA. Basically, if he hits by 4+ he will kill almost anything human unless protected by blast door armor.

How do you deal with such a character dueling another such character? The answer is: Success Point Pools. the characters have SPs that they spend during the fight to reduce the level of blows that do hit down to the 0-3 (or even down to a miss). This means the "reasonable" level of damage will come off their Damage Points while a really good hit would eviscerate them--the SP pool ensures that won't happen with just one-lucky-hit (okay, it can--but it has to be really lucky).

This is, we think, good for the game: if you make characters this way they can engage in light-saber duels but their training (which is what the pool more or less represents) will protect them from a sudden killing blow unless from a substantially superior opponent (your opponent can spend SPs for a better hit).

The problem was: either these guys were 100's of Archetype Points or, at the higher levels, "Over Unity." A Jedi might be a lot of points--but he's not 100's of them--he has other Force Powers too. So we weren't happy with this problem.

Aren't.

What could we do?

The Batman-Like Object

When looking at the outer-range of human-style characters we choose "the batman" because he (or, you know, Captain America--he could work there too) is defined as being pretty much topped out. There might be someone better in some dimension--but not across all dimensions. Not really.

So the question was "How many points do you need to play Batman?" Not: the Batman, of course--not someone who can do everything the character ever-ever-ever did in every comic--just someone close enough to feel right. That's the BLO--the Batman-Like Object.

Is it 128? 200? 1000? I settled on 320 APs--which is  really freakin' high--but still ...

But then--what do you do about him. He's Fast Company Level something high (3 or 4, probably). He likely has SP Pool abilities like Analyze Opponent and Mass Attack (hit multiple people). He may have extra attacks or blocks (which are generally TAP abilities) and so on. He has some leadership and strategic SP pools ... probably.

So he's one of those Over Unity guys. He doesn't work--or he's like 1600 points and still not that good.

Stack

Back when I was doing cyber-senses in an earlier version of the game I wanted there to be a scout-package of sensors that didn't cost a ton of points--but I also wanted to charge a few points here and there for the better senses so that everyone didn't have them. I came up with the idea of "Stack" (a "sensory stack") where you'd invest like 4 APs or 6 APs (a lot for senses) and get like 10 APs or 16 APs--a WHOLE LOT in senses. That is: for a big investment you got a lot back. It took a little tweaking--but the idea was okay.

What if we did that for Fast Company + TAP abilities?

Fast Company L2 is .52--52% of your Total APs, whatever they are. What if TAP +STACK was 80% of your total APs but you got to add .73 TAP instead of the normal .28 TAP (.80-.52 = .28).

While we know this is complex (definitely optional rule) it has a few advantages:

• It makes (at first examination) the kinds of characters we're looking for. I've done some preliminary testing and I like the results.
• It makes characters like Worm's Jack Slash a LOT fewer points for the same punch. This is a good thing.
• The numbers aren't as bad as you'd think. The decimal numbers come from the simulator. When we put in very high TAP characters they tend to always lose to the armored guys (they can't do enough damage) and do very very well against the pure Damage Point guys--guys who are tough but have no armor. In actual gaming we don't see many characters on either extreme--but a lot more in the middle. As TAP powers don't do outright damage they suffer greatly against these "mixed" characters as they have a very hard time with armor. In other words, the high TAP values are probably overpriced for most games.

Regeneration and JAGS

I'm taking a short break from the (immensely educational) exercise of trying to test-create characters from the Worm-verse to talk for a moment about regeneration in JAGS. I'll also talk about learnings so far.

What We Have Learned
There are a few things the act of trying to create characters from the Web-Serial Worm has taught us. Here are some of the key ones:

Power Modification: We have always found this a sticking point because (a) it is complex and (b) our methodology deals with a bunch of fiddly decimal points which, frankly, no one likes. We had tried to use a "Mod Points" system which extracted some of this difficulty but, really, it doesn't seem to hold up in practice as well as in theory. So we're looking at just using decimal numbers and saying "fuck it."

There are two kinds of modifications: the kind we can test with our Java Simulator and the kind we can't. The kind we can test are things like "takes a Round to charge up" or "Armor Piercing." The kind we can't are things like "only in sun-light." For the first the rule is easy: you take whatever the tested modifiers are and you multiply the damage done by them.

For the latter you assign a modifier of SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE, VERY-LARGE or EXTREME and you add all the modifiers and use the chart:

So three Mediums make a Large and so on. These are different methodologies and so they will need different explanations. It's messy--but we're getting a much better handle on it than we had in "theory land" where we didn't have a good set of highly problematic characters to test the system against.

Errors and Typos: Although we are having the book proof-read, the proof-reader is not a roleplayer. This means there are classes of errors that can't be caught by her. Using these characters tested some of the powers we'd considered but had never implemented in play. In most cases the raw material was there for the character but the specifics were not in the book. For example:

1. Animal Control and Swarm Body. The powers were more or less there but as written they didn't work to my satisfaction.
2. Vital Strike was in the book but needed the "only if you Penetrate" option to be complete.
3. The power Bodyguard works well--but additional levels of it are not cost effective.

Batteries of Attacks: We need to think hard about how we will handle certain types of "grouped" attacks. The current rules say "you pay full cost for your most expensive attack and then 1/3rd cost thereafter." This is fine for Super Strength and Heat Vision--but if you have either a billion different types of super-arrow or a bunch of normal guns and knives this gets kind of silly (do I pay for my Glock AND my six-shooter ... and my knife?). There needs to be some kind of sanity check rule that allows for "batteries" of attacks" when the GM and players rule that they are not really additive in terms of value (the arrow guy does get some benefit from having the Tangler Arrow and the Explosive Arrow and the Armor Piercing Arrow--yes--but if he just dumps all those points into the Cruise Missile Arrow he'll probably win more fights that way assuming most fights come down to dealing straight-up damage ... which we think they will).

Regeneration

In the Worm-verse there are a lot of characters with regeneration--far more than we've usually had in our games. Part of the reason is that most game systems we've played haven't paid a lot of attention to regeneration and part of the reason is that our general view of it was as a minor after-the-battle type of thing rather than "your primary defense" sort of thing.

Here's how it works today in JAGS.

1. Round 2/3 FIGHT! One of the powers we have is the Super Street Fighter power where you can, once or twice a combat, heal a significant ("Major") amount of damage and get rid of Damage Effects. Essentially you get your "second wind."
2. Healing: Healing powers can be used on others or yourself and you get back X-number of DP for some REA. This X-number recovers once per day.
3. Fast Healing: you heal quickly but not in-combat-quickly. You are probably good to go an hour or two after combat.
4. Immortality: There is a level of immortality which is basically just "I heal completely--even if killed." As with other kinds of 'combat-immortality' this is pretty much "all your points." (or, well, so many of them you are not likely to be even remotely effective against people of your same scale).
5. ADP recovery. Ablative Damage Points may be actual flesh-and-blood (and therefore heal slowly) but they can also be a bunch of other things (cybernetics? Generally "cussedness"?). We allow ADP to "Come back after a scene" if the narrative allows for it in some way (i.e. the damage done could be declared superficial, you get bandaged or get painkillers, you stop by the cyber-repair shop--or whatever). 

In the Worm-verse there are a few things that are needed to be added:

1. Crawler's Regeneration: I would say this character gets a Major Wound back each Round. This probably does not remove damage effects (if he gets Stunned or Dazed, he still suffers it) but would wake him up pretty quickly. At this level you pretty much have to kill him in one shot or do extreme, grievous damage to have a chance.
2. Really Fast Regeneration: Healing one or two Minor Wounds per Round would be below Crawler's level but still pretty extreme. It would make any fight where you didn't dominate quickly a losing proposition but not as bad as Crawler's. I'm not exactly sure who I'd give this to--but probably just about any character with better-than-Lung's regeneration.
3. Lung's Regeneration: This might be "Fast healing" (which we have) but is probably, rather, some (low-ish) number of Damage Points per second so long as he isn't at Injured Condition (badly hurt, out-of-the-fight). It would also explicitly heal limbs. The reason to make this separate from after-the-fight speed regeneration is that fighting Lung is explicitly a bad deal if it goes on for a while. He gets stronger as he fights. This, in JAGS terms, would mean healing damage taken during the fight.
4. Night's Regeneration: she heals "instantly" and completely when she's not being looked at. It's not clear to me if, in the darkness, her attack-form always insta-heals or if it's just the transition back and forth that heals her. This functions even if she is unconscious (nobody blink!). 

The Good News--We Can Simulate: I'd normally be very reluctant to include these abilities in the game as, if we got them wrong, we could "break it." To address this, we built a Java simulator that runs quite complex battles of characters against each other. Usually these characters are pretty basic--the battle is done to isolate a specific ability and see how its presence shifts the odds of victory around at different cost levels.

We don't currently have the hooks in the code for these levels of regeneration but we're putting them in.

This isn't being done "just" so that you could play Worm-verse characters but rather because, after looking at the characters we've decided that regeneration at a level of being a "primary" defense.

Trickster Part 2

After completing Trickster Part 1 in our ongoing series of play-test creating characters from the Worm-verse (an excellent web-serial about super heroes/villains), we had some discussion and did some deeper examination. Here's where Trickster wound up:

He's Bigger In Real Life

So a few things:

Area of Effect-Selective
The ability to hit an area but only hit specific targets in it ("Smart Bomb") has to be less attractive than the ability to have a few additional attacks every other Round (which is what I gave Worm-verse uber-villain Jack Slash). After doing some math it looks like the "damage divisor" that hits the sweet spot is 3.5.

What does that mean?

It means if you have an "attack" (like, say, a gun) and you want the ability to hit multiple targets you have two choices: (a) buy something like Mass Attack which gives you the ability to fire directly on separate targets--but usually something like "every other Round" or "once every three Rounds" or something or (b) hit an area-of-effect but within that area only hit enemies.

These have to be "roughly even"--one choice should not always be better than the other. The deal is that the attack that gives you more to-hit rolls every other Round should do a bit more damage than the attack that always hits "everyone you want to" within the attack's effective radius.

It turns out dividing the damage you do by around 3.25 is that sweet spot. The "Area-Attack-Selective" does less damage per attack than the shots-every-other-Round. It's better at taking out larger crowds though.

Trickster has this--and he pays dearly for it.

The Swap Other People Attack Further Examined
I'd call this attack Castle after the chess move and while it may not make it into the game in print, here's how I'd do it:

• Standard Effect: Targets are swapped but this does NOT redirect any attacks they can make (they simply re-target if they were launching an attack)
• Major Effect: Targets are swapped and any attack that was being launched will miss harmlessly.
• Critical Effect: Targets are swapped and the target (a) will be hit if there was an attack coming at the swapped character and (b) if one of the targets was launching an attack it may be re-directed at someone else.
• Catastrophic: Same as Catastrophic effect but targets placed in line of fire are at -4 to Block/Dodge.

I'm rating this a B+ as before.

Bodyguard and Defender

I gave Trickster these powers because they allow him to (a) use his power defensively for 1 REA instead of 3 (so he can do this a lot and often) and (b) he can use it to defend "his team" 2x per Round.

NOTES: Bodyguard Level 2 isn't especially cost effective. It costs 8 AP for another +7 Damage Points (a bad deal) and the ability to do one more defense per Round. Maybe additional "levels" should cost 4 AP instead of 8?

Trickster Is Over Points

I experimented with a few builds and some ideas (what if he had a "mega swap" usable once per combat for a lot of extra juice?) and decided to just build him on "more points." He is, after all, the leader of a powerful group of supervillains. I selected 192 AP as a large number and put a whopping 160 AP into his attack. We'll discuss the ramifications of that in a bit.

Trickster In Combat

Trickster pays a huge 160 AP for his ability giving him 120 Intensity. This is enough to 'swap' Weld or Jack Slash reliably but NOT enough to swap them into immediate danger or reliably re-direct their attacks. In the web serial he swaps Crawler--a massive character--with a garbage truck. He can't do that either.

A 64,000lb garbage truck would have about 4200 Damage Points in JAGS so it's out of scale for any normal character. If Trickster was Scale Number 50 he could do it pretty easily--but then he'd have 50x as many Damage Points too--and be virtually indestructible.

On the other hand: Trickster on the battlefield will be enormously disruptive for any sane group of characters to deal with. He will be constantly interrupting any action they take and then making rolls to swap characters around. In addition to the spatial/tactical issues (swapping hand-to-hand characters out of combat-range or the like) every attack launched--and especially those launched at him--will have the risk of landing on an ally--a substantial risk.

If he was 128 AP--a legal "starting character" he would clock in at around 76 Intensity--which is still enough to swap most 128 AP characters for spatial movement and can swap Coil's guards around all day long. He could massacre a team of mercs.

So What About The Garbage Truck?

One of the things that JAGS (and, I will submit, simulative RPG's in general) has problem with is characters who are very, very effective outside their ability to "take it." Consider Purity. Her blast, at full power, can "level a building." There doesn't seem to be much by way of limitations on it--she can fire it often and accurately (when she is fully powered up, anyway).

What if she were to "fight herself"? The mirror-match is not the end-all-be-all of good gaming but it's a decent litmus test to see if your characters and system is going to work well. If the test comes down to "who fires first" then you are possibly setting yourself up for some bad gaming if the characters are "intended to fight."

In JAGS firearm combat is fairly deadly for normal people--it isn't as deadly as real life (we looked at real firearms data) but it's pretty bad. We don't even enforce things like blood-loss and realistic you-get-shot-you-aren't-playing-for-the-rest-of-the-scenario healing times. However, when you get to "destroy a building" any hand-waving no longer works.

If Purity can shoot a beam that'll do 4k damage (destroy a garbage truck) then if she does fire on anyone--Jack Slash, Weld, whatever--if she hits, she'll total them. And then some.

So it's not clear what the "right thing" to do is in that situation. Our Scale Number rules allow for extremely powerful characters but they increase your ability to take it too. 

A Thought: We do have some (sketchy) rules around 'over-powered' attacks. These are really not meant for super-hero characters--but if an attack is designated as 'over-powered' then if any "PC or Named NPC" (important character) is targeted by it, they get some very powerful defenses such as "Any defensive action ALWAYS works." You could do Purity this way: if she fires her full power beam at Jack Slash and he has any action points for a defense it'll miss--but if he doesn't, he's in big trouble--but you can't really do Trickster that way since he pretty much "never misses."

Basically, in JAGS, something like Crawler is modeled at such a high power-scale due to his size and durability that even basic super-scale attacks are like trying to beat up a garbage truck: you'd better be really high power-level.

A NOTE: A lot of superhero fiction doesn't get the variance in power-level right either. I can kick the door of a car and maybe dent it. I can't do that to the size of a garbage truck. A 9mm would probably bounce off the side of a truck--but a 125mm shell goes right through it (they did in Iraq when garbage trucks were used against modern armor). There is a huge difference in the kinetic energy of a handgun to a machine gun shell (which does not equate 1:1 to damage--but it is probably semi-proportional). If a super hero can be hurt by a powerful rifle shell, the plasma cone of a Rocket Propelled Grenade (which will cut anything but main-battle-tank front armor) will leave a fist sized hole in them ... at least.

One More Note: Crawler isn't really hard to teleport because "he's so big" but rather "because he has so many Damage Points"--which, yeah, he has because he's so big. Remember that we're using DP as a proxy for how-bad-ass someone is. If Trickster in JAGS tries to swap Accord (a pretty big-league super-villain) for someone about to be incinerated in a nuclear reactor it'll probably fail too because Accord probably has a ton of Damage Points (even if Accord is armored his armor will give him DP or ADP in JAGS). Again, this is intentional: the game system wants to maintain a level of 'balance' that prevents someone with a small investment in a "cheap shot" from taking out heavy-hitters.

In this case it doesn't really jive with the fiction.

What About Trickster As a Leader?

I considered giving him (a) A success Point Pool for defensive actions. This would help ensure that, during the early stages of a fight at least, he was almost always successful in redirecting attacks and (b) some Commander type stuff--but I didn't.

For one thing the first wasn't really necessary: his investment in the Swap attack will tend to make him very successful against anything he'll reasonably fight and for the second? Well, he's not much of a leader. He's good with the psychological aspects of manipulating teammates to kinda keep them going (although their innate loyalty to Noelle is really central to that) but he doesn't seem to present much of a "leadership" role in their combat effectiveness.

JAGS has ways of handing the more mundane elements of leadership with "normal character stuff" and I think that would work for Trickster without necessarily requiring that he hand out Success Points.

In the end, I give Trickster's build a C+. His power "works" but it requires (a) a new Resisted Attack (which, okay, people are expected to be able to create--but even so it required a lot of modification and a little interpretation) (b) he's over points to have the base-line level of effectiveness I think he needs, and (c) he still can't do everything in the stories the way his character did (that's, again, a willful interpretation but still).

On the plus side, Trickster as a character--even at 128 AP--would be absolutely AWFUL to fight against which is in keeping with the story.

Exit questions:

• If Purity hits a clone of herself with her beam is it instant death--or does she have some native defense that allows her to absorb that level of damage?
• If Trickster tries to swap Accord (or a similar bad-ass) into certain death does a master super-villain have any "working defense" against it? Is there some way to "break out of Trickster's grab effect before it lands?"

Post Script: Trickster should have some kind of 'tactile detection sense' which he can use with his power. He can "feel if he has someone" before swapping them--so that's maybe 4 AP and some extra Damage Points. It's also possible he can lock-on to someone and then swap them "shortly after." If that's true then that might be another enhancement.

Final Note: we describe enhancements as Small, Medium, and Large with explicit decimal multipliers for these. This doesn't work for tested effects like Armor Piercing or Area-Effect-Selective where the numbers don't fit neatly into those categories. So we need to think on how to explain that to people.

Trickster Part 1

Trickster is a character in the Worm-verse who presents a variety of special challenges and questions for JAGS.

His basic capability is that given two objects "within his range" (which is considerable) of roughly equal size and mass, he can teleport-swap them with each other. He can do this "instantly" (the closer, the faster) and can, for example:

1. Swap his team, who is surrounded, with various gun-men surrounding them at the time of fire.
2. Swap himself with your friend--so as you are about to hit him, you wind up hitting your friend.
3. Swap a garbage-truck sized monster with an actual garbage truck.
4. More mundanely, teleport himself or someone else, away from or into danger if there's a mannequin or something available to swap.

There's more--but that's enough to start with.

Teleportation In JAGS

Teleportation in JAGS comes in three or four flavors. There's Tactical Teleport which is just an expensive form of movement and lets you teleport around as a long action (meaning if you teleport away or teleport close to a combatant they can hit you on the way in or out). This is "safe" in terms of the game rules (it doesn't overbalance combat).

There is Strategic / Long-Range Teleport (and gates) which let you cover long distances--again, as a long action.

There is Flicker which is basically the "blink" power which lets you move in or out of combat before you can be hit (it still costs an action) and lets you 'teleport-dodge.'

There is Snatch which lets you teleport someone or something to you.

There is no "swap" power.

How The Game System Treats Teleporting People

Teleporting other people is usually "pretty bad." Sure, maybe you're teleporting your buddy out of danger--but if you can teleport enemies--and, say, teleport them a pretty good distance--then you could teleport them to prison (an inescapable prison--or, I dunno, the Phantom Zone). If that's extreme, how about "up in the air" (if they can't fly or take the fall easily).

If it has to be from one solid ground to another (which isn't terribly unreasonable) then you, at very least, could have an iron box or something to teleport them into. Put a thick lexan window in it if you have to be able to see the target zone.

The way we handle doing unpleasant things to people that doesn't involve outright damage is with a Resisted Attack. This compares your attack's Intensity and their Damage Points and ADP and there's a resisted roll. The more you succeed your roll by (the better you roll) the greater you can screw them over. This is how Mind Control works. This is how Fear powers work. It's how nerve toxins work--and so on (disease, trapping someone in another dimension, and so on).

Resisted Attacks go from A+ (where any success is death or close to it) (Death Ray) to D+ where the best success still leaves someone able to flee, usually (weak tear-gas). There are some pretty good guidelines for making up Resisted Attack levels (there are four) and assigning a letter-grade and figuring out the cost.

Players are expected to be able to do that with some GM assistance--so having a Teleport Other power isn't too hard to figure out.

How bad is the worst case? Well, it's probably distance based in this case. Probably the best roll gives a success when the target is still at an extreme range. It could also be the level of match necessary (a really good roll allows a less-close swap).

NOTE: This changes two things about the character right away. (1) The power's ability is moderated by how bad-ass the target is (so Trickster probably cannot Swap Crawler--a villain the size of a garbage truck--unless he has a very high power) (2) It does not "always work." It can fail on him--something that doesn't seem possible in the Worm-verse.

These rules are here because (a) it's a game--so things that always work on opponents are generally not a big part of the terrain and (b) the based-on-damage-points construction makes the same "Cause Fear" power that works on mooks ineffective against Darth Vader even if the build the GM went with didn't include some special anti-fear powers. I can discuss this more--but it's part of the theory that we'd prefer simpler characters to complex characters and do not want to have large lists of defenses just to make sure that characters don't fall prey to unusual attacks at every turn.

Teleporting Two People

The above power would work fine for just teleporting someone somewhere (a "Beam Me Up" power). However, that's not how Tricker's power works--it hits two objects at once. We could model this as two to-hit rolls, but that doesn't really do the power the way we'd want to. That's certainly not how it plays (and that would suck up a lot of actions).

The most likely way to do it is to treat it as Area-Target with Selective fire. This is used for "smart bomb" style attacks where you can damage just-your-enemies. In this case it can hit "everyone" and then Trickster can pick and choose sets of two people to swap. This makes it (right now) about 1.5x more expensive.

We need to determine if this is the right call: if it was more cost effective for Jack Slash to buy Area-Target, Selective with his knife than to buy extra attacks every other Round that's probably not the behavior we want to encourage. We like having extra attacks every other Round.

But so far, this is how we're doing it.

Teleport As a Defense Or In Response To An Offense

So now we get to the situation where someone says "I shoot Trickster" and he says "I swap your buddy with me and you shoot your friend." This is using the power as (a) a 'Blocking' action. Usually when you block an attack or teleport-dodge out of the way, it just misses (the GM can try to determine where the attack goes--but even if there is another character "roughly in the line of fire" it is in no way guaranteed to hit that target. It is also using it as (b) an attack on someone else when a person shoots at you.

This is a general violation of the JAGS battle rules. However, there's a way: Damage Fields are things like being electrified, or being on fire, or have acidic blood or whatever. When you are hit, they trigger and, usually, damage the attacker.

This is what Trickster has--with the exceptions that: (a) he does have to declare an action unlike a Damage Field--but it's a blocking-style action so he can do it when attacked and (b) it triggers the Area Target so he can, in response to an attack, spend REA on a "block" and then swap groups of two as he wants--if he can make the rolls necessary to do it--which he probably can--all his points are there.

NOTE: to swap someone into the line of fire you probably need a higher-level success than swapping them just to a location.

The 4 levels of success would probably look like:

1. Standard Level: Target is Teleported
2. Major Level: Target will miss with an attack (necessary as a Block)
3. Critical and Catastrophic Level: Target is hit with incoming attack or targets the wrong person.

This rates a B+ which is fairly "kind" to him since directing other's attacks at teammates is pretty effective.

NOTE: this configuration allows him to react to attacks on his person. He can (and would) buy Bodyguard to react to attacks on other members of his 'team.'

What Does This Cost

Right now, let's assume he puts about 64 AP into it--an astonishing half his points. The Rating for Swap is B+ and it has a delivery system of "6" which is Area of Effect Selective. When we add usable as Block Defense that's probably / 1.3. This means:

1. For 8 Archetype Points he gets 14 Intensity.
2. With 64 AP invested he gets 111 Intensity. That's ... a LOT.

It's not enough to do a garbage truck though (although he can swap any of the characters created).

Worm Characters: Weld

In the process of (seemingly randomly, I'm sure) picking Worm characters to model I have chosen Weld. Weld is a young leader of the Wards (the government sanctioned teen-aged in-training super-team franchise). He is a made-of-metal super-strong, super durable guy who manages to be "leadership material" despite being visibly non-human (something that isn't said much about but seems to be almost an actual policy--if a secret one).

Weld is metallic and can deform his body--somewhat. He can stretch limbs and deform but he does not seem totally plastic or able to slip under doors or anything like that. He is also pretty much non-biological. I believe he does not eat or sleep (I might have that wrong).

In addition to his non-human biology he 'welds' to metal when he touches it. Sometimes this is unintentional: he can shake your hand and bond to your wedding ring. If someone fires metallic darts at him, they'll stick to him and slowly be absorbed messing his face up for a while.

Weld was both straightforward and posed some interesting questions:

If You Squint You Can See Him ...

Weld is built using the Automaton rules: he has "No Biological Weaknesses." This means what it says--he doesn't need to eat nor sleep. The rules say he needs some 'down time' (around 4 hours a day) which is pretty non-productive--but he's more machine or golem than flesh. Chemical attacks are meaningless. He can't get sick. He doesn't need to breathe.

Most importantly: he does not take traumatic Penetrating Damage (he still takes damage--but it doesn't get the huge multipliers biological people take when a "good hit" is scored and their armor doesn't hold up).

A few points:

Stretching
I gave him Stretching with just the basic power (it also has multiple "levels") and a VERY LARGE defect which is that he can only deform limbs and extend them. He doesn't use stretching to move or slide through small spaces. He can still be grabbed or grappled. He doesn't "bounce" or take negative damage modifiers from attacks that deform him. In short, he can alter himself a bit--but that's it. The cost goes from 15 to 2 AP.

Automaton, Armor, Strength
Weld has Super Strength, the Iron Automaton package, and extra "armored skin." What does this do? It gives him a punch for a whopping 45 points of damage, a weight of around 800 lbs, and 24 points of Armor with a 60 PEN Defense--not that he'll need it much since he doesn't take PEN damage (but wait--there IS a reason).

In the story he "grows" a club-weapon and I bought that with the defect that it takes a 5 REA action to create. I also allowed him to grow a sharp weapon (although to my knowledge he has not) and use that to stab people. His Basic Damage is built with the cost-modifier to allow the use of a blade.

Skin Armor: In the story Weld gets stabbed in the eye by a mind-controlled ally. The stabbing is with a dart and it hurts him ... a little. In JAGS Full Armor is generally treated a bit like a 'force field' in that it covers everything. But the reality is that everyone has weak spots. A weak-point is treated as "coverage 8" meaning you need to hit Weld by 8 or more and then, if you do (that's a really good hit) you can choose to bypass the armor. I left Weld with 8pts of armor from Automaton and +16 from "Skin Armor" with the weak-point defect (-1 AP to the cost--a minor difference).

This means that the attacker got a very lucky hit and was hitting only against 8 Armor. It's unlikely that Shadow Stalker, without using some special powers, could deal 8pts of damage--a strong person stabbing you with a shiv does around maybe 3-4 PEN--but it's at least possible a few points could get through.

On the other hand, a full-auto assault rifle burst does around 27 PEN and Weld would feel it to the tune of around 3pts of Damage on average but he can take that all day.

Damage Points and ADP
Weld has around 38 Damage Points (a moderate number--lowish for a super hero brick) and 66 ADP (which is a good number for him). If he hits himself he will take about 1/3rd to 1/2 of his damage each hit and will be able to hurt himself reasonably badly in 2-5 Rounds (his Automaton body can actually go longer than normal before it starts feeling the damage). He is very tough.

Absorbing Metal
There is no "weld with metal" power in JAGS but there is Magnetic Control which I bought at Level 4 (which is, frankly, a lot) and gave it a VERY LARGE (-88%) defect that says it's only to stick and then "absorb" metal. This gives it a 26 Grapple pull which is more than a normal man could break. If something gets stuck in him, he can break it off and get it out--but mostly, it's stuck (if you don't have his super-strength, it's really stuck). This would also apply if he was struck with a metal weapon.

I am thinking on how to handle the "always active" element of this (usually sticking something to you in a fight takes an action). There are rules for "damage fields" (such as being on fire). Those might apply reducing the strength a bit.

I treated the "absorbing metal" (and his ability to shed it) like eating metal. There is no specific power for a very unusual diet like that--but he's super strong and tough--the game rules would allow him to bite off and chew metal. There is no reason not to allow skin absorption of it.

Leadership
Weld is a pretty strong leader. I had the points and gave him Commander Level 1 so he can lend SPs to his allies (as well as himself).

Weld vs. Jack Slash
What would happen if Weld fought Jack Slash? Well, Weld is exactly (or, well, in the Worm-verse) the 128 AP character Slash doesn't want to be stuck in a small arena with. For one thing, Slash's super-damage will never apply: Weld doesn't have internal organs. For another thing Weld's armor is too high for Jack to really hurt if he can't get the Armor Piercing working.

However, Jack can. Jack's Armor Piercing attack is 36 PEN Value. Weld's full defense is 60--that's a roll of a 15- Armor Save for Weld if Jack does not hit weak points. That's "almost always" (above 90% of the time).

However, Jack has about a 17- to hit. He can hit weak points on a 9- (around 45% of the time) and he will. He can attack around 3-4 times a Round and still dodge incoming punches (Weld will attack twice a Round and will not save any action points trying to block Jack as he can't block ranged attacks anyway). Each hit that Jack gets on a weak point will deal around 15 Damage to Weld as the Armor Piercing effect will remove the (light) under-armor.

The fight goes something like this: Jack goes first and hits 4 times landing two hits for 30 damage through weak points. Weld "Feels nothing" (this is against ADP) and closes with a flying tackle. Jack dodges (Jack's dodge is probably much better than Weld's to-hit roll).

Jack goes first the second Round and does two attacks saving two defenses. This yields a 15 pt hit. A few more of these and Jack will be hitting Damage Points, which Weld will feel.

Weld hits on a "good fighter" 14-. Jack dodges on an expert 17-. About 1 in 3 or 4 attacks will hit. When they do, they will hit for about 60%-80% damage: about 38pts. Jack takes off 8 for his armor and suffers 30. Jack can take about three of those before he's likely to drop.

This gives Jack about 3 or 4 Rounds to finish Weld. He may have to get a little lucky--but I would put him at a bit of a favorite to win (albeit marginal).