Starter Kit compiled errata and clarifications

It's starting to become clear that there's a lot in the starter kit that's either vague or just plain wrong.  I'm starting a thread listing as many of these things as possible, in hopes that this will become a stickied reference.

I'm not including typoes and other errors that don't change the meaning, only things that are missing or incorrect.

Please feel free to reply with anything additional you find, and I'll add them to this post.

Errata

• Some hero abilities listed as "I" ("Inherent") are mis-labeled.  Usually, if it involves the player making a roll, it should be an Action or a Reaction.  Specific abilities we know are wrong:
  • Absolute Zero's Modular realignment should be a Reaction
  • Bunker's BUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDA should be an Action
• The "gameplay example" on page 2 has Legacy taking damage equal to the Min die as a minor twist.  While the GM is of course free to do this, it's a poor example, since the default minor twist is to lose health equal to the Max die.  (The difference between "takes damage" and "loses health" is also relevant--in this case, Legacy's Fortitude would have reduced "damage taken" but not "health lost.")  https://greaterthangames.com/comment/183576#comment-183576
• Page 16 suggests that "the scene" takes turns.  This isn't correct.  The environment takes a turn (even if no environment is described), and the scene tracker advances on the environment's turn.  https://greaterthangames.com/comment/183523#comment-183523
• Minions created as a threat by the environment act on the environment's turn, the round after they were created.  https://greaterthangames.com/comment/183523#comment-183523

Clarifications

• Unless otherwise explicitly stated, Actions always use three dice (Power, Quality, Status).  Reactions and Out abilities always use one die (specified in the ability).
• When new minions enter a fight, if there's an existing group of that type of minion, they join the group and act when they do.  If there aren't any existing minions of that type, they form a new group and go for the first time in the next round. (Minions created by the environment are an exception, see errata above.)  https://greaterthangames.com/comment/182808#comment-182808
• When you cause a twist, you choose the twist first and then roll.  No rolling first and then choosing a twist that's weaker based on your roll!  https://greaterthangames.com/comment/183208#comment-183208
• Whoever creates a bonus or penalty chooses when that bonus or penalty is to be applied, before the roll.  This should be appropriate to what the penalty or bonus was supposed to be, although the GM should interpret this generously (e.g. if Wraith was suffering from "I dropped all my knives -2," that wouldn't do anything to her doing detective work).  https://greaterthangames.com/comment/186384#comment-186384
• Bonuses and penalties apply to an "effect die," after min/mid/max is determined.  Most actions have only one effect die, but abilities that cause more than one separate effect have multiple effect dice, and each mod applies to only one (again, determined before rolling).  For instance, if Tachyon wants to deal lots of damage with a Hypersonic Assault, she can declare before the roll to add a bonus she has to the damage effect of that ability (i.e. whichever the min die ends up being).  https://greaterthangames.com/comment/186384#comment-186384
• If an ability says that a thing happens sometimes, that's in addition to what happens normally.  E.g. Bunker's Grenade Launcher always attacks up to 3 targets but also damages Bunker or causes a twist on doubles.  https://greaterthangames.com/comment/184938#comment-184938

Ooh, this is really good, but it'd be more helpful if you included links to the threads that the corrections/clarifications were said in.

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/unity-questions-unified-11148 —

Clarification: Unity's created bot die size goes to D12 in case of boosts. (Mindwanderer)

Clarification: Bunker's Out of Suit mode is for circumstances where he shouldn't be in the suit, usually for social reasons. (RySmith6)

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/bunker-grenade-launcher-question-11058 —

Bunker's Grenade Launcher: on doubles... you still get the full normal effect in addition to the twist/self damage. (davethegame)

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/environment-turns-potential-spoilers-for-non-gms-10940 —

davethegame notes the following:

The Environment also has a slot in the Action Order, under which the following things would happen (GM can choose which order): 1. Advance Scene Tracker, 2. have all Environment-created minions act, and 3. introduce new environment threat (if it doesn't have one already) OR activate one of its twists based on the status of the scene. 

This is presented as a clarification, but it should be errata - as the Gameplay guide specifies the Tracker gets its own slot in the turn order (p. 16), and the environment as well (p. 17)

RySmith6 and I aren't official sources, so we don't count, but Dave's are good.  Especially a good catch on the "scene" not actually having a turn despite the rules saying it does.

Mindeanderer: why are you so convinced that you loose health equal to your max die on a major twist?  I know it says max at one point in the book and min in another, but why are you sure it’s max that’s correct?  I’d err on the side of min (especially as how Chris does it in his twitch stream game.)  After all, if you roll a 12, 4, and 1, dealing 12 irreducible damage for a minor twist sreens pretty harsh.  That’s enough to take certain heroes from yellow zone to out for a ‘minor’ twist.

Because of this and this:

I see where degausser is coming from though. Specifically, the part about "you'll most likely get a minor twist from rolling poorly" isn't even necessarily relevant. Just because your mid is a 4 doesn't mean your max is more likely to be a 5 or a 6, it's just as likely to be a 10 or 12 like in degausser's example. As I'm talking about it, I think mid + min would be best for a minor twist, and probably max or max + min for major.

True, but honestly, I think the whole Overcome table is broken.  If you can't use a Principle on the roll, even attempting an Overcome should be an act of desparation, i.e. the stakes are so high that it's worth a heavy cost to pass it right now.  From Dave's comments, I infer that it was balanced with Principles in mind.

first of all, thanks for the source of where you got your information from.  I appreciate it.

secondly, remember that damage is the most boring minor twist of the bunch.  Look at all of the other twists we came up with that aren’t that bad.  A minor persistent hinderance that anyone can overcome, maybe just angering/annoying another player (such as Stella Nova painfully pulling memories out.)  Or activating a curse that you were trying to avoid.  (Like stella nova teleporting the talisman but not the box at the end of ep. 2). 

Minor twists aren’t nessissarily all that bad.  That’s why I think they should do less damage.  A minor twist shouldn’t take you from yellow health to out.

Actually, and I made this argument in the other thread, I think that all the minor twists are excessively harmful.

• The hero is hindered using Max+Min.  That's probably a -3 or -4.  Not too bad if your next action was a boost or hinder, but if it was an attack, you're almost guaranteed to fail, and an overcome will be downgraded a whole step, resulting in a chaining twist at best, a wasted turn more likely, or possibly the dreaded "spectacular failure".
• The scene tracker advances a step.  This is frequently horrible; most of the failures and near-failures I've seen have been because the scene tracker ran out, and losing 1/8 of it is a big deal.
• The hero is separated from the group.  Being unable to assist or be assisted by the other heroes can be crippling, depending on the situation.
• Spawn a new minion.  Congratulations, your action probably wastes the action of another hero--depending on what you achieved, things might have been better had you done nothing.  If your teammates are unlucky, your one action might waste the actions of several teammates and might cost your team some health as well.  It's a good one if your team has mass attacks, but right now I'm of the opinion that unlimited mass attacks are overpowered anyway.

There's no objective way to balance story stuff.  They can be the most lenient (they change the story rather than just "making things harder"), but can also be the worst (like creating a new challenge that requires additional Overcome actions... which in turn trigger more minor twists... creating a spiral that causes you to fail the whole scene).

I think this is an instance of the superhero comic book theme trumping conventional mechanics. Comic book characters don't tend to do what they aren't good at, or at least don't do so regularly, because repeated failure doesn't make for a good story.

But, other players can boost the Overcome, and hero point bonuses and collected issues will help, so it becomes more of a self-learning/team effort thing.

Just my thoughts, of course, and I'm not saying it's perfect,

As someone who played this game many times, my group rolls overcome checks all the time even when it not the principle. Are you telling me your hero will not save people because someone is in danger? The odds in this game are a bit fairer so you would be amazed at how many times players can succeed without a principle and fail when rolling them.

Advancing the scene tracker is a good way to get all the players into the yellow and red zone. The shorter time also helps player Focus on the task at hand (only once has my player gone past time timer, but at that point, it was just taking care to d4 minion). Like Christopher said in the Gm prep session, GM has to give room and time for the twist to complicated the scene and adjust for that. And the best park of twists is answering your own question listed in the principal area.  And besides most of the time the GM would come up with a cool twist that relates to the story, that chart is just a suggestion if you run out of idea/ keep away impromptu fatigue.

Mind Wander I want to sit you down and play this RPG with you, Are you going to Gen Con?

I don't get why you are so negative on it Mindwanderer.  I mean, if you don't want to play, you don't want to play, but this is a superhero game where you are expected to have exciting plot twists that make the game more challenging.  No one wants to play a game where you just breeze through the thing with no problems whatsoever.  Let's take a look at some of your conserns 1 at a time.

1)You are hindered.  A massive hinder is bad yes, but there are ways to mitigate that.  Dynamo (in sentinels live ep. 2)  has a power that lets him ignore hinders on his attack, so he just built up hinders until there was a convenient turn for him to blow them all off in one go.  And if your hinder turns an overcome into another plot twist, I don't know many GMs that would just keep assigning Hinders and chaining them.  Not if they want to keep their players at the table.

2)Scene Tracker advances a step.  Can be bad, sure, but can also be fine.  I've played in games where the scene tracker never got beyond three or four, so advancing a step is not always terrible.

3. Hero seperated from group: bad, but not terrible.  Had this happen to me with legacy once.  I just punched a bunch of minions while wraith and everyone did their thing.  You are right, though, this one is nasty.

4)Spawn a new minion.  You know there are a lot of hero powers that have AoE right?  I mean, Tachyon has one, as well as Violet heart.  In fact, in the Sentinels Live ep. 2 GM prep, we learn that the pepper genie, as an action, can summon a friggin d8 worth of d4 minions per round.  Not really that big a deal as Violet Heart can kill them all with her AoE attack AND hit the Pepper Genie at the same time.  

I mean, just re-listen to Sentinels live ep. 2.  In the end, the thing that was the most fun and challenging for them was when they accidentally summoned the Impossim.  It was the thing that drove the most danger and caused the most excitement.  If it hadn't been summoned, the pepper genie would have been just a joke, as he got a -3 persistant hinder off the bat because of a lucky roll from a PC and then just had poor rolls.  Without the Impossim that final fight would have been far less satisfying and climactic.

Listen, I'm not saying the system doesn't need tweaking.  Just saying, avoiding saving civilians or superheroing unless it specifically plays to your strengths seems to be . . . well . . . not in the realm of the superhero.  

Just . . . let's look at a hypothetical situation.

Gloomweaver cultists are going to sacrifice a bunch of innocent civilians held in a binding magical circle.  Tacheon is there to stop them.  She rolls an overcome to disrupt the magic circle using agility+research+(Let's say green zone).  She's not using principle of speed because she's doing this slowly to make sure she gets it right, and it certainly isn't science.  So she roll a normal overcome and gets a success with a minor twist.  She could:

-Summon a minion.  Oh, that will be so hard for her to deal with.  Or she could ignore the minion and evac the civilians with her super speed.

-Suffers a hinderance.  Well her next action will probably be evacing the civilians, which she probably doesn't have to roll for, or if she does, she'll be using her principle of speed to overcome with her max die as she super speeds them out of harm's way.

-Adds an opsticle: Well she trapped them inside the magic circle but they won't be sacraficed now.  Now she can focus on defeating the cultists or whatever now that the civilians are safe, and she can get them out at her leisure.

-Seperated from the group: Well her next action will likely STILL be an overcome will be getting the civilians out of there, so she doesn't really need other heroes for that.

So should she have A) Let the cultists kill the civilians because the overcome wasn't based on her principles, or B) Did what she did and deal with the concequences of a minor twist?

I can’t reply at length right now (on my phone, sick in bed), but can a mod split this thread please? The topic changed at post #5. I’d like the main thread to be an objective reference for confirmed rules, not a discussion on their merits.

All I can say is, that hasn't been my experience.  Granted, I've only seen a handful of games, but in each one, the heroes running out of HP was typically the lesser threat compared to the scene tracker running out.  Getting the heroes into the red zone via the scene tracker is a terrible idea–they'll only have one or two actions left each (up to 3 with a "long scene"), so those actions had better win them the fight straight off (and if it was that good, they could have taken a minor twist to do it while they were in the yellow anyway).

Sadly, no.  There's a reason I'm trying to promote and participate in play-by-post.  My free time is extremely erratic and limited.

Not everyone has that power, and using only that power over and over again is extremely restrictive.  He would have been better off using a different power with multiple effect dice and wiping them out.  As for chaining them, true, that would be a dick move, but if all minor twists are equally bad, then even one time of one twist causing another twist (which is highly probably) isn't OK.

In those games, were the heroes severely low on HP by the end?   Otherwise, it doesn't really matter what the twist is–the fight was going to be easy anyway.

They have the same ability, just with a different name.  Bunker has a red zone one (which damages himself) and Legacy has a yellow zone one.  It's quite easy to have a situation where no one has an available AoE attack, plus most of them only attack with the min die and are thus unlikely to finish anything bigger than a d4 off.  (I'd also argue that Tachyon is the most powerful of the F5+1, but that's another discussion.)  And that Pepper Genie ability sounds like it could be absolutely horrendous.  If it took its turn after Violet Heart, a single bad roll could have meant ~20 damage to the heroes.

Easy for her to deal with.  Not so easy for other heroes.  And ignoring the minion means letting it attack every round for the rest of the scene.  That's way more than a single max die's worth of damage, unless you're at the very end.

Why wouldn't she have to roll?  You have to roll for pretty much everything.  So it would be an Overcome.  On a good roll, you just end up with another minor twist you have to deal with.  On a worse roll, you have a failure or a major twist instead.

It seems like you decided that this new obstacle is less severe than the obstacle they were already facing.  It could easily be the other way around.

That depends on how she was separated from the group.  Very likely she was also separated from the civilians…

Neither.  The best option is to think of a way she could solve the problem using he principles.  Unlike other Principles, her Principle of Speed doesn't let her use her max die, so that puts her at a disadvantage, but she could certainly use her HUD to identify fluctuations in the electroscopic field to exploit, or analyse the material components used in the spell and apply a chemical reagent to neutralize them, or some other technobabble nonsense.  Or she could defer to another hero with a better idea using their own principles.

Not gonna lie, it really just sounds like you had some a-hole GMs. I’ve played a few tabletop RPGs to know some GMs are out there to play with their players, and others are out to play against them. Make sure you are choosing the right ones for your playstyle and game.

Throughout this whole conversation, Mindwanderer, you’ve talked about the scene tracker being a big threat, but you haven’t ever talked about how a hero can take an overcome action to stall it, preventing it from advancing the next time the Environment has a turn. (Gameplay Guide, page 16)

Page 11 also tells us that after hearing the options of the Twists, a player may decline to take them, taking a failure instead. Sure, losing their turn, but also making sure a twist doesn’t progress and chain like you’ve been warning about.

There are a lot of options players can take to mitigate risks, and the GM is encouraged to progress the story in fun and interesting ways, not just more challenge and impossible odds.

I can't get the quote function to work, but the OP of this thread stated: "

• Some hero abilities listed as "I" ("Inherent") are mis-labeled.  Usually, if it involves the player making a roll, it should be an Action or a Reaction.  Specific abilities we know are wrong:
  • Absolute Zero's Modular realignment should be a Reaction
  • Bunker's BUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDA should be an Action

"

Has the "errata" on BUDDABUDDABUDDABUDDA ever been confirmed officially? A player pointed out that the Ability reads: "Whenever you Attack, either Attack one target with Max+Min dice, or Attack two different targets, one with your Max die and one with your Mid die." and argued that this effect would be in addition to whatever other attack you were performing. Considering every other Attack Ability Bunker has is labeled as an Action and says Attack X targets, or Attack using X Power, it would seem that the wording "Whenever you attack" was chosen intentionally because it gave an additional effect while in Turret mode and that the Ability is not just an additional, seperate Attack Action option.

What about the somewhat conflicting start of Tome of The Bizarre? She says go to desert and we're in Las Vegas... 

Las Vegas is in a desert 

Who are you posing this question to? What are you talking about? Is this in reference to something already discussed in this thread?

She means the Egyptian Desert...

Who is the “she” you are talking about? The author? Your GM? Because actually reading it I don’t see anything remotely like what you are saying.

She as in Visionary she says she senses a new power in Tomb of Anubis and you go there via a portal in Las Vegas which makes no sense

The whole point of the adventure is that it's a bait-and-switch.  

You're meant to think that you're in an Egyptian tomb, and only find out that you're actually in a replica at the end of the adventure.

The Tomb of Anubis is not a place you can just find.  So you need something or someone to take you to it so the idea of a portal in Vegas being used is not out of the question.  

Unfortunately I wasn’t in the habit of citing my sources when I started this thread, but yes, that’s official.  BUDDABUDDABUDDA should be an Action and cannot be combined with other abilities.  That’s why it’s errata and not just a clarification, because your player would be absolutely right otherwise.

I was recently looking over the starter set and the in the final issue one of the villain's abilities says to attack using Weaponry, but has no power or quality called Weaponry. Have we ever had any clarification on this error or has it even been raised by anyone elsewhere as it's not listed here?

Not in this thread but I know it’s been brought up before.   I can’t find the thread but I believe the consensus was to use Inventions.