Character Creation

Hello,

First, I want to say that I am sorry if this is not the right place to post this question and I would ask a mod to kindly delete this thread and maybe direct me to where I should be posting this. 

So, my friend and I just got our chapter previews from the kickstarter (very exiting!) and we have come to a head in a discussion about constructed creation. He believes that the choices you are allowed to make are limited by what the charts say you can pick, meaning if you selected Dynasty for background your power source options would only be what you could pick from 8, 8, and 6 combinations where as I believe you just choose what you want from each chart regardless of the last one. Is either of those correct or not and where would the book support either explanation? We've gone over the pdf but we couldn't find anything to end our arugment. It might be helpful if this was expressly spelled out somewhere but it isn't so we are at a head in this argument without further information.   

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to  answer. 

The explanation is on the second page of Chapter 3 where it describes Constructed Method.  You pick an item you want then note which dice it uses for the next step.  So if I picked Criminal background I’d note that I get 3 d8s and so when I choose the power source of The Multiverse I know what dice to assign to powers.  

You're both right, sort of!

Basically at each step you can roll the dice, or just not what dice you have and choose from the full list.

Pretty much what ErekLich said... you are always allowed to choose whatever result on the main charts best suits the character you are going for... even if that result is not normally available given what the previous charts say.  The only thing you do keep from the previous charts are which dice you would roll (even if you aren't rolling them) as they will be used for the Powers/Qualities you get on the next chart.

For example... if the first chart tells me that I will roll a d10, a d8 and a d6 on the next chart, I would keep those dice regardless of whether or not I roll them or just choose a result as I will most likely use them when choosing any powers or qualities the chart provides.

While, in theory this can lead to some min/maxing of chart results to get the most powers/qualities or the highest dice for them, it appears that the charts are fairly well balanced so that those who go for the most powerful (highest dice) in their powers/qualities will have fewer over all... while those who go for the most powers/qualities will have most of them in the d6 to d8 range.  As for the GYRO abilities, these seem to balance out as well, depending on how many and how powerful the powers/qualities chosen are.

All in all, it seems that the game is well designed to keep the various characters fairly well balanced with each other.

Really?  I see this as an extremely unbalanced system for how crunchy it is.  It's very easy to create characters with wide ranges of power and utility.  On the low end, you can easily create characters that are stuck using small dice for their most useful abilities, ones that have Red abilities that are unlikely to advance the game to a win state, ones that can totally destroy themselves with self-damage and self-hinders and not gain anything useful out of it, ones with Principles that are extremely niche and hard to use on a regular basis, and of course you can, and are encouraged to, give up your valuable extra Red ability or increased Red die size to get a flavor-driven Retcon.  On the high end, you can also create powerful ability synergies that let you get free activations or negate the penalties of each other.  That's not even counting how some choices get trade-offs that don't make sense (like "gaining" a power or quality at d6, which is utterly unhelpful).

I think most of your concerns are based on play style, but that’s just my opinion. I LOVE that my teleporter ended up with a d6 Speed! It’s hilarious and appropriate. (He’s a hyper person, anyway, who is supposed to have good reflexes in order to get his portals out as fast as he should.) He’s not superhumanly fast, but he’s quick. Is it powerful? No, but it’s not supposed to be. it’s just… who he is.

One thing to note whenever doing random character generation is to know that it's okay to wad up the character sheet and start over. So if a player doesn't like the character they made via the guided method, they can dump them. 

I've been pretty impressed with the system so far. I've made fan builds of the MCU Iron Man, and the Arrowverse Green Arrow, Flash and Supergirl. (Supergirl was the hardest to make, but if Legacy has a Strength of d10, I'm comfortable with Supergirl having a d10 as well.)  

Sure, your “play style” can be that you don’t particularly care about balance. But that doesn’t make it balanced.

They call it out in the book some heroes may not balanced at the start:

>

On Balance
> If you browse the options on the tables used to create heroes, you can see that some options get better dice than others, which means that some heroes end up with more dice or larger die sizes than others. This is doubly true if you use the constructed method and can just choose which options you want to maximize your dice. A hero with fewer/smaller dice should feel distinct and powerful with plenty to contribute to a team, even when compared to a hero with “better” dice.  Each hero has their own powers and qualities, as well as unique abilities that give them a role in the team. Your abilities and how you use them matter far more than the specific sizes of dice of your powers and qualities.Within the Sentinels of Freedom, superpowered heroes like Legacy fight alongside non-superpowered heroes like Wraith and both are valuable and powerful members of the team.

If it bothers you too much then set limits with players with what they can or can’t choose.  

Yeah, honestly, it’s superheroes. The characters shouldn’t be balanced across all possibilities, as there are vastly different levels of power out there – and there needs to be. But PCs should be generally balanced with each other in a campaign, and that’s on the GM to make sure it happens – which is true in all RPGs. (If someone walks into my 4th-level D&D campaign with a 15th-level character, we’re going to have to talk about how to scale that back. ;-) 

And this game – like all games – isn’t going to suit everyone’s play style. Which is fine. :-) 

In my opinion, having a d6 in a power doesn’t make it unbalanced. It makes it clear there are a variety of levels of power available in the game. 

I fear you’re dismissing your play style too quickly, though. (And your use of quotes kinda drives that point home. For example, you said: 

All of these are things people I game with regularly absolutely love. Some people enjoying working through a challenge like these. Flawed characters can be a lot of fun to play for some folks, as can people with strange and unusual abilities. The challenge of working through that and making it successful is fun for them (and a great ride for the other members of the party when in the hands of someone who does it well). 

And the fact you mentioned “a win state” says a lot about play style, also. There’s nothing wrong with looking at an RPG as having win states and I’m definitely not saying there is. It’s just a style of play that differs from those of us who don’t. :-) 

I’m seeing – for folks I regularly game with – that the system is constructed in a way that, as the GM, I can make the characters balanced in a way that fits the campaign needs while not stopping the players from being able to play the character they want to play. (For example, maybe we want to play a gritty, street level game, so no one can have a d12.) For me, that is nicely balanced. If someone creates a character that they don’t like, they can make a choice instead of using random values. That is also a factor of ensuring things are balanced, to me. I don’t see anything significant in character generation that will break the game or create exceptionally swinging situations that the GM can’t control during the process. That’s on the GM, though, to set up expectations and boundaries. 

I’m fine if you feel like this is not balanced, MindWanderer – you’re welcome to your opinion on it. I just want to make sure you see the views of other folks on this and how/why that might differ from yours. Have a better one!

I think that a hard thing to wrap ones' head around--I know I've had this issue--is the concept that a d4 is *human average*.  

We tend to look at it as such a low die that a d6 looks like a disappointment or 'barely average'.  In fact, that's exactly not the case: even a d6 represents *above the average human*, while the d8s and d10s really arc into the superhuman.

One thing is that I feel a real disincentive to try an Overcome unless I have one or two dice above D8... otherwise the chances of outright succeeding on the Overcome is too low, or might even be impossible.

Just because a power or quality may have a low die in the pool, it doesn't mean that is the die that will be used to determine an effect when it is applied.  Unless the situation tells you to use the single die from that power or quality as the result, the die that is used will be determined by the action being taken, with the default being the Mid die.

One of the characters I created has Close Combat at a d6, but even with a Green Ability, I use the quality but determine damage with the Max die.  Yes, the d6 is still part of the pool since it is the quality that is needed for the ability to be used... but depending on how much damage my character has taken the status die can be a d6, d8 or a d10... while the power I am combining it with could be a d8, d10 or a d12... so with the right combination, my Close Combat attack could do a lot more than a d6 of damage... especially when one takes Boosts into account as well.

The point is that while on their own, powers and qualities can seem weak, the right use of them in combination... and with specific abilities, even a fairly weak power or quality can suddenly be a lot more useful in a situation.  True, you can try to min and max some of your abilities to use only your best powers and qualities so as to have a die pool with the hightest value dice as possible, but in the end that doesn't always work out since the Min, Mid and Max dice are determined by the actual roll and not the size of the die... even a d12 can end up being the Min die while even a d4 can be the Max die (though this is likely to be rare in either case).

You have to take the entire dice pool as a whole to see just how potent an given action will be.  This is why abilities that combine dice for a result can be quite potent... as even a Min die that can be added multiple times (there are Red Abilities that do this) can become surprisingly potent when one can take full advantage of the ability.

This is the elegance of the system... even the weakest powers or qualities can become surprisingly potent when used by a creative player in the right combination for a given situation.

For an example, let us look at the classical early Spider-Man.  Before Peter Parker got his powers, he was your typical nerd and science geek who got bullied constantly.  At best... andy Close or Ranged Combat quality he might have would likely be very low (since he wasn't shown taking any kind of self-defense class or any thing that could be comparable).  At best, I would say both of these were d6.  Even after he got his powers, he isn't really shown doing any training to improve these skills, but rather relying on his now phenominal strength, agility and awareness to help him avoid attacks and to better land them.  His Agility allowed him to aim his webs the way he wanted to... more so than any Ranged Combat ability he might have... while his powerful punches came more from his spider-like strength than from his actual Close Combat training.  His powers compensated for his lack of formal training in these innitial fights... even allowing him to defeat opponents with more formal combat training but few to no powers.  Yes, eventually he would get more formal training to hone his skills and make better use of his powers, but this is the sort of situation that SCRPG was designed to emulate.

A 4 is succeed with a minor twist if your not willing to take minor twists ever I can’t imagine this system being very fun.

Yeah. Having watched a lot of games, minor twists are usually fun. Sometimes they’re even run of the mill things like “take a little damage”. Major twists are what really need to be weighed against the current state of the game, and even then, those can be fun, especially when the chips aren’t all down yet.

That being said, some people really aren’t having fun unless they’re winning, and constantly generating setbacks can take away from that. I can see at least one person in my normal group opting to fail every time instead of ever taking a twist, and that really would not be fun.

I think the only thing you can do is try to get in the right mindset: this isn’t a game you have to win, but a story you’re trying to tell, and stories are more fun when the heroes have twists and setbacks, obstacles in their way, rather than blowing straight through everything to reach their goal.

It’s an rpg you never really win the only “lose” condition is dying

I always thought the win condition was "Have fun!".

I don't mind minor twists, but when I was GM'ing and kept throwing minor twists at my players when they tried Overcomes, their complaint was, "We are the most bumbling superheroes ever-- nothing we do ever quite comes off without a hitch!" Try to break down a wall-- a piece of concrete falls on their friend's foot. Hack into a computer-- alert the guards you're there. They felt clumsy rather than heroic, and I suppose I felt for them (even while I enjoyed plaguing them with environmental challenges).

Remember, a d4 is “human average.” Peter Parker was below human average in athleticism before becoming Spider-Man. Realistically he’d have been a d3 or a d2. However, his Science and Technology dice were impressive–even as a high-schooler he was effortlessly creating chemicals and inventions vastly better than what was available commercially.

Mechanical balance is ephemeral and playstyle dependent. THe disparate abilities were maximized by some, not by others. In other words, until you get it to table, don’t worry about it, especially since it’s easy to swap out later.

It's not supposed to be balanced like that, it's superheroes; supers aren't balanced. It's supposed to be designed in a way to create a good narrative that every character can make a decent contribution to despite them being "unbalanced" to each other.

Likewise twists are an important part of the game, you can't look upon them as incompetence on the part of your characters, as failings as much as a thing that keeps the flow of action scenes more interesting and engaging. They're a narrative function as much as a mechanical one - superhero fights go "wrong" all the time, comics wouldn't be anywhere near as fun if they didn't. Most superheroes really are quite "bumbling" compared to say most teams of RPG adventurers, they're just super flashy about it and roll with the punches.

Twists are all about the flavor.  "Bumbliing" twists are great for characters like Setback ("You succeed, but in doing so you tripped and broke something"), but for other heroes, the bad thing that happens can just as easily be something that wasn't your fault at all: more bad guys show up, the villain pulls out some new trick, a new environmental challenge emerges, etc.  They're just as likely to make your character look more heroic as they deal with the additional threat!  ("I'll go rescue the out-of-control trolley car and still come back in time to beat you!")

Yeah, that exactly. I'd recommend reading over a couple of comics and seeing what plot contrivances you could see as twists happening for the characters - there's often quite a lot of them. It could help with ideas for new twists in your own adventures.

I'm reading the classic Excalibur comics at the moment as I think that feel is right for what I want to do, almost every other panel something happens which could be a twist!

To my knowledge, there has yet to be any official statement as to what the dice mean in regards to real world skill levels. That said, since d4 is the lowest die that can be used, I find it difficult to believe that it is the human average, since that would mean that, mechanics wise, no one can be below a d4. I find it hard to believe that a 6 year old child and an 80 year old woman would be as “average” as an individual in their 20s in most areas.

I use the following unofficial scale to help myself (and others I talk to) to map the dice to real world equivalents.

d4 - Below Average (Completely Untrained)
d6 - Average (High School or Undergrad equivalent)
d8 - Skilled (Bachelor’s Degree or a few years of training)
d10 - Expert (Master’s Degree or a decade+ of training)
d12 - Master (Doctorate’s Degree or a lifetime of Training [20+ years])

These of course are merely guidelines… with raw talent in a given area adding a level or two to the usual die that would be used (depending on the level of Talent). This particular scale doesn’t quite map to Powers… still trying to work on that.

I could have sworn the rules said d4 is "Average", but now I can't find it. However, on pages 23, 28, and 49, it says "from [d6] (above average) to [d12] (godlike)"(although qualities are described on page 28 as "from [d6] (solid competency) to [d12] (world class)"), which implies d4 is average...

Hey, so, I'm late to the party and I apologise for responding to this days later, but I want to point out that in Sentinels RPG, you aren't so much playing a superhero as you are playing Sentinel Comics writers and editors creating exciting comic book stories within the metaverse. So while yes, you are creating a superhero character to play, you are also trying to make a superhero that would make for fun and exciting comic books that the "consumers of Sentinel Comics" would want to buy and read regularly.

For my money, that's what I will try to emphasize to my players. Don't get locked into making a "balanced" game or attempt to game the rules to min/max max power game, because that probably won't make for interesting characters that the "consumers" want to read about. Instead, try some broken combos and some flawed builds. Embrace a d4 in that power or quality! Take the combo that generates one or two more bonuses on your turn. Make a long combo chain of abilities! But! Do so with the intention that you will use them to make "comic book stories" that will sell like hot cakez. Talk about your build with the other players. Make that session zero for character creation super awesome and exciting for each other, because if the "editors" are all excited for each other's "new superhero first appearance", then they will begin to gel as a team and shore up each other's weak spots and possibly helping to tone down the power gaming drive to somehow break the game and instead focus on having cool team interactions and great back stories with flaws and hopes and story goals they each want to see develop over a six or twelve or more issue arc.

If at the end of hero creation the players are as excited to see the stories of the other heroes along with their own hero, then you've done your job during that creation session. And if they play those heroes and find the stories maybe aren't as exciting as they hoped, have an "editor's bullpen meeting" and retcon what needs to change to make the stories better going forward. This happens ALL. THE. TIME. in actual comics, so why wouldn't it happen here in a game about comic book superheroes? That, to me, is actually part of the game by design.

So really. Don't sweat the "balance" of the character creation rules for this game. They are literally guidelines to make whatever comic book superhero you think people would want to learn more about and stand in line at the local comics shop to get their hands on the latest issue of harrowing adventures, dangerous villains, and heroic wonder!

Even dying isn’t always a loss state.

A good death to a character, one that was meaningful and appropriate, can be a rewarding end.

The loss conditions are, IMO…

[list][]being bored.
[]being frustrated
[*]being annoyed by the other participants[/list]