I finally arranged a playtest for the the game today – chips and soda is on the table, mini-adventure is written, generally ready to go. Since I had to write up a couple villains for the occasion, I though it might be nice to share.
Six guides to see your safely through the wilderness (or not!), listed in order of their “skill level” as a guide.
1. Percivius is a haughty, arrogant escaped slave who would like to believe himself a leader of men. He primarily worked as a clerk for his master. When his master expired one night from a heart attack, the manor slaves rose up, killed the guards and torched the manor, leaving Percivius out of a job (so to speak) and in just as much trouble as the others. He struck out into the greenwood and nearly died on more than one occasion, but finally made it over the mountains to a city-state where he was unknown. He now works as a wilderness guide, lecturing his charges and scoffing at every survival mistake they make along the way (and doing his best to explain away his own errors). Percivius is short and, thanks to his new life, well muscled and fit. He is balding (hiding it under a Phrygian cap), but still has a few platinum blond ringlets. He has beady eyes that suggest a life of reading by lamp light.
2. Ghadra is a sergeant in the local guard who works on the side as a guide through the wilderness. She makes patrols with her company of crossbowmen every two weeks, and tailor’s her journey to suit her employers. Ghadra is no woodsman, but she knows enough to get along. She primarily relies on strength of numbers and a knowledge of the terrain (the trails, the pitfalls, etc) to get from point A to B safely. If she perceives weakness on the part of her employers, she isn’t above a little brigandry and knows the best places to hide the bodies.
3. Northstarr is a barbarian who clings painfully to the image of the half-naked savage popularized in copper-dreadfuls throughout the Motherlands. A city boy, he set out to remake himself as a barbarian hero, dressing in a red kilt and mail shirt and carrying a bastard sword (the love of his life!). On his head he wears an ornate dragon helm that imposes a -1 penalty to hit on him in combat, but is suits him so he doesn’t really care. Northstarr is a competent woodsman, possessed of mighty thews and, though he adopts a Thulian accent and plays the strong, silent type, has an active and imaginative mind.
4. Fiona appears to be the ultimate guide – tall, fit, competent and self-confident, beautiful. Pity she’s actually a succubus who leads a party into the wilderness and then abandons them there, stealing away the most powerful warrior they have and leaving that warrior’s withered remains on the trail back to town as a taunt. She never appears in the same town twice – at least not without a couple hundred years in between appearances.
5. Mavewyn in an ex-soldier, a pioneer who fought in three major campaigns before retiring and setting up shop on the newly conquered frontier as a guide. Rugged and quiet, he has a good relationship with the barbarian and humanoid tribes in the area – they may not like the incursion into their homeland, but they know he’s a man of honor and they fear his bow and blade. He balks at taking adventurers into the wilderness who aren’t at least 4th level, for after all, if Gygax had intended 1st to 3rd level characters to explore the wild, wilderness rules would have appears in the Basic Set.
6. St. Eudoxius appears to people as a young man in a woolen tunic and blue cloak and carrying a crooked staff. The patron saint of homesteaders, he often appears to those who are lost or in dire straits in the middle of the night, holding a lantern (illuminates 120-foot diameter area as though it were daylight) in one hand and a brace of conies (or whatever game is most appropriate) in the other. After a quick repast (his water skin never seems to empty), he will head off into the night, beckoning people to follow him. Saint Eudoxius knows the location of all strongholds and freeholds in an area and his presence assures one a night of safety (though if he knows a lord or yeoman to be wicked, he will advise the adventurers to quickly be on their way the next morning). He accepts donations of gold that always appear in the nearest Lawful temple or shrine the next morning.
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Image from HERE
Enymy does some nice stuff with a wild, somewhat weird, abstract style – not Erol Otus weird, in fact not very old school at all, but definitely high on the fun factor. Enjoy the images – and since they’re super hero centric, I’m throwing in some stats as well …
[alas, the image is gone, but I wanted the Spidey stats to remain]
I’m finally finished editing NOD 7 and should have it up for sale tomorrow. To celebrate, I figured I’d take a crack of statting up the villain that loomed largest in my pre-teen years …
Darth Vader
Adventurer Lvl 10
STR 10 | DEX 12 | CON 4 | INT 5 | WIL 6 | CHA 3
HP 75 | DC 20 | SPD 2 | XP 15,000 (70,000)
Powers: Catfall [P], Force Hand II [L], Haste [S], Jump [L], Mind Fog [L], Mind Reading [L], Precognition [L], Shield [P], Suggestion I [L], Super Dexterity (+6) [P], Telekinesis [P]
Gear: Lightsaber (sword + energy blade power and potent weapon), light armor (super strength +6), helm with respirator, black cloak
And since he’s right there in that image above, I might as well stat out the dark lord of Latveria as well.
Doctor Doom
Scientist Lvl 8, Sorcerer Lvl 8*
STR 14 | DEX 3 | CON 3 | INT 18 | WIL 5 | CHA 5
HP 43 | DC 25 | SPD 2 | XP 22,600 (70,000 XP)
Powers: Super Intelligence (+12) [P]
Armor Powers: Armor [P], Energy Ray (Electricity) [L], Force Missiles [P], Shield [P], Super Strength (+12) [P]
Sorcery Pool: 10,000 XP
Science Pool: 15,000 XP
Gear: Heavy armor (invested with several powers – see above), green hooded cloak
* Multi-classing isn’t baked into the MM! rules, but I figured they made sense with Victor. Essentially, I just split the XP remaining after powers between the two classes
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Darth Vader versus Doctor Doom by Jim Califiore (TM Marvel Comics & LucasFilm Ltd.)
They are the Herculoids!!
After statting out the Arabian Knights, the venemous pao requested the Herculoids. My love of the Herculoids and their bizarre world of Amzot is second to nobody’s, so here they are, built with 30,000 XP each …
ZANDOR
One of the best things about the Herculoids is that they don’t seem to have ever explained them – at least not in the old days. Here’s my take – Zandor was a brilliant scientist who wanted to get “back to nature”, doing so on the primitive planet of Amzot. He took along his wife and son and a few creatures (part of Project Herculoid) created in his laboratory. The Herculoids are equal parts nature and science. This is the best explanation I can come up with for a guy who lives in a tree yet clearly understand high technology, and who fights using a sling shot and exploding rocks – rocks which also seem to be produced by Tundro. Moreover, if the Herculoids are just alien animals from Amzot, why don’t we ever see any other of their kind roaming about?
Adventurer* Lvl 12
Str 4 | Dex 16 | Con 4 | Int 5 | Wil 4 | Cha 2
HP 64 | AC 16 | Spd 0 | XP 23,400
Powers: Heroism I-L, Super Dexterity (+6)-P
Gear: Shield, sling, 10 stones (treat as grenade)
* Okay, I just got through saying that I think Zandor is a scientist, and then I go and make him an “adventurer” instead of “scientist” – why? The scientist class in MM! is good for modeling characters that use lots of scientific gadgets, and often different gadgets in different adventures. Zandor doesn’t, so I’m making him a member of the adventurer class with scientist as his background/occupation.
DORNO (Sidekick of Zandor)
Adventurer Lvl 4
Str 4 | Dex 6 | Con 4 | Int 1 | Wil 2 | Cha 1
HP 32 | AC 11 | Spd 2 | XP 3,000
Powers: None
Gear: Sling, stones (treat as grenade)
IGOO, Rock Ape
Adventurer Lvl 9
Str 11 | Dex 4 | Con 11 | Int 1 | Wil 3 | Cha 3
HP 87 | AC 15 | Spd 2 | XP 12,400
Powers: Armor-P, Enlarge Person-L*, Stoneskin-P, Super Constitution (+6)-P, Super Strength (+6)-P
Gear: None
* Based on the fact that Igoo manages to be about twice the height of Zandor in some scenes and then about two or three times bigger in others. When presented with sloppy editing – make it a power!
TUNDRO
Adventurer Lvl 10
Str 12 | Dex 2 | Con 12 | Int 2 | Wil 5 | Cha 2
HP 92 | AC 14 | Spd 2 | XP 17,400
Powers: Armor-P, Elasticity (Legs)-L, Force Missile-P, Shield-P, Super Constitution (+6)-P, Super Strength (+6)-P
Gear: None
ZOK, Space Dragon
Adventurer Lvl 8
Str 9 | Dex 11 | Con 10 | Int 2 | Wil 2 | Cha 1
HP 66 | AC 17 | Spd 3 | XP 10,000
Powers: Armor-P, Energy Ray (4d6)-P, Fly-P, Super Constitution (+6)-P, Super Dexterity (+6)-P, Super Speed (+1)-P, Super Strength (+6)-P
Gear: None
GLOOP
Adventurer Lvl 5
Str 2 | Dex 17 | Con 4 | Int 2 | Wil 4 | Cha 3
HP 49 | AC 15 | Spd 2 | XP 5,400
Powers: Elasticity-P, Jump-L, Resist Energy (Electricity & Fire)-P, Super Dexterity (+6)-P
Gear: None
GLEEP
Adventurer Lvl 5
Str 1 | Dex 12 | Con 6 | Int 1 | Wil 5 | Cha 2
HP 43 | AC 14 | Spd 2 | XP 5,400
Powers: Elasticity-P, Jump-L, Resist Energy (Electricity & Fire)-P, Super Dexterity (+6)-P
Gear: None
—
Image by Nelson Daniel
The good people at Hanna Barbera created many, many superheroes back in the day, besides the old Super Friends cartoons. Lots of folks know Space Ghost these days, from his popular talk show if not his fight for cosmic justice, but there was also the caveman superhero Mighty Mightor (awesome beyond belief), Birdman (greatest war cry of any superhero ever) and the Galaxy Trio. As a way to show that Mystery Men! can be used for just about any era of heroics, this post is going to focus on the Arabian Knights.
The Arabian Knights was a cartoon produced for the Banana Splits show. It concerns an deposed prince, Turhan, and a band of super powered allies trying to re-install him on the throne of Baghdad. The cartoons are actually pretty fun and imaginative for the cut-rate production values practiced by HB during that period (though, to be honest, they would get much, much worse). The upside of all these cartoons was that, even though the production values were usually not up to par, the initial design work was done by the great Alex Toth.
The Arabian Knights work well as a super team because each of the members has a small number of abilities. For this reason, we’ll build each with 15,000 XP. Without further ado, the Arabian Knights …
TURHAN, Ex-Prince of Baghdad
Adventurer Lvl 8 (11,400 XP)
Str 4; Int 2; Wis 1; Dex 12; Con 5; Cha 5
HP 50; DC 14; SPD 2Powers: P – Super Dexterity (+6) (3,600 XP)
Gear: Sword
NIDA, Daughter of the Caliph
Adventurer Lvl 10 (15,000 XP)
Str 4; Int 3; Wis 2; Dex 4; Con 2; Cha 3
HP 45; DC 11; SPD 2
Powers: None
Gear: Sword
RASEEM
Adventurer Lvl 4 (3,900 XP)
Str 6; Int 2; Wis 2; Dex 5; Con 6; Cha 2
HP 35; DC 11; SPD 2
Powers: P – Super Strength (+6) (3,600 XP)
Sidekick: Zazuum, donkey with the Whirlwind (Single-Use; 7,500 XP) power
FARIEK
Sorcerer Lvl 5 (5,000 XP)
Str 2; Int 6; Wis 4; Dex 2; Con 6; Cha 4
HP 25; DC 10; SPD 2
Powers: Sorcery (10,000 XP)
BEZ THE BEAST
Adventurer Lvl 5 (5,000 XP)
Str 4; Int 2; Wis 5; Dex 5; Con 4; Cha 5
HP 35; DC 11; SPD 2
Powers: P – Polymorph (10,000 XP)
Now there’s a blog title that has to get some attention, right?
Well, a couple weeks ago I statted up Catwoman and Invisible Woman using the alpha rules I’m writing for Mystery Men! I’m about one or two weeks away from putting my beta rules out there for the world to playtest. The stats below take into account a couple changes from alpha to beta …
Class: Adventurer
Level: 11
Hit Points: 51
Armor Class: 15 (+1 Dex, +4 Armor)
Feat Bonus: +5
Attack Bonus: +11
Abilities: Str 3 (+0), Dex 5 (+1), Con 5 (+1), Int 10 (+3), Wis 14 (+4), Cha 11 (+3)
Permanent Powers: Force Missile, Invisibility II, Shield
Limited Powers: Force Sphere, Invisibility Sphere, Wall of Force
Class: Adventurer
Level: 16
Hit Points: 53
Armor Class: 18 (+6 Dex, +2 Armor)
Feat Bonus: +7
Attack Bonus: +16
Abilities: Str 5 (+1), Dex 19 (+6), Con 3 (+0), Int 5 (+1), Wis 3 (+0), Cha 10 (+3)
Permanent Powers: Alarm, Feather Fall, Find Clue
Single-User Powers: Moment of Prescience
Now that I have some stats for a hero and a villain, the only thing left to do is have them fight.
Getting wind that a valuable statue of Bast taken from the tomb of the Living Mummy was recently locked in the vault at the Baxter Building, Selina Kyle decides a trip to New York is in order. Doing her homework, she discovers that on one particular night, three of the Fantastic Four will be away from home, Johnny doing some publicity stunt in L.A., Reed lecturing at Medfield College on the possibility of a computer’s circuits being impressed upon a human mind, and Ben Grimm involved in some sort of team up. That left the Invisible Woman alone to hold down the fort, giving the infamous Catwoman odds she could live with.
Having picked her way through the building’s security (involving many heroic feats of Dexterity and Intelligence – see the rules document for an explanation of feat rolls), she finally gets to the vault. Unfortunately, one of those feats was unsuccessful, and the Invisible Woman, getting the alert, proceeds to the vaults to confront what she figures is a routine malfunction. As she enters, the Catwoman strikes …
Panel One
Since CW and IW have the same movement rate, initiative is decided with the roll of 1d10 + Dexterity Modifier. CW rolls 8 while IW rolls a 6. With the initiative, Catwoman decides she better try to knock IW out quickly. In Mystery Men!, you can declare a special attack every round. If you beat your opponent’s DC by 5 or more, you succeed on your special attack. If you beat your opponent’s DC without beating it by 5 or more, you still score a hit and do damage. If you don’t wish to do a special attack, you simply score double damage if you beat your opponent’s DC by 5 or more. For this attack, CW is going to try to knock IW out – if successful with her attack, she’ll score normal damage and IW will have to roll a feat of Constitution to maintain consciousness. So, CW lunges at IW and rolls a 21 (4 + 1 for Str +16 for attack bonus). This not only scores a hit for 2 points of damage, but also forces IW to roll a feat of Constitution to avoid being knocked cold.
Feats replace skills and saving throws in Mystery Men! The dice you roll for a feat depends on the difficulty of the feat, rolling 1d10 for normal feats, 2d10 for heroic feats, 3d10 for super feats and 4d10 for epic feats. To succeed at the feat, you must roll under your ability score + your feat bonus. In IW’s case, she needs to roll under a 10 to make a feat of Constitution. Since CW is 16th level, avoiding her powers and attacks requires a super feat, thus rolling 3d10. IW gets lucky, rolling a 9 and maintaining consciousness.
IW backs off a bit and launches some force missiles. Although based on the magic missile spell, I decided that a power that can potentially be used every round had better require a ranged attack, in this case against a DC of 10 + the opponent’s Dexterity modifier, or 16 in CW’s case. As an 11th level adventurer, IW can launch five missiles, rolling 26, 28, 21, 26 and 13, and thus hitting with four missiles for 4d6 damage + 1 per die for IW’s Dexterity bonus, rolling a 13.
IW still has 49 hit points, while CW is down to 40.
Panel Two
CW rolls a 14 for initiative, IW a 9. CW decides to use her whip this round, making a ranged attack against IW’s DC of 15. Her special attack this round will be tripping, needing a 21 to trip IW and knock her prone. CW has an attack bonus of +16 and a Dex bonus of +6 and rolls a 23 total, scoring 12 points of damage (1d6+6 for high Dex) and forcing IW to make a super feat of Strength to avoid being knocked over. She rolls an 18 and needed to roll an 8 or lower, meaning she hits the floor.
IW has had enough of this nonsense and fortunately can use her Force Sphere while flat on her back. She tries to capture the Princess of Plunder, who must make a heroic feat of Dexterity (roll 2d10) under 27 to avoid it – in other words, she can’t help but flip out of the way, and IW is going to have to take another tack if she’s going to win this fight.
IW has 37 hit points and CW still has 40.
Panel Three
CW rolls 10 for initiative, and IW 4. CW is going to try to knock IW out again, rolling 27 against a DC of 15 and scoring 3 damage and forcing another super Con feat to avoid falling unconscious for 1 page. IW rolls an 18 this time, passing out and leaving CW to make another stab at cracking the vault.
Cracking the vault will also take 1 page, meaning she’ll be dealing with a conscious IW whether she succeeds or not. Cracking the vault, designed by Reed Richards himself, will require a super feat of Intelligence. Catwoman needs to roll a 12 or lower on 3d10, getting a 17 and failing, just as IW returns to consciousness.
IW has 37 hit points and CW still has 40.
Panel Four
CW rolls 9 this time and IW 10. IW decides to activate her invisibility power. Catwoman, noticing that her foe has disappeared, decides to make a run for it. She climbs the wall (a heroic feat, which, with her 19 Dexterity and feat bonus of +6, she can’t fail). Normal climb speed is 30 yards per page (or 3 yards per panel), and we’ll say the vent CW is heading for is about that high off the ground, meaning she makes it to the vent opening on this round and begins crawling through it.
IW has 37 hit points and CW still has 40.
Panel Five
CW rolls a 16 for initiative, IW 6. CW climbs into the vent. Frustrated, but happy that the vault was not breached, IW heads for an elevator to see if she can catch CW on the roof and continue the fight there.
—
So, the rules are still pretty rough, but I think they’re workable. I think I might lower the attack bonus progression, since Defense Class in Mystery Men! is generally not going to keep pace with attack bonuses the way AC in d20 games kept pace with attack bonuses. I think this makes special attacks too easy to pull off. For that matter, I might change the “knocking out” special attack to a stun for 1 panel special attack. I still need to run some tests with lower powered heroes and something with epic heroes to see how things work at those levels.
—
Art by Bruce Timm – originally two separate pieces that I combined.
Okay, I guess I’m not done posting this month/year after all. Today’s deviant is Paul Harmon, aka dogmeatsausage. A few different encounters in NOD were inspired by his work – enjoy the last Deviant Friday of 2010!
A couple posts ago I statted up Invisible Woman using the alpha release rules (such as they are) for Mystery Men! Now, to show how the powers can be used to build an essentially non-powered character (and to give some attention to the other big name in comics), I decided to apply some stats to Catwoman.
Even though, for all intents and purposes, Catwoman has no super powers, it is fairly obvious that her abilities far exceed that of a normal human being, even within the fantasy universe of comic books. The powers in the game are really meant to represent results – i.e. what a character can do – not freakish abilities that are handed out by atomic blasts, radioactive animals or sharing some DNA with the gods. In that sense, Catwoman should definitely have some powers.
Ability Scores
While Sue Richards is a “normal person”, ability-wise, with extraordinary powers to make her a super hero, Catwoman is almost the opposite. Catwoman has, above all, impressive dexterity – acrobatics, sneaking about, slinging that whip, etc. Naturally, she has a high charisma as well – you can thank the primarily male audience of comic books for that – and probably a good intelligence and wisdom as well. If there are any stats we can “ignore”, they’re probably strength and constitution. So, we have 14 dice to distribute among our ability scores, we’ll put 1 each in Strength and Constitution, 2 each in Charisma, Intelligence and Wisdom and the remainder, 6, in Dexterity:
Strength: 5 (+1)
Dexterity: 25 (+8)
Constitution: 3 (+0)
Intelligence: 8 (+2)
Wisdom: 6 (+1)
Charisma: 10 (+3)
Wow – rolled extremely well for Dexterity. If I was doing a straight conversion of the character, I probably wouldn’t have gone that high with Dexterity, but since I’m randomizing this, we’ll go with 25.
Powers
Selina Kyle is an adventurer. Because she’s a major character and a long-time villain, and because I’m going to pit her against Invisible Woman to demonstrate the combat rules, I’m giving her 50,000 XP to spend on powers and levels. Normally, I would give her Super Dexterity (re-named from Cat’s Grace), but since her ability score roll was so good, I don’t need to. Her powers (and costs) are as follows:
Alarm (limitless) – 1000 XP
Catfall (limitless) – 1000 XP
Find Clue (limitless) – 1000 XP
Moment of Prescience (single use) – 7500 XP
The new incarnation wears goggles, which we’re going to invest with the Darkvision power (limitless) for 1,500 XP. Catwoman also carries a whip (ranged weapon, 10′ range, 1d6 damage). She wears leather armor.
The total XP cost of Catwoman’s powers would be 12,000 XP, leaving her 38,000 XP to put towards her level, making her a 16th level villain.
Our finished Catwoman conversion looks like this:
CATWOMAN
Name: Selina Kyle
Class: Adventurer
Level: 16
Hit Points: 65
Armor Class: 20 (+8 Dex, +2 Armor)
Saving Throw: 7
Attack Bonus: +16
Abilities: Str 5 (+1), Dex 25 (+8), Con 3 (+0), Int 8 (+2), Wis 6 (+1), Cha 10 (+3)
Powers: Limitless – Alarm, Feather Fall, Find Clue; 1/issue* – Moment of Prescience.
* At the moment, I’m doing time in Mystery Men! in terms of panels (about 1 minute), pages (10 minutes) and issues (1 day). One commenter last time didn’t care for this, and I’ll admit it’s cutesy (kinda like calling a referee a Dungeon Master), but I kinda like it. I’m not married to the concept, though, so I’d love to hear what others think of it.
So – next time around I’ll run a little scenario in which Catwoman has broken into the Baxter Building to steal a cat statuette taken from the tomb of the Living Mummy. Sue Richards hears the alarm and goes to investigate …
Catwoman is the property of D.C Comics and the application of Mystery Men! stats and use of images of the character in this blog post is not intended to threaten or infringe on their copyright or intellectual property. Top image is Julie Newman as Catwoman from the greatest TV show ever made, and the bottom image is by Darwyn Cooke.
Now that PARS FORTUNA, NOD 6 and Hexcrawl Classic #2 are off my plate, I have some breathing room to work on Mystery Men! The alpha document now has magic-user spells from level 1 to 5 converted into powers. The character creation section is about 80% complete and most other rules sections are outlined. While I’ve been writing out the powers, I’ve become very itchy to write up some heroes, especially heroes that everybody knows and loves to give people an idea of how the game works. With that in mind, I give you a brief conversion of the first lady of the Marvel Universe – Invisible Woman into Mystery Men! stats.
Ability Scores
So, first things first, we need to work on ability scores. For the most part Sue Richards is a normal person, ability-wise, with extraordinary powers. For that reason, I’m going to assign two dice to every ability except Wisdom and Charisma, which get three dice each to represent her beauty and common sense Rolling the dice, we get the following stats:
Strength: 5 (+1)
Dexterity: 5 (+1)
Constitution: 8 (+2)
Intelligence: 10 (+3)
Wisdom: 14 (+4)
Charisma: 11 (+3)
Powers
Sue is going to be an adventurer rather than scientist or sorcerer. Because she’s a major character and a long-time hero, we’re going to give her 50,000 XP to spend on powers and levels. Her powers (and costs) are as follows:
Force Missile (limitless) = 1,000 XP
Force Sphere (limited) = 6,000 XP
Shield (limitless) = 1,000 XP
Wall of Force (limited) = 9,000 XP
Invisibility II (limitless) = 10,000 XP
Invisibility Sphere (limited) = 3,600 XP
In addition, her costume (designed by Reed) is invested with two powers, Armor and Endure Elements. This costs an additional 200 XP.
The total XP cost of Sue’s powers would be 30,800, leaving her 19,200 XP, making her an 11th level hero.
Our finished Invisible Woman conversion looks like this:
INVISIBLE WOMAN
Name: Sue Richards
Class: Adventurer
Level: 11
Hit Points: 62
Armor Class: 15 (+1 Dex, +4 Armor)
Saving Throw: 9
Attack Bonus: +11
Abilities: Str 5 (+1), Dex 5 (+1), Con 8 (+2), Int 10 (+3), Wis 14 (+4), Cha 11 (+3)
Powers: Limitless – Force Missile, Invisibility II, Shield; 1/page* – Force Sphere, Invisibility Sphere, Wall of Force.
* At the moment, I’m doing time in Mystery Men! in terms of panels (about 1 minute), pages (10 minutes) and issues (1 day).
Invisible Woman is the property of Marvel Entertainment and the application of Mystery Men! stats and use of images of the character in this blog post is not intended to threaten or infringe on their copyright or intellectual property.
Land of Nod 