Did anyone else run into issues, back in the day, running games mostly at the low end (
In high school, my group tried running a Punisher/Batman/Daredevil.Capatin America "street-level" game, with the majority of the stats being less than Remarkable. I recall it as being a little frustrating, given the need to roll pretty high -- lots of "whiffing" on all sides of a conflict.

Note than none of us ever went out and bought any of the street-level modules; were they any good at covering this?

I don't remember the 'street-level' supplements covering that angle of it.

I'd have to dig out my charts and look, but does your Excellent guy really need to roll that high to get a green result on a Typical bank robber or whatever?

I'm not remembering a ton of 'whiffing' in FASERIP in general, but it's been since high school for me, too.

I don't recall the odds being terribly bad at the lower level. For example, to get a green result at Excellent, you have to roll 41.  Karma scales with your abilities, as it is a derived stat, so you don't have the benefit of lower costs for boosting your roll.  Proportionately, the costs are actually a bit higher, as you would need to spend karma to just get a green result if you roll 40 or less, while that is a yellow success starting at Shift X.  A green result for Monstrous starts a full 20pts lower, at 21.  

As VectorSigma mentions, it's not that hard to get a green result on a Typical opponent, who would have something like 24 Health.  A Remarkable green result would do 30 points of damage, so one robber per hit, more or less.  If they have a blunt weapon of some kind, they would actually do 36 points.  Martial Arts A would give them a +1 CS, so they could actually be doing In(40) points of damage unarmed, so they could still put down an opponent with Good stats.  Of course, with a cap on stats of Rm, their Karma would be 90 max starting out, so a few bad rolls could wipe that out.

Sounds like fun, though.  A few adjustments to play style and it should work out fine.  No running into every fight like Wolverine or the Thing, for instance, more reliance on ranged weapons, and so on.

The low end, is well "low" part of the solution to this is built into the game: Fighting for example is a stat of its own, meaning you could have a decent fighting and still be a street level character. Of course it is worth noting the characters you mention are fairly loaded with "high fighting" stats.

Wolverine: Incredible, Captain America: Amazing, Daredevil: Incredible. Spider-Man is the lowest with a Remarkable fighting and even then that is a roll of 36+ giving him  64% chance of hitting.  Of course all before adding in talents which increase things even more. Then add in the ability to use Karma.

Karma is integral to the game, it should be looked at as a resource that you get a lot of and use to modify die results (heroes side) a LOT. With the dice roll being a cost modifier for karma expenditure.

Plus in melee combat tactics can matter: Evading to get a column increase on your next strike is wise. Using terrain to avoid some attacks and so on.


Ex: Spider-Man gets a tingling with Spider senses, so uses his first round to evade. He has a 40% chance to get at least a +1 to his next attack. Spend a bit of karma and he's good to go.

Plus Spider-Man can lure a target with taunts, Which gives him a +2 CS. He gets +2 CS if he strikes from blindside (with all that bouncing around) or  +3cs for point blank range, and so on.

Most of this is loosely covered of course.

Sure I prefer characters to have a higher chance of success myself in some instances, but that's what the judge does.

Quote from: chadu;333322Note than none of us ever went out and bought any of the street-level modules; were they any good at covering this?

At one point in time, I bought "Lone Wolves", a street-level module that pitted Daredevil, Black Widow, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage against the likes of The Punisher, Kraven, and (I think) The Taskmaster.  I wasn't playing MSH at the time (I bought the module as a reference for SuperWorld), but I recall that the hero stats were pretty well balanced with the villain stats, and all of the heroes had special abilities that gave them an edge tactically.  When converting stats to SuperWorld, they seemed pretty true to the genre in that they were masters of their more limited domain, but stalemates could occur in combat against more evenly matched foes.

!i!

Hmmm. I think the OP may have found a serious flaw in the system besides the "spider-man is as easy to hit as Aunt May" problem.  However for fighting it shouldn't matter- since like Silverlion said, those characters usually have very high Fighting stats.  

Now for finding clues at the crime scene or engaging in a high-speed chase, I can see how this would be really frustrating.  Typically, I'd make sure they only need green results to succeed.

Second, to help them out, I'd give a Karma Pool to the party in addition to their own personal Karma, since their stats are low and Karma is a derived stat.   I never liked that the weaker characters got *less* Karma than the stronger ones, but this is a way to deal with it.  

That said, I run this style of game all the time with no problems at all, but I don't use FASERIP to do it.  The main trick is lowering the difficulty levels to be things that the Heroes have a reasonable chance of making.  In FASERIP terms, I guess that means stick to Green results, but even then you need a 45% with an Excellent score to get that... It is better than a 50/50 shot, though.  Maybe you could divide the white section of the chart in half...  Make the lower half gray- this is the complete failure level, and the actual white half is the partial success result.  So then the characters would have a decent chance of eking out *some* success.

Quote from: BASHMAN;333706Hmmm. I think the OP may have found a serious flaw in the system besides the "spider-man is as easy to hit as Aunt May" problem.  However for fighting it shouldn't matter- since like Silverlion said, those characters usually have very high Fighting stats.  

Now for finding clues at the crime scene or engaging in a high-speed chase, I can see how this would be really frustrating.  Typically, I'd make sure they only need green results to succeed.

Second, to help them out, I'd give a Karma Pool to the party in addition to their own personal Karma, since their stats are low and Karma is a derived stat.   I never liked that the weaker characters got *less* Karma than the stronger ones, but this is a way to deal with it.  

That said, I run this style of game all the time with no problems at all, but I don't use FASERIP to do it.  The main trick is lowering the difficulty levels to be things that the Heroes have a reasonable chance of making.  In FASERIP terms, I guess that means stick to Green results, but even then you need a 45% with an Excellent score to get that... It is better than a 50/50 shot, though.  Maybe you could divide the white section of the chart in half...  Make the lower half gray- this is the complete failure level, and the actual white half is the partial success result.  So then the characters would have a decent chance of eking out *some* success.

FASERIP as written, at least in the Advanced set, has a group Karma pool.

It's been forever since I ran this, but I don't recall a big "whiff" factor, even for the lower powered guys, or I wouldn't have had to fight so hard getting the guys to switch to SAGA.