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MARVEL RPG

Marvelous Phile: Character Creation

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Hey, guys, Professor Bill of Comic Book University (where tuition is always free) and I’m bringing you the tenth article of the Marvelous Phile, an homage to the excerpt in Dragon Magazine back in the ’80s.

Game mechanic – character creation

MARVEL RPGGetting right into it, we’re going to start off on page 5 of the Marvel Super Heroes RPG Player’s Handbook using the Advanced system. Here you’ll find the Origins Table. You can either roll for your origin (if you’re feeling giddy) or just choose from these. Your choices are as follows, with examples for each:

  1. Altered Human – Fantastic Four, Captain America, Spider-Man
  2. Mutant – X-Men, Wolverine
  3. Hi-Tech – Iron Man, Spitfire
  4. Robot – Vision, Machine Man
  5. Alien – Kree, Asgardians, Atlanteans

Turning to page 6 we go to the Random Ranks Table. Here is where you’ll roll for your primary abilities (FASERIP stats). You can go in order from Fighting to Psyche or place the stats where you will. Once you have your stats, you will add the FASE stats to get your health and then add your RIP stats to get your starting karma.

Move a little to the right of the Random Ranks Table to find the Ability Modifier Table. Here you will determine your resources. Start with Typical resources (your origin may offer an alternative) and roll to see what that number will be modified by, if at all.

Next find the Powers, Talents, Contacts Table and roll for how many powers, talents, and contacts you will start the game with. There is a backslash between many of the numbers. The first figure is the number you will use; the second number is the maximum you can start with.

On page 8 find the Power Category Table where you’ll roll which categories you’ll be choosing your powers from. You now have the option to choose from the ten or more powers in each category or roll a single die for a more random selection.

Remember, powers with an asterisk (*) mean they have double the cost, meaning they cost two power slots instead of just one. These are much more potent or rare powers.

Game mechanic – limitations

One of my favorite aspects of the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced RPG is the limitations aspect. Check out my accompanying video where I use Nightcrawler as an example of a player using limitations to increase powers and stats.

That’s it for this week, everybody. Make sure to check out my accompanying video and keep gaming.

Character profiles

Be sure to check out Comic Book University for a Behind the Judges Screen video on this subject. Thanks for reading and keep your dice hand strong!

Professor Bill

Comic Book University

Class dismissed

Join us for good karma

Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game streams live on Mondays at 8 p.m. EST on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. Viewers in the live chat are encouraged to get their percentile dice and join in as Professor Bill leads Season Two players Nerdarchist Dave, Travis Boles from WebDM Nerdarchy Nerditor-in-chief Doug, novelist and staff writer Megan R. Miller and Nerdarchy superfan Fraginator through a street-level campaign featuring original superhero characters.

You can learn more about how karma is gained and used by viewers in the live stream chat here. Live chat participants can use karma to affect the results of dice rolls using the same mechanic as the players. Before rolling the dice, a player can spend karma to add to the result on a 1:1 ratio. After a dice roll, karma can be added to the result on a 2:1 ratio, with a minimum of 10 karma spent. For example, if Ash is about to make a roll to use his Fire Manipulation power, Megan can choose spend five karma to add an equal amount to the dice result. If Megan decides to roll without using karma, and rolls a 60 (a green result), she could spend 22 karma to add 11 to the result, bringing to total to 71 (a yellow result).

Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game Season Two is produced by War Eagle Keep, creating overlays, running sound and a million other things that make to make this live game awesome in the Mighty Marvel Manner! Check out War Eagle Keep on Instagram @war.eagle.keep

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Doug Vehovec

Nerditor-in-Chief Doug Vehovec is a proud native of Cleveland, Ohio, with D&D in his blood since the early 80s. Fast forward to today and he’s still rolling those polyhedral dice. When he’s not DMing, worldbuilding or working on endeavors for Nerdarchy he enjoys cryptozoology trips and eating awesome food.

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