d20 Powers

[Ancient History]

A spin-off of the build-your-own-class d20 variant thread, although nowhere near as much work, I'm toying with the Superdungeon! concept again, and wonder what D&D would look like if players could design and choose super-powers for their characters.

It would be an interesting intellectual exercise, I think - and it would in part depend upon the world. Strength 25 at level 1 could be seen as a superpower; strength 25 at level 6 would still be impressive, but less gamebreaking. A soulknife who manifests a leShay blade at level 1 would be very impressive indeed (to the point that class modifiers would be cool but probably just icing on the already overpowered cake). Some abilities like Psi Resistance 100 would only really seem applicable within a campaign where Psionics was a significant factor. And some abilities might have unforeseen drawbacks or weaknesses as determined by the character's backstory or Mister Cavern fiat - like a character with Photographic Reflexes that can copy any physical feat they see might have the caveat "provided they meet the prerequisites" or even the more cruel "but you lose one feat you previously knew." Heck, you could even go Koschei the Deathless where rendering the character to -10 hit points doesn't kill them.

The thing is I'm thinking of this as very much a one-off, fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants system - not the kind of thing where you create a Mutants & Masterminds style point-buy system, but where you work with the players to realize the kind of powers they want for their character (ignoring blatant grabs for omnipotence or omniscience). But I have been silly about these things before, so...what do y'all think? Is it a good idea, or a terribad idea? Can you think of good powers, or do you think all the example powers are stupid? Would it be subject to rampant abuse, or just the right amount of abuse for people to have a jolly good dungeoneering time?

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I once played in a game where classes were limited to non-spellcasters, each character got a vestige a la Binder (with thematically tighter abilities and without any of the summoning fluff), and characters were considered X-men style mutants. Considering super powers as part of a limited package with static, 1/round and 1/5 round abilities, mapped to a nominally tolerable effect system like 3E spells, would allow for quickly generating templates, at least.

[Josh_Kablack]

It's an idea that's both wonderful and terrible. It's gonna require the group to be largely on the same page about desired power levels of play and the MC to be very good at adapting to unforeseen interactions and clever power uses on the fly - but if you can clear those hurdles, it could be a blast.

But this isn't exactly new ground, D&D has had wild talents and a hope of rolling Body Weaponry since the 1980s, and a plurality of MCs like to include crazy things like homebrew half-troll races, and chaos pools that let PCs roll on random mutation charts.

So my advice would be to figure loosely how you are handling powers - with Spells/SLAs, Psionics, PrCs, Custom Races, Templates, Spheres, mix and match, "just wing it", etc. And then translate a half a dozen recognizable comic book characters' power sets into your loose framework. These example characters would both test your skeleton and provide your players with a rough example of what's acceptable. There's a big difference in power level between that one dude who gets at-will Jump, Spider Climb, Animate Rope, Web, and Foresight and that other dude who gets at-will Fly, Clairsentience, Iron Body, Wall of Ice and Scorching Ray.

[OgreBattle]

It would be an interesting intellectual exercise, I think - and it would in part depend upon the world. Strength 25 at level 1 could be seen as a superpower; strength 25 at level 6 would still be impressive, but less gamebreaking. A soulknife who manifests a leShay blade at level 1 would be very impressive indeed (to the point that class modifiers would be cool but probably just icing on the already overpowered cake). Some abilities like Psi Resistance 100 would only really seem applicable within a campaign where Psionics was a significant factor. And some abilities might have unforeseen drawbacks or weaknesses as determined by the character's backstory or Mister Cavern fiat - like a character with Photographic Reflexes that can copy any physical feat they see might have the caveat "provided they meet the prerequisites" or even the more cruel "but you lose one feat you previously knew." Heck, you could even go Koschei the Deathless where rendering the character to -10 hit points doesn't kill them.

Reminds me of Gamma World, or at least what I think GW is suppose to be as I've never played it. The one-shot nature of the game makes me think Feng Shui would be a better fit though. D&D3e character generation and sheet length is kind of long for something you use once.