House Rules; Guardians of the Galaxy: Dangerous Freedoms
House Rules
Advancement - You can buy straight to the next rank. Stats that aren't already superhuman are kept at human limit.
Body Armor - common criticism of this system is that the Body Armor power, granting damage reduction essentially, is a bit too powerful, and outright prevents certain characters from being useful. As a compromise, I propose that attacks with Red results ignore ALL Body Armor, representing finding a critical weak point in its structure. Additionally, attacks with Yellow results ignore HALF of the Body Armor score. If this proves a bit too much, we can revise it, but I think it will, overall, allow for more fun battles.
Defensive Actions - A common criticism of FASERIP is that it's too easy to hit dodgy characters, like, say, Daredevil. We're going to rectify that by reducing the hefty penalty given towards taking multiple actions when taking defensive actions (Dodging, Evading, Blocking, Shielding). Usually, this gives a -2 CS to all other actions taken that turn, which can be a real drag. I'm reducing this penalty to -1 CS. Additionally, characters with a power that might apply towards this sort of manuever may substitute their power rank for that ability rank. Therefore, Daredevil for instance could use his Enhanced Senses power rank of Monstrous to roll for Dodging rather than his Incredible Agility. I'm not super sure how these changes to Defensive actions will work out in play, so this is subject to change, but let's see.
Karma - Traditionally, Karma serves the double-purpose of being both an in-game resource and an advancement resource, which leads to somewhat crappy situations where the characters that need Karma least are the ones using it for advancement. I propose that there be two separate pools of Karma - one normal pool for use in-game, and one of "spent" Karma which then becomes available to be used for advancement. This encourages heroes to be heroic, and I think fits the genre better than hoarding Karma.
While the pool of Karma for in game use is entirely determined and useable by your current Hero your Spent 'Advancement Karma' is player owned and can be spent on any hero you have played.
EDITOR'S NOTE - The intent of this is to explain how 70s Blade can disappear for decades then reappear as Post Movie Blade. In our game's rationale his player would've gone on to play Ghost Rider through his lengthy run then put all that earned Advancement Karma into making Blade's return epic.
BETA (SUBJECT TO CHANGE) Changes to Martial Arts - Rules as written, Martial Arts talents are of greatly varying quality. These range from Martial Arts A, which grants a benefit already given by the advanced core rules, to Martial Arts D, which creates an advanced subsystem for studying opponents' moves. Martial Arts B is simply an unarmed specialty, which can honestly be rolled into the other weapon talents. C and E are highly situational.
My solution to this issue is to streamline Martial Arts into a single talent, designed to get rid of the clutter, and make Martial Arts something desirable. It also allows non-super-strong characters like Moon Knight or Ronin to not feel totally powerless. I've reduced the 5 talents down to 2.
Unarmed Fighting - A character with this talent is trained in unarmed combat. They receive +1 column shift to attack, dodge, or evade rolls when fighting unarmed.
Martial Arts - A character with this talent is trained in one or more martial arts. When fighting using these martial arts, unarmed or not, the character may substitute the damage dealt by their Strength (or Weapon Value) for their Fighting ability -1 CS.
Example: Ronin with Good (10) Strength and Incredible (40) fighting, busts out some of her assimilated training on a Hand Ninja. Instead of dealing a mere 10 Damage, she may instead deal Remarkable (30) Damage, her Fighting -1CS.
NOTE- The damage that may be achieved this way is capped at Remarkable (30) fighting higher than Incredible gives enough advantages through our Body Armour house rules.
Power Stunts- Once you've done a stunt THREE TIMES successfully and it becomes "Established", the Karma Cost will be reduced to 10, and you won't need any feats o
BETA (SUBJECT TO CHANGE) Shields- here's how I intend to handle shields, let's see how it pans out.
Shields follow a variation of the the Blocking defensive action. A shield block is a defensive ability that uses Material Strength of the shield used to lessen the damage of physical attacks. Which in this case include Slugfest, Edged and Blunt Throwing attacks, Force attacks, and shooting attacks (but not energy attacks). But not Wrestling or Charging.
The Shield Block move is an attempt to meet Force with Density and use the Shield's Material Strength as a form of Body Armour against a specific attack. The character using a Shield Block may take no other actions but may shield others behind them. Normal Body Armour, but not Force Fields still apply to Defense.
The Character using the Shield Block manoeuvre does not attack, but counts their Shield's Material Strength as Body Armour provided the force can be physically resisted (use common sense here- A fire cannot be blocked, but a pillar of ice can). Roll on the universal Table against FIGHTING to determine the effects. The notation -6CS for a WHITE result, -4CS for a GREEN result, -2CS for a YELLOW, and +1 CS for a RED result indicates the level of Body Armour taken from the Material Strength of the Shield.
Example: A Charactet with Amazing Fighting and an Amazing Material Strength Shield wishes to block a punch thrown by an opponent with Monstros Strength. The character gets a GREEN FEAT, -4CS which provides them with an equivalent Body Armour of Good. The character takes 65 points of damage. If the hero had made a RED FEAT roll, the character would've totally blocked the attack (Monstrous Body Armour against Monstros Damage Attack).
I know this doesn't interact perfectly with how items usually work, but lets see how it works in practice.
NOTE- Note that these conditions may be modified by specific Shield Items Such as Black Knight's Ebony Blade's abilities. Which posseses anti-magical properties that exclusively and solely allow it to deflect spells and energy as if it were a shield of Unearthly strength
