Fria Ligans forum

Nerd Parker posted some feedback on the Starter Set adventure over at RPGnet's Invincible thread.

I'm reposting here:

Read through the Starter Kit Beta, and I have concerns. (Mild spoilers for the Starter Kit and the Invincible comics below.)

1. Titan.
Early on, there's an encounter that's giving powerful 5E Acquisitions Incorporated vibes. The players meet Titan, one of Machine Head's lieutenants, who comes to the PCs and tells them: "he wants the same thing as them – to stop Machine Head."

With a successful Presence roll, the PCs can learn a bunch of info based on how well they roll. Then, "Regardless of what Titan reveals or does for the heroes, he will go to great lengths to avoid being seen helping them. As soon as he can, he will slip away and return to his post."

If the PCs fail the Presence roll, Titan bids them adieu and that's the scene. So there could be an upwards of 20% chance the players have a scene where the GM says "So Titan approaches. He says he doesn't want Machine Head to win. Anyway, he sneaks back to his post. Good talk."

2. Enforcers
I realize this is not entirely fair to the Invincible RPG, because this is a problem endemic to most superhero RPGs, but the second fight in the Starter Kit - which is very likely to be the second fight an Invincible GM is ever going to run - has 5 unique superhero stat blocks to keep track of. "Build NPCs with the same rules as PCs" is a hard trap for system designers to escape from, and superhero RPGs are the worst of the lot, but as an experienced GM eyeing Invincible as a pitch for this summer, yeesh. The stat blocks are on par with the freely available Mauler Twins with regards to complexity, but each is unique. Each has 3-6 powers, some regular, some Major, with Boosts. Each has two Talents. This is par for the course for a "Sinister Six" kind of fight, but for the GM's second encounter this seems really rough.

3. Machine Head and Isotope
We are told multiple times that the PCs can't fight Machine Head. If they try, his minion Isotope teleports him away. If the PCs interrupt the monologue too much, Machine Head teleports out and finishes the monologue via hologram. This is fine; good even: teach the PCs to let the villain monologue, it's a trope. But if the adventure has multiple callouts that the PCs can't fight Machine Head, because he has a teleporting sidekick and he will absolutely escape, why does he have a huge stat block?

It's a Starter Box, you want to include some extra villain stat blocks so GMs can keep going for a bit while they wait for their core book to be ordered? Sure? But Machine Head doesn't have any fighting weight: he'll fold like a wet blanket. Yet he has a full stat block with a 7 (!) Talents that are mostly about how good a talker he is. Isotope also gets a full stat block, even though his role (in the adventure and in the source comics!) is basically just to teleport the leader away.

"You're probably not going to fight these dudes, but here's a stat block." Sure. "If you even think about fighting these dudes, they teleport away and escape and you can't do anything about it. Here's two stat blocks." Why?

4. The Kaiju
Okay, on the one hand, I love this fight. The third scene's encounter really highlights what you can do with a superhero RPG. An entire city district as a battlemap, showcasing the power of zone-based RPGs? Check. Tons of civilians in danger, highlighting the competing priorities of the superhero genre? Check. Humongous villains showcasing that beginning superhero adventures are about more than goblins? Check.

But each of the kaiju get a full page writeup! This is the same complaint as #2, but why?

They're giant kaiju. They can't be reasoned with. They don't have backstory. They exist so the PCs can fly around the city and throw 5 story opponents into buildings and be awesome. Why is the GM tasked with maintaining four completely different statblocks?

Even if we assume the kaiju need to be different (which I don't think is true, but let's assume), I see no reason you couldn't have a kaiju stat block and then say "Alpha has this tentacle power, Gamma has extra armor", etc. Instead, I have to know that Alpha has a Fighting of 7, and Beta has a Fighting of 6.

Are my players going to notice that Alpha has one more Fighting? Is that distinction going to impact the game enough to merit the mental overheard for the GM?

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I'm still really high on Invincible, but this Starter Kit seems like it does the game no favors. I acknowledge this is a beta product, but the level of done-ness of the product gives me the impression they're looking for proofreading more than structural feedback.

I haven't run the adventure yet, so what do I know, it might sing. Yet I also don't really have a desire to run the starter kit anymore, either.

While incredibly important feedback, I think this ought to go into the starter set thread.

While converting Conan, I noticed an issue. Weapons do their listed damage instead of the character's base slugfest one. This means that anyone with Str 5+, like Conan, does less damage with a sword (2) than with their punch (3). I understand Invincible is a superhero game and, since one of the tropes is that characters don't walk around with regular weapons, you have to discourage their use somehow. But this still feels a little off to me.

A solution could be importing Marvel Super-Heroes rule that if your Strength is higher than the weapon's listed damage, you increase the latter by +1 CS. In Invincible, this translates to +1 damage if your base slugfest damage is higher than the weapon's. So, Conan would do 3 damage with the sword, the same as his punch, but the sword also gives +1 bonus to the roll and makes his damage "sharp".

Effects: Diseases can have a wide range of effects, as
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you fatigued (page xx),