Friday, September 8, 2017

MP - What Happened to Heightened Speed?

Villains & Vigilantes 2.0 and 2.1 had a power called "Heightened Speed" which increased both the character's ground movement and initiative. It was the basic power for Speedsters in V&V.

Mighty Protectors (aka V&V 3e) evolves that, essentially deconstructing one power into its component parts, and giving you new options, and more flexibility. It's easy to re-create "Heightened Speed," and more.

Here is a basic breakdown of new options in MP:

"Heightened Initiative" increases the Init stat with a flat bonus to the roll, affecting who gets to act first.

"Speed" power is just movement - the ability to move quickly from one place to another.  Cars and motorcycles need this, as well as any characters who want to run (or swim) faster than a speeding bullet.

"Super Speed" gives the character more turns per round - kind of like "Altered Time Sense" from GURPS, where the character literally experiences more subjective time than other people do. It's PR=2 per extra turn per round, not-coincidentally exactly the same as extra actions per turn cost in 2e. Characters can move once per turn they get (multiple turns per round), so can be combined with relatively low value of "Speed" power to create someone who relocates very quickly.

A twist is that Initiative is now based on Cool (formerly Charisma), and the cost of Heightened Cool is competitive with the cost of Heightened Initiative, when the goal is to boost initiative (3 CP vs 2.5 CP per +1 to max).

So it depends on the goal - Cool has more benefits like skill bonuses and hit point bonuses (HP is now linked to Cool, not Intelligence).

Heightened Initiative is a fixed value, so your minimum init on any given turn is higher, making it more likely the character will act before at least some opponents, particular slow opponents like Cool 10 generic thugs (Init d4).


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